Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, Robert Evans here and I wanted to let
Speaker 1: you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode
Speaker 1: of the week that just happened is here in one
Speaker 1: convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to
Speaker 1: listen to in a long stretch if you want. If
Speaker 1: you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,
Speaker 1: there's going to be nothing new here for you, But
Speaker 1: you can make your own decisions.
Speaker 2: You probably don't remember the passage of Title forty two,
Speaker 2: let alone that of Title forty two, Chapter six A
Speaker 2: sub chapter two, Part G Section two sixty four, but
Speaker 2: it's a part of US federal law that gives the
Speaker 2: government of the authority to take emergency action to keep
Speaker 2: communical diseases out of the country. The portion, which allows
Speaker 2: a sweeping disregard for asylum law passed in nineteen forty four,
Speaker 2: reads in one giant run on paragraph sentence.
Speaker 3: As follows, Whenever the Surgeon General determines that, by reason
Speaker 3: of the existence of any communicable disease in a foreign country,
Speaker 3: there is serious danger of the introduction of such disease
Speaker 3: into the United States, and that this danger is so
Speaker 3: increased by the introduction of persons or property from such
Speaker 3: country that a suspension of the right to introduce such
Speaker 3: persons and property is required in the interest of the
Speaker 3: public health. The Surgeon General, in accordance with regulations approved
Speaker 3: by the President, shall have the power to prohibit and
Speaker 3: whole or in part, the introduction of persons and property
Speaker 3: from such countries or places as he shall designate, in
Speaker 3: order to avert such danger, and for such period of
Speaker 3: time as he may deem necessary for such purpose.
Speaker 2: Before President Donald Trump's administration used it on March twentieth,
Speaker 2: twenty twenty, it had been used only in nineteen twenty
Speaker 2: nine to keep ships from China and the Philippines from
Speaker 2: entering US ports due to meningitis outbreak. But in March
Speaker 2: of twenty twenty, when you probably weren't paying much attention
Speaker 2: because the world was falling apart, when I just returned
Speaker 2: from a work trip to Rwanda, where I was months
Speaker 2: before any precautions appeared in the screened for a novel coronavirus.
Speaker 2: The Trump administration cited this public health law in instructions
Speaker 2: to the Department of Homeland Security on restrictions for migrants
Speaker 2: entering the United States that very same day, Center for
Speaker 2: Disease Control Director Robert R. Redfield relied on this regulation
Speaker 2: to issue an order suspending the introduction into the United
Speaker 2: States of certain individuals who had been in quote unquote
Speaker 2: coronavirus impacted areas and quote who would be introduced into
Speaker 2: a congregate setting at the port of entry or a
Speaker 2: border station. This includes individuals coming from Canada or Mexico
Speaker 2: who would normally be detained by CBP after arriving at
Speaker 2: the border, people including asylum seekers and accompanied children, and
Speaker 2: people attending to enter the United States between ports of entry.
Speaker 2: Citing the new CDC order, that same day, the Border
Speaker 2: Patrol began expelling individuals who arrived at the US Mexico
Speaker 2: border without giving them the opportunity to seek asylum. Reports
Speaker 2: indicate the CDC scientists expressed opposition to the invocation of
Speaker 2: Title forty two, arguing that there was really no public
Speaker 2: health rationale to support it. Ever since then, public health
Speaker 2: experts outside the CDC have continued to agree, arguing that
Speaker 2: while international borders largely remain open to other travelers, there
Speaker 2: is no need to turn away refugees and expel them
Speaker 2: to their home countries or send them to Mexico. Despite
Speaker 2: this DHS has been applying Title forty two to migrants
Speaker 2: for three years since then, and people have been turned
Speaker 2: away without getting a chance to plead their case for
Speaker 2: asylum three million times.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 2: Trump is no longer president, but Title forty two has persisted.
Speaker 2: It's actually persisted for much longer under Biden's watch two
Speaker 2: years and four months than it did under Trump ten months.
Speaker 2: But we'll get to that part later. First, let's look
Speaker 2: at what this bureaucratic wrinkle does when it's applied for
Speaker 2: three years across a land border spanning three one hundred
Speaker 2: and forty five kilometers. That's one nine hundred and fifty
Speaker 2: four miles for the Americans listening at a time when
Speaker 2: climate change, economic decline, and state and nonstate violence are
Speaker 2: driving more and more people towards the USA's southern border
Speaker 2: in the hope of a better life. We're talking about
Speaker 2: the Title forty two this week because it ended on
Speaker 2: Mail eleventh. In a sense, this marks an important change
Speaker 2: in immigration law. But in a sense it doesn't. Immigration
Speaker 2: was complicated and cruel for migrants and profitable for people
Speaker 2: on both sides of the border before March of twenty twenty,
Speaker 2: and it's the same after Title forty two has gone,
Speaker 2: but nonetheless Title forty two represented a distinct change in
Speaker 2: how asylum works in the US, and especially when combined
Speaker 2: with other Trump policies that Biden has continued, a distinct
Speaker 2: change in how many people die when coming to this
Speaker 2: country to try and have a better chance at a
Speaker 2: save future. By April of twenty twenty, Title forty two
Speaker 2: expulsions at the border overtook the previous record for expulsions
Speaker 2: under the so called Migrant Protection Protocol, which is better
Speaker 2: known as Remain in Mexico, that was set in August
Speaker 2: of twenty nineteen. Under an agreement reached with the Mexican government.
Speaker 2: In late March of twenty twenty, the border Patrol began
Speaker 2: sending quote unquote back to Mexico most Mexican but also
Speaker 2: Guatemala and Honduran and Saldorean families and seeing adults encountered
Speaker 2: at the border. This group of nationalities remained unchanged until
Speaker 2: May of twenty twenty two, when the Biden administration came
Speaker 2: to an agreement with Mexico to accept quote unquote thousands
Speaker 2: of Cubans and Nicaraguans sent from the United States to Mexico.
Speaker 2: But this doesn't really matter. You'll see that alone these episodes.
Speaker 2: Immigration law on the ground and immigration law in Washington,
Speaker 2: DC are two very different things. There has been extensive
Speaker 2: documentation of individuals expelled to Mexico who do not fit
Speaker 2: within these nationalities, including Haitian asylum seekers, some of whom
Speaker 2: I've spoken to myself. People who are expelled are often
Speaker 2: driven by bus to the nearest port of entry that's
Speaker 2: a land border crossing, and told to walk back to Mexico,
Speaker 2: often without their luggage and other belongings. I found that
Speaker 2: luggage in belongings, including ID cards, clothing, and even little
Speaker 2: stuffed animals, all along the border in the three years
Speaker 2: since Title forty two has been in place. I asked
Speaker 2: my friend Paul to describe what we found in Texas
Speaker 2: when we've been for a walk along the border wall
Speaker 2: during our time reporting on the National Butterfly Center.
Speaker 5: There you'd find drivers' licenses. I believe at one point
Speaker 5: we found like an almost an information packet for like
Speaker 5: it was for a teenager, a teenage girl. I remember
Speaker 5: that because we got pictures of it. And then when
Speaker 5: we took that long walk, remember we walked down the
Speaker 5: border wall there's two two and a half mile walk
Speaker 5: something like that. When we got to the very end
Speaker 5: of the wall where the river was, there was just
Speaker 5: a giant pile of people's stuff. And some of it
Speaker 5: was obviously trash, you know, they were abandoning clothes after
Speaker 5: they changed from crossing and stuff like that, but a
Speaker 5: lot of it was full backpacks. A lot of ID
Speaker 5: documents just in piles, just piles of them. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 5: just big piles of documents that proved who you were.
Speaker 2: The other thing we found with ladders, tons of them.
Speaker 2: Apparently someone built a gazebo out of them. The wall
Speaker 2: varies in design a bit along the border depending on
Speaker 2: when and by whom it was built, but the trund
Speaker 2: design has a flat anti climb plate at the top.
Speaker 2: I'll let Paul describe how that's going.
Speaker 5: It was literally like somebody went to the hardware store
Speaker 5: bought two of the longest or actually sorry, three of
Speaker 5: the longest two by four as you could put two
Speaker 5: of them beside each other, and then just nailed steps
Speaker 5: up them, so you know, they were like sixteen twenty
Speaker 5: feet long, and which was enough to just climb over
Speaker 5: the wall, like there weren't there weren't many places actually,
Speaker 5: because most of the wall had that anti climb barrier
Speaker 5: at the top. Whereas when you didn't have the anti
Speaker 5: climb barrier, you didn't actually have something to set it against.
Speaker 5: But once you put that on there, you could just
Speaker 5: lean the ladder up against it. It's like self defeating.
Speaker 2: Sometimes these expulsions are not as straightforward. It's a bus
Speaker 2: to nearest port of entry. CVP has carried out what
Speaker 2: are called lateral transfers by plane or bus, taking migrants
Speaker 2: to another location along the border, to towns like San
Speaker 2: Diego or El Paso, even if they entered in Arizona
Speaker 2: or California. This leaves families stranded in the town where
Speaker 2: they have no connections, no resources, and no community. Again,
Speaker 2: these are people I've met. It won't have escaped the
Speaker 2: listener's attention that those planes and buses and other means
Speaker 2: of detention and transport are indeed congregate settings, But that
Speaker 2: doesn't seem to matter here. Title forty two didn't stop
Speaker 2: people trying to come, but it made the journey more difficult.
Speaker 2: Instead of crossing and trying to turn themselves in for
Speaker 2: asylum or approaching a port of entry, people began crossing
Speaker 2: in more remote places, places without border walls or barriers,
Speaker 2: with less frequent border patrols. In twenty twenty, the Border
Speaker 2: Patrol found two hundred and forty seven dead bodies along
Speaker 2: the border. This is unlikely to represent the full human
Speaker 2: toll of border enforcement. Many deaths in the desert go
Speaker 2: unreported and undiscovered, but it gives some kind of point
Speaker 2: of comparison for the twenty twenty one number. After a
Speaker 2: year of Title forty two, five hundred and forty six
Speaker 2: people died that year. In twenty twenty two, third year
Speaker 2: of Title forty two, eight hundred and fifty seven people died.
Speaker 2: None of those people were guilty of any crime than
Speaker 2: wanting a better life, but under Title forty two, they
Speaker 2: lost their lives because the US didn't give them a
Speaker 2: safe way to exercise the human right to claim asylum.
Speaker 2: One local advocate, Hamira Yusefi from a group called PANA,
Speaker 2: the Partnership for the Advance with New Americans, explain what
Speaker 2: Title forty two have been like for her as an
Speaker 2: advocate for asylum seekers.
Speaker 6: When the pandemic hit, we saw that Title forty two
Speaker 6: heavily restricted those who were able to seek asylum in
Speaker 6: this country. So while there was chaos happening and folks
Speaker 6: around the world who were trying to come to the
Speaker 6: United States for refuge, they were unable to do so.
Speaker 6: And what this resulted in is people taking an even
Speaker 6: more dangerous path right than before and going between the
Speaker 6: ports of entries in order to try to seek refuge.
Speaker 6: And so we have had hundreds of cases of individuals
Speaker 6: who have gotten themselves injured, who the hospitals calling us
Speaker 6: because they tried to cross and got injured, and where
Speaker 6: we're trying to help them with getting some basic legal
Speaker 6: services and immediate shelter and those types of things.
Speaker 2: Since Biden took office, Human Rights First says it's identified
Speaker 2: more than thirteen thousand incidents of kidnapping, torture, rape, or
Speaker 2: other violent attacks on people blocked or expelled to Mexico
Speaker 2: on a title forty two. That's because it's easy for
Speaker 2: violence to follow people who have no resources and no
Speaker 2: community to protect them. It's for that reason that you
Speaker 2: won't always see faces in my photographs at the border,
Speaker 2: and that some of the names in this series have changed,
Speaker 2: or perhaps we're just using someone's first name. It's also
Speaker 2: for that reason that not everyone at the border always
Speaker 2: wants to talk, but we do have some interviews coming
Speaker 2: up for you tomorrow. Here's a clip from a discussion
Speaker 2: about this which I recorded the border last week.
Speaker 4: I'm trying to get people's faces, and that's what everybody's
Speaker 4: doing our needs.
Speaker 3: I can't speak to what they're doing.
Speaker 4: That's what I'm doing.
Speaker 3: I don't know about other people.
Speaker 2: You should ask. You should if you think someone's taking
Speaker 2: a photo of you.
Speaker 4: It's okay.
Speaker 7: I don't have a why you know?
Speaker 4: I wish I could. Yeah, I could tell you.
Speaker 2: People who are subject to Title forty two expulsion are
Speaker 2: not given an opportunity to contest their expulsion on the
Speaker 2: grounds it would face persecution in the country to which
Speaker 2: they would be expelled. There's a very limited exceptions Title
Speaker 2: forty two for people who quote unquote spontaneously inform CBP
Speaker 2: officers that they fear being tortured in the country to
Speaker 2: which they will be expelled. However, in order to receive
Speaker 2: an official screening by an asylum officer for exemption under
Speaker 2: that provision, the CBP officer must first determine that the
Speaker 2: claim is reasonably believable. From March twenty twenty through September
Speaker 2: twenty twenty one, just two hundred and seventy two people
Speaker 2: were granted the right to seek asylum under this exception.
Speaker 2: The use of Title forty two has been despite the
Speaker 2: relative lack of outrage and surbide. The administration took office
Speaker 2: bipartisan in twenty twenty one. A few weeks before Biden's inauguration,
Speaker 2: I spent some time talking to migrants at the other
Speaker 2: border for Slate. Many of them had come to a
Speaker 2: small tent city that popped up just feet from the
Speaker 2: pedestrian border crossing and the country that they had traveled
Speaker 2: thousands of miles to get to, but that they couldn't reach.
Speaker 2: You can see America through the fence there, but you
Speaker 2: can't get there. The camp was diverse in its composition.
Speaker 2: On one trip, I interviewed folks from Haiti, Honduras, Salvador, Watemala,
Speaker 2: and Ethiopia. Here's what one of them said to me
Speaker 2: when he asked his message to President Biden. You recognize
Speaker 2: their voices Daniald's. That's because I don't have his permission
Speaker 2: to use his voice.
Speaker 8: Here.
Speaker 3: We are appealing to President Biden. We aren't bad people.
Speaker 3: Our goal is to work and get ahead in the
Speaker 3: world for our children. We don't want to go back.
Speaker 3: They will kill us, so we are here.
Speaker 2: Some of them wore Biden t shirts, which I suspect
Speaker 2: righttually a plant by a right wing our Jean provocateur
Speaker 2: looking to make the new administration look weak. They needn't
Speaker 2: really have bothered with all the effort Biden would do
Speaker 2: plenty in the next few months to make himself look
Speaker 2: cruel and unkind. Before we'd talk about that, I want
Speaker 2: to play you a clip from Biden's first press confidence President.
Speaker 9: You just listed the reasons that people are coming talking
Speaker 9: about in country problems, saying that it happens every year.
Speaker 9: You blamed the last administration. Sir, I just got back
Speaker 9: last night from a reporting trip to the border, where
Speaker 9: I met nine year old Josel who walked here from
Speaker 9: Honduras by himself, along with another little boy. He had
Speaker 9: that whole numbe on him and we were able to
Speaker 9: call his family. His mother says that she sent her
Speaker 9: son to this country because she believes that you are
Speaker 9: not deporting unaccompanied minors like her son. That's why she's
Speaker 9: sent him alone from Honduras. So, Sir, you blamed the
Speaker 9: last administration, But is your messaging and saying that these
Speaker 9: children are and will be allowed to stay in this
Speaker 9: country and work their way through this process, encouraging families
Speaker 9: like Jose's to come.
Speaker 10: Well, look.
Speaker 11: The idea that I'm going to say, which I would
Speaker 11: never do. If an unaccompanied child ends up at the border,
Speaker 11: We're just gonna let him starve to death and stay
Speaker 11: on the other side. No previous administrations dead either except Trump.
Speaker 11: I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to
Speaker 11: do it. That's why I've asked the Vice President of
Speaker 11: the United States yesterday to be the lead person I'm
Speaker 11: dealing with focusing on the fundamental reasons why people leave Honduras, Guatemala,
Speaker 11: or Salvadora in the first place.
Speaker 2: In the coming months, some of which I covered for
Speaker 2: an op ed and NBC about the Biden administration's cruel
Speaker 2: treatment of Haitian migrants, things on the border didn't get
Speaker 2: any better. Biden deported more Haitian people in a few
Speaker 2: weeks than the Trump administration did in a year, eight
Speaker 2: hundred and ninety five people reported in twenty twenty versus
Speaker 2: more than one thy two hundred people from January twentieth
Speaker 2: to March twenty second, twenty twenty one, while making declarations
Speaker 2: about showing compassion to migrants, the Biden administration packed Haitians
Speaker 2: onto crowded planes and buses and sent them back to
Speaker 2: Haiti in the middle of a pandemic. In March, the
Speaker 2: US sent another pointed disinvitation to Haitians. The US Embassy
Speaker 2: in Haiti tweeted a picture President Joe Biden looking off
Speaker 2: into the distance with a caption in both English and
Speaker 2: Haitian Creole. In Creole, it read wing cardi sa bienk pavini.
Speaker 2: The translation above it was.
Speaker 3: I can say quite clearly, don't come over.
Speaker 2: In July of that year, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Majorcas,
Speaker 2: himself a child of parents who fled from Cuba, said
Speaker 2: that Haitians and Cubans fleeing unrest in their countries will
Speaker 2: not find safety in the US, even if they have
Speaker 2: a credible claim for asylum, and especially if they flee
Speaker 2: by sea. In doing so, he was echoing statements that
Speaker 2: the US broadcast from planes flying over Haiti following the
Speaker 2: devastating earthquake in twenty ten. Following these announcements, the US
Speaker 2: diverted resources that it could have used to help people
Speaker 2: from suffering in a country which have been destroyed by
Speaker 2: a natural disaster, to stop them coming to this country.
Speaker 2: He was also overlooking that under both international and domestic law,
Speaker 2: asylum seekers are entitled to make claims no matter how
Speaker 2: they enter the country. Here's what may Orcas said at
Speaker 2: his press conference.
Speaker 3: Allow me to be clear, if you take to the sea,
Speaker 3: you will not come to the United States.
Speaker 2: Part of this hard line is because of a perceived
Speaker 2: crisis at the border. You don't have to go far
Speaker 2: on Twitter dot com before you run into people like
Speaker 2: Fox Newses Bill Malogan. Yep, the tampon in the coffee
Speaker 2: guy is now a border reporter, and he's shamelessly repeating
Speaker 2: CBP statistics about apprehensions on the southern border. Here he
Speaker 2: is talking to his buddy Tucker Carlson. Do you remember
Speaker 2: that guy?
Speaker 12: Bill Maluchin has covered the border more closely than any
Speaker 12: reporter in the United States for the last two years. Today,
Speaker 12: in his estimation, the single largest caravan of illegal aliens
Speaker 12: flowing into this country in his two years of watching crossed.
Speaker 13: Today he broke the story.
Speaker 12: He's got remarkable video for us.
Speaker 8: He's lab at the border.
Speaker 13: Now, Bill, great to see you.
Speaker 12: What did you.
Speaker 14: See, Tucker cad evening to you. You mentioned it right
Speaker 14: off the top. This was easily the biggest group we
Speaker 14: have ever seen during our nineteen months of covering this
Speaker 14: border crisis, and they all crossed illegally into El Paso
Speaker 14: last night, and we got some pretty wild camera footage
Speaker 14: to show you. Take a look at this.
Speaker 3: This was last night in El Paso.
Speaker 14: A massive caravan, over one thousand illegal immigrants crossing into
Speaker 14: El Paso last night. Local media they're reporting it was
Speaker 14: potentially up to two thousand people and that it was
Speaker 14: possibly the biggest mass crossing in the city's history. Now,
Speaker 14: as you look at the video, you'll see just wave
Speaker 14: after wave after wave of these people walking across the
Speaker 14: river and then gathering on the US side of the
Speaker 14: river where they kind of form a single file line.
Speaker 2: But it's not just folks news doing this. You'll see
Speaker 2: MPR and other more liberal outlets quoting these same statistics
Speaker 2: without the necessary context. They're not lying. Apprehensions are higher,
Speaker 2: but that is in some part because migrants are now
Speaker 2: crossing more than once in twenty nineteen, before Title forty
Speaker 2: two went into effect. Just seven percent of migrants apprehended
Speaker 2: by the border patrol had previously been apprehended. The reapprehension
Speaker 2: rate grew to twenty seven percent in fiscal year twenty
Speaker 2: twenty two. This is because we're expelling people to places
Speaker 2: where they have no hope of a better future, and
Speaker 2: not leaving them with many options other than to try
Speaker 2: again in more remote and risky settings. Meanwhile, there's much
Speaker 2: less concern from the right and from Democrats at the
Speaker 2: fact that Ukrainians are exempted from Title forty two and
Speaker 2: Russians and Ukrainians generally experience expedited processing of the sort
Speaker 2: which one would hope this country could offer to other
Speaker 2: people escaping conflicts around the world, including many that we started.
Speaker 2: I asked my friend Gustavo Solis, a border investigative reporter
Speaker 2: at CAPE PBS in San Diego, to summarize it. By
Speaker 2: the administration to take on Title forty.
Speaker 15: Two now, on paper, the rationale is there's a pandemic
Speaker 15: going on. We need to stop or slow the spread
Speaker 15: of COVID nineteen. So because of this extraordinary circumstance, we
Speaker 15: need Title forty two to shore up the border. That
Speaker 15: was bullshit, and we know that now through reporting that
Speaker 15: it was total bullshit. We know that from as early
Speaker 15: as twenty eighteen, Stephen Miller, Trump's White House aid wanted
Speaker 15: to use Title forty two to stop this type of migration.
Speaker 15: We know that Vice President Mike Pence pressured the top
Speaker 15: doctors at the CDC into doing this, basically saying, if
Speaker 15: you don't do this, you might lose your job. Because
Speaker 15: even then in March twenty twenty, doctors at the CDC
Speaker 15: knew that there was no real public health rationale for this.
Speaker 15: I mean, if you look at the order, it's supposed
Speaker 15: to stop COVID, but there weren't any exceptions for migrants
Speaker 15: who were vaccinated or there was no testing component to it.
Speaker 15: So that's kind of the beginning of Title forty two.
Speaker 15: By the time Biden came in office, Biden had promised
Speaker 15: to end it along with Roman in Mexico and restore
Speaker 15: the humane asylum system, but he kept Title forty two
Speaker 15: in place. And he didn't just keep it in place,
Speaker 15: he expanded it to include nationalities that weren't included when
Speaker 15: Trump first rolled it out.
Speaker 2: Even as a legal battle went back and forth, another
Speaker 2: major bottle neck emerged in a migration system in the
Speaker 2: form of never ending clusterfuck. That is the CBP one app. Again,
Speaker 2: I let Gustavo explain his reporting here.
Speaker 15: It actually kind of started with the Ukrainians. That was
Speaker 15: kind of how they started using it for the asylum context.
Speaker 15: But CBP one is essentially a phone app for asylum,
Speaker 15: and on paper it kind of makes sense, right instead
Speaker 15: of like you know, Joe Biden and the Dems are
Speaker 15: really terrified of the optics of a lot of people
Speaker 15: at the border, and a lot of their policy is
Speaker 15: revolved around stopping that right. They don't want masses of
Speaker 15: people at the border. The CVP one app aims to
Speaker 15: address that by telling micros, hey, instead of coming all
Speaker 15: the way to Mexico and showing up the border, just
Speaker 15: download this app and schedule an appointment to come here,
Speaker 15: and we'll let you to see if you're eligible for
Speaker 15: asylum or not. Another example of a policy in Washington,
Speaker 15: DC that has like no reality in what's going on
Speaker 15: the border because migrants live in shelters with really bad
Speaker 15: Wi Fi access and they have crappy phones. So what
Speaker 15: I found in the reporting is that CBP one rewards
Speaker 15: people with the best phones, not necessarily people who are
Speaker 15: most vulnerable. And the story I came out with last
Speaker 15: week was about how data from the Mexican government shows
Speaker 15: that at least in Tijuana, about forty four percent of
Speaker 15: every microt who has gotten a CBP one application to
Speaker 15: enter the country is a Russian national and Russian nationals
Speaker 15: makeup at most ten percent of the overall migroant population
Speaker 15: in Tijuana. So you have this situation where a relatively
Speaker 15: affluent ten percent of the population is getting almost half
Speaker 15: of these humanitarian protection appointments that are designed for the
Speaker 15: world's most vulnerable people. And that's what CEP one does.
Speaker 8: Like it.
Speaker 15: They call it the ticketmaster of asylum, and and that's
Speaker 15: not a compliment. That is like ticketmaster fucking sucks. Nobody
Speaker 15: likes it.
Speaker 2: I also spoke to Kiba, an activist who participated in
Speaker 2: mutual aid at the border. We talked about the app
Speaker 2: because CABA has some professional insight into the technologies used.
Speaker 8: Data science bench for a living and the problem building
Speaker 8: the systems trained entirely on databases of white faces than
Speaker 8: not working for people of other you know, ethnic backgrounds,
Speaker 8: is very well known in this field. That is a
Speaker 8: very well documented issue. For more than a decade, and
Speaker 8: anyone who could tell you that building a facial recognition
Speaker 8: or some kind of a camera app that does image
Speaker 8: processing and and only training it on my faces, it
Speaker 8: won't like that. This is a This is not something
Speaker 8: that I think any competent software development house who would
Speaker 8: have done and not expected. So I have a hard
Speaker 8: time believing that the whole chain of everyone that's had
Speaker 8: to go through, from the developers on up to you know,
Speaker 8: anyone who does it or you know has authority of
Speaker 8: these things at CBP or Homeland Security. This is just
Speaker 8: it's it's it's like, I don't know, it's it's, it's
Speaker 8: it's it's hard to believe that this was an accent.
Speaker 2: Anyway, before we get too far from discussing things that
Speaker 2: fucking suck, here's an advertising break. You might be wondering
Speaker 2: why Title forty two is ending now and how we
Speaker 2: got here, given that there seems to be a consensus
Speaker 2: in DC that the border is in crisis, and that
Speaker 2: that crisis is not that people were leaving to die
Speaker 2: on the streets on the other side or in the
Speaker 2: deserts of California and Arizona, but the people were allowing
Speaker 2: to come to the richest country that's ever existed, from
Speaker 2: countries that we've destabilized for decades to have a chance
Speaker 2: in a decent life. Well, the answer is complicated. Some
Speaker 2: of it's a bit too complicated for me to really
Speaker 2: spend the time explaining, and you don't really need to
Speaker 2: know the ins and outs of court cases to understand that. Essentially,
Speaker 2: the Biden administration had planned to end Title forty two
Speaker 2: in late twenty twenty two, right after the midterms. Title
Speaker 2: forty two actually became theoretically unenforceable in November of that
Speaker 2: year thanks to a court ruling, but the Supreme Court
Speaker 2: in December prevented the Biden administration from ending Title forty two.
Speaker 2: While the Justice is considered a request by a group
Speaker 2: of Republican led states that want to continue knew the expulsions,
Speaker 2: which had previously been declared unlawful by lower court. Biden's
Speaker 2: Department of Justice had previously defended Title forty two as
Speaker 2: necessary to public health, but by the end of twenty
Speaker 2: twenty two, they were ready to end enforcement a Title
Speaker 2: forty two politically, even if they were nowhere near prepared
Speaker 2: on the ground. A coalition of Republican led States, however,
Speaker 2: managed to get a federal judge in Louisiana to prevent
Speaker 2: officials fromending Title forty two, saying the Biden administration had
Speaker 2: not taken adequate steps required to terminate the policy. Then,
Speaker 2: on November fifteenth, another federal judge declared Title forty two
Speaker 2: un lawful, saying the CDC had not properly explained the
Speaker 2: policy's public health rational or considered its impact on asylum seekers.
Speaker 2: At the request of the Biden administration, The judge gave
Speaker 2: border officials five weeks until December the twenty first to
Speaker 2: end Title forty two. Nineteen Republican led States asked several
Speaker 2: courts to delay Title forty two's resision indefinitely, warning that
Speaker 2: chaos would otherwise ensue. After their request was denied by
Speaker 2: lower courts, the States asked to super Spreme Court to intervene.
Speaker 2: On December twenty seventh, the Supreme Court said it would
Speaker 2: suspend the lower court order that found Title forty two
Speaker 2: to be illegal until it decided whether the Republican Led
Speaker 2: States should be allowed to intervene in the case. That's
Speaker 2: some Christmas spirit for you. Eventually, with the end of
Speaker 2: the federal emergency over COVID nineteen. Title forty two just
Speaker 2: kind of went away. Customs and Border Protection, the federal
Speaker 2: agency which put up the most staunch resistance to vaccine mandates,
Speaker 2: would begin processing migrants under Title eight of US immigration
Speaker 2: law on the eleventh of May twenty twenty three. I'll
Speaker 2: let them summarize what they see this to mean. According
Speaker 2: to the USCIS website, individuals who unlawfully cross the Southwest
Speaker 2: border will generally be processed under Title eight expedited Removal
Speaker 2: authorities in a matter of days. They will be barred
Speaker 2: from re entry to the United States for at least
Speaker 2: five years if ordered removed, and they will be presumed
Speaker 2: ineligible for asylum under the proposed Circumvention of Lawful Pathways
Speaker 2: regulation an absent and applicable exception what this means and
Speaker 2: if you cross into the United States not at the
Speaker 2: port of entry, you will be assumed ineligible for asylum
Speaker 2: and the process to remove you from the United States
Speaker 2: will begin immediately. You have a chance to file a
Speaker 2: defensive asylum claim against that, but the process can be
Speaker 2: rushed and more difficult. Despite this, and having almost three
Speaker 2: years to repair, they were by no means ready, let's
Speaker 2: hear from Gustavo again. Gustavo, can you explain to us
Speaker 2: a little bit about what you found that by the
Speaker 2: administration has been planning for the end of Title forty two.
Speaker 15: Yeah, what I found is they haven't really been doing
Speaker 15: much planning, right. I mean they talk about I think
Speaker 15: with Title forty two, it's a clear example of immigration
Speaker 15: policy being decided in Washington and no one really from
Speaker 15: the border being involved or told what's going on. So, like,
Speaker 15: I think it was the last week DHS Secretary Majorca
Speaker 15: did this press release about what they're doing in terms
Speaker 15: of processing centers in Guatemala and Columbia so people can
Speaker 15: just go there instead of coming all the way to
Speaker 15: the border, which actually there have been timelines of when
Speaker 15: those will open. But they had asked all these things
Speaker 15: for like big picture things, right, to stop people from
Speaker 15: coming in the first place, expanding some legal pathways, like
Speaker 15: making it easier for people with families already here to
Speaker 15: get sponsors, fixing some of the little things with CVP one,
Speaker 15: But they don't talk about like on the ground logistics, right.
Speaker 15: So for example, I went to Tijuana to talk to
Speaker 15: the head of the Department of migrant affairs there who
Speaker 15: told me this and I checked with him yesterday morning,
Speaker 15: who said, still to this day, less than forty eight
Speaker 15: hours before Title forty two ends, he doesn't know how
Speaker 15: many migrants CBP will allow to cross through the ports
Speaker 15: of entry in Sandy Seero. His guess is that maybe
Speaker 15: two hundred, because that's kind of the number that they
Speaker 15: floated around in December when they originally wanted to get
Speaker 15: rid of Title forty two before their lawsuit. And if
Speaker 15: it's two hundred, he basically said, Tijuana's going to be
Speaker 15: screwed because two hundred doesn't even cover the number of
Speaker 15: new migrants coming in and deporties being sent to Tijuana.
Speaker 15: So it's gonna like we have this bottleneck of migration
Speaker 15: in Tijuana and all over the border because of Title
Speaker 15: forty two. For the last three years, no one's been
Speaker 15: able to move. And if they just open it up
Speaker 15: to two hundred people, that's not really going to address
Speaker 15: any of the bottleneck.
Speaker 2: Right There's like, I think, is it sixteen thousand people
Speaker 2: are waiting like an asylum application right now?
Speaker 15: Yeah? Yeah, I hear different numbers throwing around, like teny, fifteen, sixteen,
Speaker 15: and nobody really knows, because there's like a network of
Speaker 15: official shelters, and there's a bunch of unofficial shelters, and
Speaker 15: there's a bunch of Russian dudes staying in hotels in airbnbs.
Speaker 15: But I think, yeah, tens of thousands. I think sixteen
Speaker 15: is an accurate number.
Speaker 2: I think it's introdructive here to listen to the Fox
Speaker 2: News coverage of this and how much Secretary of Majorcas
Speaker 2: tries to panda to them.
Speaker 8: I want to be very clear, our borders are not open.
Speaker 16: Homeand Security Secretary Alejandro Majorcis says when Title forty two
Speaker 16: expires at midnight tonight, anyone who arrives at the southern
Speaker 16: border will be presumed ineligible for asylum and face consequences.
Speaker 16: But withholding facilities already overwhelmed, the administration is ratcheting up
Speaker 16: tough rhetoric while also clearing the way for mass releases
Speaker 16: into US communities with no way for authorities to track people.
Speaker 16: You said at the beginning that you've prepared for this
Speaker 16: moment for almost two years. So why is part of
Speaker 16: that plan and honor system?
Speaker 8: Oh, it is not an honor system.
Speaker 17: They are a subject of our apprehension.
Speaker 16: Efforts, but under parole release authorized by the US Border
Speaker 16: Patrol Chief last night, migrants do not receive an alien
Speaker 16: registration number for authorities to track them. They don't even
Speaker 16: get a court date. Instead, migrants are asked to turn
Speaker 16: themselves into ice within sixty days to start immigration proceedings
Speaker 16: on themselves.
Speaker 1: The American people are watching this.
Speaker 4: They know what they see.
Speaker 18: They see a wide open border.
Speaker 16: Florida's Attorney General is suing the administration, arguing the parole
Speaker 16: plan is identical to a policy a federal judge struck
Speaker 16: down earlier this year.
Speaker 8: You have confidence in the lawfulness of our actions.
Speaker 16: Plans to release migrants at bus stops, gas stations, and
Speaker 16: supermarkets was first detailed last year, according to a memo
Speaker 16: uncovered by the Florida Legal Proceedings. Today, Texas Governor Greg
Speaker 16: Abbott sent a busload of migrants to the Vice President's Residents.
Speaker 2: Greg Abbott's disgusting antics aside. There was a real attempt
Speaker 2: by the Biden deministration to come through a publican side
Speaker 2: on migration that we can see clearly here. In the
Speaker 2: hours before we expected Title forty two to die, Folks
Speaker 2: like me who cover the border made plans. The day before,
Speaker 2: on the tenth, MYOCAS announced the title forty two would
Speaker 2: be enforced up until eleven fifty nine pm Eastern time,
Speaker 2: and in San Diego, Border Patrol offices closed down the
Speaker 2: port of entry at Sanisedra, the border town just south
Speaker 2: of San Diego, for a training exercise in which they
Speaker 2: lined up in front of the cars waiting to cross
Speaker 2: the border with plexiglass shields and ryotgear. Meanwhile, in between
Speaker 2: the two thirty foot board offenses that divide Sanisedra from Tijuana,
Speaker 2: Border Patrol began corraling migrants. Afghans, Colombians, Vietnamese, Koreans and
Speaker 2: Golan Sudanese, Tagiks and Congolese people all shared little more
Speaker 2: than a few tarps and cardboard boxes for shelter as
Speaker 2: they waited for something to happen. Despite having months to
Speaker 2: repair and years to plan, it appears at Department of
Speaker 2: Homeland Security totally failed to create so much as a
Speaker 2: scrap of shade or shelter, and instead chose to house
Speaker 2: people detain pending processing in the open air. In tomorrow's episode,
Speaker 2: We'll Hear from some of.
Speaker 4: Them went on Meelli and gen by Molly it's going off,
Speaker 4: not going lengthy and elm see im for the sky
Speaker 4: not me. I'm pre and Mama says something push free
Speaker 4: and glo ree for them, say must smile them, No, no,
Speaker 4: I must do and re being Gannata can I watch me?
Speaker 4: Hey man, grateful man gradeful? I went not in on
Speaker 4: mana smile yeah. Once there is a live God. All
Speaker 4: want give me everything for some five Yeah, love sack
Speaker 4: fries pick up to jommy car, I got to eat
Speaker 4: and come back. I'm seeing yeah man, that's it one
Speaker 4: love ba out.
Speaker 2: On the eleventh of May this year, title forty two
Speaker 2: finally ended. I actually began to write this episode the
Speaker 2: day before on the tenth of May, but it was
Speaker 2: that day the DHS announced that Title forty two would
Speaker 2: be enforced until eight fifty nine pm Pacific or midnight Eastern.
Speaker 2: They kept Title forty two in place for every single
Speaker 2: minute they could, and that same day, five hundred active
Speaker 2: duty troops arrived in El Paso and one thousand more
Speaker 2: set off for the border towns to join the two thousand,
Speaker 2: five hundred troops already deployed to the border. According to
Speaker 2: oppress release from Apartment of Homeland Security.
Speaker 3: CBP and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement are further expanding
Speaker 3: detention capacity, ramping up removal flights, and shifting agents and
Speaker 3: officers to high priority regions along the southwest border. This week,
Speaker 3: CBP opened two new holding facilities, and the Department of
Speaker 3: Health and Human Services is increasing its bed capacity to
Speaker 3: prepare for a potential increase in unaccompanied children. DHS also
Speaker 3: launched targeted enforcement operations and high priority regions along the border,
Speaker 3: including El Paso, to quickly process migrants and place them
Speaker 3: in removal proceedings. DHS last week also announced over two
Speaker 3: hundred and fifty million dollars in additional assistance for communities
Speaker 3: receiving migrants.
Speaker 2: On the ground. This assistance and planning didn't exactly meet
Speaker 2: the task at hand, albeit the specific court all out
Speaker 2: of El Paso does suggest that they saw their task.
Speaker 2: It's not looking bad in the right wing media hits
Speaker 2: some audio recorded after a couple of hours walking around
Speaker 2: talking to people at Sanisedro, where Customs and Border Protection
Speaker 2: had detained around five hundred people in between the two
Speaker 2: thirty foot fences that make up the border between Sansedro
Speaker 2: and Tijuana. I'm just for people familiar with San Diego
Speaker 2: and the Tijuana River Valley park by International Hill, where
Speaker 2: border patrol are holding people in between the two border fences.
Speaker 2: For those who thought we didn't have a border wall
Speaker 2: or weren't having a border wall, we have at least two,
Speaker 2: sometimes three, But right here we have two. People are
Speaker 2: being put in between these fences by border patrols. So
Speaker 2: I just spoke to some young Colombian women who had
Speaker 2: crossed about fifteen miles east of here and then being
Speaker 2: relocated here and there in between these border walls. They
Speaker 2: don't have running water. What food and water they have
Speaker 2: appear to be in surplied by bottle tears. On the
Speaker 2: northern side, they've just been given space blankets, but a
Speaker 2: lot of people are literally sleeping under bin bags right now, blankets.
Speaker 2: It's pretty brief. There's one portra toilet sort of thing
Speaker 2: that we can see about five hundred people. So I'm
Speaker 2: going to give you an idea of the conditions. Obviously
Speaker 2: those don't live up to the detention conditions that border
Speaker 2: patrol are supposed to hold people under. But here we are.
Speaker 2: I guess border patrol have just said that they're calling
Speaker 2: an ambulance. There have been a number of medical emergencies
Speaker 2: that nearly always are in these situations because you're holding people.
Speaker 2: They're you know, old people, young people, sick people, and
Speaker 2: they're in the sun all day, they're in the cold
Speaker 2: all night. It rains, they get wet. If it's hot,
Speaker 2: they get hot. If it's cold, they get cold. Their
Speaker 2: little children were just asking me for a blanket a
Speaker 2: minute ago, which is always a pretty bleak thing. If
Speaker 2: you've not been here, you'd be forgiven for not knowing that.
Speaker 2: We have a double layer of wall separating us from
Speaker 2: our neighbors in Tijuana. Both sections are now the Trump
Speaker 2: period design, but we're standing in a place we're not
Speaker 2: so very long ago. Nancy Reagan stood and said she
Speaker 2: hoped that there wouldn't be a fence here for very long.
Speaker 2: Now there are two towering walls, and their little children
Speaker 2: stuck sleeping in the dust between them or the a
Speaker 2: to These people had to go through the wall, too,
Speaker 2: and that meant no hot meals. Because the gaps are
Speaker 2: smaller than a plate. Someone tried to bring tents, but
Speaker 2: they wouldn't fit. Everything from food to clothes to medical
Speaker 2: supplies had to go through the gaps. In the War
Speaker 2: Hamara Yusefie, a volunteer from the Partnership for the Advancement
Speaker 2: of New Americans, described to me what she saw that night.
Speaker 6: I see about five hundred beautiful, smiling faces of people
Speaker 6: who are desperately trying to get to safety, and they're confused.
Speaker 6: They don't know what's going on. They don't know how
Speaker 6: long it will take them. You know, they many of
Speaker 6: them are aware that something is happening today. Many of
Speaker 6: them are asking does this mean that be turned back?
Speaker 6: What is going on? I see, you know, people who
Speaker 6: don't even have many kids, don't have shoes, they don't
Speaker 6: have I talked to individuals who lost everything on them.
Speaker 6: They don't have jackets. They're trying to cover themselves with
Speaker 6: any kind of covering that they have. Some of them
Speaker 6: using trash bags, others using scarves and other types of
Speaker 6: things to cover themselves from the sun. We are in
Speaker 6: San Diego, so it's quite sunny here.
Speaker 2: The first thing I noticed on arrival was dozens of
Speaker 2: hands sticking through the wall holding phones and charges. That's
Speaker 2: because people need to use the CBP one app to
Speaker 2: interact with border enforcement, but they've been detained by the
Speaker 2: same border enforcement in between two walls in an open
Speaker 2: field where there obviously isn't any electricity. They also need
Speaker 2: their phones to stay in touch with their families to
Speaker 2: let them know they survived a difficult and dangerous journey
Speaker 2: and that they're now technically inside the USA. Here's the
Speaker 2: advet a CBP broadcast in Spanish to encourage asylum seekers
Speaker 2: to download the app before they put them in a
Speaker 2: place they couldn't charge their phones.
Speaker 19: Attencion migrante.
Speaker 3: Attention migrants in Mexico City or further north in the country.
Speaker 3: Why do you need to download CBP one. It's a
Speaker 3: free and legal way to get an appointment guaranteed at
Speaker 3: a port of entry. It's a clear way to solicit asylum,
Speaker 3: and you have the possibility to work while your case
Speaker 3: is being processed. If you present without an appointment, you
Speaker 3: can be prohibited from entering the US for five years.
Speaker 3: You will be subject to expedite a deportation unless you
Speaker 3: comply with the strict requirements of the asylum process. In
Speaker 3: the majority of cases, it is assumed that migrants do
Speaker 3: not comply with the requirements for asylum, and you won't
Speaker 3: have the right to work unless you comply with the
Speaker 3: strict requirements. Again, if you are now in Mexico City
Speaker 3: or further north, download CBP one.
Speaker 2: As we heard yesterday, CBP one has been an a
Speaker 2: mitigated design and has shown a very clear bias towards
Speaker 2: certain types of wealthy and white asylum seekers, despite that
Speaker 2: it seemed to have been the only plan in place
Speaker 2: the end of Title forty two. The hundreds of people
Speaker 2: detained in between defenses whomably didn't have appointments and with
Speaker 2: no way to charge their phones, they couldn't make them.
Speaker 2: It's not clear of making them would have helped, as
Speaker 2: it seems that they were already being detained and thus
Speaker 2: they would have to file defensive asylum claims, effectively stopping
Speaker 2: the repatriation process by claiming that they couldn't safely be
Speaker 2: sent back to their country of origin. This is opposed
Speaker 2: to making an affirmative asylum claim that people should have
Speaker 2: been able to make at the border. With a CBP
Speaker 2: one appointment, these would not have to be argued with
Speaker 2: the threat of repatriation hanging over the person making the claim. Volunteers,
Speaker 2: local people, a mosque group, and a church group all
Speaker 2: showed up soon after CBP began dumping more people in
Speaker 2: between the fences. An hour after my own arrival, I'd
Speaker 2: given away all the charge cables that I had in
Speaker 2: my truck, which is a lot more charge cables than
Speaker 2: I thought I had in my truck, and all my
Speaker 2: charge bricks accrued over six years of getting free shared
Speaker 2: at the consumer electronics show in Las Vegas. Later, I
Speaker 2: came back with a massive solar generator that I'd like
Speaker 2: to use when I'm living off grid. But I still
Speaker 2: need to write stuff. Even all my home electronics ephemera
Speaker 2: and the combined efforts of nonprofits, religious and mutual aid
Speaker 2: groups couldn't really make much difference to the five hundred
Speaker 2: people from around the world, mostly families with children being
Speaker 2: held between the two fences. When it got hot, they
Speaker 2: got hot. When it got cold, they got cold. When
Speaker 2: the wind blew, they got dust in their eyes, and
Speaker 2: everything was constantly dirty. The only hot food volunteers could
Speaker 2: get to them was pizza. Some of the detained people
Speaker 2: had cash and they were able to order door dash
Speaker 2: on the Tijuana side, but again the meals had to
Speaker 2: fit through a hole barely wider than my arm. The
Speaker 2: only way to get clean was with wet wipes and
Speaker 2: there was only one bathroom, There was no shade or
Speaker 2: shelter either, and the only way people could construct shelters
Speaker 2: were through tying tops to the border wall itself. I
Speaker 2: like Caber, one of the volunteers who came to help,
Speaker 2: describe what they saw when participating in Mutilated a couple
Speaker 2: of days after, but it was.
Speaker 8: Definitely was. I don't think it really struck me until,
Speaker 8: you know, after, after everything, and you know, after I
Speaker 8: left several hours later. But the kind of I mean,
Speaker 8: I am right about the situation at the border, but
Speaker 8: the kind of matter of fackness of there's just several
Speaker 8: hundred people, including children, just kind of between this fence
Speaker 8: and they're just stuck there with nothing, and the sort
Speaker 8: of a matter of fatness of it all was I think,
Speaker 8: I think that struck me the most, and it's been
Speaker 8: a much challenge in the process.
Speaker 2: In the days before the end of Title forty two,
Speaker 2: confusion had rained at the border. A lot of people
Speaker 2: I talked to mentioned that they thought they had to
Speaker 2: cross before the end of Title forty two or they
Speaker 2: would be ejected and not able to apply for five
Speaker 2: years at a Title eight. This misunderstanding might in part
Speaker 2: be due to some of the misleading rhetoric put out
Speaker 2: by Majorcas and others, which focused on the harsh penalties
Speaker 2: for crossing between ports of entry an attempt to appear
Speaker 2: strong on the border to their colleagues in DC, they
Speaker 2: didn't place as much emphasis on the right to present
Speaker 2: and claim asylum at a port of entry. But as
Speaker 2: we saw yesterday, it's virtually impossible to actually do that,
Speaker 2: and Tijuado is already full of thousands of people trying
Speaker 2: to do that exact thing. Given a set of circumstances,
Speaker 2: it makes sense that many people took the days before
Speaker 2: the end of Title forty two. At the final chance
Speaker 2: to cross before Title forty two ended, I spoke to
Speaker 2: Diana Rodriguez from Colombia about her understanding of what was
Speaker 2: going to happen.
Speaker 20: Later that night, Diana Rodriguez the Columbia.
Speaker 2: Diana was with two friends, all of them wearing little
Speaker 2: daisies in their hair and sharing a tarp shelter they'd
Speaker 2: made by tying a blue tarp against the wall so
Speaker 2: they could get some shade and privacy. I asked her
Speaker 2: where the flowers had come from. You hate a recidity
Speaker 2: into your voice by cherine.
Speaker 7: Oh, the flowers, the flowers. Ah, well, there are these
Speaker 7: little flowers, flowers that are growing here, like in the garden.
Speaker 7: So when we went and took a walk over there
Speaker 7: and we found them, we put them on and they're pretty.
Speaker 7: We call these the little yellow flowers of hope, and
Speaker 7: they match the color of our bracelets. We picked them
Speaker 7: on the day we arrived, and we knew that we
Speaker 7: needed a little bit of encouragement. We got the yellow bracelets.
Speaker 7: Because we arrived on Tuesday, everyone got the same bracelet.
Speaker 2: I asked, Diana, which you'd heard about Title forty two,
Speaker 2: which is ending a few hours after we talked.
Speaker 7: Yes, it's the end of Title forty two. Title forty
Speaker 7: two is the one that endorses mass deportations. Yes, and
Speaker 7: well it's a question of you not just getting deported,
Speaker 7: but being repatriated. In other words, after this they do
Speaker 7: a full repatriation. But right now you are not registered.
Speaker 7: And this is but what they do is that they
Speaker 7: only return you. They don't register you. But let's say,
Speaker 7: on the basis of Article eight, is that a few
Speaker 7: at least we are invading American territory, then we are
Speaker 7: in effect breaking a law. And what Article eight does
Speaker 7: is that they deport you and they put you in
Speaker 7: the registered database, saying that you broke the law, and
Speaker 7: they punish you for five years and you lose the
Speaker 7: right to request your asylum through legal channels.
Speaker 2: People at another camp in u Cumba heard the same
Speaker 2: thing from Colombians, and it seems like there are even
Speaker 2: news pieces run on domestic television explain that US plan
Speaker 2: to return many Colombians in the coming months, and this
Speaker 2: might be the last best chance to cross the border
Speaker 2: without permanent consequences. You got caught in the Cumba. Volunteers
Speaker 2: estimated that two thirds of the people corraled then the
Speaker 2: deasert son from Colombia. Of course, in recent years there
Speaker 2: has been instability and violence there, which also drives migration.
Speaker 2: One of my sources also meant a lot of Colombian
Speaker 2: people had seen misleading information about immigration lawa on TikTok.
Speaker 2: Two days had passed since Janna arrived. She came with
Speaker 2: one of the girls she was now sharing a top with.
Speaker 2: I met another when they were all dumped in the
Speaker 2: camp together. In the days before they were detained here.
Speaker 2: They crossed three countries on their way to what they
Speaker 2: hope was a better life for young women like them.
Speaker 2: I asked them to describe that journey for me.
Speaker 7: Yes, eight days, eight days more or less, walking from
Speaker 7: Colombia from El Salvador to Guatemala, the New Mexico. To
Speaker 7: hear all that time walking and taking the bus. There's
Speaker 7: apart fifteen or twenty minutes from here where the wall ends,
Speaker 7: and we crossed there there was a Mexican patrol and
Speaker 7: when they changed shifts, we ran and here we are
Speaker 7: on American soil. We arrived on foot and the police
Speaker 7: brought us here. They opened the gate and dropped us.
Speaker 2: Here along the way. She said, they've run into a
Speaker 2: lot of people. The Mico journey north is such a
Speaker 2: common trick that people living alone the way. I found
Speaker 2: a way to make a buck, but also a way
Speaker 2: to make a difference. It's not uncommon for migrants to
Speaker 2: be extorted, robbed, or threatened. It's also not uncommon for
Speaker 2: them to be fed by strangers, perhaps handing off bags
Speaker 2: with food in them, to passing trains or buses, or
Speaker 2: perhaps given a place to sleep for the night by
Speaker 2: someone they might never see again.
Speaker 7: There were parts where we were extorted. They took all
Speaker 7: the money we brought. They robbed us, They stole our passports,
Speaker 7: they stole our documents. So it's always quite dangerous. Let's
Speaker 7: say that it's dangerous to take this journey. Yes, just
Speaker 7: as we have met some bad people along the way,
Speaker 7: we have also met some very good people, people who
Speaker 7: have given us a hand, people who have helped us,
Speaker 7: people who have collaborated with us in ways you least expect.
Speaker 2: I asked Dianna what she hoped for now she was
Speaker 2: technically inside the USA.
Speaker 7: Yes, let's say the hope is that they will listen
Speaker 7: to our case, listen to our case, and let us
Speaker 7: fight the case inside. Yes, because we want to be
Speaker 7: able to explain the conditions we are in, reasons that
Speaker 7: those of us who are here came here things like extortion, kidnapping,
Speaker 7: and because our lives are in danger in Colombia. So
Speaker 7: we wish that they at least listen to our case
Speaker 7: and let us plead our cause.
Speaker 2: Before we started recording, Deanna asked what network I was with.
Speaker 2: I thought that was in astute question. Networks like Fox
Speaker 2: show up at the border, although I didn't see any
Speaker 2: Fox National reporters on my trip. Certainly local news channel kus.
Speaker 2: I was there, but they're reporting on the ground differed
Speaker 2: from their xenophobic and outright incorrect online coverage. I asked Diana,
Speaker 2: what you'd want to say to folks who might have
Speaker 2: had their perspective influence by the constant demonization of migrants
Speaker 2: by right wing media.
Speaker 7: There are many people who, let's say, are in a
Speaker 7: mindset of not wanting migrants, and they view them with contempt.
Speaker 7: Because where xenophobia exists, it's hard for us because we
Speaker 7: suffer along the way. We would like you to change
Speaker 7: your way of seeing things and your way of thinking
Speaker 7: so that you don't look at us with contempt.
Speaker 4: We have a.
Speaker 7: Saying in Columbia that says that he who was born
Speaker 7: in a golden cradle never suffers or never sees what
Speaker 7: he does not know. So it's hard when you're born
Speaker 7: in a golden cradle and you don't see beyond what
Speaker 7: you have. So there are people that in our case,
Speaker 7: in my case, I lived a very hard life where
Speaker 7: you see the war between armed groups. They exist outside
Speaker 7: the law and they can control an area, and you
Speaker 7: see the kidnapping, you see the rape of girls, recruitment, extortion, death. Yes,
Speaker 7: so it's hard when we experience that and people say
Speaker 7: things like these migrants are coming to invade our country,
Speaker 7: we also ask them to treat us as people, because
Speaker 7: if we are here, it is not because we want
Speaker 7: to invade a territory. It is because we want to
Speaker 7: come to fight for a better future for our children
Speaker 7: without stepping on anyone. Nobody wants this. But where we
Speaker 7: come from, we receive travelers with open arms. And it's
Speaker 7: hard when one is a migrant, when one lives the
Speaker 7: experience of being a migrant, it is a very hard
Speaker 7: thing to be a migrant, having to endure cold, hunger, rain, sun,
Speaker 7: that is, all these things, and then arriving here and
Speaker 7: seeing faces of contempt. It's hard. It is very hard.
Speaker 7: So yes, the important thing is that people must know
Speaker 7: that being an immigrant is not easy. Being an immigrant
Speaker 7: is not easy.
Speaker 2: One of her friends, who she was sharing a top with,
Speaker 2: leaned over to give an example.
Speaker 7: Everyone despairs because everyone wants to leave, so everyone sees
Speaker 7: each other as enemies. So let's say, for example, right now,
Speaker 7: when they are sending cars to collect people to process,
Speaker 7: so everyone there thinks, I hope they take me. Then
Speaker 7: when they don't, it gets to a point where, Yes,
Speaker 7: where you despair? I mean it's desperate, but well everyone,
Speaker 7: everyone is in the fight together, all in the fight.
Speaker 2: I have to get another dusting down from a CBP
Speaker 2: agent who really liked to RaSE his squad bike passing
Speaker 2: mutilaid tables. Spake to a man from Angola. I'll leave
Speaker 2: his name out, as he preferred for me not to
Speaker 2: share it. He'd been into Juana for three days, he said,
Speaker 2: I was waiting his chance to plead his case for asylum.
Speaker 3: No, it's just me and my sister. We suffered a lot.
Speaker 3: There were bandits. We came here to be safe. It's
Speaker 3: no way to live. People broke into our house to
Speaker 3: violate women, to look for people, and I was injured.
Speaker 3: Then yeah, why did I leave to come here? Over there?
Speaker 3: They're not They're not the means to live.
Speaker 2: We didn't get a chance to talk for long, and
Speaker 2: some of the recording I got wasn't very good. He
Speaker 2: was waiting in line for food and to be quite on,
Speaker 2: I don't like prodding people to share their trauma, but
Speaker 2: with so many journalists crowding the border asking them to
Speaker 2: do just that, it tends to be what people offer.
Speaker 2: Lots of African migrants can be quite cautious of the
Speaker 2: media because talking to the media at home could get
Speaker 2: them in trouble. I spoke to a friend of mine
Speaker 2: himself a migrant from Africa. He said that if migrants
Speaker 2: don't speak English or Spanish, it can be very hard
Speaker 2: for them to get information, and there aren't as many
Speaker 2: nonprofits set up to serve them as there are for
Speaker 2: Spanish speaking people, for example. They can often end up
Speaker 2: isolated and alone. I did get a better chance to
Speaker 2: talk to a Jamaican man called Joseph. It's his singing
Speaker 2: you've heard at the start of this episode. Mostly we
Speaker 2: talked about things in America, about how he lost his
Speaker 2: phone on his journey, we got him another one at Walmart,
Speaker 2: and about things like football and music. I didn't record
Speaker 2: all of that because sometimes it's nice to just talk
Speaker 2: to people. Hopefully it makes their deair a bit brighter
Speaker 2: and gives them some information maybe they could help. He
Speaker 2: did let me record a bit of an interview and
Speaker 2: some of him singing. He was pretty guarded on the recording,
Speaker 2: but as you can hear in this clip, we had
Speaker 2: a good time when we weren't recording.
Speaker 4: I am the best one, Yeah, it's gotta gimps up.
Speaker 4: He's gotta get man up. There we go get my
Speaker 4: man's up.
Speaker 21: Hey.
Speaker 4: You know it's like Jenny is it went on yelling
Speaker 4: gen length but Molly, it's going off, going lengthy and
Speaker 4: let me see Ian for the sky not me. I'm
Speaker 4: pre And Mama says something push free and glow and
Speaker 4: red for them, say, m I smile them, No normans
Speaker 4: do and red beIN gonna time. Can I watch me? Hey? Man,
Speaker 4: grateful man, grateful I went not and go on man,
Speaker 4: I smile. Yeah. Once there is life God, I want
Speaker 4: to give you everything for some fun. Yeah, love suck,
Speaker 4: grat fries, pick up to job me a car. I
Speaker 4: gotta to eat and come back. I'm seeing Yeah, man,
Speaker 4: that's it. One love. That was beautiful. Yeah, I'm I'm
Speaker 4: I'm Joseph.
Speaker 2: I asked him about some of the stuff we spoke
Speaker 2: about before, but he didn't want to share it.
Speaker 21: Yeah.
Speaker 4: That's the old testimony to me and you and God
Speaker 4: have to go into church for that. But I'm gonna
Speaker 4: give you that the next time.
Speaker 2: Okay, buddy, all right, just experienced a lot of personal
Speaker 2: harm from conflict back home in Jamaica. I had a
Speaker 2: difficult journey here with his five year old son.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's rough. It's rough out there, man, you know,
Speaker 4: it's rough.
Speaker 2: How did you come like you come? I asked him
Speaker 2: how his young son a dealt with the journey. It's
Speaker 2: not a safe or easy one for an adult, let
Speaker 2: alone for a little child.
Speaker 4: It's like, it's just kind of scary, broll he pulled you. Yeah,
Speaker 4: that's good. You have my energy inside. That's good. Yeah?
Speaker 2: Are you how's he finding it here in the camp?
Speaker 4: Oh? Yeah, that camp. I don't know why. That guy
Speaker 4: is just like me. We just don't make anything better us. Yeah,
Speaker 4: what it's it's working here because you guys give it
Speaker 4: a strength and supporting us. You know.
Speaker 2: Joseph wanted me to know that he wasn't giving up
Speaker 2: his home. He loves Jamaica, but he also wants a
Speaker 2: better life for his son.
Speaker 4: Is that it's that? Isn't that like I'm giving away
Speaker 4: my home? My home is a good place. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: it's a good island, nice place to be.
Speaker 2: Of course, this perspective is very common, and it's one
Speaker 2: that often gets left out of reporting. Coming to the
Speaker 2: USA is a very hopeful act. It's not abandoning your
Speaker 2: family or your home. It's trying to make their lives
Speaker 2: better in your life, Livabool. Joseph was quite guided with
Speaker 2: his story, and that's fine. It's his to share as
Speaker 2: much as little as he wants. I came to the
Speaker 2: USA without having to get persecuted or hurt, and people
Speaker 2: who don't look like me should have that same right
Speaker 2: as well. Sadly, coming to the USA is also scary
Speaker 2: and confusing, even for me with three university degrees and
Speaker 2: all the intersectional privilege I have and fifteen years living here,
Speaker 2: and I've recently minted US passport. Now, I worried for
Speaker 2: years that maybe I'd made a mistake on a form
Speaker 2: or missed some kind of deadline. Speaking of deadline, what
Speaker 2: none of the migrants could tell us, what they all
Speaker 2: wanted to ask about was exactly what was happening to
Speaker 2: them as Title forty two expired. A Congolese lady asked
Speaker 2: me if her passport would be confiscated. A lady from
Speaker 2: Senegal asked if she needed to pay a bribe like
Speaker 2: the one she'd paid in Mexico. It wasn't really clear
Speaker 2: at first if these people were being detained and under
Speaker 2: what process they were being received. Would they be sent
Speaker 2: back to Mexico and a Title forty two, repatriated under
Speaker 2: Biden's interpretation of Title eight, or given the right to
Speaker 2: plead their case as international and US law suggests should
Speaker 2: be able to. CBP made people sit in lines all
Speaker 2: day with no indication of when they would be taken
Speaker 2: to the port of entry for processing. Sometimes I heard
Speaker 2: people saying if everyone didn't sit down, there would be
Speaker 2: nobody processed that day. But the only food, water, and
Speaker 2: medical attention available to the migrants with ZA which could
Speaker 2: be passed through the wall, and they had to get
Speaker 2: out of their lines to receive this aid. I'll let
Speaker 2: Kaber describe what this looked like.
Speaker 8: And they had people made in their lines, sit in
Speaker 8: a line in a specific assigned spot, and but it
Speaker 8: wasn't always clear if those how those lines actually worked,
Speaker 8: because they would kind of take people from lots of places.
Speaker 8: I think they might have been prioritizing family for children,
Speaker 8: or people with some kind of medical needs or something
Speaker 8: like that. But well, you would never know when they
Speaker 8: were going to come, and we didn't seem to know
Speaker 8: also who they were going to choose to take. We
Speaker 8: assume We didn't know exactly where we were taking them,
Speaker 8: but we assume they were taking the port of entry
Speaker 8: in Sana Seat, which is about a mile away. And
Speaker 8: so what would always happen when they come and get
Speaker 8: a group is like three or four people from that
Speaker 8: group would sprint over to the world because we still
Speaker 8: had their phones and CBP wasn't going to wait for
Speaker 8: us to get the phones.
Speaker 2: One thing a lot of people we talked to shared
Speaker 2: was that there was another camp, which we later found
Speaker 2: how is as many as eight hundred single men. It's
Speaker 2: fairly usual to keep single men apart from families, but
Speaker 2: keeping them in an inaccessible place without adequate food or
Speaker 2: water is not usual. The camp was further west, and
Speaker 2: despite repeated requests from myself and others, including those delivering aid,
Speaker 2: we were not allowed to access it. One pair of
Speaker 2: Jamaican twins, both young men, told me they had walked
Speaker 2: up there and that things were very bad. People were
Speaker 2: only given one small water bottom the granola bar every day,
Speaker 2: they said. One person told me they'd heard people eating grass.
Speaker 2: I asked CBP's press office for information on this, but
Speaker 2: they didn't respond. Here's one clip of a man trying
Speaker 2: to explain how bad things were there. It's hard to
Speaker 2: communicate across language barriers, and with a war between you
Speaker 2: it is even harder. But I could tell he was
Speaker 2: very concerned for the folks that we couldn't get to,
Speaker 2: despite myself and others trying and me addressing this issue
Speaker 2: directly and emails to CBP, and never got any response
Speaker 2: on why people were not allowed to help the single
Speaker 2: men in the other camp, just not helping.
Speaker 18: What little water, chocolod.
Speaker 2: Nothing else, no food, no war water, blankets, nothing. I'll
Speaker 2: go try and go up there. Even with these camps
Speaker 2: being pretty desperate places, folks look after one another. We
Speaker 2: spoke a lot with one lady who spoke English. She
Speaker 2: was there with her own family, but she was also
Speaker 2: looking after two Tagi children who'd come alone. Their mother
Speaker 2: spoke a little English, so she relayed news to the
Speaker 2: children by calling their mother and having her translated for
Speaker 2: her children. Other folks took it upon themselves to try
Speaker 2: and walk to the camp for single men with water,
Speaker 2: and people constantly helped us find the owners of phone
Speaker 2: by wandering through the rows of people sheltering under taps
Speaker 2: and space blankets to look for people who had left
Speaker 2: us their devices to charge. In Noucumber, a town an
Speaker 2: hour or so east of San Diego, things were worse.
Speaker 2: Cumber's home to a cute hotel, a lovely lake, a
Speaker 2: hot and an awful lot of big rugs. When the
Speaker 2: border war was being built in earnest before the twenty
Speaker 2: twenty election, they skipped some of the harder areas. Perhaps
Speaker 2: they figured it would be too hard to cross there,
Speaker 2: it's not Perhaps they wanted to maximize the mileage before
Speaker 2: election day. Well it didn't help much, but either way,
Speaker 2: for some reason, the wall just takes a little break
Speaker 2: in Hucumber, and this makes crossing marginally easier there. However,
Speaker 2: the boulder fields, scorching hot days and cold nights make
Speaker 2: it anything but easy. On Thursday night, the eleventh of May,
Speaker 2: locals in Ucumber became aware that CBP were holding people
Speaker 2: on a dirt road in the open desert, just a
Speaker 2: few miles east of town and a few hundred feet
Speaker 2: from the wall. The people held they didn't have access
Speaker 2: to toilets, running water, or shelter. With every hour that
Speaker 2: went past, the number of people grew. The biggest camp
Speaker 2: soon held over a thousand people desperately trying to scratch
Speaker 2: out a little shade in the desert. Other smaller camps
Speaker 2: popped up, one was apparently in someone's yard, and the
Speaker 2: people of this tiny desert town about helping as best
Speaker 2: they could. Soon they were joined by volunteers from all
Speaker 2: over the county. Katie was one of those volunteers. She
Speaker 2: doesn't live in a Cumba, but her friends do and
Speaker 2: her family sometimes spends time there. Once she heard about
Speaker 2: what was happening, she knew she had to help. I
Speaker 2: let her describe her feelings after she saw the post online,
Speaker 2: and then drove out to cumber to see what she
Speaker 2: could do to help.
Speaker 20: At first, I was just super touched by the activation
Speaker 20: and the carrying, and my son was asleep, comfortable in
Speaker 20: his car seat, you know, in our Mercedes van. And
Speaker 20: my husband is still trying to get citizenship after being
Speaker 20: here since he was two years old. So and we're
Speaker 20: married and he pays taxes. And when I saw our
Speaker 20: friends activating, I just told him tomorrow's Mother's Day and
Speaker 20: I need to come back here, and it's not safe
Speaker 20: for you here. So when I first arrived, I thought
Speaker 20: it was kind of odd that everything was organized around
Speaker 20: a random road that has a gate, and there were
Speaker 20: five only five border patrol at the time, and about
Speaker 20: that was a larger camp, so I want to say
Speaker 20: at least eight hundred people, maybe a thousand. I didn't
Speaker 20: see them all because many of them would received their
Speaker 20: donations and the assistance and went back to their shelters.
Speaker 2: A few days after the migrants arrived, I camped out
Speaker 2: in Ukumba. I was cold in my sleeping bag at
Speaker 2: night and dizzy in the sun in the day. It's
Speaker 2: not a place where you'd want to be stuck outside
Speaker 2: the long but it's a place where fifteen hundred or
Speaker 2: so people were held for days little more than the shelters.
Speaker 2: They were built out of creosota and mesquite to protect
Speaker 2: their families from the elements. They slept on the dirt
Speaker 2: or in cardboard boxes left over from the food Volunteers
Speaker 2: fed them and under whatever folks and tiny desert count
Speaker 2: could find to give them. By the time I arrived,
Speaker 2: the migrants were gone and volunteers were cleaning up. The
Speaker 2: landscape was dotted with impressively constructed brush shelters. Volunteers from
Speaker 2: her Cumba set up tables to distribute food, blankets, water,
Speaker 2: and clothing. Other volunteers stayed away from the camp itself
Speaker 2: and spent time packing things into individual sizes, perhaps combining
Speaker 2: hats and socks and maybe a toy for a child
Speaker 2: in one bag, or breaking down costco packages of snacks
Speaker 2: into individual portions. It's not necessarily the most rewarding task,
Speaker 2: but it's an important one. I asked Marissa, another volunteer
Speaker 2: who had previously worked in Sandy Go for the Forest Service,
Speaker 2: what she felt when we were cleaning out some of
Speaker 2: those shelters together a couple of days later.
Speaker 22: I don't know the best way to say this, but
Speaker 22: what hit me deeper was when this might seem strange,
Speaker 22: but when I saw women's sanitary napkins or the diapers
Speaker 22: or the babies, like it was kind of like a
Speaker 22: fabric padded crib basinet type thing that suddenly hit me
Speaker 22: on a deeper level. It would make me emotional because
Speaker 22: it's like then you start to realize, like, wow, what
Speaker 22: if that was me and my child or I'm not
Speaker 22: a mother, but I can only imagine what that must
Speaker 22: be like for them to be going through these things
Speaker 22: as a as a woman, being on your on your
Speaker 22: period and being out and not having anything, you know,
Speaker 22: going to the bathroom out there. What do you use
Speaker 22: when you don't have those supplies?
Speaker 4: So yeah, it just.
Speaker 23: That was when it hit me deeper, and I knew
Speaker 23: I was doing the right thing by being out there
Speaker 23: and helping in whatever way I could, because I don't
Speaker 23: when it comes to the politics side of it, when
Speaker 23: it comes to like legality and just different aspects of it.
Speaker 23: In that way, I don't have necessarily an opinion one
Speaker 23: way or another. I'm not educated enough to feel like
Speaker 23: I can argue one way or another or defend one
Speaker 23: position or another. I went out there purely for my
Speaker 23: love of humanity, and I think being able to support
Speaker 23: in whatever way I can that was the way that
Speaker 23: I felt like I could serve and be a support.
Speaker 2: Katie hadn't expected to meet migrants of the camp when
Speaker 2: you first showed up. She knew it was important not
Speaker 2: to flog the camp with volunteers, and their help was
Speaker 2: needed packaging and preparing aid drops, which she was happy
Speaker 2: to do. But in the end, she traveled up to
Speaker 2: the camp with a friend who spoke Portuguese so they
Speaker 2: could help translate and distribute supplies. I asked her what
Speaker 2: it was like to see the supplies she'd purchased a
Speaker 2: few hours before end up in the hands of people
Speaker 2: who desperately needed them.
Speaker 20: They don't even have a grocery store in her cumber.
Speaker 20: They have one mini mart with nothing in it, and
Speaker 20: that was sold out the first day. So these people
Speaker 20: who we would look at without a lot of resources,
Speaker 20: passing the abundance of what they actually have. Well, I
Speaker 20: saw a lot of families. I could tell that there
Speaker 20: were leaders within the group because they were helping organize
Speaker 20: as much as the volunteers were. And unfortunately there was
Speaker 20: language barriers, you know, And so those that could speak
Speaker 20: multiple languages, whether they were border crossers or volunteers, were
Speaker 20: together in it and or and that was part of
Speaker 20: that organization that I'm talking about, you know. And and
Speaker 20: it was actually a very calm scene when we first
Speaker 20: came up. I saw my son's hat that I donated
Speaker 20: and a little boy hugging this jaguar stuffed animal. And
Speaker 20: the jaguar was really significant to my friend and I
Speaker 20: when we found it. So it was really touching just
Speaker 20: to like see see the things that we were bringing
Speaker 20: being literally being distributed. Like sometimes when you think you're helping.
Speaker 20: I worked for a door to door campaign when I
Speaker 20: was in my teens and I got fifty percent of
Speaker 20: what I raised, and it was like disheartening, and you're like, oh,
Speaker 20: this is how it works. And in this case, money
Speaker 20: that I directly spent on resources that were needed was
Speaker 20: going directly to the people.
Speaker 2: In all likelihood, people crossed in a specific spot because
Speaker 2: someone dropped them there telling them it would be easy.
Speaker 2: In fact, it was anything but people die crossing around here.
Speaker 2: In the dirt around Cucumber, I found discarded fly to
Speaker 2: itineries and documents from Turkey, Nicaragua, Columbia, Mexico. There were
Speaker 2: also little children's toys, shoes, and hundreds of empty water
Speaker 2: bottles which we diligently picked up. But none of the
Speaker 2: more than one thousand people who the Board Patrol held
Speaker 2: in this camp have planned for what they got, which
Speaker 2: was several days being detained in the desert by CBP
Speaker 2: with intefficient water, no shelter, and very little food, and
Speaker 2: no information on what was happening or how long they
Speaker 2: could expect to be there. Sadly didn't get there in
Speaker 2: time to speak to any of them. I was in
Speaker 2: Arizona looking for border vigilantes and wondering what CBP had
Speaker 2: been doing to migrants there where they have the full
Speaker 2: support of local law enforcement and a large percentage of
Speaker 2: the aging population. To my surprise, he didn't find much.
Speaker 2: It seems like most people had crossed in the San
Speaker 2: Diego County area. Many had flown or walked to Tijuana.
Speaker 2: Of course, migrants, just like us, have accessed the news
Speaker 2: and to weather forecast and maps. Crossing in Arizona, a
Speaker 2: place known for cruelty and very hot weather doesn't make
Speaker 2: any sense when California offers a better political and weather climate,
Speaker 2: and with the mixed messages coming out about immigration law,
Speaker 2: these folks may not have been intending to evade border patrol,
Speaker 2: but to come to the USA and to take their
Speaker 2: legal right to claim asylum. I spoke to Sam, a
Speaker 2: volunteer with extensive on the ground experience in humanitarian crises,
Speaker 2: about what he'd seen at the camp.
Speaker 24: Oh my name is Sam.
Speaker 2: Sure, he said, many of the people who found themselves
Speaker 2: in a cumber had likely been told by people smokelers,
Speaker 2: but this was an easy way into the US. In
Speaker 2: the end, it was anything but.
Speaker 24: They I mean, I know they didn't expect that they
Speaker 24: were just waltz across the border at a normal check station,
Speaker 24: but they thought it was going to be they were
Speaker 24: sold in bill of goods.
Speaker 2: Let's put it back walking.
Speaker 24: Yes, that's it. And so I mean, I feel sorry
Speaker 24: for anybody who's take advantage of all like that. But
Speaker 24: most of the people that I met again who are
Speaker 24: not Colombians, were of the wealthier side of the on
Speaker 24: their countries. I met some of Becky's, some Kazakis, a
Speaker 24: bunch of people from India, a couple of Pakistani guys. Mindray,
Speaker 24: I mean they didn't get here cheap.
Speaker 2: The wall behind the people in Hookumba cost twenty five
Speaker 2: million dollars a mile on average. The border patrol agent
Speaker 2: drove around in f one fifty rapped to trucks that
Speaker 2: started eighty thousand dollars and each make a starting salary
Speaker 2: of over sixty thousand dollars in their first year. Surveillance
Speaker 2: towers that dot the desert only one which provided a
Speaker 2: tiny scrap of shade to migrants resting under its solar panels,
Speaker 2: can cost a million dollars apiece. But people in a
Speaker 2: cumber received only one small water bottle each day. Despite
Speaker 2: the punishing weather. Although Customs and Border Protection did not
Speaker 2: seem to make any plan to shelter migrants in Cucumber,
Speaker 2: they did plan to have contractors paid forty dollars an
Speaker 2: hour to take them away. I found a job advert
Speaker 2: for a Southwest Border Transportation and Security officer at ISS
Speaker 2: Action Security. The agency photograph transporting migrants in the Cumber.
Speaker 2: The job posting, which was posted two weeks before the
Speaker 2: end of Title forty two, has a description that includes
Speaker 2: patting down all detainees and applying appropriate restraints prior to
Speaker 2: boarding vehicles. The process through its migrants become detainees normally
Speaker 2: involves processing which had not been done in Nucumber. But
Speaker 2: it seems the presumption of ineligibility announced on the day
Speaker 2: Title forty two ended came into effect here. This might
Speaker 2: seem minor distinction, but it's important. It means that people
Speaker 2: have to file a defensive asylum claim and not an
Speaker 2: affirmative one. They have to plead why they shouldn't be deported,
Speaker 2: rather than why they have a right to stay. Many
Speaker 2: of the people who have been trying to cross before
Speaker 2: the end of Title forty two, like Diana, because they
Speaker 2: felt they would face a less serious penalty. Many of
Speaker 2: them flew to Tina, walked from further south in Mexico
Speaker 2: or even in Central America. I likely spent their entire
Speaker 2: savings on a trip to the gap in the wall
Speaker 2: near Cucumber that ended with them being held by border
Speaker 2: patrol in the open desert with next to nothing in
Speaker 2: the way of shelter, sanitation, or sustenance. As a way
Speaker 2: to quantify this, I want a reference to UCSD US
Speaker 2: Immigration Policy Center report apparently had some pretty problematic practices,
Speaker 2: but anyway, these are results from its survey. When asked
Speaker 2: whether border patrol gave them enough water for the day,
Speaker 2: over half of the asylum seekers that we interviewed, approximately
Speaker 2: fifty three percent said no. Border patrol distributed one water
Speaker 2: bottle to each migrant in the morning. When asked where
Speaker 2: the border patrol gave them enough food for the day,
Speaker 2: all of the asylum seekers said no. Border patrol did
Speaker 2: not distribute any food. When asked where the border patrol
Speaker 2: provided adequate sanitation such as toilets, all of the asylum
Speaker 2: seekers that we interviewed, meaning one hundred percent, said no.
Speaker 2: Border patrol provided one porter body for the entire encampment.
Speaker 2: When asked where the border patrol provided adepriate shelter, such
Speaker 2: as shade to protect them from the sun. All of
Speaker 2: the asylum seekers that we interviewed said no. Border patrol
Speaker 2: did not provide any shelter. When asked where the border
Speaker 2: patrol provided blankets to keep them warm at night, all
Speaker 2: but one of the asylum seekers we interviewed said no.
Speaker 2: Border patrol provided blankets. Some migrants, but the overwhelming majority,
Speaker 2: did not receive blankets. Altogether, two thirds of the asylum
Speaker 2: seekers we interviewed said that they agree or strongly agree
Speaker 2: with the statement if I did not receive food and
Speaker 2: water from volunteers, I would not get enough food and
Speaker 2: water from border patrol to survive. These aren't exaggerations, as
Speaker 2: we'll see, several migrants did come very close to losing
Speaker 2: their lives in the five or more days that CBP
Speaker 2: detained people out in the open along the border. Medical
Speaker 2: incidents in this kind of attention are far from uncommon.
Speaker 2: A lawsuit filed against Customs a Border Protection by the
Speaker 2: Southern Border Communities Coalition regarding their actions this week, stated
Speaker 2: that quote many migrants have fallen into medical distress because
Speaker 2: of the conditions and CBP has been slow to provide
Speaker 2: access to medical attention, often only responding at the insistence
Speaker 2: of advocates. As a result, one woman suffered life threatening allergies,
Speaker 2: a child suffered an epileptic seizure, and a man suffered
Speaker 2: an unattended infection on his leg. Medical attention was slow
Speaker 2: to arrive, and when it did arrive, it was often insufficient.
Speaker 2: Arlet Kayber described the conditions they saw a couple of
Speaker 2: days after the end of Title forty two.
Speaker 8: That's really the part that it is hard to interstate.
Speaker 8: The conditions there were not safe or sanitary. I guess
Speaker 8: this is sort of related to the medical issues, but
Speaker 8: there was it's been you know, to their credit, this
Speaker 8: aspect has been reported in the media. But there was
Speaker 8: a single portable toilet for anywhere from I guess there's
Speaker 8: probably twitered to four hundred people there. I heard a
Speaker 8: couple of different citations of how often this toilet is
Speaker 8: serviced and cleaned and the waste removed anywhere from once
Speaker 8: or twice a week to once every week or two weeks.
Speaker 8: Either way, that's not remotely sufficient for four hundred people
Speaker 8: using the bathroom multiple times a day in this single
Speaker 8: portable like just a construction site toilet. It was right
Speaker 8: next to the phone charging station on the other side
Speaker 8: of the wall, and I would just feel sick if
Speaker 8: I got if I sit too close to it. It
Speaker 8: was really vile. It was not safe. It is not
Speaker 8: a way for people to be helping. And I do know,
Speaker 8: I think a lot of thankfully people stop using it,
Speaker 8: but then they don't have any privacy or that's not
Speaker 8: you know, a sanitary in a situation to be in
Speaker 8: since I mean they don't have a feed in the
Speaker 8: space anywhere, so that's definitely right. The way is that
Speaker 8: people are intention of help and safety.
Speaker 2: He's Hamara, who will hear more from tomorrow describe being
Speaker 2: ano of the medical.
Speaker 6: Incident and the call that I got this morning was
Speaker 6: of a woman who was rushed out because she had
Speaker 6: an emergency situation, taken to the hospital. The hospital didn't
Speaker 6: know what to do with her, so they sat her
Speaker 6: right back here in the middle of the night, in
Speaker 6: the middle of the night, and they brought her here.
Speaker 6: She doesn't have any documents. CBP didn't get a chance
Speaker 6: to process her yet, so she doesn't even have any
Speaker 6: proof that she actually came to the port of entry
Speaker 6: and try to seek asylum. And she was just sleeping
Speaker 6: right here, and she has burns all over her body,
Speaker 6: has an infection.
Speaker 7: I read the.
Speaker 6: Seven medications that they gave her, and she speaks daddy.
Speaker 6: She's from Avonistan. Her husband got taken by the Taliban
Speaker 6: and she escaped, running for her life. And she's here
Speaker 6: and she has sunburns all over her face and she
Speaker 6: has nowhere to go. She thought she was still detained.
Speaker 6: She actually thought she was still detained. She was just
Speaker 6: trying to get back to the other side of the border.
Speaker 6: She thought she was still in Mexico. No one explained
Speaker 6: anything to her. They brought her back here in the
Speaker 6: middle of the night, and she was freezing and so wet.
Speaker 6: That's why I came out here.
Speaker 10: I talked to her.
Speaker 6: The other folks who were out here didn't know why
Speaker 6: she was just sleeping here, and I came out and
Speaker 6: tried to translate it. And now we have her at
Speaker 6: a hotel.
Speaker 2: Cable witness one of the emergencies described in the Southern
Speaker 2: Border Communities Coalition lawsuit when they visited the camp. Here's
Speaker 2: him describing it in.
Speaker 8: Terms of you know, medical player as well, Like I said,
Speaker 8: one of the parts of the aid operation that was
Speaker 8: going on was most people. I think there's a combination
Speaker 8: both of people who were were you know, and then
Speaker 8: street medicine as well as people who were like nurses
Speaker 8: volunteering their prime and things like that, and and mostly
Speaker 8: taking care of just kind of fortein first aid for
Speaker 8: the most part. There was a situation where someone was
Speaker 8: having an ellergic reaction, a fairly severe one, and and
Speaker 8: I happy to carry an EpiPen, so I simply give
Speaker 8: that to be one of one of the street medics.
Speaker 8: And then they eventually did call this person. The reaction
Speaker 8: bot severe enough that it was an an hour or
Speaker 8: so later that nine one was called I assumed by
Speaker 8: one of the volunteers, and uh amby Villaince and Border
Speaker 8: patrol came to open the gate and and bring this
Speaker 8: person in the country. They did eventually treat, but it
Speaker 8: was a very it was a long time an anti
Speaker 8: quatus someone as someone who has a flexis and actions,
Speaker 8: and something happened many times in her life that is
Speaker 8: absolutely terrifying. I cannot imagine how terrifying it would be
Speaker 8: to be experiencing a life priding situation when you worked
Speaker 8: for apps and and you know, there's no authority that
Speaker 8: really cares that you're there. And I don't know if
Speaker 8: she would have been able to get help if there
Speaker 8: have been volunteers in the second while, especially once.
Speaker 2: We're training where volunteers weren't. Things were worse in Texas
Speaker 2: and is out There is an eight year old girl
Speaker 2: born in Panama to or On Duran parents, died in
Speaker 2: CBP custody. Rosselleree Is, the girl's father, told NBC News
Speaker 2: that they gave authorities documents about the girl's medical conditions
Speaker 2: congenital heart disease and sickle cell anemia while they were
Speaker 2: in immigration customer. They said that a doctor there examined
Speaker 2: dan Adeath and that she had contracted the flu. Alvarez,
Speaker 2: her mother, said she spoke to both detention authorities and
Speaker 2: medical personnel at the station multiple times to explain her
Speaker 2: daughter was complaining of pain and shortness of breath and
Speaker 2: that she was getting worse. I'll quite the next part
Speaker 2: directly from the NBC story. They never listened to me,
Speaker 2: she said. Rayas said his daughter was in a lot
Speaker 2: of pain, a lot of pain. I begged them to
Speaker 2: call an ambulance. Alvarez said, adding the authorities told her
Speaker 2: the girl's condition wasn't serious enough to warrant calling an ambulance.
Speaker 2: Alvarez said her daughter begged authorities as well, telling them
Speaker 2: she could not breathe from her nose or mouth. Alvarez
Speaker 2: says that eventually her daughter lost consciousness and died in
Speaker 2: my arms. She said authorities took the girl from her
Speaker 2: arms and put her on the floor trying to revive her.
Speaker 2: My daughter died there in the station, she said. Ava
Speaker 2: said she feels authorities did not do enough to help
Speaker 2: her little girl. My daughter is a human being. They
Speaker 2: had to take care of her, she said. Despite what
Speaker 2: you might have heard on the network news, the asylum
Speaker 2: process is anything but easy. I've had several visas, a
Speaker 2: Green card, and a US passport, and I can completly
Speaker 2: tell you the only easy way I've ever seen to
Speaker 2: come here is to be very rich. But even among
Speaker 2: the convoluted bureaucratic mess that is US immigration, the asylum
Speaker 2: process stands out as both rigorous and complicated. Asylum is
Speaker 2: a process by which people unable or unwilling to return
Speaker 2: to their country because of persecution or a well founded
Speaker 2: fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, politics,
Speaker 2: or membership of a particular social group may remain in
Speaker 2: a safe country. From the eleventh of May onwards, migrants
Speaker 2: at the border were assumed ineligible for asylum. If they
Speaker 2: crosspitw Queen points of entry, they must enter the defensive
Speaker 2: asylum process to prevent themselves from being deported. What this
Speaker 2: means for people we heard from earlier is that they
Speaker 2: are now taken for whatever God for sake and holding area.
Speaker 2: They're in a bust to a processing facility where they're
Speaker 2: interviewed by an asylum officer to determine if they have
Speaker 2: a credible fear of persecution. They may need to provide
Speaker 2: a translator if there is an interviewing agent who speaks
Speaker 2: their language, and if they're determined to have a credible fear,
Speaker 2: they're told to check in with the US Customs and
Speaker 2: Immigration Office and sometimes given a notice which may or
Speaker 2: may not be dated to appear in court. My colleague
Speaker 2: Joe tried to get into one of these hotels to
Speaker 2: talk to one of the people we'd spoken to at
Speaker 2: the border, but he was pretty quickly shut down.
Speaker 14: Yeah, how you do either, I'm a freelance journalist I'm
Speaker 14: here reporting for my boss, James Stout.
Speaker 4: He's at iHeartMedia.
Speaker 2: I'm wondering if you're letting media in here to see
Speaker 2: the causability that okay, also be actelized.
Speaker 4: And I put the strict uny of this area here.
Speaker 1: Okay, you're going to set up it has to be
Speaker 1: on the side of the line, have a bland traffic.
Speaker 14: Yeah, and it's very dangerous for your k So like
Speaker 14: beyond here, past the yeah, from here over Okay, cool, I'll.
Speaker 25: Say how you're.
Speaker 2: One of the folks we'd met was able to stay
Speaker 2: in touch for our WhatsApp and share the hotel rules
Speaker 2: with us. They were pretty strict. Migrants are confined to
Speaker 2: their rooms, they can't have visitors, and they can't even
Speaker 2: order food delivery from the hotel where they're hosted by
Speaker 2: Catholic charities. Migrants need to get to their sponsor in
Speaker 2: the United States if they have one. If they don't
Speaker 2: have one, they can be sent just about anywhere. I've
Speaker 2: heard of East African folks having ended up in Alaska,
Speaker 2: for example. Once they get to where they're going to be,
Speaker 2: they check in with US Customs and Immigration Services in
Speaker 2: their new location and they're given a special phone which
Speaker 2: also tracks their movements. They may have a DNA sample
Speaker 2: taken in addition to fingerprints. Later, sometimes years later, they
Speaker 2: attend a court hearing or two to determine their eligibility
Speaker 2: to stay. I've heard of lawyers charging from five thousand
Speaker 2: dollars to twelve thousand dollars for these hearings, and nonprofit
Speaker 2: legalists and services are totally overwhelmed. At the moment, the
Speaker 2: system's massively backed up, and court dates are being given
Speaker 2: as far out as twenty twenty seven already. They may
Speaker 2: or may not be able to work during that period.
Speaker 2: Another the table work is getting harder and harder to find.
Speaker 2: Even if they do find work on less than minimum wage,
Speaker 2: it can be very hard to say about five thousand
Speaker 2: dollars for a lawyer A Migrants who can't find nonprofit
Speaker 2: help are at a significant disadvantage when it comes to
Speaker 2: their asylum hearings. Again, private security contractors, this time from Allied.
Speaker 2: We're transporting migrants to the hotel and guarding it. Like CBP.
Speaker 2: The private contractors you guard transport and incat rate migrants
Speaker 2: or rely on the broken in immigration system to make money.
Speaker 2: Unlike CBP. The agents themselves aren't well paid. Nineteen dollars
Speaker 2: an hours are going rate for Allied, not much higher
Speaker 2: than San Diego's sixteen dollars and thirty cents minimum wage.
Speaker 2: But the company itself is huge. It's the third last
Speaker 2: year as private employer in North America after Walmart Amazon.
Speaker 2: Allied guards are at prisons, airports, and shopping malls across America,
Speaker 2: and it's alleged that some are underpaid, insufficiently trained, and
Speaker 2: improperly vetted. The company grosses over twenty billion dollars, and
Speaker 2: it's affiliates are frequent political donors. All across this story
Speaker 2: you'll see this Allied security iss action, security people, smugglers,
Speaker 2: customs and border protection, contractors who build the war pieces,
Speaker 2: and contractors who install the war pieces, General Atomics who
Speaker 2: sell CBP drones, and the Israelian American companies who sell
Speaker 2: the surveillance technology to the government. All these people make money,
Speaker 2: but the poorest people in the world are the only
Speaker 2: ones losing money and sometimes their lives when they cross
Speaker 2: our southern border tomorrow. We're here from some of the
Speaker 2: people who made no money and looked after the migrants
Speaker 2: and will continue to support them through the asylum process.
Speaker 9: Try and carpool, try and shove into cars as best
Speaker 9: you can, just so that we don't have a mile long.
Speaker 5: Line of cars.
Speaker 9: We have trash bags, we have gloves, we have things
Speaker 9: that we're bringing up there, so what we.
Speaker 4: Have cars that you can get all of that out of.
Speaker 26: Once we pull over. We're also setting up a couple.
Speaker 4: Of pop ups.
Speaker 2: Ohcumba, California is a tiny town. You've probably never heard
Speaker 2: of it. It's actually really charming. There's a hot spring
Speaker 2: and a gorgeous hotel, a few stores selling our drinkets,
Speaker 2: that kind of thing. There's a lovely lake fed by
Speaker 2: the spring. And on this Sunday morning, there are about
Speaker 2: fifty people outside an old petrol station, nervously pounding bottles
Speaker 2: of water, applying sunscreen and getting ready to head out
Speaker 2: of the desert to clear up the ad hoc migrant
Speaker 2: camp that's held as many as fifteen hundred people out
Speaker 2: in the open when Title forty two ended and Border
Speaker 2: Patrol made no plans to keep them anywhere. It was
Speaker 2: a diverse bunch of people hidden beneath sun hats. There's
Speaker 2: an Australian film producer who was at a conference in
Speaker 2: Orlando and booked a fly over a grad student painter.
Speaker 2: The folks who were in the Hookumber Hotel who organize
Speaker 2: this whole thing, they're friends from the hospitality industry in
Speaker 2: San Diego. There were students and mums and dads and
Speaker 2: about the entire population of this tiny desert town. There
Speaker 2: were also two former International Aid workers who are in
Speaker 2: a tower where you can look at the desert, which
Speaker 2: is actually a much cooler thing than it sounds. And
Speaker 2: there's also a museum of boulders right next to it.
Speaker 2: You should probably check them out. Dur in the area.
Speaker 2: I spent the day helping out in Neucumber after the refugees,
Speaker 2: some of them in handcuffs, had been taken by private
Speaker 2: contractors to be processed by CBP's Office of Field Operations.
Speaker 2: We met at a petrol station in the middle of town.
Speaker 2: The space where the pumps should be was filled with tons,
Speaker 2: and I do mean tons of bottled water, masks, hand
Speaker 2: sanitized and other necessary supplies. When I'd arrived the night before,
Speaker 2: around ten pm, the eerie green and yellow lights reflecting
Speaker 2: from the roof had lit up the palace of water
Speaker 2: like some kind of giant lava lamp, and driving across
Speaker 2: the desert, the town looked like it was glowing. The
Speaker 2: town certainly has had a bit of a glow up
Speaker 2: in the last few years. Three business partners purchased the
Speaker 2: cir Cumber hot Springs Hotel, a down in the mouth
Speaker 2: property that had once been a glamorous desert resort, and
Speaker 2: they've been restoring the place for nearly two years. Inadvertently,
Speaker 2: they also purchased a lot of land and a few
Speaker 2: other rundown buildings in a town that were sold as
Speaker 2: a lot with the hotel. It was in one of
Speaker 2: these buildings, the old gas station, that they set up
Speaker 2: a de facto mutual aid hubbo almost overnight. The hotel's
Speaker 2: not finished yet, and they probably didn't make much progress
Speaker 2: on it during the week when they were feeding more
Speaker 2: than a thousand people in the desert. The town's lake,
Speaker 2: fed by a natural spring an old bath house used
Speaker 2: to be attractions. Today the bathhouse of roof has fallen off,
Speaker 2: but it still makes a pretty cool concert venue, and
Speaker 2: the whole town offers commanding views of the border wall,
Speaker 2: which sadly is only a couple of hundred yards from
Speaker 2: the main street. When I arrived in Cucumber. Everything was close.
Speaker 2: The mini mark was sold out, the hotel was still
Speaker 2: being worked on, and the hotel kitchen was churning out
Speaker 2: food volunteers at the clean up effort. I asked Marissa,
Speaker 2: one of the volunteers I met that day, about her
Speaker 2: first impressions on arriving at a meeting point.
Speaker 22: I was incredibly impressed by what the people of hu
Speaker 22: Kumba and the hotel group of individuals that have organized this,
Speaker 22: Like I couldn't believe seeing their donation depot in that
Speaker 22: old car wash, just to how well organized everything was,
Speaker 22: and that they provided so much for the volunteers, and
Speaker 22: they just the level of love and.
Speaker 2: Compassion and was.
Speaker 22: Yeah, it was an amazing opportunity to be part of,
Speaker 22: very humbling.
Speaker 2: I've been there since late the night before after visiting
Speaker 2: border crossings in California and Arizona and Jeff, one of
Speaker 2: the co owners a hotel, can you let me put
Speaker 2: up my truck in some desert behind his house. Now,
Speaker 2: I'm a person who enjoys sleeping outside, and I do
Speaker 2: it as often as I can. I try and camp
Speaker 2: police once a month, But that night I was cold,
Speaker 2: even underneath my down blanket, and I couldn't help but
Speaker 2: think of how desperate it must have been to spend
Speaker 2: nearly a week out there with nothing but in my
Speaker 2: last base blanket and some thorny bushes to keep you warm.
Speaker 2: It's certainly not the welcome that one would expect from
Speaker 2: the richest nation on Earth, which had three years to repair.
Speaker 2: For the day, Title forty two ended to get a
Speaker 2: bit of background on the town, I spoke to Natalie.
Speaker 10: So the previous owner bought it at an auction, and
Speaker 10: I don't think that the previous owner didn't realize how
Speaker 10: much she was getting, and he kind of just like
Speaker 10: neglected a bunch of it, you know. And then he
Speaker 10: was older, and so he finally sold off the hotel.
Speaker 10: He thought he was just buying the hotel, but he
Speaker 10: buying all the land as well. So they when they
Speaker 10: bought the hotel, they acquired all their land, and they're
Speaker 10: actually putting money into it and fixing and everything up,
Speaker 10: which is really wonderful.
Speaker 2: The hotel in Lake and hot Spring really are wonderful.
Speaker 2: But the scene that had played out there on the
Speaker 2: eleventh of May, with anything but within a short period
Speaker 2: of time, more than a thousand people of all ages
Speaker 2: and nationalities will be held in the open desert and
Speaker 2: left defend large for themselves. I let Natalie describe the
Speaker 2: space there in.
Speaker 10: There's lots of cactuses everywhere, so there's environmental like a
Speaker 10: watch out where you're walking that it's hot. It's hot
Speaker 10: in the day and really cold at night. Because it's
Speaker 10: the high desert, there can be gusts of wind that
Speaker 10: can just take over, get dust in your eyes, your hair,
Speaker 10: everything's just you're just filthy.
Speaker 26: I don't lack of food. I mean there's no resources.
Speaker 26: You're in the middle of nowhere.
Speaker 2: I talked to a lot of the volunteers, many of
Speaker 2: whom have been in the desert for me at week.
Speaker 2: It'd first been made aware of the impending humanitarian crisis
Speaker 2: late on Thursday night, but one of the people working
Speaker 2: on the renovation of the Hot Springs Hotel got a
Speaker 2: call about it. Within a few hours. The hotel zonners
Speaker 2: and all this stuff running what became very nearly the
Speaker 2: only source of food, shelter, and water for more than
Speaker 2: a thousand people trapped and held in the desert by CBP.
Speaker 2: I spoke to Sam, another volunteer, to get a sense
Speaker 2: of response. Now, Sam is a kind of guy who
Speaker 2: just looks like he's a home in the desert. His
Speaker 2: Wi brim hat, boots, and long cleeved shirt and pants
Speaker 2: told me he spent plenty of days under the baking
Speaker 2: sun out here, and his redness with an isoproble alcohol
Speaker 2: spray disinfect people's boots after walking in an area that
Speaker 2: was likely covered in human shit told me he'd been
Speaker 2: around one or two situations like this in the past.
Speaker 24: I spent a great deal of my life as his
Speaker 24: second career working for in developmental relief logistics in Southeast Asia,
Speaker 24: mainly working with large age organizations, for example World Food Program,
Speaker 24: Doctors without Borders show unise many many there from their
Speaker 24: place things.
Speaker 2: In the context of that kind of experience, it's easy
Speaker 2: to understand why people come to the United States. But
Speaker 2: I asked Sam to put the situation here into perspective.
Speaker 2: For me, it's understandable that the folks came to the US,
Speaker 2: but why to a tiny desert town of five hundred people.
Speaker 24: These people were radically unprepared for what they were going
Speaker 24: to go through because they were sold a bill of
Speaker 24: goods by coyotes on the other side about what was
Speaker 24: going to happen to them, you understand. So they had
Speaker 24: really no idea what they were getting into at all,
Speaker 24: and so there was not anything in the way of
Speaker 24: life threatening situations for any of those people in any
Speaker 24: meaningful way, a great deal of discomfort. It could have
Speaker 24: turned very badly if these people here had not stepped up,
Speaker 24: because the border patrol was completely overwhelmed, and so there
Speaker 24: was never that bad of a situation here compared to
Speaker 24: what I have seen in other places in the past.
Speaker 2: A sound pointed out the migrants were now gone, but
Speaker 2: we were still surrounded by times of supplies. But at
Speaker 2: the time there was no way of knowing the scope
Speaker 2: or scale of the need. People reacted as best they could.
Speaker 24: Actually it was overkilled, but you had no way of
Speaker 24: knowing right at the time. There's just no way to know.
Speaker 24: How do you know ahead of time? You always ask
Speaker 24: for as much as you can get, because why would
Speaker 24: you not, I mean, you never know what. You don't
Speaker 24: know how many children with babies there are on the
Speaker 24: other side of the wall right now, might be zero,
Speaker 24: might be five hundred.
Speaker 2: You have no idea, you know, before anyone knew how
Speaker 2: if this was going to end or really what even
Speaker 2: was going on. Dozens of people across the county decided
Speaker 2: to help. One of them was Katie. Here she is
Speaker 2: describing some of the volunteers she worked alongside.
Speaker 20: There was a hard hodgepodge of people and as volunteers
Speaker 20: and leading it were some of the owners of a
Speaker 20: hotel out there, and that was the main organizers. But
Speaker 20: who showed up were people from the town, people that
Speaker 20: I knew and recognized. There were some really devout, like
Speaker 20: they're twenty four hours a day, and then there was
Speaker 20: some coming in and out. But I met people from
Speaker 20: all over the county and most of them answered the
Speaker 20: car through Instagram of the hotel.
Speaker 2: All those volunteers called their friends, who called their friends,
Speaker 2: who gradually coordinated response. Natalie first became aware of this,
Speaker 2: as many volunteers did, through an Instagram post by Melissa.
Speaker 2: Another were three co owners of the Combo Hotel. On
Speaker 2: Thursday night, just as title forty two was ending, Natalie
Speaker 2: saw the post and decided to help. At first, she
Speaker 2: wanted to leave right then at one am, as soon
Speaker 2: as she'd seen the post, but after consulting her family,
Speaker 2: she decided to make her own post. Asking for people
Speaker 2: to bring supplies that were needed soon. She was overwhelmed
Speaker 2: by the response.
Speaker 10: Yeah, I mean immediately, even at one in the morning,
Speaker 10: I was getting messages because I posted it. That's when
Speaker 10: I posted the story, I immediately got a messages from
Speaker 10: front say I'll bring a blanket over.
Speaker 26: What's your address.
Speaker 10: Yeah, everyone just kind of rallied and started bringing supplies over,
Speaker 10: collecting money as well. Some friends started collecting money and
Speaker 10: then bought stuff and brought loads of food and things
Speaker 10: to my house.
Speaker 2: Her husband ferried the supply eyes to Hakomba, where they
Speaker 2: were joined by their nations from all over the county
Speaker 2: in the old petrol station. Like Natalie, Katie also saw
Speaker 2: a post and immediately felt compelled to help. She called
Speaker 2: a friend and some members of her family instead about
Speaker 2: raising funds and buying supplies.
Speaker 20: So I met my friend at a cafe and in
Speaker 20: that in the meantime, and I don't know how much
Speaker 20: of this is really important. So in the meantime, I
Speaker 20: text my mother and my two sisters who live on
Speaker 20: the East coast, and just it was late at night
Speaker 20: for them, and I just said I would love for
Speaker 20: you to send prayers, because that's something that I believe in.
Speaker 20: I believe in prayer or intention and thought reality, and
Speaker 20: some of it was just because I felt so touched,
Speaker 20: like praying for the community that I love too. And
Speaker 20: the next thing I know, like my venmo was blowing
Speaker 20: up and there was one thousand dollars in my venmo
Speaker 20: sent from my family members. And so by the time
Speaker 20: my friend arrived, we were like, let's go and we
Speaker 20: filled our car with Amazingly, we found like organic, there's
Speaker 20: grocery outlet, right, so we found organic soup for you know,
Speaker 20: dollars something a can, and we spent a few hundred dollars.
Speaker 20: And the next morning we met early and we stopped
Speaker 20: in El Cone on the way and we spent all
Speaker 20: the rest on We went to three or four thrift
Speaker 20: stores and bought every blanket and hat and baby carrier.
Speaker 20: Because we have both focused on motherhood in our careers.
Speaker 2: I asked people I spoke to about a week later
Speaker 2: how the experience had impacted them.
Speaker 10: It was overwhelming, just the way the community really came
Speaker 10: around and supported.
Speaker 26: The people in Hukumba that were trying to help.
Speaker 10: You know, after we finished cleaning up, when we're back
Speaker 10: at the gas station, the Amazon driver was delivering, like
Speaker 10: I think he delivered three hundred and fifty boxes and
Speaker 10: so we had to open them up and sort them,
Speaker 10: and it was there was so much food. I think
Speaker 10: that it was insane amount of food, and it was awesome.
Speaker 10: It was really cool just to see how many people
Speaker 10: and donated.
Speaker 2: I like some of the people I saw in Santa Cedro, Natalie, Katie,
Speaker 2: Sam and Marissa are not part of an NGO or
Speaker 2: a mutual aid collective. They're just people who wanted to help,
Speaker 2: and that describes most of the people in Hucumber, although
Speaker 2: some of them did have previous and regular volunteer experience
Speaker 2: with excellent groups like Border Kindness. I asked Katy to
Speaker 2: reflect on the mutual aid approach and the absence of massive,
Speaker 2: multimillion dollar organizations. Yeah, wasn't their n.
Speaker 20: No, they weren't there. We were told that the Red
Speaker 20: Cross couldn't come unless Border Patrol called, and Border Patrol
Speaker 20: told us that they weren't allowed to call the Red Cross.
Speaker 8: Yeh, that's a pretty standard.
Speaker 2: The one institution that did show support to people in
Speaker 2: Hucumber was one that you might not expect given the
Speaker 2: support for this cruel immigration policy. By almost all the
Speaker 2: Democrats in DC. But things are different when you can
Speaker 2: see the results of these policies with your own eyes.
Speaker 2: Perhaps that's why I didn't see a single elected official
Speaker 2: in my entire week at the border. But one person
Speaker 2: I missed who everyone mentioned was a lady who worked
Speaker 2: for California Senator Steve Pidia. I wouldn't name her as
Speaker 2: I don't have her permission, but hopefully one days, soume,
Speaker 2: we'll be able to interview her. I'll let Katie describe
Speaker 2: the role this woman played.
Speaker 20: There was someone from Steve Padilla's team, and that's the
Speaker 20: woman I rode with, and she was incredible. Her brother
Speaker 20: in law is the chef at the hotel, so I think,
Speaker 20: I mean, she might have came anyway, but she came
Speaker 20: faster and there was true connection. And she stood up
Speaker 20: to the border patrol and said, you know, said we're allowed.
Speaker 20: We're here on behalf of this senator. So I mean
Speaker 20: I saw some like had had like arguments about our
Speaker 20: right to be there, and most of us didn't. Weren't
Speaker 20: paying attention to that. We were paying attention to the
Speaker 20: people that we were, you know, around, and no one
Speaker 20: that was out there. What didn't believe that we should
Speaker 20: be out there and that more help should be out there.
Speaker 2: Sadly, part of that familiarity with the system this woman
Speaker 2: brought to the team also meant a familiarity with the
Speaker 2: cruel and arbitrary nature of it. Katie says that they
Speaker 2: had to organize for that as well.
Speaker 20: So my friend and I we ended up writing in
Speaker 20: her truck, so in Steve Padia's Senator Padia's assistant truck.
Speaker 20: So we had the opportunity to ask some questions that
Speaker 20: probably everyone out there wanted to know, including the migrants,
Speaker 20: And it was like, what will happen in what's the
Speaker 20: process from here? And how do you know that these
Speaker 20: people are being tended to? And I literally heard her
Speaker 20: on the phone getting as many bodies on the ground
Speaker 20: to start going to those centers where they're being taken
Speaker 20: to make sure that they were that we would follow
Speaker 20: them through the entire process as best possible, monitoring their
Speaker 20: well well cared for, that they were well cared for,
Speaker 20: as well cared for as possible in a system and
Speaker 20: a process like that. Yeah, yeah, but she literally said
Speaker 20: they're going to be busted off and putt in cages,
Speaker 20: and that they would do their best to make sure
Speaker 20: that that no one was split up and that everyone
Speaker 20: was fed, showered, and they weren't allowed to bring anything
Speaker 20: with them, so a lot of the cleanup was all
Speaker 20: of the things that everyone donated that had to be
Speaker 20: left behind, including some of the stuffed animals.
Speaker 2: For all the volunteers I spoke to, the chance to
Speaker 2: be of service was empowering. Here's Natalie discussing that, Yeah.
Speaker 10: I mean, well, like and so many times do you
Speaker 10: like feel overwhelmed with like so much suffering in this world,
Speaker 10: and like what can one person do?
Speaker 21: You know?
Speaker 10: And so it did feel good that to actually see
Speaker 10: an immediate impact, like I'm doing this and this is
Speaker 10: a result, because sometimes you can just get discouraged, you know,
Speaker 10: like we're just one person.
Speaker 26: What can we really do and can we really make
Speaker 26: an impact?
Speaker 10: And just seeing that and being able to see directly
Speaker 10: how that one person can impact, you know, can rally.
Speaker 10: Like just seeing how my friends came together, you know,
Speaker 10: when shopping, bought things, gathered money money.
Speaker 26: You know, my really good friend Sam, she went.
Speaker 10: To her local bar after she collected a bunch of money,
Speaker 10: went and dropped stuff supplies off at my house, she
Speaker 10: was just down at her local bar and just chatting
Speaker 10: with them and like, oh, what did you do today,
Speaker 10: And so she told them, oh, I collected money and
Speaker 10: I bought supplies and the people. She ended up collecting
Speaker 10: about two hundred more dollars at the bar from people
Speaker 10: hearing her story. And so then the next day she
Speaker 10: went and bought more supplies and she actually ended up
Speaker 10: driving them out herself. She ended up doing like three
Speaker 10: trips just from her own talking to people and collecting.
Speaker 10: So just like the little impact that you know, everyone
Speaker 10: just kind of coming together and making a difference.
Speaker 2: Santa Sidro, a pretty diverse range of San Diegan's came
Speaker 2: to help. On the first night, I personally left at
Speaker 2: about one in the morning, after spending almost two hours
Speaker 2: trying to leave but needing to get charged phones back
Speaker 2: to their owners by loudly in Spanish and French, then
Speaker 2: English describing the backgrounds on the phone or the color
Speaker 2: of their case.
Speaker 27: How can we describe it?
Speaker 2: It wasn't a great system, and by the weekend, Caber
Speaker 2: and others had seen that more help an organization was needed,
Speaker 2: and they decided to plan a response. Here's cable describing
Speaker 2: how they prepared for.
Speaker 8: That are maybe I'll just grabbed some paying attention to
Speaker 8: people I know who the grenade and what supplies they
Speaker 8: were saying was needed. A particular store near me has
Speaker 8: like a wall of travel size like the Giant Times,
Speaker 8: where you can basically just scoop out one hundred deodorant,
Speaker 8: hands and to paste and things like that.
Speaker 2: CAPA met up with some other members of a local
Speaker 2: mutual aid group. I'll make sure to include donation links
Speaker 2: for all the groups I've mentioned at the end of
Speaker 2: this series, so please make sure to listen right through
Speaker 2: to the end.
Speaker 8: I met up with him and he had just received
Speaker 8: a bunch of donations through through mutually networks, so we
Speaker 8: were not even more of a travel size I got
Speaker 8: some truth hygiene kits and deodorant and and a bunch
Speaker 8: of friends and papers because because the kids that are
Speaker 8: between the walls don't really have actually do unfortunately, so
Speaker 8: so that those were those wereent really fast, and so
Speaker 8: we got a whole bunch of bags of all those
Speaker 8: kinds of supplies, and then we dropped down on the
Speaker 8: border from there.
Speaker 2: By the time they arrived, various organizations organized areas along
Speaker 2: the wall for different kinds of aid to be passed through.
Speaker 2: Everything from clothes to food to medical supplies and toilet
Speaker 2: paper was piled up given out.
Speaker 8: They help donations and you know, organizing toilet paper, food,
Speaker 8: everything like that, and people just come up to the
Speaker 8: wall and if their family needed something, they would just
Speaker 8: kind of pointing to it. Were asked us if we
Speaker 8: were a bit there, you know, if there was a
Speaker 8: common language there. So yeah, we just kind of you know,
Speaker 8: pay things as people needed them. I know that I
Speaker 8: helped him out some of the friends and pads of
Speaker 8: paper and those were those were a big hit. And
Speaker 8: tons of kids all came running over from the whole
Speaker 8: all the parts of the camp when they heard that
Speaker 8: there was there were toys being given out, so that
Speaker 8: was it was. It was heartbreaking, but it was also
Speaker 8: you know, it made me smile to.
Speaker 2: See them smile in this male Because of the need
Speaker 2: to use c BP one and of course they need
Speaker 2: to stay in touch with families back home, there was
Speaker 2: a constant and overwhelming demand for phone charging. News reporters
Speaker 2: took phones back to charge in their cars. Some people
Speaker 2: bought charge bricks and power strips, and mutual aid groups
Speaker 2: wrote names on the back of the phones using painter's
Speaker 2: tape and sharpie so they wouldn't get separated from their owners.
Speaker 2: But the second day it was a better system. But
Speaker 2: on the first day it was chaos. I'll let Kber,
Speaker 2: who spent a whole day charging phones described the system
Speaker 2: that volunteers came up with to mitigate that chaos a
Speaker 2: little bit.
Speaker 8: And obviously they couldn't charge their phones if they're just
Speaker 8: in this kind of desert gap between between these walls
Speaker 8: that doesn't have any kind of minimies or anything. So
Speaker 8: we had a system where they would pass the phone through,
Speaker 8: and we had we would we would put a piece
Speaker 8: of tape on it with their name and give their
Speaker 8: a piece of tape with their name the same name,
Speaker 8: and then they would give us that if they came
Speaker 8: back to give us the tape back, and we would
Speaker 8: match their names and in the phone, and and that
Speaker 8: was it worked well enough. I mean, it was still
Speaker 8: extraordinarily chaotic process. I mean we had we always had
Speaker 8: at least one hundred phones on our side of the
Speaker 8: wallet any given time, and and some people had, you know,
Speaker 8: some people like chargers, some people didn't. Some people had
Speaker 8: Android or Samsung or all the iPhones, and some people
Speaker 8: had well adaptors and some people didn't have the wallet
Speaker 8: ESA adapters, so we kind of had to every phone
Speaker 8: that came through was we had to find a way
Speaker 8: to get it, you know, basically chained into the set
Speaker 8: of generators that we had, which was do we have
Speaker 8: power strips? Do we have to write cables and and
Speaker 8: and we have space on those cables and and I
Speaker 8: think it was it was a bit of a puzzle
Speaker 8: the whole time. The only part of it that really
Speaker 8: overwhelmed me was we did overload. Someone brought a bunch
Speaker 8: of uh USBC power strips and we blew out one
Speaker 8: of them, and so there was now eight phones attached
Speaker 8: to it that I had to find new spaces for.
Speaker 8: And I was just like as long as I was
Speaker 8: just frustrated by the situation. In addition affair, I think
Speaker 8: whatever happened to.
Speaker 2: It, it was chaos, but it was a good nature chaos.
Speaker 2: Over several days that migrants were attained in the open
Speaker 2: with no shelter and inadequate sanitation, just about two miles
Speaker 2: from the discount mall where you can buy cheap ralpherend shirts.
Speaker 2: If that's your jam. People showed up in ever increasing numbers.
Speaker 2: The American Friends Service Committee helped organize volunteers into groups
Speaker 2: to distribute food, package up wet white snacks, medicines, give
Speaker 2: out tarps, and do just about anything else that they
Speaker 2: could or anything else that they could fit into ziploc
Speaker 2: bags that could be passed through gaps in the wall.
Speaker 4: At least.
Speaker 2: People who had been immigrants themselves or who were the
Speaker 2: children of immigrants were notably numerous among the volunteers. I
Speaker 2: spoke to one of them.
Speaker 18: My name is Launchai.
Speaker 28: I'm part of Asian Soliday Collective grass with organization here
Speaker 28: in San Diego.
Speaker 18: I've been I've been coming over here since yesterday.
Speaker 28: I came here around five six yesterday, and then I
Speaker 28: came back through here this morning and been here since.
Speaker 28: I got home at twelve last night and woke up,
Speaker 28: dropped my kid off, and came right back with more supplies.
Speaker 28: I've been reaching out to family, friends and community to
Speaker 28: help donate supplies and things like.
Speaker 18: That, food, whatever, whatever they may have.
Speaker 28: And I've pretty much been driving around city and collecting
Speaker 28: from folks that can't make it so I could bring
Speaker 28: it down here myself.
Speaker 18: So that's what I've been.
Speaker 2: Doing LUNCHA explained to me why it was so important
Speaker 2: to show up my community.
Speaker 28: I'm pretty sure they they they're sympathetic to this because
Speaker 28: I'm coming from I'm a first generation Camboden American here
Speaker 28: in the US, and when my parents and my family
Speaker 28: fled their country, they went through this as well. So
Speaker 28: somebody somewhere came man provided to supports, provided to aid
Speaker 28: the donations for them to be able to to make
Speaker 28: it to America to crossover, and and able to to
Speaker 28: to provide out here for for me growing up out here.
Speaker 29: You know.
Speaker 18: So it's just I just sympathize with it, with the
Speaker 18: whole thing. I mean, I mean.
Speaker 28: Everybody should should should feel the same way because somewhere
Speaker 28: down the line, our families went through similar situations. If
Speaker 28: you're not an indigenous, then then then your family somewhere
Speaker 28: down down to history went through the same thing.
Speaker 18: So you know that everybody should have a heart for
Speaker 18: this and be able.
Speaker 28: To come down here and and and and donate or
Speaker 28: donate their time or supplies whatever the case may be.
Speaker 18: You don't come out in help.
Speaker 2: He also explained why he feels it's important to encourage
Speaker 2: empathy for refugees.
Speaker 28: Well, it's it's you have to you have to, you
Speaker 28: have to be keep in mind, there's there's this families
Speaker 28: out here, there's this young children, there's babies. I mean,
Speaker 28: it takes a lot for for for a mother to
Speaker 28: pick up her infant child and to to leave where
Speaker 28: she's coming from.
Speaker 18: So that just says a lot about where.
Speaker 28: What's going on where she's coming for for her to
Speaker 28: to to trek and to go through this, to to
Speaker 28: sit out here and cold and stuff.
Speaker 18: Because if she would rather endure her endure.
Speaker 28: This and take the risk and the chances that means
Speaker 28: where she's coming from is not as you know, she's
Speaker 28: wanted to take that risk.
Speaker 2: Later that night, I saw an Afghan family come to
Speaker 2: help the other Afghan families. Their kids talk to other
Speaker 2: Afghan kids separated by the border war. They passed crayons
Speaker 2: through the wall and coloring books, and the little daughter
Speaker 2: asked her dad if she could give her watch to
Speaker 2: the Afghan girl being held in the camp. Her dad said,
Speaker 2: of course, I don't record or photograph people's children, certainly
Speaker 2: not without asking, And I wasn't about to interrupt them,
Speaker 2: but it was a very sweet moment. The father of
Speaker 2: the family had worked in the Army Corps of Engineers.
Speaker 2: He'd been to the border before to build this section
Speaker 2: of the wall. I didn't really need to ask him
Speaker 2: how it felt to see folks stuck behind it, but
Speaker 2: it said a lot that he and his family had
Speaker 2: taken the time to drive down, buy bags and supplies,
Speaker 2: and then come face to face with the people who
Speaker 2: needed them and hand them out. Like dozens of other folks,
Speaker 2: they tried to pass whatever they could to little gaps
Speaker 2: in the wall to make someone's day a little bit brighter.
Speaker 2: Another volunteer who we heard from yesterday came from a
Speaker 2: local group called Pana. Hermira had been at the wall
Speaker 2: since five in the morning, and it was getting on
Speaker 2: for five pm when we spoke. I normally ask people
Speaker 2: what they ate for breakfast, just to tune in the
Speaker 2: volume levels on my recorder a bit, but I'm going
Speaker 2: to include it this time, just so you can see
Speaker 2: how long her day had been and how hard she'd
Speaker 2: been working.
Speaker 6: Okay, do you know what do you want me to say?
Speaker 4: So that good?
Speaker 3: I mean, we have a breakfast vegan.
Speaker 6: I don't remember anymore French shast frend shosts. But my
Speaker 6: name is Harmaira Usafi, and I'm with a Partnership for
Speaker 6: the Advancement of New Americans PANA, or, an organization in
Speaker 6: San Diego that fights for the full incusion of refugees
Speaker 6: and those who come from refugee producing countries.
Speaker 2: We spoke about the emergency that had kept her here
Speaker 2: all day.
Speaker 6: So in terms of this morning, I mean I was,
Speaker 6: I was, you know, very concerned because there was an
Speaker 6: asylum seeker who had an emergency and was rushed out
Speaker 6: of this place. Where now, like for example, where we
Speaker 6: are at right now is people who are being detained
Speaker 6: and the most inhumane way possible. This is going against
Speaker 6: CBP's own protocols and policies as to how they're being
Speaker 6: detained with. No they're not giving them food, they're not
Speaker 6: giving them bathrooms, they're not giving them basic basic things
Speaker 6: that they need to survive. And so that's why the
Speaker 6: community is out here today to do that.
Speaker 2: Sadly, not everyone who showed up at the makeshift detention
Speaker 2: facility were showing up in solidarity. Local anti migrant activists
Speaker 2: and blogger Roger Ogden showed up. Now Ogden might be
Speaker 2: familiar to some listeners due to his attempts to host
Speaker 2: he called a Patriot picnic and his advocacy for the
Speaker 2: removal of the historic murals in Chicano Park. Ogden organized
Speaker 2: gatherings in the park in twenty seventeen and twenty eighteen,
Speaker 2: and they resulted in a huge and overwhelming community response
Speaker 2: to defend the park, and this time Olgden decided to
Speaker 2: keep to himself, but Natalie ran into some people who
Speaker 2: weren't quite as shy about their opinions.
Speaker 26: You know, a lot of the people in the community.
Speaker 10: Are you know, lower income, and you know, they are
Speaker 10: struggling in their own struggle on their and so I know,
Speaker 10: you know, maybe I don't know it like for those people,
Speaker 10: I don't know, like, yeah, it's hard, I don't know.
Speaker 10: I mean, towards the end, like when I was walking
Speaker 10: to my car, this man, this man in a car
Speaker 10: like pulled up and he's like, excuse me, what's going
Speaker 10: on over there? And I was like, Oh, we're gathering
Speaker 10: you know, supplies for the asylum seekers. And then I
Speaker 10: you know, like if you're from here, you kind of
Speaker 10: if you're in hookum, but you kind of already knew
Speaker 10: what was going on. And so him asking me that,
Speaker 10: I was kind of like mm, and then he just
Speaker 10: started laying into I've had illegals, you know, have broken
Speaker 10: into my house a few times. Why are you supporting illegals?
Speaker 10: And I'm like, we're trying to let like make sure
Speaker 10: that people don't die, and he just kept going off
Speaker 10: on me, and so he, you know, his the whole
Speaker 10: all the talking points that people have about not allowing
Speaker 10: people to seek asylum here, and so.
Speaker 26: I just walked away.
Speaker 2: Maurica didn't run into the same kind of vocal opposition,
Speaker 2: but she said in her conversations and attempts to process
Speaker 2: everything she'd seen, she ran into some of the sort
Speaker 2: of need yate responses. So people can only really make
Speaker 2: about immigration when they haven't looked the cruelty that they're
Speaker 2: advocating for in the face.
Speaker 22: It took me a little while to kind of work
Speaker 22: through just how I felt about it on an emotional,
Speaker 22: maybe a spiritual level. I you know, I spoke with
Speaker 22: family and friends about it, about my experience, and and
Speaker 22: it's it's difficult to I found it difficult to explain
Speaker 22: my experience because I don't know that somebody can really
Speaker 22: truly understand that unless they've actually been out there and
Speaker 22: done it themselves, because the arguments or or they're kind of.
Speaker 7: Debate, so to speak.
Speaker 22: What they would come back at me with when I
Speaker 22: was sharing that is, but we don't have enough food
Speaker 22: or housing to be able to support this that many
Speaker 22: people coming in, And I'm like, but we just had
Speaker 22: so many people and so much money put out there
Speaker 22: to help in a very short amount of time. Look
Speaker 22: how many donations were donated, how much money was contributed
Speaker 22: in a short amount of time from not that many people.
Speaker 22: I'm like, obviously we do have the money. Obviously we
Speaker 22: do have the food. So where's the where's the breakdown? Like,
Speaker 22: is it our system that just doesn't allow for that happened?
Speaker 22: I don't know, And that that's where I like, I
Speaker 22: don't I don't understand it enough.
Speaker 7: But I feel like.
Speaker 22: It just made me realize that I don't know that
Speaker 22: anybody that I spoke to afterward really understands it enough,
Speaker 22: either because their arguments or they're a defense and what
Speaker 22: they tried to share on the opposite side of me
Speaker 22: going out there and supporting just felt like it was
Speaker 22: just something to say, you know, and like what they
Speaker 22: what they hear from the general media out there, and
Speaker 22: they also don't really they can't quite grasp it, so
Speaker 22: they're just kind of throwing something out there, I guess
Speaker 22: is what it what it felt like.
Speaker 2: Kaiba also ran into some less in charitable San Diegans,
Speaker 2: this time down in sant Asedra.
Speaker 8: Yeah, so, I guess the first part is why they
Speaker 8: might have or why they might have found us there,
Speaker 8: which is theres a local news organization SANE, which is
Speaker 8: kind of I would describe as ayal equivalent of something
Speaker 8: like one American News, which is really unfortunate because we
Speaker 8: already have more American news here. But they are are
Speaker 8: pretty well known for kind of a lot of like misinformation,
Speaker 8: kind of scare mongering about and has people, immigrants, vaccines
Speaker 8: and and all that sort of sort of thing, but
Speaker 8: with kind of a local news sort of aesthetic to it.
Speaker 8: And they were, as far as I could tell, they
Speaker 8: were really the only identify the media that were there
Speaker 8: throughout the day. I read articles eventually made me realize
Speaker 8: there were other reporters there, but they were identifying themselves
Speaker 8: the way that has I was, but they had signed
Speaker 8: was one cameraman just shooting the rule. I guess and
Speaker 8: he was walking to all the different parts of the
Speaker 8: wall and like all the different sort of stations for
Speaker 8: aid and like trying to really trying to get as
Speaker 8: many faces as possible. You could kind of tell that
Speaker 8: that's like what he was doing. Every one was around
Speaker 8: I was, I was kind of oriented, and most of
Speaker 8: them with kind of their backband sort of analysts between people,
Speaker 8: and you know, when they saw the players trap, they're
Speaker 8: like a pappoints their masking, you know, and killing them
Speaker 8: in so where and I am don't you know, slightly
Speaker 8: identifying logo on my struct shirt which I take over
Speaker 8: so that you know that image wouldn't show up.
Speaker 26: Now.
Speaker 2: K us I have drifted further and further right since
Speaker 2: twenty twenty. Along with their relatively miniscule viewership. These days,
Speaker 2: they engage in fake news culture war stuff, like repeating
Speaker 2: the recent false accusations that Target was making tuckable swimming
Speaker 2: costumes for kids, or labeling everyone in the asylum process
Speaker 2: illegal immigrants. It's sadly pretty standard for writing news organizations now.
Speaker 2: Kaiba thinks that some of the people who saw footage
Speaker 2: on k USI, or perhaps found the location posted on
Speaker 2: Ogden's blog came down to the border.
Speaker 8: That's that's the one short in to see people know
Speaker 8: kind of go buy and and and we could tell
Speaker 8: that they weren't volunteers because like pop when people like playing,
Speaker 8: people who weren't even necessarily vounteer would are buy and
Speaker 8: say like hey, I just heard out going on. I
Speaker 8: brought a piece of water, and and they bring up
Speaker 8: the water and then they drive away. But the people
Speaker 8: who are doing who were like cute where I think,
Speaker 8: you know, kind of do some kind of intimidation where
Speaker 8: you know, they wouldn't approach directly. They would just kind
Speaker 8: of get out of their exceptionally large entivies and and
Speaker 8: just kind of just kind of watch, and they would
Speaker 8: kind of, you know, get a little bit closer at
Speaker 8: a time, and then you know a little bit closer
Speaker 8: and kind of whispered to each other and you know,
Speaker 8: point at things, and you know it's just kind of
Speaker 8: they were just watching, and you know, they got close
Speaker 8: enough that I could read their shirts and and the
Speaker 8: shirts had a slogan that's associated with a Christian nationalism slogan.
Speaker 8: So as this whole family is kind of kind of
Speaker 8: sad that the kids would wear the shirts too, and
Speaker 8: and so I kind of, yeah, I figured out that
Speaker 8: that's what was going on. And I never talked to them.
Speaker 8: I didn't approach them, but I stood when I was,
Speaker 8: you know, seeing they closer with this or I kind
Speaker 8: of positioned myself in between the rest of the volunteers and
Speaker 8: in this group, and and just kind of, you know,
Speaker 8: did never really stare at them, just kind of looked
Speaker 8: at them and and just made it clear with my
Speaker 8: body language that I, like I knew what they were doing,
Speaker 8: like they weren't you know, they weren't doing any kind
Speaker 8: of secret agent thing or whatever, like they were being
Speaker 8: really really obvious. And and I just you know, stood
Speaker 8: and positioned myself in a way that dicated that you know,
Speaker 8: I know what you're doing, and you're not going to
Speaker 8: get close. You're not going to interfere with you know,
Speaker 8: what we're doing here. You're not going to contact to
Speaker 8: anyone or you trill anyone or like what everyone did.
Speaker 8: And eventually one of the people who is either volunteer
Speaker 8: or work for like one of the mngos contesting tell
Speaker 8: there was something going on. So Sho went over and
Speaker 8: had a conversation with them that I could hear and
Speaker 8: eventually they decided to leave, and I think she was
Speaker 8: just kind of trying to be diplomatic, but just sort
Speaker 8: of like asked them if they wanted to help and
Speaker 8: if they don't want to help, you, yeah, somewhere else,
Speaker 8: I suppose. And it was I mean, the sort of
Speaker 8: one Amazon prior to people that was that they apparently
Speaker 8: complained to this person about me because they said that
Speaker 8: I had been watching them and I was I was
Speaker 8: racially profiling them because they were white. And I realized
Speaker 8: now that this is an around this interview, but just
Speaker 8: for the listeners, I am very very white myself.
Speaker 2: I think it's important when we discuss volunteering to honor
Speaker 2: how hard this kind of experience could be on people. Obviously,
Speaker 2: the trauma associated with seeing people brutalized by the state
Speaker 2: and capital is not the same as being brutalized by
Speaker 2: state and capital yourself. But that doesn't mean it's easy.
Speaker 2: I asked Natalie to reflect a little on children's toys
Speaker 2: we found in the shelter when we were cleaning up
Speaker 2: the camp, like.
Speaker 10: As a mom, like I have my own children, and
Speaker 10: it just really it was emotional. It's like it's just
Speaker 10: like I'm like, who's who? What child was playing with this?
Speaker 10: You know here in this space, and you know that
Speaker 10: no child should be ever in, you know, an encampment
Speaker 10: like that or it just no one should be living outside,
Speaker 10: no one should be doing that. But also it's like
Speaker 10: kind of like the humanity in a way like that.
Speaker 10: You know, even a child's going to play wherever child's
Speaker 10: going to play, and like that little toy of little
Speaker 10: hopefully it brought that kid some joy in that moment,
Speaker 10: you know, if it was there a little piece of
Speaker 10: home or someone gave it to him or what, you know,
Speaker 10: it was Yeah, the reality, it was like it was
Speaker 10: like a person, you know, like a little artifact of
Speaker 10: someone who was actually there.
Speaker 26: You know, like it was a little more tangible than
Speaker 26: you know, a sock. You know, that's not that's not
Speaker 26: I'm not the you know who wore that sock. But
Speaker 26: think of who who was playing with that joy? You know?
Speaker 26: Was it a little boy a little girl? At hold?
Speaker 26: Were they did they bring up home? Are they missing it?
Speaker 26: When they? When I saw they have that, she needed
Speaker 26: people to clean up.
Speaker 10: It was like Okay, I took a day off of
Speaker 10: work and went out there and just felt overwhelming almost.
Speaker 10: I mean, just one day of me working out there
Speaker 10: was really emotional. I can't imagine how you know, Melissa
Speaker 10: and all the people that were on the ground just
Speaker 10: dealing with it. I know they're just struggling a little
Speaker 10: bit and just processing it all has been really hard,
Speaker 10: you know, really hard. It's just just just how how
Speaker 10: privileged we are. You know, like no one leaves their
Speaker 10: country because they want to. They leave because they have to,
Speaker 10: but they feel like they have to. And you know,
Speaker 10: it's i mean, just respecting and honoring and understanding the
Speaker 10: privilege that you're.
Speaker 26: In and not taking for granted because it's very easy too.
Speaker 2: Both Katie Marisa said they don't really identify as political
Speaker 2: and that they wanted to be there as people. Sometimes
Speaker 2: often politics can become a complicated game of numbers and statistics,
Speaker 2: but it's important to remember that what this is really
Speaker 2: about is organizing in such a way that we can
Speaker 2: take care of one another, and that the most important
Speaker 2: politics of war is the politics of feeding hungry people
Speaker 2: and maybe bringing a sad child of stuffed animal. Here's
Speaker 2: Katie talking about the community response.
Speaker 20: I think I'm a really compassionate person and I'm not
Speaker 20: very political in the sense that like I don't really participate.
Speaker 20: My life in my community's life is solution oriented. So
Speaker 20: I saw like that on a large scale, like when
Speaker 20: people come together, we create solutions when and you don't
Speaker 20: wait for someone like the government to show up and
Speaker 20: fix it, because then people will die. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 20: I mean that's the reality is if that community didn't activate,
Speaker 20: there would have been a lot of dead people in
Speaker 20: the desert.
Speaker 2: Katie shared with me that she's been having a difficult time,
Speaker 2: feeling guilty for not having the language skills to do
Speaker 2: more and questing her own worthiness to be their helping
Speaker 2: But in the end, she said she felt that what
Speaker 2: she'd done was right and important. I'll leave you with
Speaker 2: her thoughts and tomorrow I'll be back to talk about
Speaker 2: the people who put everyone in this situation in the
Speaker 2: first place, the Department of Homeland Security.
Speaker 20: I think an important thing is like so many times
Speaker 20: we hear about things and we say, isn't that awful,
Speaker 20: and we kind of shut down because we don't feel
Speaker 20: empowered or we don't know how to help. And literally
Speaker 20: a smile makes a difference, a feeling of like I
Speaker 20: see you and you belong on this planet makes a difference.
Speaker 20: And you know, little kids packing up canned goods and
Speaker 20: fruit snacks for other little kids. They didn't see those kids,
Speaker 20: but when the adult said they're gonna be so happy
Speaker 20: to get that package, they felt like they made a difference.
Speaker 20: And those little girls are gonna grow up and not
Speaker 20: be afraid to step up and make a difference. I
Speaker 20: think a lot of people think like they can't do enough,
Speaker 20: so they don't do anything. And if we all just
Speaker 20: do a little bit or what you can, then I
Speaker 20: think we would see a very large impact. Kumba is
Speaker 20: a town of five hundred and they just fed thousands,
Speaker 20: house thousands, closed thousands, hugged and welcomed thousands of human beings.
Speaker 20: And those people in that town don't have much excess,
Speaker 20: and they made a difference.
Speaker 3: And I was.
Speaker 20: Proud to be a part of that community in a
Speaker 20: way that I'm on the fringe of it, and it
Speaker 20: made me want to be even more a part of it.
Speaker 20: My feelings and intuition about that town were confirmed by
Speaker 20: watching the simplest action make an incredible impact on real
Speaker 20: lives and real people, and that this isn't demographics, it's
Speaker 20: real bodies that have breating, hearts and breathe and we
Speaker 20: all share the same air, in the same water, and
Speaker 20: we're all connected. And when you make one little drip
Speaker 20: in the bucket, it actually does make a difference. And
Speaker 20: I think that stops us sometimes when we think what
Speaker 20: we have isn't enough to give, but when someone has nothing,
Speaker 20: what you have is more than what they can.
Speaker 2: Imagine the history of the Border and It's in four
Speaker 2: begins in fourteen ninety two with the colonization of what
Speaker 2: would become known as the Americas. It goes through the
Speaker 2: eighteen forty two Mexican American War and a curl of
Speaker 2: indigenous people's lands without their knowledge or consent in the
Speaker 2: eighteen fifty three Gasden Purchase, and of course, through the
Speaker 2: eighteen eighty two Chinese Exclusion Act and numerous other explicit
Speaker 2: attempts to prevent non white people from moving to the USA.
Speaker 2: From there, it weaves its way through the Mexican Revolution
Speaker 2: and the First World Wars GEMA proposal to ally with
Speaker 2: Mexico to reclaim those territories it had lost in the
Speaker 2: decades before then. The border patrol story itself begins in
Speaker 2: May nineteen twenty four and in the ninety nine years since,
Speaker 2: it has encompassed everything from David Duke to nine to
Speaker 2: eleven in its journey to becoming the biggest and least
Speaker 2: accountable law enforcement agency in the federal government. People from
Speaker 2: the colonial periphery have always migrated to the metropol. It's
Speaker 2: why a man called fat LEDs singing a song about
Speaker 2: vinderlou is basically my country's second national anthem, and why
Speaker 2: every four years France accepts black Frenchmen onto its football
Speaker 2: team before it returns to vilifying them in other forms
Speaker 2: of discos. Migration to the United States is no different.
Speaker 2: Climate change in US imperiodism have destabilized and impoverished nations
Speaker 2: from the Americas to Afghanistan and driven people to the
Speaker 2: US border looking for a better life. What's distinct about
Speaker 2: the US is how obsessed it has become with keeping
Speaker 2: these people out and enforcing the longest land borders in
Speaker 2: the world. But the US border is much bigger than
Speaker 2: the land boundary between the USA and Mexico to the
Speaker 2: south and Canada to the north. If you're listening to
Speaker 2: this in the United States, the chances are that you
Speaker 2: live in the border enforcement zone. This swath of territory
Speaker 2: outside the Constitution has been established since the Immigration and
Speaker 2: Nationality Act of nineteen fifty two. Established at a reasonable
Speaker 2: distance of the border would extend one hundred air miles
Speaker 2: around the outline of the country. Two thirds of the
Speaker 2: US's population live within this zone. Washington, d C. San Francisco, Chicago,
Speaker 2: New Orleans, and Boston are all within it, and that
Speaker 2: means that cbpagents can search vehicles and vessels to look
Speaker 2: for property that's in the country without the right documents.
Speaker 2: They can public transportation or set up interior checkpoints and stop,
Speaker 2: interrogate and search citizens and non citizens without the need
Speaker 2: for a warrant. Within twenty five miles of the border,
Speaker 2: they can enter your property provide it's not a domicile.
Speaker 2: The Fourth Amendment, part of a foundational bill of rights
Speaker 2: at US likes to tout as what makes it different from
Speaker 2: the rest of the world, doesn't apply when you're near
Speaker 2: the border, and all encompassing history of the border and
Speaker 2: its enforcement is beyond the scope of this podcast. Even
Speaker 2: a history of the Southwest border could take up a
Speaker 2: whole bookshelf, but we will try and skim the high
Speaker 2: points here. Let's start with a Gadsden Purchase when a
Speaker 2: party of military surveyors first bumped into horn Art and
Speaker 2: elders as they attempted to draw a line dividing to
Speaker 2: Horn Autumn People from to Horn Autum people. The southern
Speaker 2: border is no more obvious today than it was then, and,
Speaker 2: of course, to the Autumn it was and remains and
Speaker 2: aberration that divides them from much of their ancestral and
Speaker 2: current homelands. It has over the years seen violent enforcement
Speaker 2: on members of the nation and a growing encroachment of
Speaker 2: the Border Patrol into today's to Horn Autumn Reservation, which
Speaker 2: is the second largest in the USA. It only represents
Speaker 2: a fraction of the tribe's historical homeland. These surveyors were
Speaker 2: in the process of finalizing most of the California and
Speaker 2: Arizona border, a border I drove most of in the
Speaker 2: days after Title forty two. The southern border as it
Speaker 2: looks now, was largely shaped by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo,
Speaker 2: which Mexico lost fifty five percent of its territory, including
Speaker 2: all of what is today California, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Nevada,
Speaker 2: and parts of what is today Colorado. Wyoming, Kansas, and Oklahoma.
Speaker 2: The Gaston purchase of eighteen fifty three added more of
Speaker 2: southern Arizona. In New Mexico, the specific border in Santa
Speaker 2: Ciedro withdrawal so that San Diego Bay would fall to
Speaker 2: the north of the line. The border in a cumba
Speaker 2: seems more arbitrary, a straight line in the desert that
Speaker 2: runs into a pile of rocks. Of course, long before
Speaker 2: the border divided San Asidra from Tijuana, this was Cuma land,
Speaker 2: and despite the border, it still is. The name Tijuana
Speaker 2: derives from Tijuan, which we by the sea in Kumiai.
Speaker 2: Despite this, the Kumii and many other indigenous peoples were
Speaker 2: ignored when the border crossed them, and it's becoming harder
Speaker 2: and harder for them to cross it. In parts of desert,
Speaker 2: it can be pretty hard to see the border at all.
Speaker 2: In twenty twenty, while out with a group of Kumi
Speaker 2: people who were in ceremony to honor their ancestors whose
Speaker 2: burial sites have been and continue to be desecrated by
Speaker 2: border war construction, I had to be worried of stepping
Speaker 2: over it to better frame my shots the emerging declaration.
Speaker 2: Donald Trump made allowed war construction to sidestep legislation in
Speaker 2: place to protect archaeological and sacred sites, but it didn't
Speaker 2: allow me to sidestep into Mexico to get a better shot. Luckily, Bortac,
Speaker 2: a team of armed border patrol agents who you might
Speaker 2: remember from Portland in twenty twenty, provided a guy addressed
Speaker 2: like he was in the Battle of Falluja to help me.
Speaker 2: I would say the border is a line in the sand,
Speaker 2: but at the time there wasn't a line that was
Speaker 2: visible at all in Valley the Moon, a few miles
Speaker 2: east to Wear that Bortec patrol guard shouted at people
Speaker 2: stepping too close in twenty twenty. The border wall is
Speaker 2: about waste, high, rusty, and essentially comprised of a single
Speaker 2: strand of barbed wire in cucumber. The thirty foot Trump
Speaker 2: wall pushes right up to a boulder pile and then
Speaker 2: stops the logic as much as there can be any logic,
Speaker 2: and spending twenty five million dollars a mile to desecrate
Speaker 2: sacred spaces and defile the landscape, is it. People will
Speaker 2: be deterred from crossing by the harsh landscape, brutally hot
Speaker 2: days and brutally cold nights. This logic, of course, fails
Speaker 2: to consider not just where people are going, why they're leaving,
Speaker 2: the places they've come from. Risking one's life crossing the
Speaker 2: border makes sense only when one considers the danger that
Speaker 2: many people in places around the world face every day.
Speaker 2: It hasn't always been this way, fear reference here in
Speaker 2: Reagan and Bush talking about migration in nineteen eighty.
Speaker 30: Heit, I'm going to ask you what you would do
Speaker 30: about Cuba.
Speaker 8: But now I'm going to hold you.
Speaker 17: Now, we're going to have some questions from the audience.
Speaker 25: Yes, my name's David Grosberg, and I'd like to know
Speaker 25: do you think that children of illegal aliens should be
Speaker 25: allowed to attend Texas public schools free?
Speaker 15: Or do you think that their parents should pay for
Speaker 15: their education?
Speaker 26: Who you're addressing that too?
Speaker 8: I think he was looking right at you.
Speaker 31: I said he was, Well, I'd like.
Speaker 29: To see something done about the illegal alien problem that
Speaker 29: would be so sensitive, in so understanding about labor needs
Speaker 29: and human needs that.
Speaker 15: That problem wouldn't come up.
Speaker 32: But today, if.
Speaker 29: Those people are here, I would reluctantly say I think
Speaker 29: they would. They would get whatever it is that they're
Speaker 29: you know what the society is giving to their neighbors,
Speaker 29: but it has the problem has to be solved. The
Speaker 29: problem has to be solved because as we have kind
Speaker 29: of made illegal some kinds of labor that I'd like
Speaker 29: to see legal, we're doing two things. We're creating a
Speaker 29: whole society of really honorable, decent, family loving people that
Speaker 29: are in violation of the law.
Speaker 8: And secondly, we're.
Speaker 29: Exacerbating relations with Mexico. The change, the answer to your
Speaker 29: question is much more fun to metal then whether they
Speaker 29: attend Houston schools. It seems to me, I don't want
Speaker 29: to see a whole if they're living here, I don't
Speaker 29: want to see a whole. I think it's six and
Speaker 29: eight year old kids being made, you know, one totally
Speaker 29: uneducated and made.
Speaker 17: To feel that they're living with outside the law.
Speaker 1: Let's address ourselves to the fundamentals.
Speaker 29: These are good people, strong people.
Speaker 17: Part of my family is an Mexican. And I added
Speaker 17: that I think the time has come that the United
Speaker 17: States and our neighbors, particularly our neighbor to the south,
Speaker 17: should have a better understanding and a better relationship than
Speaker 17: we've ever had.
Speaker 8: And I think but we haven't.
Speaker 17: Been sensitive enough to our size and our power. They
Speaker 17: have a problem of forty to fifty percent unemployment. Now
Speaker 17: this cannot continue without the possibility arising with regard to
Speaker 17: that other country that we talked about of Cuba, and
Speaker 17: what it is stirring up of the possibility of trouble
Speaker 17: below the border, and we could have a very hostile
Speaker 17: and strange neighbor on our border. Rather than making them
Speaker 17: or talking about putting up a fence, why don't we
Speaker 17: work out some recognition of our mutual problems. Make it
Speaker 17: possible for them to come here legally with a work permit, and.
Speaker 8: Then while they're working and earning here, they pay.
Speaker 17: Taxes here, and when they go on to go back,
Speaker 17: they can go back, and they can cross and open
Speaker 17: the border both ways. By understanding their problems.
Speaker 2: The modern era of border enforcement began. As far as
Speaker 2: we can pinpoint a single date with Silvestre Reyes, that
Speaker 2: then Sector Chief of the Border Patrol in McAllen, Texas
Speaker 2: and his operation hold the line the community around McAllen,
Speaker 2: who got tired of border patrol snooping around businesses and
Speaker 2: even schools in a Rio Grand Valley, and instead Rayes
Speaker 2: deployed his agents forward in a sort of human fence
Speaker 2: along the Rio. Grand Rays would later become the chief
Speaker 2: of the Olpaso sector and a Democratic Congressman. He lost
Speaker 2: his seat to be to a rok in twenty thirteen,
Speaker 2: but this strategy would long outlive his career with border patrol.
Speaker 2: The following year, on September seventeenth, nineteen ninety four, US
Speaker 2: Attorney General Janet Reno announce the start of Operation Gatekeeper.
Speaker 2: The first phase of the operation focus on the first
Speaker 2: five miles of the western border, including the place where
Speaker 2: I recorded all those interviews you heard earlier this week.
Speaker 2: According to a piece written a quarter of a century
Speaker 2: later in the La Times, the strategy was to deter
Speaker 2: migrants from illegally crossing in the first place, and for
Speaker 2: those who remained undeterred, to encourage him to cross in
Speaker 2: more isolated wilderness areas to the east, where they could
Speaker 2: be more easily captured. There were already fences in nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety four, first a chain link fence and then one
Speaker 2: made of helicopter landing mats left over from Vietnam that
Speaker 2: had horizontal struts that closely resembled and were used as
Speaker 2: a ladder. Anti migrant rhetoric was already there too. California
Speaker 2: Governor Pete Wilson became an outspoken advocate for Prop One
Speaker 2: eighty seven, a ballot measure that cut off state services
Speaker 2: like healthcare and education to undocumented people. Here's a clip
Speaker 2: of Wilson's reelection ad.
Speaker 30: They keep coming two million illegal immigrants in California. The
Speaker 30: federal government won't stop them at the border, yet requires
Speaker 30: us to pay billions to take care of them, and
Speaker 30: Governor Pete Wilson sent the National Guard to help the
Speaker 30: border patrol.
Speaker 2: But that's not.
Speaker 21: All for Californias who work hard, pay taxes, and obey
Speaker 21: the laws. I am suing to force the federal government
Speaker 21: to control the border, and I'm working to deny state
Speaker 21: services to illegal amigrants.
Speaker 30: Enough is enough, Governor Pete Wilson.
Speaker 2: Under the operation, a much higher number of agents were
Speaker 2: deployed to the border. Apprehensions increase, and with them, so
Speaker 2: did funding for border enforcement. It was around this time
Speaker 2: that the narrative around the border began to change. It
Speaker 2: was also around this time, a few months earlier in fact,
Speaker 2: that the US, Mexico, and Canada entered into the North
Speaker 2: American Free Trade Agreement, which made it easier than ever
Speaker 2: for capital to move across the border and take advantage
Speaker 2: of low wages in Mexico. To learn a little bit
Speaker 2: more about Operation Gatekeeper, I spoke to one of the
Speaker 2: agents who was tossed with executing it.
Speaker 31: My name is Jen Budd and I'm a former senior
Speaker 31: Patrol agent with the United States Border Patrol. I was
Speaker 31: a senior intelligence agent as well as San Diego Sector Headquarters.
Speaker 2: Jennison's left the Border Patrol, but she realizes the impact
Speaker 2: of Operation Gatekeeper on migrants was anything but positive. Yeah.
Speaker 31: Operation Gatekeepers started in nineteen ninety four, in October of
Speaker 31: nineteen ninety four, and I got to Campo in November
Speaker 31: of nineteen ninety five, and so right afterwards, the fence
Speaker 31: was just getting to pick that day when.
Speaker 26: I got there.
Speaker 31: So most of my class, I think we had I
Speaker 31: don't know, forty people graduate or something. Most of them
Speaker 31: went down to Imperial Beach and they had a wall there.
Speaker 31: And so that was the idea, is to fill the
Speaker 31: San Diego City area with as many agents and weapons
Speaker 31: and all this, and then that would push the traffic
Speaker 31: for that to the mountains, making it more difficult for
Speaker 31: them to cross. And some of them get injured, and
Speaker 31: we knew some of them would die. It was intentional.
Speaker 31: The death and the injuries, according to management, would deter
Speaker 31: future crosses.
Speaker 8: But of course that that's.
Speaker 31: Not the case.
Speaker 2: Alan Berson, US attorney in San Diego, was named the
Speaker 2: so called Border Czar by President Bill Clinton a few
Speaker 2: years later to implement that same Gatekeeper strategy across the
Speaker 2: rest of the Southwest border. Burston saw things a little differently.
Speaker 3: Neither side claims it, but Gatekeeper was probably the most
Speaker 3: important domestic achievement accomplished in a purely bipartisan manner through
Speaker 3: three administrations, and the greatest accomplishment since President Eisenhower and
Speaker 3: the Democrats put together the state highway system in the
Speaker 3: mid nineteen fifties.
Speaker 2: But in fact, while apprehensions did drop in San Diego,
Speaker 2: they spiked by five hundred and ninety one percent in
Speaker 2: the Tucson sector between nineteen ninety two and two thousand
Speaker 2: and four. The La Times quotes a non partisan congressional
Speaker 2: research service as saying, one unintended consequence of this enforcement
Speaker 2: posture and the shift in migration patterns has been an
Speaker 2: increase in the number of migrant deaths each year. On average,
Speaker 2: two hundred migrants died each year in the early nineteen nineties,
Speaker 2: compared with four hundred and seventy two migrant deaths in
Speaker 2: two thousand and five. Many of those deaths are now
Speaker 2: in a sector that encompasses the Autumn Reservation. The desert
Speaker 2: there is particularly hard to cross, and the enforcement that
Speaker 2: began with Operation Gatekeeper pushes more and more people onto
Speaker 2: the reservation. Dahn or Autumn People used to travel between
Speaker 2: the United States and Mexico fairly easily on roads without
Speaker 2: checkpoints to visit family, go to school, visit a doctor,
Speaker 2: or perform their traditional ceremonial practices. But after nine to eleven,
Speaker 2: the United States and its Border Patrol began a more
Speaker 2: visible and violent occupation of the reservation. It started with
Speaker 2: a vehicle barrier in two thousand and seven, and it
Speaker 2: continued with CBP's quote unquote virtual wall of surveillance technology,
Speaker 2: cameras and drones. The Israeli company Elbit Systems has built
Speaker 2: fixed surveillance towers, which they pioneered in the West Bank
Speaker 2: on tribal land with the permission of tribal council. Meanwhile,
Speaker 2: other members of the nation strongly oppose the militarization of
Speaker 2: their homeland in the name of security of whatever homeland
Speaker 2: the Department of Homeland Security is securing. I'll quote here
Speaker 2: from Todd Miller, whose excellent work on the border has
Speaker 2: required reading for anyone interested in the subject. Amy Juan
Speaker 2: and Nellie Joe David, members of the Horn Autumn her
Speaker 2: Magicum writes Network Tohrn joined a delegation to the West
Speaker 2: Bank in October twenty seventeen, convened by the Palestinian Organization
Speaker 2: to Stop the War. It was a relief, one says,
Speaker 2: to talk with people who understand our fears, who are
Speaker 2: dealing with militarization and technology. In twenty seventeen, to Horn
Speaker 2: Autumn vice chairman Verlin Josse said that a war will
Speaker 2: be built quote over my dead body, and the tribe
Speaker 2: released a video saying there is no Autumn word for war.
Speaker 2: The sixty two miles of the border on their reservation
Speaker 2: would remain without one, they said. By twenty twenty, the
Speaker 2: Trump administrator had fought through a wall or much of
Speaker 2: the border, using what is known as the Roosevelt Reservation.
Speaker 2: This is a sixty foot wide strip of land that
Speaker 2: the federal government owns along the border in California, Arizona,
Speaker 2: and New Mexico. Although much of the Autumn Nation remains
Speaker 2: war free and somehows what's called a vehicle barrier or
Speaker 2: a normandy barrier. Approximately one third of the Roosevelt Reservation
Speaker 2: is on tribal land. Since two thousand and five realized
Speaker 2: the Act, environmental surveys and laws have been waived for
Speaker 2: border security, and this gave the Trump administration a way
Speaker 2: to justify the destruction of autumn and Kumi burial grounds,
Speaker 2: swad or cacti that the Autumn Seas relatives, and other
Speaker 2: sacred sites along the border. Despite efforts by tribal members
Speaker 2: and allies to stop the construction, members of the Tahana
Speaker 2: Autumn Nation have been pepper sprayed, beaten, tailed, and shot
Speaker 2: by border patrol. In two thousand and two, a border
Speaker 2: patrol agent ran over and killed an Arthumn teenager. Last week,
Speaker 2: the same night I was waiting down by the border
Speaker 2: for the end of Title forty two, border patrol agents
Speaker 2: shot and killed Raymond Mattia, an odd to man who
Speaker 2: had called and asked him for help. He was shot
Speaker 2: thirty eight times just two feet from his front door.
Speaker 2: According to his family, well, mister Mattia's death is still
Speaker 2: being investigated. The Border Patrol has a long tradition of
Speaker 2: literally getting away with murder. It is because they investigate
Speaker 2: themselves using so called critical Incident teams. I talked to
Speaker 2: Jen about what those teams do, and so.
Speaker 31: What they would do is they would get there first
Speaker 31: on the scene because we would call them first. We
Speaker 31: wouldn't call anybody else, We'd call them first, and then
Speaker 31: they come, They get rid of the witnesses, they set
Speaker 31: the scene up the way we want to be done,
Speaker 31: and they tell you the narrative that you're going to
Speaker 31: stick with. You talk to your union reps, and it's
Speaker 31: all this giant cover up.
Speaker 2: Here's John Carlos Free, a journalist who covered CIIT cover ups,
Speaker 2: talking to Democracy Now about how these teams work.
Speaker 33: Within the actual agency of the US Board Patrol, there
Speaker 33: is an investigative body called SIT, the Critical Incident Team.
Speaker 33: They are has with investigating incidents that involved Border Patrol,
Speaker 33: and it can be anything from a car accident to
Speaker 33: in this case, an individual who's killed at the hands
Speaker 33: of the US Border Patrol. In this particular case of
Speaker 33: Anastasio Hernandez Rojas, Border Patrol agents, deleted video, they collected
Speaker 33: evidence at the scene. They were present in the hospital
Speaker 33: when Anastasio was being treated, They were present at the autopsy.
Speaker 33: They fudged reports, they deleted reports, They coached their own
Speaker 33: agents on what kind of testimony they were to give.
Speaker 33: They were present at every one of the depositions. They
Speaker 33: made sure that they were the victims in this case.
Speaker 33: And when I say that, what I mean is that
Speaker 33: Border Patrol agents sit team agents make sure that Border
Speaker 33: Patrol agents are looked at as the victims in any
Speaker 33: sort of an incident, meaning that they are allowed then
Speaker 33: to use lethal force if a Border Patrol agent has
Speaker 33: rocks thrown at them or in the case of Anastasio,
Speaker 33: they alleged that Honosta was violent and that he was
Speaker 33: kicking and punching and he needed to be subdued. If
Speaker 33: we take a look at the videotape, that's not actually
Speaker 33: what happened. He's handcuffed, he's prone on the ground, his
Speaker 33: faces down, agents are on top of him. But if
Speaker 33: you read the reports in this case that were prepared
Speaker 33: by sid Anastasio was a violent man and needed to
Speaker 33: be subdued.
Speaker 2: In twenty twenty one, Border Patrol was ordered to disband
Speaker 2: these teams, but Jen says they simply moved them somewhere
Speaker 2: else and gave them a different name.
Speaker 31: So then they said that they disbanded them because we
Speaker 31: brought the truth out and how they did all this
Speaker 31: and we proved it. But what they actually did is
Speaker 31: they did a retention. So they had the Border Patrol
Speaker 31: agents resign from the Border Patrol and move over to
Speaker 31: cbp OPR and we hired them under there. So the
Speaker 31: team that likely went to go investigate the tahonum Otem killing,
Speaker 31: I believe his name is Matia Matia Raymond Matia is
Speaker 31: likely the Border Patrol fit teams. So if the Border
Speaker 31: Patrol agents, a lot of people don't understand it's like
Speaker 31: a cult, you know. They always say you blee green,
Speaker 31: you know, and you don't go back hung green, and
Speaker 31: probably one of the few that ever left, you know,
Speaker 31: and tells the truth about it.
Speaker 2: Of Course, the vast majority of people whose families will
Speaker 2: never find justice because of these cit teams are not white,
Speaker 2: and of course Border Patrol has long rooted links to
Speaker 2: white nationalism. In nineteen seventy seven, about forty five minutes
Speaker 2: from San Diego and another forty five minutes from Komba.
Speaker 2: David Duke, Grand Dragon of the Knights of the klu
Speaker 2: Klux Klan at the time, announced the official beginning of
Speaker 2: Clan Border Watch. You claim there were hundreds of Klansmen
Speaker 2: on the border, but local newspapers The Desert Sun reported
Speaker 2: that there were in reality at least ten are quote
Speaker 2: directly from the Desert Suns reporting at a time here,
Speaker 2: Duke said clansmen would refrain from direct contact with illegal
Speaker 2: aliens if any have found. He said klansmen would not
Speaker 2: talk to them or contact them, but if any illegal crossings,
Speaker 2: they're going to use CBE radios to relate the information
Speaker 2: to border patrol, Duke said. Duke of Metairie, Louisiana, claimed
Speaker 2: the clan has the support of the American people and
Speaker 2: helping the border patrol stem the influx of illegal aliens
Speaker 2: into this country. He claimed, the illegal aliens take jobs
Speaker 2: away from US citizens. We feel this rising tide washing
Speaker 2: over our border is going to affect our culture, he
Speaker 2: told reporters at the time, in a statement that wouldn't
Speaker 2: sound out of place on Fox News Today. In response,
Speaker 2: more than one thousand, five hundred brown Berries threatened to
Speaker 2: rally against Duke. A protest far out numbering his patrols,
Speaker 2: popped up along the border in the late nineteen seventies
Speaker 2: and early nineteen eighties. Texas Knights of the KKK leader
Speaker 2: Louis Beam, a Vietnam War veteran who had helped to
Speaker 2: organize and promote Duke's border stunt, established paramilitary camps around
Speaker 2: Texas and trained children as young as eight in the
Speaker 2: deadly guerrilla warfare tactics he learned overseas. He rallied white
Speaker 2: fishermen against Vietnamese migrants and burned their boats. In twenty nineteen,
Speaker 2: a border patrol agent from Logali's named Matthew Bowen was
Speaker 2: accused of knocking down Aguaatemela Maunt with his vehicle and
Speaker 2: then lying to a quarter about the incident. The prosecutors
Speaker 2: in the case showed the jury text Bowen sent, including
Speaker 2: one which called migrants quote disgusting sub human shit, unworthy
Speaker 2: of being kindling for a fire. In several text messages,
Speaker 2: Bowen references quote tonks. This is a derogatory term for
Speaker 2: border crossing migrants. The origins are determined a little bit unclear,
Speaker 2: but it seems to be derived from the sound of
Speaker 2: a flashlight hitting the back of someone's head. In argument
Speaker 2: against submitting the texts, defense lawyer Sean Chapman wrote that
Speaker 2: he would argue certain terms are quote commonplace throughout the
Speaker 2: Border Patrols tuson sector. This is part of the agency's
Speaker 2: culture and therefore it says nothing about mister Bowen's mindset. Genss'
Speaker 2: kind of language and attitude was not uncommon in her
Speaker 2: time in border patrol from the mid nineties to the
Speaker 2: early two thousands, but things have got worse since.
Speaker 31: There have been some definite changes in the Border Patrol,
Speaker 31: in the training from before nine to eleven to after
Speaker 31: nine to eleven, and what you also see so their
Speaker 31: vocabulary has changed. So like they refer to migrants and
Speaker 31: asylum seekercs invaders. We never use that term prior to
Speaker 31: nine to eleven, and we did have racist words that
Speaker 31: we used for them, and I use them as well.
Speaker 31: I'm not denying there.
Speaker 2: Of course, this kind of language isn't just restricted to
Speaker 2: border patrol.
Speaker 25: The US has become a dumping ground for everybody else's problems.
Speaker 25: I care, it's true, and these are the best and
Speaker 25: the finest. When Mexico sends its people they're not sending
Speaker 25: their best.
Speaker 2: They're not sending you. They're not sending you.
Speaker 25: They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're
Speaker 25: bringing those problems with us. They're bringing drugs, they're bringing crime,
Speaker 25: their rapists, and some I assumer good people.
Speaker 2: There has been white supremacist violence at the border ever
Speaker 2: since Duke and long before. Often it's been at the
Speaker 2: hands of groups outside of the state. Sometimes it's been
Speaker 2: at the hands of the state. In Arizona, groups like
Speaker 2: Arizona Border Ricon and Minute Men American Defense have terrorized
Speaker 2: border communities for decades, engage renewed momentum from Trump's consistent
Speaker 2: demonization of migrants. I spent a bit of time looking
Speaker 2: for them in the desert in Arizona last week, but
Speaker 2: I didn't see much, not that I really wanted to.
Speaker 2: Interaction with these militias, probably far more often than we
Speaker 2: have documented evidence for, can be fatal, just like interaction
Speaker 2: with customs and border protection. Here's just one example, called
Speaker 2: from David Newitt's a excellent book, and help followed with her.
Speaker 2: On May thirtieth, two thousand and nine. Seana Ford, Jason
Speaker 2: Eugene Bush, and Albert Gacxiola. All members of Ford's vigilante
Speaker 2: group minu at Man American Defense, forced their way into
Speaker 2: Raoul Flores Junior's home in Alavika, Arizona, by pretending to
Speaker 2: be Border Patrol agents. The group planned to steal and
Speaker 2: sell drugs they thought Flores had in his house. The
Speaker 2: FBI knew about this, but did nothing to stop them.
Speaker 2: Finding no drugs in the house, c vigilantes murdered Flores
Speaker 2: and his nine year old daughter, Bricennia, Flora's wife and
Speaker 2: Briisenia's mother, Gina Marie Gonzalez, was shot three times. She
Speaker 2: played dead, but when attackers returned, she exchanged fire with them,
Speaker 2: using her husband's handgun. In doing so, she hit Bush.
Speaker 2: Bush had previously been charged with a September nineteen ninety
Speaker 2: seven execution of an Aryan Nation associate for the supposed
Speaker 2: crime of being a race traitor. Both Ford and Bush
Speaker 2: are currently on death row in Arizona. The k k
Speaker 2: K was not the only group recruiting children for border patrolling.
Speaker 2: Since the mid nineteen eighties, the Border Patrol's Explorer Program
Speaker 2: has recruited young men and women of high school age.
Speaker 2: The program is charted through learning for Life, which is
Speaker 2: a subsidiary of the Scouts from America for kids, often
Speaker 2: the children of immigrants living in border towns where industry
Speaker 2: has long since gone in a decent wag it is
Speaker 2: hard to come by. The program offers the chance at
Speaker 2: a starting salary of sixty two thousand dollars twice a
Speaker 2: median income in some of these towns. Young Explorers will
Speaker 2: learn tracking, survival, shooting, and how to detain and process
Speaker 2: on documented migrants, people who in some cases are walking
Speaker 2: in the footsteps of their own parents. According to an
Speaker 2: article by Moray Music in the Nation, young Explorers have
Speaker 2: to earn the writer to their uniform by participating in
Speaker 2: their sixty hour Basic Explorer Academy, of which they learned
Speaker 2: CPR drills and the methods of conducting vehicle stops. It
Speaker 2: also offers courses in radio communications, public speaking, report writing,
Speaker 2: and ethics and integrity, and introduces the youth to criminal
Speaker 2: juvenile immigration, a Fourth Amendment law. What I was writing
Speaker 2: so checked out the San Diego sector page. We seem
Speaker 2: to show young people running, shooting and one who looks
Speaker 2: like he's just been mased in the face. The next
Speaker 2: photo on the Facebook page dedicated to this Border Patrol
Speaker 2: sector shows a man in handcuffs above. This is a
Speaker 2: video of someone dropping a chilt from the top of
Speaker 2: the border fence. Without figures from the CVP. It's hard
Speaker 2: to tell if participation in the Explorers has dropped as
Speaker 2: public awareness of family separation assault now the behavior doesn't
Speaker 2: exactly fit with the Border Patrol's motto on a first
Speaker 2: has spread. I asked Jen for her take on the
Speaker 2: Explorer program.
Speaker 31: Well, I call it Border Patrol youth because it reminds
Speaker 31: me a lot of the hip Er youth, where we
Speaker 31: go into the high schools and we get the kids
Speaker 31: that are in trouble, and typically they are Latino dominant
Speaker 31: high schools, and we teach them how to be many
Speaker 31: Border Patrol agents, and we teach them to hate somebody
Speaker 31: else instead of themselves. So we indoctrinate them into the
Speaker 31: same stuff that I was indoctrinating too. But it's even
Speaker 31: gone so far now as to they do the dog
Speaker 31: and pony shows at the elementary school, so they're getting
Speaker 31: them when they're like six seven years old, and they
Speaker 31: go there with a little Border Patrol bulletproof fessed and
Speaker 31: put them on them and take pictures and put it
Speaker 31: on social media, and they have them sit in their
Speaker 31: trucks and turn the signs on and all this other stuff.
Speaker 2: That indoctrination is crucial to Border patrol culture, and to
Speaker 2: be honest, the reason I wanted to talk to Jen
Speaker 2: was to understand it better. In Occomber, i'd seen a
Speaker 2: young Border Patrol agent, a woman giving volunteers rights. I'm
Speaker 2: not about to get into a Border Patrol truck myself,
Speaker 2: and I wasn't going to get a responsive by asked
Speaker 2: the agent how she squared up her role in holding
Speaker 2: people in the desert with the fact that some volunteers
Speaker 2: said she'd spend her own money buying supplies. Jen said
Speaker 2: that this kind of behavior can be pretty common with
Speaker 2: young agents.
Speaker 31: I had intended to go to law school to be
Speaker 31: a civil rights attorney when I joined the Border Patrol,
Speaker 31: and for me, I ignored my core values and ignored that
Speaker 31: I was enforcing laws that sent thousands of human beings
Speaker 31: to their death because I felt like I was trying
Speaker 31: to survive. I was raped in the academy by a
Speaker 31: fellow agent, and they covered that up, and I was
Speaker 31: really trying to get out of the South and start
Speaker 31: my life. I oft would say, like, especially with female agents,
Speaker 31: they calls it's five percent, because there's never been more
Speaker 31: than five percent of women in the Border Patrol rings.
Speaker 31: And they say, oh, it's because it's very hard. It's
Speaker 31: not because it's very hard. I mean, it is very
Speaker 31: hard to get through, but it's also it's because they're
Speaker 31: actually assaulting us all the time in the academy and
Speaker 31: lansing us. So I go back and forth in my mind,
Speaker 31: and I would imagine this young woman, you know, she
Speaker 31: has days where she arrests some pretty decent criminals every
Speaker 31: now and then once in a blue moon, but the
Speaker 31: majority of them, if she's paying attention and not completely
Speaker 31: self absorbed, she'll realize that that they're not criminals and
Speaker 31: their families just simply seeking a sound. So she at
Speaker 31: some point has to decide in her mind, is this
Speaker 31: what I got in two? Is this what I want
Speaker 31: to do with my life?
Speaker 2: In the wake of nine to eleven, and quite tellingly,
Speaker 2: the Border Patrol moved from oversight by the Department of
Speaker 2: Justice to the new Department of Homeland Security. This move
Speaker 2: from Justice as Security has been echoed in its recruiting,
Speaker 2: which once drew heavily on those of humanitarian aid experience,
Speaker 2: and now tries to appeal to veterans of the two
Speaker 2: decades of war that have accompanied the growth of DHS
Speaker 2: Since two thousand and one. When the DHS was first established,
Speaker 2: the name struck many as problematic. In the two thousand
Speaker 2: and two article in The New York Times, Elizabeth Becker
Speaker 2: wrote that the name had worrying similarities to the way
Speaker 2: the Nazis talked about their fatherland, and it didn't really
Speaker 2: fit with the way Americans spoke. Nobody in two thousand
Speaker 2: and one was talking about the homeland. But two decades
Speaker 2: and billions of dollars later, it's hard to find much
Speaker 2: in the way of criticism of the agency in DC
Speaker 2: despite the fact that the twenty twenty two budgets of
Speaker 2: CBP and ICE was sixteen and eight billion, respectively, and
Speaker 2: every year since two thousand and one, DHS has obtained
Speaker 2: more guns, more drones, a more surveillance technology that is
Speaker 2: inevitably used to spy on citizens as well as non citizens.
Speaker 2: In nineteen ninety five, there are about four thousand CBP agents.
Speaker 2: By twenty twenty there were twenty thousand, with seventeen thousand
Speaker 2: station on the southern border. This is a slight drop
Speaker 2: from a peak of just over twenty one thousand. Under Obama,
Speaker 2: who is often called the deporter in Chief, is fondness
Speaker 2: for expelling people from the United States for crimes like
Speaker 2: having a PieP or financial misconduct, the so called aggravated
Speaker 2: felonies and crimes of moral turpitude that only exist for
Speaker 2: non citizens. These agents today have the ability to operate
Speaker 2: in what the ACLU calls a constitution free zone and
Speaker 2: can conduct suspicion free searches of electronic devices, use cell
Speaker 2: site simulators, and sweep up data about thousands of people
Speaker 2: never accused of any crime. One of the more notable
Speaker 2: examples of this happened only a few yards from whereas
Speaker 2: recording last week in Santasidro. It's a story worth recounting
Speaker 2: in detail because it brings together the themes we've spoken
Speaker 2: about so far, demonization of migrants, government overreach, and a
Speaker 2: frank disregard for international and national law. In late twenty eighteen,
Speaker 2: I was enjoying a break from work in a caravan
Speaker 2: near in Sonata. If you think back to that time,
Speaker 2: right before the mid terms, you might remember some of
Speaker 2: the rhetorics was circulated around large group of migrants making
Speaker 2: their way to the southern border. I'll play some of
Speaker 2: the clips from Fox that MPR cut together in their
Speaker 2: coverage of the issue.
Speaker 19: The sympathetic, overwrought coverage of this invading horde is calling
Speaker 19: it a caravan is a misnomer in a frankly.
Speaker 32: Sickness or sample that Chipper Morning Show, Fox and Friends.
Speaker 12: I've gotten so many email from people who said, don't
Speaker 12: call it a caravan, call it an invasion.
Speaker 10: Yes?
Speaker 4: Is that fair?
Speaker 32: Host Steve Doocy put the question to conservative pundit Michelle Malkin.
Speaker 1: Of course it is.
Speaker 20: It is a full scale invasion by a hostile force,
Speaker 20: and it requires our president and our commander in chief
Speaker 20: to use any means necessary to protect our sovereignty.
Speaker 32: CNN's Brian Stelter found that Fox News featured segments using
Speaker 32: the phrase invasion more than sixty times this month about
Speaker 32: the migrants. On Fox Business Network, lou Dobbs's program invoked
Speaker 32: it dozens of times. Trump ordered five thousand troops to
Speaker 32: the border. He tweeted yesterday, quote, this is an invasion
Speaker 32: of our country, and Trump has, without evidence, claimed gang
Speaker 32: members and criminals and Middle Easterners are among them. Over
Speaker 32: On Fox, guests have similarly, without supporting facts, suggested people
Speaker 32: from Isis and the Taliban might be among those migrants.
Speaker 32: Even so, the network's chief news anchor, Shepherd Smith, tried
Speaker 32: to put on the brakes yesterday.
Speaker 13: Tomorrow is one week before the midterm election, which is
Speaker 13: what all of this is about. There is no invasion,
Speaker 13: no one's coming to get you. There's nothing at all
Speaker 13: to worry about.
Speaker 32: This month, Fox hosts and guests have repeatedly questions whether
Speaker 32: the migrants might bring in infectious diseases, again without evidence.
Speaker 32: Laura Ingram, we don't.
Speaker 19: Know what people have coming in here. We have diseases
Speaker 19: in this country we haven't had for decades.
Speaker 2: I'll leave you to price. I seeing credible arroony of
Speaker 2: the network that killed the decent percentage of its viewers
Speaker 2: by denying that COVID was serious or a disease, or
Speaker 2: the vaccines and masks are useful panicking about infectious diseases.
Speaker 2: Just two years before the pandemic began, the Tree of
Speaker 2: Life shooter who we won't name here, who is currently
Speaker 2: facing a death penalty trial for murdering eleven people in
Speaker 2: a Pittsburgh synagogue was obsessed with the caravan. The victims
Speaker 2: of the largest anti Semitic mass murder in US history
Speaker 2: included a beloved community doctor, a great grandmother, and a
Speaker 2: couple who'd gotten married at the same synagogue more than
Speaker 2: sixty years earlier. The shooter's last post on hate speech
Speaker 2: social media site gab, posted just minutes before the synagogue
Speaker 2: massacre began, spells it out with a reference to the
Speaker 2: Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, the Jewish nonprofit that resettles refugees
Speaker 2: in the United States. HIAS liked to bring invaders to
Speaker 2: kill our people. I can't sit by and watch my
Speaker 2: people get slaughtered. Screw your optics, I'm going in. The
Speaker 2: shooter was obsessed with the idea that a caravan of
Speaker 2: migrants with not a group of people trying to save
Speaker 2: their own lives, but a coordinate and somehow you led
Speaker 2: invasion an attempt to demographically restructure the United States. If
Speaker 2: you're ending where he got that idea from, he is
Speaker 2: America's favorite jobs, you get Tucker Calson on the caravan.
Speaker 12: Over the past month, a caravan of Central American migrants
Speaker 12: has gradually made its way up from Honduras through Mexico
Speaker 12: all the way to Tijuana opposite San Diego. At one point,
Speaker 12: Mexican authorities claimed they broke up the group, and American media,
Speaker 12: of course, dutifully reported that they did, but they didn't.
Speaker 12: That was just a pr gesture and a temporary one.
Speaker 12: In fact, during parts of the trip, Mexican police escorted
Speaker 12: the migrants northwards. In other words, the Mexican government abedded
Speaker 12: illegal immigration into this country, as it has done for
Speaker 12: many years. Well tonight, the caravan is on our southern border.
Speaker 12: Rather than wait for the crossing station a Sanya Sidro
Speaker 12: to open, many of them just jumped the fence. Some
Speaker 12: waved Honduran flags when they got to the top, And
Speaker 12: that tells you everything. When you arrive in a country
Speaker 12: to contribute to it and to assimilate into its culture,
Speaker 12: you don't waive the flag of a foreign nation. That's
Speaker 12: what you do in triumph, when you invader country.
Speaker 2: On my way home from Ensnado in twenty eighteen, I
Speaker 2: saw that quote invading Horde in the Benito Quada's sports
Speaker 2: complex and probably turned around and went back. My instinct
Speaker 2: as a journalist is to cover things like this, but
Speaker 2: my instinct is the person is to help first. On
Speaker 2: the first day, I was there with two friends I
Speaker 2: know from the weird world of pro cycling. Things were
Speaker 2: pretty bad. We'd obtained a backpack full of stroop waffles
Speaker 2: that a friend who makes stroop waffles had given us.
Speaker 2: Once we gave those out, I talked to a few
Speaker 2: people about what they needed. We coordinated with mutual ad
Speaker 2: groups in Tijuana and offered support her for wee could.
Speaker 2: In the next few weeks, my friends and I spent
Speaker 2: tens of thousands of dollars at a Tijuana costco, received
Speaker 2: thousands of dollars in donations from people we hadn't seen
Speaker 2: in years, and in one memorable instance, rigged up and
Speaker 2: projected as someone had tactically obtained from an office to
Speaker 2: a DVD player which we'd installed in the roof of
Speaker 2: a dilapidated nightclub for little children and their mothers so
Speaker 2: they could watch Beverly Hills, Chihuahua and forget about the
Speaker 2: fact that the country they were traveling to, portraying the
Speaker 2: little infants as invaders. Have a lot of very complicated
Speaker 2: memories of those few weeks. Little girls braiding my hair,
Speaker 2: little boys and girls trying to comprehend exactly how I
Speaker 2: could be this bad at football, and people from San
Speaker 2: Diego churches, tijuan anarchist kitchens and mutual a groups around
Speaker 2: the region coming together to look after a group of
Speaker 2: people who've been so heavily demonized by folks who had
Speaker 2: never met them or even been here. His Trump defending
Speaker 2: calling the caravan an invasion and simultaneously explaining why migrants
Speaker 2: low wage to labor it is desirable for people like him.
Speaker 34: Thank you, miss President. I challenge you on on one
Speaker 34: of the statements that you made in the tail end
Speaker 34: of the campaign in the midterms that here we go that, well,
Speaker 34: if you don't mind, miss president, that this caravan was
Speaker 34: an invasion, as you know, as you know, miss President,
Speaker 34: the caravan was not an invasion. It's a it's a
Speaker 34: a group of migrants moving up from Central America towards
Speaker 34: the border with the US. And why why did you
Speaker 34: why did you characterize it as such.
Speaker 15: As I can an invasion?
Speaker 18: You and I have a difference of a button.
Speaker 34: Do you think that you demonized immigrants to try.
Speaker 25: I want them, I want them to come into the country,
Speaker 25: but they have to come in legally.
Speaker 15: You know they have to come in Jim through a process.
Speaker 25: I wanted to be a process and I want people
Speaker 25: to come in.
Speaker 18: And we need the people.
Speaker 32: Your campaign, your campaign.
Speaker 25: You know why we need the people does because we
Speaker 25: have hundreds of companies moving in.
Speaker 18: We need the people.
Speaker 2: Trump, as you heard in the clip, used a migrant
Speaker 2: caravan and to prop for its racist and bigoted midterm campaign.
Speaker 2: It didn't work and he lost control of the House,
Speaker 2: but he did succeed in forcing these people to spend
Speaker 2: months in the cold, first in a sports stadium and
Speaker 2: then in an old nightclub. Even as a migrant gradually
Speaker 2: reduced in number, with many finding work and new life
Speaker 2: in Mexico, some finding their way north. The long legacy
Speaker 2: of that caravan was only just starting. In the months
Speaker 2: have followed journalists who'd cover the caravan, as well as
Speaker 2: those who offered assistant to caravan members, so they felt
Speaker 2: they've become targets of intense inspections of scrutiny by border officials.
Speaker 2: I got pulled into secondarily once during this time, and
Speaker 2: that was entering Mexaco. The worst I got was a
Speaker 2: chance to inspect my nineteen eighty pickup truck oil pen.
Speaker 2: But for others, things weren't so easy. Homeland Security Investigation
Speaker 2: special agent turned whistleblower Wesley Peternac helped NBC to document that,
Speaker 2: under the umbrella of what was called Operation Secure Line,
Speaker 2: the Department of Homeland Security created a database of activists, journalists,
Speaker 2: and social media influences tied to the migrant caraban When
Speaker 2: they crossed the border. Individuals in that database were often
Speaker 2: subjected to hours long screenings and in some cases had
Speaker 2: flags placed on their passports. A PowerPoint slideshow which Petanac
Speaker 2: leaked to NBC seven lists some of the people, some
Speaker 2: of them have been guests on this show. They include
Speaker 2: ten journalists, seven of whom were US citizens, a US attorney,
Speaker 2: forty eight people from the US and other countries who
Speaker 2: were labeled as organizers, instigators, or having unknown roles. The
Speaker 2: target lists also includes organizers from groups like Border Angels
Speaker 2: and Pueblos in Frontellas I asked journalist brook Ben Cowsey
Speaker 2: to describe her experience of increased border scrutiny in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 35: If you don't have a pre approved card, you have
Speaker 35: to like go through wait and line, wait in this
Speaker 35: long ass line, and then you know you go and
Speaker 35: get vetted by CDP. They ask you some questions or
Speaker 35: they just wave you through, depending on what kind of
Speaker 35: day they're having or whatever. So in my case, I
Speaker 35: started getting pulled into secondary inspection more and more. So
Speaker 35: they would wave my car over and then take me
Speaker 35: into this secondary place where it's sort of like this
Speaker 35: back it's like a Quonsett pet sort of, and in
Speaker 35: it like all these cars drive in and out, and
Speaker 35: they'll they'll go through your things, they'll get in your face,
Speaker 35: you know, they'll do all kinds of stuff. And I
Speaker 35: don't there have to be cameras in there somewhere, but
Speaker 35: I've never seen any. So I just kept getting pulled
Speaker 35: into secondary more and more, as though I was this
Speaker 35: suspicious person, as though I was suspected of something, and
Speaker 35: every time I asked, they'd be like, I don't know,
Speaker 35: it's just random, ma'am, and ma'am, it's just random. So
Speaker 35: actually this started about twenty fourteen for me, but it
Speaker 35: started to escalate in twenty eighteen. Twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen
Speaker 35: started to escalate, and I was like, a fucking Trump
Speaker 35: administration of course going to escalate.
Speaker 2: Right under Trump. She said, things got worse.
Speaker 35: From twenty seventeen through twenty eighteen. It kind of worked
Speaker 35: where you pushed back and I'd be like, you need
Speaker 35: to let me fucking go. You know, I'm century, I'm
Speaker 35: already pre checked. If you think that there's something wrong
Speaker 35: that I'm doing, and take my fucking century away, and
Speaker 35: I want to talk to your manager type stuff, right,
Speaker 35: So I was doing that. That worked until twenty eighteen,
Speaker 35: and then it started to get really gnarly.
Speaker 2: Eventually things came to a head the day before the
Speaker 2: migrants of the caravan were tear gassed. And I've seen
Speaker 2: most people remember from twenty eighteen.
Speaker 35: So but on that night, as I was coming back,
Speaker 35: I drove through and I did the Century thing, you know,
Speaker 35: the usual stuff, and got pulled into secondary. And this
Speaker 35: time it was really like gnarly. The time before that
Speaker 35: had also been really gnarly, like nobody hurt me, nobody
Speaker 35: did anything, but they got really close to my face,
Speaker 35: like right in my face, you know, and started screaming
Speaker 35: at me, like screaming over me. And I kept going,
Speaker 35: I'd like to speak to your manager, you know, sir,
Speaker 35: like please please get out of my face, sir. And
Speaker 35: it was it was gross, and they were going through
Speaker 35: my shit and that was gross, Like they didn't find anything,
Speaker 35: but it was just an invasive, hostile, disgusting thing. And
Speaker 35: that was when so I said, can I speak to
Speaker 35: your manager? Which is a magic phrase when you're a middle.
Speaker 8: Aged white woman.
Speaker 35: So I say this, and they bring over some guy
Speaker 35: and he goes, ma'am, can I help you? I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 35: what the fuck?
Speaker 21: You know?
Speaker 35: Why are you treating me this way? Why did any
Speaker 35: of this happen? And he goes, oh, yeah, I'm sorry.
Speaker 35: Your name's on a list somewhere.
Speaker 32: You've been flagged.
Speaker 35: And I'm like, so every time I've crossed, I've been
Speaker 35: flagged and he's like, yeah, and yeah, you've been. There's
Speaker 35: a flag on your passport or against your name and
Speaker 35: that's why. And I said, well, why is there a
Speaker 35: flag against my name? And he goes, I don't know,
Speaker 35: You're gonna have to do a Freedom of Information Act
Speaker 35: request or something. I don't even know if he knew
Speaker 35: I was a journalist.
Speaker 2: Sadly broke last crossing twenty and since I photographed those
Speaker 2: CUMEI folks in ceremony near Campo, the border wall has
Speaker 2: only got longer every mile it stretches out means another
Speaker 2: mile into the desert people have to walk, and that
Speaker 2: means that more people won't walk out of that desert,
Speaker 2: those people who lost their lives. An attempt to save them,
Speaker 2: a mark with little red dots on the various maps,
Speaker 2: an attempt to put the humanitarian crisis into a visual form.
Speaker 2: Those dots begin in South America's people die traveling north,
Speaker 2: but they're sparse and isolated. Where that changes is the
Speaker 2: places I've been driving all week, Eastern California, southern Arizona.
Speaker 2: Places I know from years of hiking, climbing, and cycling,
Speaker 2: places when one mistake can be fatal. I know from
Speaker 2: my friends who spend time resupplying water caches and searching
Speaker 2: for missing people, that you don't have to make any
Speaker 2: mistakes to die in the desert, especially if you're young
Speaker 2: or old, or sick or afraid to ask for help.
Speaker 2: These are the places we force people to travel through
Speaker 2: on foot to come here and create a better future
Speaker 2: for themselves. Hydration, exposure and drowning or rank highly as
Speaker 2: caused a death along the border. Last year saw a
Speaker 2: record for border deaths, and with Biden attempting to take
Speaker 2: a hard line going into twenty twenty four, and climate
Speaker 2: change and instability continuing to drive migrants north to the
Speaker 2: place that causes so much of that climate change and instability,
Speaker 2: there's no reason to believe things will get better. I
Speaker 2: want to point to one tragic loss, one of thousands,
Speaker 2: that happened not far from where I live. In February
Speaker 2: of twenty twenty, Juana Margarita and Paula Santosar were traveling
Speaker 2: by foot from Wahaka to their future in the United
Speaker 2: States along a trail sometimes known as the Shrine Trail.
Speaker 2: Their family told media back home that they were searching
Speaker 2: for a Senor Americano the American Dream. Along their route
Speaker 2: is a small religious shrine which marks the last point
Speaker 2: from which you can see in Mexico. It's well inside
Speaker 2: the US along a dry creek bed in the Laguna Mountains.
Speaker 2: It can be hot in the summer and cold in
Speaker 2: the winter. Last November I can out there, and even
Speaker 2: with thousands of dollars in gear, I was dangerously close
Speaker 2: to cold injury. I've also rescued hikers with dehydration symptoms
Speaker 2: near here. The desert and the weather might be part
Speaker 2: of the story, but the desert doesn't kill people on
Speaker 2: its own. It's the border that forces people deep into
Speaker 2: the desert that kills them. The desert is just a
Speaker 2: tool for a system that uses death of the current.
Speaker 2: When the girls crossed the border near Campo on the
Speaker 2: ninth of February, it was raining. As they climbed the
Speaker 2: Laguna Mountains, it started to snow. They huddled under a
Speaker 2: bolder for warmth, and the two men smuggling them across
Speaker 2: struck out to get Star reception and call nine to
Speaker 2: one one. By the time bor Star Border Patrol Search
Speaker 2: Trauma and Rescue team arrived, two of the girls had
Speaker 2: died as they tried to save Juana. Their request for
Speaker 2: air support was declined, and she died with one of
Speaker 2: the agent's jackkits wrapped around her and another agent's beanie
Speaker 2: on her head. For some reason, the girl's remains were
Speaker 2: not recovered right away, and they were not rewarmed, and
Speaker 2: so they last their last chance at the American dream
Speaker 2: and not life. Today, their final resting place is marked
Speaker 2: by three crosses and a cache of supplies placed there
Speaker 2: by volunteers. At the time I'm recording this, we don't
Speaker 2: know where all the folks we met at the border
Speaker 2: around now then we might never know. Not being able
Speaker 2: to follow stories is a sad part of this reporting.
Speaker 2: Sometimes knows people all have my phone number, but they
Speaker 2: might not. Only more have their phones or this scrap
Speaker 2: of paper are wroted on. Often these things can be
Speaker 2: taken for them in custody. What we do know is
Speaker 2: that on May eighteenth, exactly one week after Title forty
Speaker 2: two ended, Immigration and Customs Enforcement also known as ICE,
Speaker 2: tweeted a video of Customs Enforcement and Removal Operations agents
Speaker 2: walking down the corridor of a flight full of mass people.
Speaker 2: The caption read ICE conducted multiple removal flights including Ecuador, Guatemala,
Speaker 2: and Honduras as part of dozens flights conducted each week.
Speaker 2: On the wall of my office as I write this,
Speaker 2: there are several propaganda posters Second Republic. One is as
Speaker 2: simple as it is heartbreaking. The poster depicts a squadron
Speaker 2: of fascist bombers and the dead body of a child.
Speaker 2: The slogan underneath reads, if you tolerate this, then your
Speaker 2: children will be next. The poster was, of course correct.
Speaker 2: It was the inspiration for songs by the Clash and
Speaker 2: the Mansrud preachers, which are what in turn made me
Speaker 2: want to learn about the Spanish Civil War. The slogan
Speaker 2: coined in nineteen thirty seven feels as relevant today as
Speaker 2: it does then. It was one that folks on the
Speaker 2: border might as well have been screaming by twenty eighteen,
Speaker 2: but one that went ignored, just as it did in
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty seven. In twenty twenty, folks began to realize
Speaker 2: what it meant when border patrol drones circled the skies
Speaker 2: around Minneapolis and cell phone signal interceptors track citizens all
Speaker 2: over the US when they came together to demand that
Speaker 2: the police stopped murdering people. It became more real in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty three when under DeSantis, Florida began the process
Speaker 2: of legalizing state kidnapping of trans and gender non performing
Speaker 2: kids from their loving families. But that all began when
Speaker 2: the state ripped Indigenous children for their families in the
Speaker 2: nineteenth and twentieth centuries, who tried to destroy their culture
Speaker 2: by punishing them for wearing their clothes, speaking their languages,
Speaker 2: or using their names. Wasn't a big leap from there
Speaker 2: to Trump's family separation policy, which detained kids on their
Speaker 2: own away from their families as a means of punishing
Speaker 2: a deterring migrants, and it's reached its obvious endpoint in
Speaker 2: Florida because despite all the people chanting about kids in
Speaker 2: courages in twenty twenty, there's almost universal bipartisan agreement on
Speaker 2: treating people of our southern border like humans without rights.
Speaker 2: And because for two decades we've allowed the border surveillance
Speaker 2: industrial complex to grow to an unprecedented and uncontrollable scale,
Speaker 2: the watches us all changing things now will be very difficult.
Speaker 2: DHS aren't numbers many nations armies, and it's considerably better equipped.
Speaker 2: But unless people show up and take action, things are
Speaker 2: going to get considerably worse, regardless of who you vote
Speaker 2: for or what they say in order to get you
Speaker 2: to vote for them. As Katie said, little things can
Speaker 2: make it difference, And if you listen this far, I
Speaker 2: hope you'll take the time to try and do those
Speaker 2: little things. Before we go, I want to update you
Speaker 2: on what's happened in the week we've been publishing this.
Speaker 2: Although there are no longer people held out in the
Speaker 2: open in ho Goomba and San Asedro, there are still
Speaker 2: many people trying to present themselves at the sant Asedra
Speaker 2: border to claim asylum. Today, I was told they are
Speaker 2: about one hundred of them. They're waiting there, often for days.
Speaker 2: Most of them are getting turned away. They're all frustrated
Speaker 2: with CVP one which continues to be buggy, offer no appointments,
Speaker 2: and struggle to photograph black faces. I also wanted to
Speaker 2: mention some of the organizations you can find and donate
Speaker 2: to if you'd like to support their efforts. They are
Speaker 2: the Asian Solidarity Collective, Alo Trollao, the American Friends Service Committee,
Speaker 2: Border Kindness, border Lands Relief Collective, the Haitian Bridge Alliance,
Speaker 2: the Partnership for the Advancement of New Americans, and PREVENKASA
Speaker 2: pre ev e ncas A. I'd also like to thank
Speaker 2: Joe Oriana his Twitter is at Joe or Photo for
Speaker 2: his reporting which very much contributed to this series.
Speaker 1: Hey, We'll be back Monday with more episodes every week
Speaker 1: from now until the heat death of the Universe. It
Speaker 1: could happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 7: For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
Speaker 7: cool Zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the
Speaker 7: iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts,
Speaker 7: you can find sources for It could happen here, Updated
Speaker 7: monthly at cool zonemedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.