Speaker 1: Al Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Hey everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let
Speaker 2: you know this is a compilation episode, So every episode
Speaker 2: of the week that just happened is here in one
Speaker 2: convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to
Speaker 2: listen to in a long stretch if you want. If
Speaker 2: you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,
Speaker 2: there's gotta be nothing new here for you, but you
Speaker 2: can make your own decisions.
Speaker 3: Hello, this is Mia from the Future. The whole crew
Speaker 3: is off this week, so you'll be getting a series
Speaker 3: of episodes from our past, and this episode in particular,
Speaker 3: I wanted to rerun for Indigenous People's Day, but it
Speaker 3: is also from before I came out, So hope you
Speaker 3: all enjoy and we will be back next week.
Speaker 4: Welcome to Ick It Up and Here, a podcast that
Speaker 4: is on the cycle of being sort of okayly introduced.
Speaker 4: When this episode out, it will be Indigenous People's Day
Speaker 4: and so to talk about that more. Where we're going
Speaker 4: to talk to Dalia Killsback, who is a member of
Speaker 4: the Northern Cheyenne or has a Northern Cheyen tribal citizenship
Speaker 4: and has studied and worked in federal India Tribal Policy Dahlia. Hello,
Speaker 4: how are you doing?
Speaker 5: I'm doing one all. Thank you for inviting me here today.
Speaker 4: Of course Garrison is also here. Garrison Hello, Hello.
Speaker 6: I'm currently also doing writing about indigenous stuff, but within
Speaker 6: the context of Canada, which people should. We'll probably here
Speaker 6: later this week.
Speaker 4: So yeah, I guess first thing I wanted to talk
Speaker 4: about is a little bit is about what Indigenous People's
Speaker 4: Day is and why it is that and not the
Speaker 4: other thing.
Speaker 5: Yeah. So, Indigenous People's Day, as many people know, is
Speaker 5: replacing I'm going to say it, Chris chrispher Columbus to
Speaker 5: day that is still like a federal holiday, but multiple
Speaker 5: cities and states have opted to use Indigenous People's Day instead.
Speaker 5: And the reasoning for that is achnology. The atrocities that
Speaker 5: were committed by Christopher Columbus, who first of all, did
Speaker 5: not discover America, but continue to not only use slavery,
Speaker 5: but commit different forms of genocide, rape, et cetera, all
Speaker 5: of these terrible atrocities. And so rather than celebrating somebody
Speaker 5: like that, Indigenous People's Day has been implemented in order
Speaker 5: to recognize the people who are actually here first and
Speaker 5: Indigenous peoples across the America's their histories, cultures, and contributions.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Columbus, real piece of shit, worst Christopher, Like, yeah,
Speaker 4: it really cannot be overstated how bad that guy was.
Speaker 4: Even you know, even people in that era who had
Speaker 4: committed their own genocides like Isabelle and Ferdinand, who you know,
Speaker 4: expelled the Jews from Spain, where it's like, you know,
Speaker 4: if once you've reached the sentence expelled the Jews from X,
Speaker 4: like you're already in the shit list of the worst
Speaker 4: people in human history.
Speaker 7: And even they saw.
Speaker 4: What Columbus was doing, it was like what on earth?
Speaker 4: Bad bad guy, bad name. Things are going to continue
Speaker 4: to go badly. And yeah, that was a'n everthing that
Speaker 4: I wanted to talk about, which is federal Indian policy.
Speaker 4: And you know, this is an incredibly broad it's an
Speaker 4: incredibly broad area spanning like three hundred years, So we're
Speaker 4: not gonna be able to go into like an enormous
Speaker 4: amount of depth in it, but I think it's important
Speaker 4: that people have an understanding of, i mean, a just
Speaker 4: what the US did and how everyone else has had
Speaker 4: this sort of deal with it, and then also the
Speaker 4: fact that this is something that changes over time and
Speaker 4: has has looked different. It's it's been bad in different ways.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and so in talking about federal Indian policy, uh
Speaker 5: I always like to contextualize it within a larger sort
Speaker 5: of like euro American like teleology of colonial conquests and
Speaker 5: then moving on to settler colonialism and where we are
Speaker 5: with federal Indian policy currently. So how do we connect
Speaker 5: Christopher Columbus to where we are currently? And this is
Speaker 5: the history of federal Indian policy and Western legal discourse
Speaker 5: and how European powers throughout history have defined what it
Speaker 5: means to be an Indian person and relationship to indigenous
Speaker 5: people's rights to their own land and to self governance.
Speaker 5: So when we're looking at the different periods of federal
Speaker 5: Indian policy prior to their being a United States government,
Speaker 5: we have the colonial period, which is fourteen ninety two
Speaker 5: to seventeen seventy six. This is how federal Indian policy
Speaker 5: legal scholars divide that, and it's really important to kind
Speaker 5: of give the difference between what is a colonial state
Speaker 5: versus a settler colonial state when you're talking about not
Speaker 5: just the United States government, but also the Canadian government
Speaker 5: and different governments globally. But I want to talk just
Speaker 5: a little bit about what I mean by the difference
Speaker 5: between a colonial government and a settler colonial government, because
Speaker 5: they're tied together. So by a sutler colonial government, I
Speaker 5: mean what I mean is that it is defined by
Speaker 5: the de territorialization of indigenous population populations. And so rather
Speaker 5: than in a colonial government as you had with Christopher
Speaker 5: Columbus and the Spanish and with the English, et cetera,
Speaker 5: is rather than a state and sovereignty being conceived as
Speaker 5: all these resources are going back to the metropoal, all
Speaker 5: these resources are going back to England or to Spain,
Speaker 5: et cetera. And colonial occupation is in is conceptualized within
Speaker 5: this way in set the colonial governments. The colonists come
Speaker 5: to these lands and stay and they're what they define
Speaker 5: as sovereignty is within this land that they define now
Speaker 5: as their own. So and in order for that process
Speaker 5: to happen, there needs to be different forms of genocide
Speaker 5: of the indigenous populations. And so that's what we saw
Speaker 5: with Christopher Columbus and throughout history was just the depletion
Speaker 5: of a lot of our indigenous populace. And so when
Speaker 5: I mean about the United States being a setlar colonial state.
Speaker 5: I mean that this is current and ongoing, and so
Speaker 5: when we talk about federal Indian policy, federal Indian policy
Speaker 5: is always in this conversation with what started with Christopher
Speaker 5: Columbus as the doctrine of discovery. And so that's how
Speaker 5: we define the colonial period. And feel free to like
Speaker 5: stop me and ask me questions. Also, I'm just going
Speaker 5: to try to move quickly because there's a lot.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think we probably should briefly talk about what
Speaker 4: the doctory discovery is, at least before we get through
Speaker 4: the Marshall trilogy and stuff, for sure. So what does
Speaker 4: that actually mean legally?
Speaker 5: So the it's the discovery of a quote unquote newfound
Speaker 5: Land by European colonial forces. And the reason why it's
Speaker 5: called the doctrine of discovery was that indigenous peoples on
Speaker 5: these lands were deemed unable to govern themselves and they
Speaker 5: did not know how to utilize their land up to
Speaker 5: the definition of what the European powers thought land use.
Speaker 5: Was that indigenous peoples didn't have the same concept of property,
Speaker 5: and same with their relationship with resources and resource extraction.
Speaker 5: So when Christopher Columbus and all of these other colonizers
Speaker 5: conkystic doors came to the quote unquote New Land. They
Speaker 5: saw all of this rich, plentiful resource and thought to themselves, well,
Speaker 5: obviously these people don't know what they're doing because there's
Speaker 5: just so much they have not done anything with it,
Speaker 5: and we're going to take this back to to ours
Speaker 5: because obviously their inferior beings and don't know what property is.
Speaker 5: So legally, the adoption of discovery conveyed legal title to
Speaker 5: an ownership of American soil to European nations, a title
Speaker 5: that devolved to the United States, and so this definition
Speaker 5: is expansive and expansive discovery implies that Native nations have
Speaker 5: a right to lands as occupants or possessors, but they
Speaker 5: are incompetent to manage those lands and need a quote
Speaker 5: unquote benevolent guardian such as a federal government who holds
Speaker 5: legal title. And so when we're talking about this legal title,
Speaker 5: it to the United States later on in history after
Speaker 5: the American Revolution, and so rather than being colonial states
Speaker 5: as the United States like thirteen original colonies, given the
Speaker 5: American Revolution and its own constitution and its creation of
Speaker 5: itself as a nation state, then that turns into a
Speaker 5: settler colonial government.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I think we can, Yeah, we can get
Speaker 4: to what happens next then, because yeah, yeah, you have
Speaker 4: this elaborate lab or framework that lets you steal people's
Speaker 4: land and murder them and then control it. And then
Speaker 4: the outgrowth of that is this sort of weird event
Speaker 4: where the colonies go into rebellion and suddenly, yeah, there's
Speaker 4: not a colony. They're not colonies anymore. They just are
Speaker 4: the state. And so yeah, what happens next after the
Speaker 4: sort of formation of the United States.
Speaker 5: So after the formation of the United States, so we
Speaker 5: have this period the American Revolution that's all not really
Speaker 5: dive that into. It is seventeen seventy six to seventeen
Speaker 5: eighty nine, and it's called the Confederation period. But next
Speaker 5: we have the Trade and Intercourse Act era, which is
Speaker 5: from seventeen eighty nine to eighteen thirty five. And so
Speaker 5: this is defined with the United States Constitution and Congress's
Speaker 5: exclusive right to regulate trade relations and make leans since
Speaker 5: land secessions, and enter into treaties with tribes. So this
Speaker 5: is a treaty making era with the tribes that only
Speaker 5: the United States federal government is able to and there's
Speaker 5: a distinction there because there had been a lot of
Speaker 5: contestation between states and the federal government as to who
Speaker 5: is going to now deal with these these nations that
Speaker 5: are within our own settler colonial borders. Whose job is
Speaker 5: that to solve this issue? So within the United States Constitution,
Speaker 5: there are three clauses that define the United States' legal
Speaker 5: relationship to American Indians, and so these are the treaty
Speaker 5: making clause, the commerce clause, and the property clause. And
Speaker 5: so this movement from just relying on the doctrine of
Speaker 5: discovery and treaty making processes between different European powers now
Speaker 5: is between the United States federal government and tribes. And
Speaker 5: so what this does is now tribes are located within
Speaker 5: the United States territory, and this places Indians within the
Speaker 5: boundaries and jurisdiction of the United States, and now they're
Speaker 5: a matter of domestic interest.
Speaker 3: Something at least.
Speaker 4: It's one of the sort of complicated questions that changes
Speaker 4: through this whole era, which is about what does sovereignty
Speaker 4: mean for these tribes and to what extent they even
Speaker 4: continue to possess it, and how does that even sort
Speaker 4: of you know, how does that work if when you
Speaker 4: have this new state that sort of just has his
Speaker 4: clean control.
Speaker 5: Here, right, and also during this period, well, well later
Speaker 5: on when we have sorry jumping ahead of myself, when
Speaker 5: we have the extermination of the treaty making process, and
Speaker 5: this completely removes seeing tribes as independent sovereign nations. So
Speaker 5: I think that we'll kind of get more into that later.
Speaker 5: But the thing with federal Indian policy is that it's
Speaker 5: sort of self prophesizing. So as settlers are moving across America,
Speaker 5: the United States government also has to create these policies
Speaker 5: in order to legalize these land cessations and movements. And
Speaker 5: pattern that we do see here throughout history and throughout
Speaker 5: time is that the United States federal government, as a
Speaker 5: settler state, is over the rights of over the rights
Speaker 5: to land and rights of indigenous peoples themselves. You have
Speaker 5: a priority of the settler state in order to acquire land.
Speaker 5: So a lot of the reason why later these treaties
Speaker 5: will be broken, et cetera, is because settlers are moving
Speaker 5: into these lands and the United States is then breaking
Speaker 5: these treaties in order to have more more land, more
Speaker 5: land successions.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the law, the law sort of just following the
Speaker 4: violence and it just becomes a sort of retroactive justification
Speaker 4: for yes, just.
Speaker 5: It's it's a self justifying sort of sovereignty. So this
Speaker 5: is the Removal period, and what a lot of people
Speaker 5: may have heard of. So it's from eighteen thirty five
Speaker 5: to eighteen sixty one, and what we have is the
Speaker 5: extinguishment of Indian title to eastern lands and the removal
Speaker 5: of Indian tribes westward. So one of the most notable
Speaker 5: acts is the Removal Act, which was authorized by President
Speaker 5: Andrew Jackson, which moved Indians from the east to the
Speaker 5: west of the Mississippi River into what is was called
Speaker 5: Indian Territory. And what brought about this federal Act was
Speaker 5: a series of three foundational statutes within federal Indian policy,
Speaker 5: dictated by Chief Justice John Marshall. So first we have
Speaker 5: Johnson B. McIntosh, Cherokee Nation v. Georgia and Worcester v. Georgia.
Speaker 5: And I won't go into two to detail, but what
Speaker 5: this these essentially did and legally defined tribes as being
Speaker 5: domestic dependent nations. And so it clarified more that again
Speaker 5: tribal nations are underneath the federal government's overview, not the states.
Speaker 5: So yeah, it placed tribes above state jurisdiction, and what
Speaker 5: this was trying to do was solve some issues that
Speaker 5: tribes such as the Cherokee Nation had with different states
Speaker 5: when it came to land and jurisdiction over said land.
Speaker 5: But that is kind of the basis of a lot
Speaker 5: of federal Indian policy and still remained truth day. And
Speaker 5: what is notable in each one of these statutes, I believe,
Speaker 5: particularly in Worcester the Georgia, although it seems that it
Speaker 5: was supporting tribal sovereignty in them and that they were
Speaker 5: above state jurisdiction, a lot of these statute cited racist
Speaker 5: president and the doctrine of Discovery. So what you see
Speaker 5: for federal Indian policy is that a lot of the founder,
Speaker 5: well all the foundation for a federal Indian policy based
Speaker 5: on President is the Doctrine of Discovery, which is reliant
Speaker 5: on the idea that American Indians were savages and needed
Speaker 5: federal benevolence and paternalism in order to regulate their own affairs.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I think that's well, okay, we should probably
Speaker 4: not just immediately get to allotment, but yeah, because there's
Speaker 4: there's there's also yeah, this is also the period used. Yeah,
Speaker 4: the thing you were talking about earlier, the thing you
Speaker 4: helped me know about, which is, Okay, it's not true
Speaker 4: to say this is when this starts, but this is
Speaker 4: Indian Removal Act, Trail of Tears territory. And yeah, one
Speaker 4: thing that you know, I think one of the sort
Speaker 4: of running themes of this is that, you know, the
Speaker 4: the law in this context is just sort of it
Speaker 4: becomes a sort of retroactive excuse to do whatever needs
Speaker 4: to be done from the perspective quote unquote of the
Speaker 4: sort of of the settler state to just take all
Speaker 4: of this land.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: And I think maybe like one of the keystones of
Speaker 4: this is Andrew Jackson just straight up telling the Supreme
Speaker 4: Court to fuck off so that he can do so
Speaker 4: he can do a trail of tears.
Speaker 5: Yeah. So the Removal Act happened after all of these
Speaker 5: statutes that you already had that supported federal Indian sovereignty.
Speaker 5: And so the Cherokees in Georgia were one of the
Speaker 5: tribes that were removed. And so you kind of see
Speaker 5: what you talked about, the the retrograde kind of justifications
Speaker 5: for said removal despite the statutes that are there. So
Speaker 5: although that like Marshall in Worchester feed Georgia determined that
Speaker 5: the State of Georgia did not have jurisdiction over Cherokee
Speaker 5: Territory all this although this territory was in the state's borders.
Speaker 5: Later on, you see with the Removal Act that although
Speaker 5: these statutes are still president in federal Undian policy, those
Speaker 5: were null in order for there to be more expansion
Speaker 5: of settlers within these areas. So when it was decided that, oh, wait,
Speaker 5: we do need this land and we don't actually want
Speaker 5: these Indians here, let's put them to the side overpast
Speaker 5: the Mississippi so that they're out of sight, out of mind, right,
Speaker 5: So we see more of this justification for settler expansion.
Speaker 5: And so again we bring back to these themes of
Speaker 5: like settler colonialism in order to and kind of gain
Speaker 5: more of this land.
Speaker 1: And a lot.
Speaker 5: Of these statutes are still cited the doctrine of discovery
Speaker 5: in them, and rather than supporting tribal policy, the relationship
Speaker 5: between the United States federal government and American Indians was
Speaker 5: not based on the rights of Indians, but more that
Speaker 5: they can't they can't govern themselves, right and so so,
Speaker 5: and that's the whole issue is, like people were like
Speaker 5: they don't know what they're doing, so we're gonna push
Speaker 5: them and like take their land again. So I don't
Speaker 5: know if you want me to go too much into
Speaker 5: the trail of tears, but you're seeing a lot of
Speaker 5: patterns here, I think, different forms of genocide, different forms
Speaker 5: of taking the land.
Speaker 6: This was this is all around the same time as
Speaker 6: the Indian Action Canada as well, which was a very
Speaker 6: similar thing, especially starting in the nineteen hundred's, starting in
Speaker 6: the twentieth century as well with thee like expansion of
Speaker 6: the like assimilation programs.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I think I guess one other thing I
Speaker 4: want to point out about this is that, you know,
Speaker 4: so one of the things that happens trails here is
Speaker 4: that the Supreme Court like tells Jackson that he can't
Speaker 4: do this, and Jackson just does it anyways. And I
Speaker 4: think that's a very interesting important moment because you know,
Speaker 4: this is this is this thing right where the federal
Speaker 4: government can tell the Supreme Court to fuck off, right,
Speaker 4: and there's nothing that the Streme Court could do about it.
Speaker 4: And if you look at what they did it to do,
Speaker 4: the thing they did it to do was genocide, and
Speaker 4: it's I think it's it's just I think this is
Speaker 4: very sort of I don't know, this incredibly grim, like
Speaker 4: you know, encapsulation of like what this state actually is,
Speaker 4: which is this sort of genocide machine and whatever sort
Speaker 4: of you know, this is what sovereignty is, right, the
Speaker 4: ability to break your own rules to sort of art
Speaker 4: to maintain the system. So you you know, you break
Speaker 4: your own laws and you know, as we're going to
Speaker 4: get to in a second, like you break your own
Speaker 4: treaties continuously, and you do this because you know, the
Speaker 4: gene slide machine has to keep moving, right.
Speaker 5: And there's a couple of federal Indian policy theorists Bendelari
Speaker 5: Junior who's one of the most famous ones, and David
Speaker 5: Wilkins who talks about how there is no need for
Speaker 5: checks and balances within the federal Indian policy system. So
Speaker 5: you have Congress that is able to pass whatever act
Speaker 5: they want, and then you also have the Supreme Court,
Speaker 5: and then you also have executive action. But it wasn't
Speaker 5: really delineated that well within especially when it comes to
Speaker 5: this period as to who is going to be dealing
Speaker 5: with the Indians kind of thing, and so this kind
Speaker 5: of confusion and not really completely defining what it means
Speaker 5: to be a domestic dependent nation. I think really just
Speaker 5: goes to show how much of a fragile edifice like
Speaker 5: settler colonial policy is for it is within the system.
Speaker 5: But again moving on, it comes back again to land.
Speaker 5: So the reservation area era in eighteen sixty one to
Speaker 5: eighteen eighty sevens you have a lot of westward expansion
Speaker 5: of non Indians settlers, specifically to California. You also have
Speaker 5: the creation of Indian reservations and resulting Indian wars. So
Speaker 5: during this era, what you see a lot of are
Speaker 5: different types of the times that assimulation and a lot
Speaker 5: of warfare. So you have a lot of the planes
Speaker 5: tribes my tribe for instance, that are going through all
Speaker 5: of these battles fighting forced removal onto reservations. One of
Speaker 5: the most famous ones was the Battle of Greece Grass.
Speaker 5: There was a little Big Horn where General Custer was
Speaker 5: killed by Sioux, Cheyennes and Arapahos, and different instances of
Speaker 5: battles such as those, and also where a lot of
Speaker 5: tribes were forcibly removed to era areas that they were
Speaker 5: weren't originally from, so like how the rapes were moved
Speaker 5: to Oklahoma. There was attempts of my tribe, for instance,
Speaker 5: Northern Cheyenne, to be moved down to Oklahoma as well,
Speaker 5: and that's why there's some Southern Cheyennes in Oklahoma and
Speaker 5: then my tribe, the Northern Chan's in Montana. Another another
Speaker 5: thing that is happening during this period are boarding schools,
Speaker 5: the boarding school era. So this attempt at assimilation through
Speaker 5: education and assimilation is also within within the settler colonial
Speaker 5: kind of structure. It's it's defined the process where indigenous
Speaker 5: people end up conforming to different constructed notions of setular norms.
Speaker 5: So if they're not absorbed within the state completely, then
Speaker 5: their attempted attempt to be assimilated culturally through education, through languages,
Speaker 5: in terms of economics. So now you have a bunch
Speaker 5: of different sort of bureaucratic structures on these reservations trying
Speaker 5: to make tribal governments appear to be or constructed as
Speaker 5: as setular colonial governments are. So maybe it's the three
Speaker 5: branches in ways that aren't just compatible with different tribes culturally,
Speaker 5: and you also have the attempted eradication of different kind
Speaker 5: of spiritual and cultural practices and a lot of Christianity
Speaker 5: being forced on to different people and just kind of
Speaker 5: terrible things that I think more and more people are
Speaker 5: becoming aware of due to current movements. But we'll get
Speaker 5: into that moment later.
Speaker 4: Do we want to talk about a lot of pass
Speaker 4: if in the same.
Speaker 5: Period, Yes, a lotment period and force a similation. So
Speaker 5: this is like eighteen seventy one to nineteen thirty four,
Speaker 5: and so this is the end of the treaty making process.
Speaker 5: So the whole idea of trying to force tribes onto
Speaker 5: reservations and sign these treaties were to again take land
Speaker 5: and make sure that the United States has more land
Speaker 5: and all the land, et cetera that they possibly have.
Speaker 5: So at this end of treaty making and federal allotment
Speaker 5: of Indian lands also happened in the the DAWs Act.
Speaker 5: And so what this was was an attempt to further
Speaker 5: shrink the reservation lands that tribes were already guaranteed within treaties.
Speaker 5: So during this period, I think that somewhere like nine
Speaker 5: million acres were taken from tribal reservations during the allotment process.
Speaker 5: So what the allotment process did was it counted each
Speaker 5: in every individual Indian that was eligible. I think there
Speaker 5: were adults. Yeah, adults that were eligible, and each one
Speaker 5: of them were given a certain parcel of land a
Speaker 5: certain number eight bridge. And once all of this land
Speaker 5: was calculated, what you had was an excess of land
Speaker 5: quote unquote excess of land that the tribes obviously didn't
Speaker 5: need because they had still to too many people. And
Speaker 5: so what the excess of land was utilized for us,
Speaker 5: for pioneers and for settlers if it didn't go to
Speaker 5: the federal government, it was to incentivize settlers to colonize
Speaker 5: the secil on Indian lands, so trying its hardest to
Speaker 5: not stay true to its treemaking practices.
Speaker 4: I think the every thing that was interesting to me
Speaker 4: about this is that like because one of the other
Speaker 4: goals of this is to sort of like, oh is
Speaker 4: the civilizing missions, Like yeah, we're going to turn them
Speaker 4: into We're gona tell these people into like like yeoman farmers,
Speaker 4: like true American fintiersmen or whatever. And it's just like
Speaker 4: it just doesn't work because economically it doesn't make any sense,
Speaker 4: Like breaking up all these like lens is like it
Speaker 4: doesn't you can't just give someone like a small patch
Speaker 4: of like shitty land and have them farm like this
Speaker 4: doesn't like this, it doesn't it doesn't.
Speaker 5: It's like they.
Speaker 6: Certainly tried and then yeah, yeah, yeah, like that was
Speaker 6: one of the main thing, one of the main things
Speaker 6: in Canada was about getting them to adopt like, uh,
Speaker 6: like European farming practices, which which they they they already
Speaker 6: knew how to like get their own food, right, they
Speaker 6: were trying to change this whole system of of of
Speaker 6: like of food growth to to this like to this
Speaker 6: European way of farming, and it just and they were
Speaker 6: just forcing them to and there's yeah, it's it's yes,
Speaker 6: it gets, it gets, it gets super, it gets super
Speaker 6: like dark and horrible. Once you like look at like
Speaker 6: the letters that were being written by like the heads
Speaker 6: of these programs, like you know, instructing like these agents
Speaker 6: were stationed at these like reservations to like force people
Speaker 6: to be doing this horrible farming for like all day
Speaker 6: every day.
Speaker 4: And I think, you know the sign that this was
Speaker 4: like like this is this is so bad that even
Speaker 4: the US government eventually is like wait this like this
Speaker 4: is fucked up and doesn't work. So I think that's yeah,
Speaker 4: your transition to sort of like the next phase, I guess.
Speaker 5: Yeah, a very short phase.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 5: So the next phase is the Indian Reorganization Act. And
Speaker 5: so this something lasted six years from nineteen thirty four
Speaker 5: to nineteen forty. So this is when allotment ended. As
Speaker 5: you said, the United States government was like, wait, this
Speaker 5: isn't working. What else can we do? The Indians aren't
Speaker 5: dying off, they're not assimilating, they're not a culturating. We
Speaker 5: don't know what to do with them. So maybe we'll
Speaker 5: We'll have them adopt these constitutions and a lot of
Speaker 5: them just templates. So regardless of whether or not they
Speaker 5: were I think compatible with tribal different tribes way of life,
Speaker 5: they were like, you have these constitutions. Now now you're
Speaker 5: you're a tribe, and this is what each tribe has
Speaker 5: to look like in order for us, the federal government
Speaker 5: to recognize you as a legitimate entity. And then so
Speaker 5: you have the establishment of these tribal governments that consist
Speaker 5: of tribal councils and big business committees, et cetera. However,
Speaker 5: this period is fleeting, very fleeting, and next you have
Speaker 5: the termination era. So this is the period of time
Speaker 5: where the federal government essentially even more so, wants to
Speaker 5: just get rid of the quote unquote Indian problem, which
Speaker 5: is the existence of indigenous peoples that are reminders to
Speaker 5: the government essentially that they are a setlar colonial force
Speaker 5: and they don't know what to do with us because
Speaker 5: they tried to commit genocide, they tried to remove us,
Speaker 5: et cetera, et cetera. It's still not working. They decided
Speaker 5: that our Chibel governments are aren't legitimate, and they just decide, well,
Speaker 5: it's too much to try to keep up with our
Speaker 5: treaties and what we promised them when it comes to
Speaker 5: health care, education, housing, et cetera, et cetera. How about
Speaker 5: we terminate our federal responsibility, our trust responsibility that are
Speaker 5: delineated in federal Unian policy and in our treaties and
Speaker 5: give them off to this to the states to decide
Speaker 5: what to do with. And so during this period you
Speaker 5: see sort of the federal dissolution of some tribes such
Speaker 5: as the monogamy and other ones as well. So this
Speaker 5: is another dark time there. The dark times just keep
Speaker 5: on coming. And but Federalumbian policy scholars have characterized federal
Speaker 5: run new policy as a pendulum. So swing swinging from
Speaker 5: side to side between this termin this termination of tribes,
Speaker 5: So the federal Indian government as trying to get rid
Speaker 5: of tribes, especially as you can see in this era,
Speaker 5: and then the pendulum of the other side of self determination.
Speaker 5: But both of these are held within the context of
Speaker 5: goals of assimilation. So this is just another phase of terribleness.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 4: Well, I think this this phase also like one thing
Speaker 4: I think that also like is important people understand is
Speaker 4: it like like it's not like people aren't fighting this
Speaker 4: like the whole time. I mean even going like even
Speaker 4: going back to the stuff the Seventh Cavalry, like the
Speaker 4: stuff of cavalry loose was like bors Dayli's bells all
Speaker 4: the time. People are fighting constantly, and this is this period.
Speaker 4: The termination period is also where you see the rise
Speaker 4: of the American Indian movements.
Speaker 5: Yeah, a lot of these periods can be like dove
Speaker 5: into more and all of these different things. In every instance,
Speaker 5: in every instance of federal Indian policy, you have resistance,
Speaker 5: which we're not covering here right now, but you have
Speaker 5: instances throughout history where Indigenous peoples have fought for their
Speaker 5: rights to land, for their community, to being sovereign nations,
Speaker 5: et cetera. And that's why the federal Indian the federal government,
Speaker 5: not federal Indian government, the federal government has not been
Speaker 5: able to eradicate us, much to their dismay. Yeah, and
Speaker 5: so now I'm going to switch into the era that
Speaker 5: we are considered to be in, which I had mentioned
Speaker 5: when I talked about the pendulum of federal Indian policy.
Speaker 5: So now we are in the self determination era, which
Speaker 5: began in nineteen sixty two, and we have the right
Speaker 5: it's characterized with the revitalization of tribal entities. So going
Speaker 5: kind of back to when there was the Indian Reorganization Act,
Speaker 5: that we have our tribal councils. There's restoration of some
Speaker 5: tribes under federal recognition who were terminated, again not all
Speaker 5: of them. We also have the Indian Civil Rights Act,
Speaker 5: so this kind of guaranteed individual Indians some rights, not
Speaker 5: just characterized by their tribes. Also the self determination policy,
Speaker 5: so this is when Nixon condemned the termination policy and
Speaker 5: gave more control to Indians rather than the Bureau of
Speaker 5: Indian ferris which just a federal bureau and just kind
Speaker 5: of like other policies that have given the tribes more
Speaker 5: rights to determine for themselves and their own trust, their
Speaker 5: own people to a certain degree, underneath the federal government
Speaker 5: as semess of dependent nations. And again I think that
Speaker 5: we have seen a lot more movement, but within the
Speaker 5: context of being within a settler colonial state, it's always
Speaker 5: I think a possibility that the federal unding government, or
Speaker 5: the federal government I keep saying Indian, the federal government
Speaker 5: will try to take more and more. And I think,
Speaker 5: for instance, when it comes to issues of fishing rights,
Speaker 5: issues of hunting rights with states, not even just with
Speaker 5: the federal government. So you have a lot of states
Speaker 5: throughout throughout history but still ongoing that attempt to encroach
Speaker 5: on tribal treaties. And again, treaties are the basis of
Speaker 5: federal Indian policy. Without these treaties, the lands would have
Speaker 5: never been seceeded to the United States. And so there's
Speaker 5: this sort of like legal legal conundrum I would say,
Speaker 5: of where all these all treaties in the history of
Speaker 5: the United States with Indian with Indian tribes have been
Speaker 5: broken in some way, shape or form.
Speaker 10: But still.
Speaker 5: American Indians have to live on their reservations instead of
Speaker 5: having their their land back, and so nowadays a lot
Speaker 5: of movement has been towards land back. What this means?
Speaker 5: What is this process? And I think it means a
Speaker 5: lot of different things for different people, Indigenous people because
Speaker 5: again and there's there's five hundred and seventy four federally
Speaker 5: recognized tribes, and so it's not one monolith of ideas,
Speaker 5: the monolith of beliefs. But by just by saying land back,
Speaker 5: that's like recognition that this is our this was our
Speaker 5: land first, and you're not keeping your side of the
Speaker 5: deal and never have been.
Speaker 6: Could you maybe go a bit more into land back
Speaker 6: as the topic, because like specifically, like the past five years,
Speaker 6: it has really gained a lot more like popularity as
Speaker 6: like a slogan ye, But I think for a lot
Speaker 6: of a lot of people who you like, chanted and
Speaker 6: hear it don't always really know exactly what it means.
Speaker 6: There's a lot of like mixed opinions on what it means.
Speaker 6: Of course, on like the more like reactionary side, it's
Speaker 6: like people be like, what you're gonna like kick white
Speaker 6: people out of these areas, Like that's kind of that's
Speaker 6: what a lot of like the reactionary takes on land
Speaker 6: Back is and I'm sure most people are listening to
Speaker 6: this podcast that's not what they think, but they may
Speaker 6: not really know exactly what it means either. They may
Speaker 6: think it sounds a good idea, but they're not quite
Speaker 6: sure what it is. Do you mind kind of talking
Speaker 6: about how land back has like developed as an idea
Speaker 6: and what like you mean by it personally?
Speaker 5: At least? Yeah, I think I could talk about more
Speaker 5: about like what I mean by it personally and what
Speaker 5: I've understood it to mean to other people, because I
Speaker 5: think land back itself it means like a lot of
Speaker 5: different things, and I don't think that there has been
Speaker 5: a concrete kind of idea of what it means. But
Speaker 5: I think a lot of the movement I want to
Speaker 5: like contextualize it within a lot of the sort of
Speaker 5: activism that we've seen in their recent years. So for instance,
Speaker 5: you know, Dapple the Dakota Access Pipeline in twenty sixteen,
Speaker 5: and kind of I think that's one of the more
Speaker 5: recent events that have really illustrated on a wide scale,
Speaker 5: like globally about indigenous movements, sovereign movements, and then especially
Speaker 5: when it comes to environmental justice. But what you saw
Speaker 5: there was encroachment on tribal treaty land within what it
Speaker 5: had to do with the Dakota Access pipeline. So although
Speaker 5: it didn't cross some of the current reservation borders, it
Speaker 5: was in treaty land, you know that kind of thing.
Speaker 6: The same thing with Stop line three, how it encroached
Speaker 6: on like the hunting land and the farmland that was
Speaker 6: not technically in the like residential like like like, not
Speaker 6: in like the reservation area where people live, but it's
Speaker 6: in the surrounding area that is for hunting that is
Speaker 6: specified in the treaty, and keep trying to use these
Speaker 6: loopholes to get the pipelines through.
Speaker 5: Right right, And so I think what we see as
Speaker 5: a lot of solidarity across tribes because this is not new,
Speaker 5: this has never been new, and a lot of tribes
Speaker 5: can relate to that. And what you've seen and what
Speaker 5: I've hoped that I've highlighted throughout this kind of very
Speaker 5: brief overview of vetereral new policy is the different ways
Speaker 5: that indigenous rights to land and sovereignty has been attacked
Speaker 5: in different forms by settler and colonial governments. And I
Speaker 5: think that the day and age that we live in
Speaker 5: now has allowed for sort of more widespread solidarity, especially
Speaker 5: over social media. And so when we say land back,
Speaker 5: for me, how I interpret it as what people mean
Speaker 5: when they're saying it is recognition of our tribal sovereignty,
Speaker 5: of our right to this land that has not been respected.
Speaker 5: And then I also think that it means, well, if
Speaker 5: these treaties aren't being respected, then how is this treaty
Speaker 5: still valid?
Speaker 11: Right?
Speaker 5: How come we aren't getting our land back because you're
Speaker 5: not upholding your end of the deal. Well, some people
Speaker 5: also might mean and recognize that this whole United States
Speaker 5: government is a settler state right based on the doctrine
Speaker 5: of discovery, which is based on denying tribes and American
Speaker 5: Indians of their rights to this land. So some people
Speaker 5: might take it to this whole other context of yeah,
Speaker 5: well maybe this is all of our land, et cetera,
Speaker 5: et cetera. But in practice, what does this look like?
Speaker 5: And I think in practice a lot of people are
Speaker 5: seeing it with reparations or people buying land back for
Speaker 5: tribes and giving it back to tribes, and we have
Speaker 5: seen some of that, or also just people interrupting the
Speaker 5: narrative in their own mind of their euro American identity,
Speaker 5: so not non American Indians and primarily European settlers and
Speaker 5: their history of their own families taking part of the
Speaker 5: setler colonial process, and how has that what about their lands.
Speaker 5: There's everyone who descends, I guess, from these these settlers,
Speaker 5: and I want to be specific when I'm talking about
Speaker 5: Euro American settlers and how they currently benefit from these systems.
Speaker 5: And I think by saying land back, it's we're able
Speaker 5: to highlight this movement for tribal sovereignty and recognition on
Speaker 5: a global scale instead of searching for justice within the
Speaker 5: quote unquote like searching for justice within the courts of
Speaker 5: the conqueror, How how do we expect for the conqueror
Speaker 5: to be held accountable for all of these atrocities attempts
Speaker 5: of genocide is simile, et cetera. By taking it more
Speaker 5: towards a global scale, such as no adaptle highlighting these
Speaker 5: to other people as these are injustices, this is this
Speaker 5: is ongoing genocide. I think that land back has many,
Speaker 5: like a plethora of meanings in that sense. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 5: I hope that answers your question. I myself might use
Speaker 5: it in in some some different ways because land as
Speaker 5: we conceive it to be property kind of grew. That
Speaker 5: concept grew in conversation with Euro American conceptions of property.
Speaker 5: So I think that moving forward, when we talk about
Speaker 5: decolonization as a process and not like a metaphor, that
Speaker 5: thinking of land back not within that whole idea of
Speaker 5: your American profit video as well. That's that's kind of
Speaker 5: another thing to consider.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I think I think lend back will just be
Speaker 6: a whole other thing that will pay someone more qualified
Speaker 6: than our team to talk about on this show, because yeah,
Speaker 6: that's definitely, like you know, like all of the things
Speaker 6: we've we've discussed, they deserve their own deep dives by
Speaker 6: people that are uh, not me, Robert and Chris. Let's see,
Speaker 6: is there any kind of resources, either books or stuff
Speaker 6: online that you would recommend for people wanting to learn
Speaker 6: more about this history and then any kind of ways
Speaker 6: to I don't know, I guess show support in these
Speaker 6: and these kind of like efforts that are going on.
Speaker 5: Yeah, for sure. So in terms of resources and reading,
Speaker 5: I have read Lorenzo Ercini's Settler Book on settler colonialism.
Speaker 5: That's really helpful when you're trying to understand that framework
Speaker 5: in terms of getting to know kind of more of
Speaker 5: the basics of like current issues impacting tribes. The National
Speaker 5: Congress of American Indians does a lot of work on
Speaker 5: the federal level. If you want to talk more about
Speaker 5: kind of lived current lived experiences of American Indians, there's
Speaker 5: illuminatives and getting more involved in those as well. I
Speaker 5: think that they have some tips, but I would recommend
Speaker 5: everyone getting more familiar with the land that they are
Speaker 5: on currently, the tribes within their state, and what they
Speaker 5: can do not just on the local level, but on
Speaker 5: the state level to support tribal sovereignty because a lot
Speaker 5: of issues. For instance, I worked on the state policy
Speaker 5: level in Washington and in Montana, and both of those
Speaker 5: have a significant amount of tribes, but you have a
Speaker 5: lot of legislation that's trying to happen that infringes on
Speaker 5: tribal treaty rights. And the thing is is as ugly
Speaker 5: as it may be to say, but sometimes voices of
Speaker 5: non indigenous peoples are listening to more within those contexts,
Speaker 5: So you need to get more involved on those levels.
Speaker 5: What sort of like at nonprofit organizations work with your
Speaker 5: tribes or and what sort of issues are impacting tribes
Speaker 5: and again, these are all going to probably be surrounding
Speaker 5: tribal sovereignty, so maybe it's fishing access, hunting rights, et cetera.
Speaker 5: I think that's a really good way to make some
Speaker 5: more tangible change, to feel like you're doing something to
Speaker 5: support tribal sovereignty while you're also educating yourself and making
Speaker 5: sure that their voices are at the forefront. And that's
Speaker 5: also applicable to the federal level, especially with as you
Speaker 5: already said, like stop line three in Minnesota, contacting your legislators,
Speaker 5: et cetera, et cetera. And I think also with when
Speaker 5: it comes to one of one of the larger issues
Speaker 5: besides environmental justice for Indigenous peoples such as pipelines, you
Speaker 5: have right now missing a murdered Indigenous women, So looking
Speaker 5: and looking into that a little bit more and who
Speaker 5: you can support who's addressing those issues along with there
Speaker 5: is another movement with boarding schools right now, because there's
Speaker 5: been a lot of bodies of young children that have
Speaker 5: been uncovered. And this is not an issue that happened
Speaker 5: a long long time ago, like for instance, my grandmother
Speaker 5: went to a boarding school. There's still schools that, although
Speaker 5: they're not called boarding schools right now that we're boarding
Speaker 5: schools but are still in operation under different names, et cetera.
Speaker 5: So kind of familiarizing yourself with those histories. And then
Speaker 5: also there's a national I think it's called the National
Speaker 5: Boarding School Healing Coalition based out of Minnesota, and looking
Speaker 5: into them and supporting their efforts with this issue is
Speaker 5: also a good place to start.
Speaker 6: Is there anywhere that people can find you online?
Speaker 5: Yes?
Speaker 7: I don't.
Speaker 5: I don't really use social media that much. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 5: I try not to. I don't know if I want
Speaker 5: people to find.
Speaker 6: Me, don't do it better. But it's better that people
Speaker 6: don't find anyone online. It's better we're all just just
Speaker 6: posting into the void. There's nothing, just just the void.
Speaker 6: Well that that is I think gonna wrap up what
Speaker 6: we have today, Chris, Do you want to close us
Speaker 6: out with a funny bit?
Speaker 4: I light your local gas station on fire. Wow, Jesus
Speaker 4: Christ killing here? Oh my god, geez wow. All right,
Speaker 4: goodbye for buddy.
Speaker 7: You probably don't remember passage of Title forty two, let
Speaker 7: alone that of Title forty two taped to six a
Speaker 7: sub chapter two, Part G Section two sixty four. But
Speaker 7: it's a part of US federal law that gives the
Speaker 7: government the authority to take emergency action to keep communical
Speaker 7: diseases out of the country. The portion which allows a
Speaker 7: sweeping disregard for asylum. Law passed in nineteen forty four,
Speaker 7: reads in one giant run on paragraph sentences.
Speaker 12: Follows, whenever the Surgeon General determines that, by reason of
Speaker 12: the existence of any communicable disease in a foreign country,
Speaker 12: there is serious danger of the introduction of such disease
Speaker 12: into the United States, and that this danger is so
Speaker 12: increased by the introduction of persons or property from such
Speaker 12: country that a suspension of the right to introduce such
Speaker 12: persons and property is required in the interest of the
Speaker 12: public health. The Surgeon General, in accordance with regulations approved
Speaker 12: by the President, shall have the power to prohibit in
Speaker 12: a whole or in part, the introduction of persons and
Speaker 12: property from such countries or places as he shall designate,
Speaker 12: in order to avert such danger, and for such period
Speaker 12: of time as he may deem necessary for such purpose.
Speaker 7: Before President Donald Trump's administration used it on March twentieth,
Speaker 7: twenty twenty, it had been used only in nineteen twenty
Speaker 7: nine to keep ships from China and the Philippines from
Speaker 7: entering US ports during to meningitis outbreak, but in March
Speaker 7: of twenty twenty, when you probably weren't paying much attention
Speaker 7: because the world was falling apart, or when I just
Speaker 7: returned from a work trip to Rwanda, where I was
Speaker 7: months before any precautions appeared in the USA screened for
Speaker 7: a novel coronavirus. The Trump administration cited this public health
Speaker 7: law in instructions to the Department of Homeland Security on
Speaker 7: restrictions for migrants entering the United States. That very same day,
Speaker 7: Center for Disease Control Direct Robert R. Redfield relied on
Speaker 7: this regulation to issue an order suspending the introduction into
Speaker 7: the United States of certain individuals who had been in
Speaker 7: quote unquote coronavirus impacted areas and quote who would be
Speaker 7: introduced into a congregate setting at the port of entry
Speaker 7: or a border station. This includes individuals coming from Canada
Speaker 7: or Mexico who would normally be detained by CBP after
Speaker 7: arriving at the border, people including asylum seekers and accompanied children,
Speaker 7: and people attending to enter the United States between ports
Speaker 7: of entry. Citing the new CDC order, that same day,
Speaker 7: the Border patrol began expelling individuals who arrived at the
Speaker 7: US Mexico border without giving them the opportunity to seek asylum.
Speaker 7: Reports indicate the CDC scientist expressed opposition to the invocation
Speaker 7: of Title forty two, arguing that there was really no
Speaker 7: public health rationale to support it. Ever since then, public
Speaker 7: health experts outside the CDC have gones continue to agree,
Speaker 7: arguing that while international borders largely remain open to other travelers,
Speaker 7: there is no need to turn away refugees and expel
Speaker 7: them to their home countries or send them to Mexico.
Speaker 7: Despite this, DHS has been applying Title forty two to
Speaker 7: migrants for three years since then, and people have been
Speaker 7: turned away without getting a chance to plead their case
Speaker 7: for asylum three million times.
Speaker 8: Now.
Speaker 7: Trump is no longer president, but Title forty two has persisted.
Speaker 7: It's actually persisted for much longer under Biden's watch two
Speaker 7: years and four months than it did under Trump ten months.
Speaker 7: But we'll get to that part later. First, let's look
Speaker 7: at what this bureaucratic wrinkle does when it's supplied for
Speaker 7: three years across the land border spanning three one and
Speaker 7: forty five kilometers. That's nine hundred and fifty four miles
Speaker 7: for the Americans listening at a time when climate change,
Speaker 7: economic decline, and state and nonstate violence are driving more
Speaker 7: and more people towards the USA's southern border in the
Speaker 7: hope of better life. We're talking about the title forty
Speaker 7: two this week because it ended on Mail eleventh. In
Speaker 7: a sense, this marks an important change in immigration law,
Speaker 7: but in a sense it doesn't. Immigration was complicated and
Speaker 7: cruel for migrants and profitable for people on both sides
Speaker 7: of the border before March of twenty twenty, and it's
Speaker 7: the same after Title forty two has gone. But nonetheless,
Speaker 7: Title forty two represented a distinct change in how asylum
Speaker 7: works in the US, and, especially when combined with other
Speaker 7: Trump policies that Biden has continued, a distinct change in
Speaker 7: how many people die when coming to this country to
Speaker 7: try and have a better chance at a save future.
Speaker 7: By April of twenty twenty, Title forty two expulsions at
Speaker 7: the border overtook the previous record for expulsions under the
Speaker 7: so called Migrant Protection Protocol, which is better known as
Speaker 7: Remain in Mexico, that was set in August of twenty
Speaker 7: nineteen under an agreement reached with the Mexican government. In
Speaker 7: late March of twenty twenty, the Border Patrol began sending
Speaker 7: quote unquot quote back to Mexico most Mexican, but also
Speaker 7: Guatemala and Honduran and Saldarrean families and seeingle adults encountered
Speaker 7: at the border. This group of nationalities remained unchanged until
Speaker 7: May of twenty twenty two, when the Biden administration came
Speaker 7: to an agreement with Mexico to accept quote unquote thousands
Speaker 7: of Cubans and Nicaraguans sent from the United States to Mexico.
Speaker 7: But this doesn't really matter. You'll see that alone these episodes.
Speaker 7: Immigration law on the ground and immigration law in Washington,
Speaker 7: DC are two very different things. There has been extensive
Speaker 7: documentation of individuals expelled to Mexico who do not fit
Speaker 7: within these nationalities, including Haitian asylum seekers, some of whom
Speaker 7: I've spoken to myself. People who are expelled are often
Speaker 7: driven by bus to the nearest port of entry that's
Speaker 7: a land border crossing, and told to walk back to Mexico,
Speaker 7: often without their luggage and other belongings. I've found that
Speaker 7: luggage and belong including ID cards, clothing and even little
Speaker 7: stuffed animals all along the border in the three years
Speaker 7: since Title forty two has been in place. I asked
Speaker 7: my friend Paul to describe what we found in Texas,
Speaker 7: and we've been for a walk along the border wall
Speaker 7: during our time reporting on the National Butterfly Center.
Speaker 13: There you'd find driver's licenses, I believe. At one point
Speaker 13: we found like an almost an information packet for like
Speaker 13: it was for a teenager, a teenage girl. I remember
Speaker 13: that because we got pictures of it. And then when
Speaker 13: we took that long walk, remember we walked down the
Speaker 13: border wall, it's two two and a half mile walk
Speaker 13: something like that. When we got to the very end
Speaker 13: of the wall where the river was, there was just
Speaker 13: a giant pile of people's stuff. And some of it
Speaker 13: was obviously trash, you know, they were abandoning clothes after
Speaker 13: they changed from crossing and stuff like that, but a
Speaker 13: lot of it was full backpacks, a lot of ID
Speaker 13: documents just in piles, just piles of them. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 13: just big piles of documents that proved who you were.
Speaker 7: The other thing we found with ladders, tons of them.
Speaker 7: Apparently someone built a gazebo out of them. The wall
Speaker 7: varies in design a bit along the border, depending on
Speaker 7: when and by whom it was built, but the trum
Speaker 7: design has a flat anti climb plate at the top.
Speaker 7: I'll let Paul describe how that's going.
Speaker 13: It was literally like somebody went to the hardware store
Speaker 13: bought two of the longest or actually sorry, three of
Speaker 13: the longest two by four as you could put two
Speaker 13: of them beside each other, and then just nailed steps
Speaker 13: up them, so you know, they were like sixteen twenty
Speaker 13: feet long, and which was enough to just climb over
Speaker 13: the wall Like there weren't There weren't many places actually,
Speaker 13: because most of the wall had that anti climb at
Speaker 13: the top, Whereas when you didn't have the anti climb barrier,
Speaker 13: you didn't actually have something to set it against. But
Speaker 13: once you put that on there, you could just lean
Speaker 13: the ladder up against it. It's like self defeating.
Speaker 7: Sometimes these expulsions are not as straightforward as a bus
Speaker 7: to nearest port of entry. CBP has carried out what
Speaker 7: are called lateral transfers by plane or bus, taking migrants
Speaker 7: to another location along the border, to towns like San
Speaker 7: Diego or El Paso, even if they entered in Arizona
Speaker 7: or California. This leaves families stranded in the town where
Speaker 7: they have no connections, no resources, and no community. Again,
Speaker 7: these are people I've met. It won't have escaped the listeners'
Speaker 7: attention that those planes and buses and other means of
Speaker 7: detention and transport are indeed congregate settings, But that doesn't
Speaker 7: seem to matter here. Title forty two didn't stop people
Speaker 7: trying to come, but it made the journey more difficult.
Speaker 7: Instead of crossing and trying to turn themselves in for
Speaker 7: asylum or approaching a port of entry, people began crossing
Speaker 7: in more remote places, places without border walls or barriers,
Speaker 7: with less frequent border patrols. In twenty twenty, the Border
Speaker 7: Patrol found two hundred and forty seven dead bodies along
Speaker 7: the border. This is unlikely to represent the full human
Speaker 7: toll of border enforcement. Many deaths in the desert go
Speaker 7: unreported and undiscovered, but it gives some kind of point
Speaker 7: of comparison for the twenty twenty one number. After a
Speaker 7: year of Title forty two, five hundred and forty six
Speaker 7: people died that year. In twenty twenty two, third year
Speaker 7: of Title forty two, eight one hundred and fifty seven
Speaker 7: people died. None of those people were guilty of any
Speaker 7: crime other than wanting a better life, but under Title
Speaker 7: forty two, they lost their lives because the US didn't
Speaker 7: give them a safe way to exercise the human right
Speaker 7: to claim asylum. One local advocate, Hamaira Yusefi from a
Speaker 7: group called PANA, the Partnership for the Advance with of
Speaker 7: New Americans, explain what Title forty two have been like
Speaker 7: for her as an advocate for asylum seekers.
Speaker 14: When the pandemic hit, we saw that Title forty two
Speaker 14: heavily restricted those who were able to seek asylum in
Speaker 14: this country. So while there was chaos happening and folks
Speaker 14: around the world who were trying to come to the
Speaker 14: United States for refuge, they were unable to do so.
Speaker 14: And what this resulted in is people taking an even
Speaker 14: more dangerous path right than before and going between the
Speaker 14: ports of entries in order to try to seek refuge.
Speaker 14: And so we have had hundreds of cases of individuals
Speaker 14: who have gotten themselves injured, who the hospitals are calling
Speaker 14: us because they've tried to cross and got injured, and
Speaker 14: where we're trying to help them with getting some basic
Speaker 14: legal services and immediate shelter and those types of things.
Speaker 7: Since Biden took off his human rights first says, it's
Speaker 7: identified more than thirteen thousand incidents of kidnapping, torture, rape,
Speaker 7: or other violent attacks on people blocked or expelled to
Speaker 7: Mexico and a Title forty two. That's because it's easy
Speaker 7: for violence to follow people who have no resources and
Speaker 7: no community to protect them. It's for that reason that
Speaker 7: you won't always see faces in my photographs at the border,
Speaker 7: and that some of the names in this series have changed,
Speaker 7: or perhaps we're just using someone's first name. It's also
Speaker 7: for that reason they're not everyone at the Border always
Speaker 7: wants to talk. But we do have some interviews coming
Speaker 7: up for you tomorrow. Here's a clip from a discussion
Speaker 7: about this which I recorded the border last week.
Speaker 15: I'm trying to get people's face, and that's what everybody
Speaker 15: is doing.
Speaker 10: I can't speak to what they're doing. That's what I'm doing.
Speaker 15: I don't know about other people.
Speaker 7: You should ask. You should if you think someone's taking
Speaker 7: a photo of you, it's okay.
Speaker 8: I don't have a why.
Speaker 16: You know?
Speaker 1: I wish I could.
Speaker 7: I could tell you people who are subject to Title
Speaker 7: forty to expulsion are not given an opportunity to contest
Speaker 7: their expulsion on the grounds it would face persecure in
Speaker 7: the country to which they will be expelled. There's a
Speaker 7: very limited exceptions Title forty two for people who quote
Speaker 7: unquote spontaneously inform CBP officers that they fear being tortured
Speaker 7: in the country to which they will be expelled. However,
Speaker 7: in order to receive an official screening by an asylum
Speaker 7: officer for exemption under that provision, the CBP officer must
Speaker 7: first determine that the claim is reasonably believable. From March
Speaker 7: twenty twenty through September twenty twenty one, just two hundred
Speaker 7: and seventy two people were granted the right to seek
Speaker 7: asylum under this exception. The use of Title forty two
Speaker 7: has been despite the relative lack of outrage sin sur
Speaker 7: Bide the administration took office bipartisan in twenty twenty one.
Speaker 7: A few weeks before Bileen's inauguration, I spent some time
Speaker 7: talking to migrants at the southern border for Slate. Many
Speaker 7: of them had come to a small, tense city that
Speaker 7: popped up just feet from the pedestrian border crossing and
Speaker 7: the country that they had traveled thousands of miles to
Speaker 7: get to but that they couldn't reach. You can see
Speaker 7: America through the fence there, but you can't get there.
Speaker 7: The camp was diverse in its composition. On one trip,
Speaker 7: I interviewed folks from Haiti, Honduras, Ol Salvador, Gatemana, and Ethiopia.
Speaker 7: Here's what one of them said to me when he
Speaker 7: asked his message to President Biden. You recognize the voices Daniel's.
Speaker 7: That's because I don't have his permission to use his voice.
Speaker 12: Here we are appealing to President Biden. We aren't bad people.
Speaker 12: Our goal is to work and get ahead in the
Speaker 12: world for our children. We don't want to go back.
Speaker 12: They will kill us, so we are here.
Speaker 7: Some of them wore Biden T shirts, which I suspect
Speaker 7: rightually a plant by right wing our Jean provocateur looking
Speaker 7: to make the new administration look weak. They needn't really
Speaker 7: have bothered with all the effort Biden would do plenty
Speaker 7: in the next few months to make himself look cruel
Speaker 7: and unkind. Before we talk about that, I want to
Speaker 7: play you a clip from Biden's first press confidence. President.
Speaker 17: You just listed the reasons that people are coming talking
Speaker 17: about in country problems, saying that it happens every year.
Speaker 3: You blamed the.
Speaker 17: Last administration, Sir. I just got back last night from
Speaker 17: a recording trip to the border where I met nine
Speaker 17: year old Jose who walked here from Honduras by himself,
Speaker 17: along with another little boy. He had that snout on him,
Speaker 17: and we were able to call his family. His mother
Speaker 17: says that she sent her son to this country because
Speaker 17: she believes that you are not deporting unaccompanied miners like
Speaker 17: her son. That's why she's sent him alone from Honduras. So, Sir,
Speaker 17: you blamed the last administration, But is your messaging and
Speaker 17: saying that these children are and will be allowed to
Speaker 17: stay in this country and work their way through this process,
Speaker 17: encouraging families like Jo says to come.
Speaker 1: Well, look.
Speaker 18: The idea that I'm going to say, which I would
Speaker 18: never do. If an unaccompanied child ends up at the border,
Speaker 18: We're just gonna let him starve to death and stay
Speaker 18: on the other side. No previous administrations dead either except Trump.
Speaker 18: I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to
Speaker 18: do it. That's why I've asked the Vice President of
Speaker 18: the United States yesterday to be the lead person I'm
Speaker 18: dealing with focusing on the fundamental reasons why people leave Honduras, Guatemala,
Speaker 18: or Salvadora in the first place.
Speaker 7: In the coming months, some of which I covered for
Speaker 7: an op ed in NBC about the Biden Administration's cruel
Speaker 7: treatment of Haitian migrants. Things on the border didn't get
Speaker 7: any better. Biden deported more Haitian people in a few
Speaker 7: weeks than the Trump administration did in a year, eight
Speaker 7: hundred and ninety five people reporting in twenty twenty versus
Speaker 7: more than one two hundred people. From January twentieth to
Speaker 7: March twenty second, twenty twenty one. While making declarations about
Speaker 7: showing compassion to migrants, the Biden administration packed Haitians onto
Speaker 7: crowded planes and buses and sent them back to Haiti
Speaker 7: in the middle of the pandemic. In March, the US
Speaker 7: sent another pointed invitation to Haitians. The US Embassy in
Speaker 7: Haiti tweeted a picture President Joe Biden looking off into
Speaker 7: the distance with a caption in both English and Haitian Creole.
Speaker 7: In Creole, it read wing kadi sa bienkie pavini. The
Speaker 7: translation above it was.
Speaker 12: I can say quite clearly don't come over.
Speaker 7: In July of that year, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Majorcas,
Speaker 7: himself a child of parents who fled from Cuba, said
Speaker 7: that Haitians and Cubans fleeing unrest in their countries will
Speaker 7: not find safety in the US even if they have
Speaker 7: a credible claim for asylum, and especially if they flee
Speaker 7: by sea. In doing so, he was echoing statements to
Speaker 7: the US broadcast from planes flying over Haiti following the
Speaker 7: devastating earthquake in twenty ten. Following these announcements, the US
Speaker 7: diverted resources that it could have used to help people
Speaker 7: from suffering in a country which have been destroyed by
Speaker 7: a natural disaster to stop them coming to this country.
Speaker 7: He was also overlooking that under both international and domestic law,
Speaker 7: asylum seekersts are entitled to make claims no matter how
Speaker 7: they enter the country. Here's what Mayoka said at his
Speaker 7: press conference.
Speaker 12: Allow me to be clear, if you take to the sea,
Speaker 12: you will not come to the United States.
Speaker 7: Part of this hardline is because of a perceived crisis
Speaker 7: at the border. You don't have to go far on
Speaker 7: Twitter dot com before you run into people like Fox News.
Speaker 7: Is Bill Malugan yep, the tampon in the coffee guy
Speaker 7: is now a border reporter and he's shamelessly repeating CBP
Speaker 7: statistics about apprehensions on the southern border. Here he is
Speaker 7: talking to his buddy Tucker Carlson. Do you remember that guy?
Speaker 11: Bill Malujin has covered the border more closely than any
Speaker 11: reporter in the United States for the last two years,
Speaker 11: and today, in his estimation, the single largest caravan of
Speaker 11: illegal aliens flowing into this country in his two years
Speaker 11: of watching crossed. Today he broke the story. He's got
Speaker 11: remarkable video for us. He's live at the border now.
Speaker 1: Bill. Great to see you.
Speaker 19: What did you see, Tucker, Good evenings. You mentioned it
Speaker 19: right off the top. This was easily the biggest group
Speaker 19: we have ever seen during our nineteen months of covering
Speaker 19: this border crisis. And they all crossed illegally into El
Speaker 19: Paso last night, and we got some pretty wild camera
Speaker 19: footage to show you. Take a look at this. This
Speaker 19: was last night in ol Paso. A massive caravan, over
Speaker 19: one thousand illegal immigrants crossing into l Paso last night.
Speaker 19: Local media they're reporting it was potentially up to two
Speaker 19: thousand people and that it was possibly the biggest mass
Speaker 19: crossing in the city's history. Now, as you look at
Speaker 19: the video, you'll see just wave after wave after wave
Speaker 19: of these people walking across the river and then gathering
Speaker 19: on the US side of the river where they kind
Speaker 19: of form a single file line.
Speaker 7: But it's not just Fox News doing this. You'll see
Speaker 7: MPR and other more liberal outlets quoting these same statistics
Speaker 7: without the necessary context. They're not lying. Apprehensions are higher,
Speaker 7: but that is in some part because migrants are now
Speaker 7: crossing more than once. In twenty nineteen, before Title forty
Speaker 7: two went into effect, seven percent of migrants apprehended by
Speaker 7: the Border Patrol had previously been apprehended. The reapprehension rate
Speaker 7: grew to twenty seven percent in fiscal year twenty twenty two.
Speaker 7: This is because we're expelling people to places where they
Speaker 7: have no hope of a better future and not leaving
Speaker 7: them with many options other than to try again in
Speaker 7: more remote and risky settings. Meanwhile, there's much less concern
Speaker 7: from the right and from Democrats at the fact that
Speaker 7: Ukrainians are exempted from Title forty two, and Russians and
Speaker 7: Ukrainians generally experience expedited processing of the sort which one
Speaker 7: would hope this country could offer to other people escaping
Speaker 7: conflicts around the world, including many that we started. I
Speaker 7: asked my friend Gustavo Solis, a border investigative reporter at
Speaker 7: KPBS in San Diego, to summarize the Biden administration to
Speaker 7: take on Title forty two.
Speaker 20: Now, on paper of the rationalists, there's a pandemic going on.
Speaker 20: We need to stop or slow the spread of COVID nineteen.
Speaker 20: So because of this extraordinary circumstance, we need Title forty
Speaker 20: two to shore up the order that was bullshit, and
Speaker 20: we know that now through reporting that it was total bullshit.
Speaker 20: We know that from as early as twenty eighteen, Stephen Miller,
Speaker 20: Trump's White House aid wanted to use Title forty two
Speaker 20: to stop this type of migration. We know that Vice
Speaker 20: President Mike Pence pressured the top doctors at the CDC
Speaker 20: into doing this, basically saying, if you don't do this,
Speaker 20: you might lose your job. Because even then in March
Speaker 20: twenty twenty, doctors at the CDC knew that there was
Speaker 20: no real public health rationale for this. I mean, if
Speaker 20: you look at the order, it's supposed to stop COVID,
Speaker 20: but there weren't any exceptions for migrants who were vaccinated
Speaker 20: or there was no testing component to it. So that's
Speaker 20: kind of the beginning of Title forty two. By the
Speaker 20: time Biden came in office, Biden had promised to end
Speaker 20: it along with Roman in Mexico and restore the humane
Speaker 20: asylum system. But he kept Title forty two in place.
Speaker 20: And he didn't just keep it in place, he expanded
Speaker 20: it to include nationalities that weren't included when Trump first
Speaker 20: rolled it out.
Speaker 7: Even as a legal battle went back and forth, another
Speaker 7: major bottleneck emerged in a migration system in the form
Speaker 7: of never ending clusterfuck. That is the CBP one app.
Speaker 7: Again a let Gustavo explain his reporting here.
Speaker 20: It actually kind of started with the Ukrainians. That was
Speaker 20: kind of how they started using it for the asylum context.
Speaker 20: But CBP one is essentially a phone app for asylum,
Speaker 20: and on paper it kind of makes sense, right instead
Speaker 20: of like, you know, Joe Biden and the Dems are
Speaker 20: really terrified of the optics of a lot of people
Speaker 20: at the border, and they a lot of their policy
Speaker 20: is revolved around stopping that right. They don't want masses
Speaker 20: of people at the border. The CBP one app aims
Speaker 20: to address that by telling micros, hey, instead of coming
Speaker 20: all the way to Mexico and showing up the border,
Speaker 20: just download this app and schedule an appointment to come here,
Speaker 20: and we'll let you to see if you're eligible for
Speaker 20: asylum or not. Another example of a policy in Washington,
Speaker 20: DC that has no reality in what's going on the
Speaker 20: border because migrants live in shelters with really bad Wi
Speaker 20: Fi access, and they have crappy phones. So what I've
Speaker 20: found in the reporting is that CBP one rewards people
Speaker 20: with the best phones, not necessarily people who are most vulnerable.
Speaker 20: And the story I came out with last week was
Speaker 20: about how data from the Mexican government shows that at
Speaker 20: least in Tijuana, about forty four percent of every migrant
Speaker 20: who has gotten a CBP one application to enter the
Speaker 20: country is a Russian national, and Russian nationals makeup at
Speaker 20: most ten percent of the overall migrant population in Tijuana.
Speaker 20: So you have this situation where a relatively affluent ten
Speaker 20: percent of the population is getting almost half of these
Speaker 20: humanitarian protection appointments that are designed for the world's most
Speaker 20: vulnerable people. And that's what if you one does like
Speaker 20: it they call it the Ticketmaster of asylum, and that's
Speaker 20: not a compliment. That is like ticketmaster fucking sucks. Nobody
Speaker 20: likes it.
Speaker 7: I also spoke to Caba, an activist who participated a
Speaker 7: mutual aid at the border. We talked about the app
Speaker 7: because Caba has some professional insight into the technologies used.
Speaker 8: I do data science and machine learning the native things
Speaker 8: for a living. And the problem of building these systems
Speaker 8: trained entirely on databases of white faces and then the
Speaker 8: motain working for people, you know, the backgrounds is very
Speaker 8: well known in this field. That is a very well
Speaker 8: documented issue for more than a decade. And anyone that
Speaker 8: could tell you by building a facial recognition or some
Speaker 8: kind of a camera app that does image processing and
Speaker 8: and I'm only training it on my face, is it
Speaker 8: like that this is a This is not something that
Speaker 8: I think any competent, separate development house would have done
Speaker 8: and not expected. So I have a hard time believing
Speaker 8: that the whole chain of everyone's had to go through
Speaker 8: from the developers on up to you know, anyone who
Speaker 8: does it or you know has authority of these things
Speaker 8: at CBP or Homland Security. This is just it's it's
Speaker 8: it's like, I don't know, it's it's, it's, it's it's
Speaker 8: hard to believe that this was enough.
Speaker 7: Anyway, before we get too far from discussing things to
Speaker 7: fucking suck, he's an advertising break. You might be wondering
Speaker 7: why Title forty two is ending now and how we
Speaker 7: got here, given there seems to be a consensus in
Speaker 7: DC that the border is in crisis, and that that
Speaker 7: crisis is not that people were leaving to die on
Speaker 7: the streets the other side or in the deserts of
Speaker 7: California and Arizona, but the people were allowing to come
Speaker 7: to the richest country that's ever existed from countries that
Speaker 7: we've destabilized for decades to have a chance of a
Speaker 7: decent life. Well, the answer is complicated. Some of it's
Speaker 7: a bit too complicated for me to really spend the
Speaker 7: time explaining, and you don't really need to know the
Speaker 7: ins and outs of court cases to understand that. Essentially,
Speaker 7: the Biden administration had planned to end Title forty two
Speaker 7: in late twenty twenty two, right after the midterms. Title
Speaker 7: forty two actually became theoretically unenforceable in November of that
Speaker 7: year thanks to a court ruling, but the Supreme Court
Speaker 7: in December prevented the Biden administration from ending Title forty two,
Speaker 7: while the Justice is considered a request by a group
Speaker 7: of Republican led states that want to continue the expulsions,
Speaker 7: which had previously been decaarred unlawful by lower court. Biden's
Speaker 7: Department of Justice had previously defended Title forty two as
Speaker 7: necessary to public health, but by the end of twenty
Speaker 7: twenty two, they were ready to end enforcement a Title
Speaker 7: forty two politically, even if there were no way when
Speaker 7: near prepared on the ground. A coalition of Republican led states, however,
Speaker 7: managed to get a federal judge in Louisiana to prevent
Speaker 7: officials fremending Title forty two, saying the Biden administration and
Speaker 7: had not taken adequate steps required to terminate the policy. Then,
Speaker 7: on November fifteenth, another federal judge declared Title forty two
Speaker 7: are lawful, saying the CDC had not properly explained the
Speaker 7: policy's public health ration art or considered its impact on
Speaker 7: asylum seekers. At the request of the Biden administration, the
Speaker 7: judge gave border officials five weeks until December the twenty
Speaker 7: first to end Title forty two nineteen, Republican led States
Speaker 7: asked several courts to delay Title forty two's resision indefinitely,
Speaker 7: warning that chaos would otherwise ensue. After their request was
Speaker 7: denied by lower courts, the States asked a Supreme Court
Speaker 7: to intervene. On December twenty seventh, the Supreme Court said
Speaker 7: it would suspend the lower court order that found Title
Speaker 7: forty two to be illegal until it decided whether the
Speaker 7: Republican led States should be allowed to intervene in the case.
Speaker 7: That's some Christmas spirit for you. Eventually, with the end
Speaker 7: of the federal emergency over COVID nineteen, Title forty two
Speaker 7: just kind of went away. Customs and Border Protection, the
Speaker 7: federal agency which put up the most staunch resistance to
Speaker 7: vaccine mandates, would begin processing migrants under Title eight of
Speaker 7: US immigration law on the eleventh of May twenty twenty three.
Speaker 7: I'll let them summarize what they see this to mean.
Speaker 7: According to the USCIS website, individuals who unlawfully cross the
Speaker 7: Southwest border will generally be processed under Title eight expedited
Speaker 7: removal authorities. In a matter of days, they will be
Speaker 7: barred from re entry to the United States for at
Speaker 7: least five years if ordered removed, and they will be
Speaker 7: presumed ineligible for asylum under the proposed Circumvention of Lawful
Speaker 7: Pathways regulation absent and applicable exception. What this means is,
Speaker 7: if you cross into the United States not of the pordamentry,
Speaker 7: you will be assumed ineligible for asylum and the process
Speaker 7: to remove you from the United States will begin immediately.
Speaker 7: You have a chance to file a de into asylum
Speaker 7: claim against that, but the process could be rushed and
Speaker 7: more difficult. Despite this and having almost three years to repair,
Speaker 7: they were by no means. Ready, let's hear from Gustavo again. Gustavo,
Speaker 7: can you explain to us a little bit about what
Speaker 7: you found that by the administration has been planning for
Speaker 7: the end of Title forty two.
Speaker 20: Yeah, what I found is they haven't really been doing
Speaker 20: much planning, right, I mean they talk about I think
Speaker 20: with Title forty two, it's a clear example of immigration
Speaker 20: policy being decided in Washington and no one really from
Speaker 20: the border being involved or told what's going on. So, like,
Speaker 20: I think it was last week the HS Secretary Majorca
Speaker 20: did this press release about what they're doing in terms
Speaker 20: of processing centers in Guatemala and Colombia so people can
Speaker 20: just go there instead of coming all the way to
Speaker 20: the border, which actually there have been timelines of when
Speaker 20: those will open. But they had asked all these things
Speaker 20: for like big picture things, right, to stop people from
Speaker 20: coming in the first place, expanding some legal pathways, like
Speaker 20: making it easier for people with families already here to
Speaker 20: get sponsors, fixing some of the little things with CVP one,
Speaker 20: but they don't talk about like on the ground logistics right. So,
Speaker 20: for example, I went to Tijuana to talk to the
Speaker 20: head of the Department of Migrant Affairs there who told
Speaker 20: me this, and I checked with him yesterday morning, who said,
Speaker 20: still to this day, less than forty eight hours before
Speaker 20: Title forty two ends, he doesn't know how many migrants
Speaker 20: CBP will allow to cross through the ports of entry
Speaker 20: in Sandy Seerro. His guess is that maybe two hundred,
Speaker 20: because that's kind of the number that they floated around
Speaker 20: in December when they originally wanted to get rid of
Speaker 20: Title forty two before their lawsuit. And if it's two hundred,
Speaker 20: he basically said, Tijuana is going to be screwed because
Speaker 20: two hundred doesn't even cover the number of new migrants
Speaker 20: coming in and deporties being sent to Tijuana. So it's
Speaker 20: gonna like we have this bottleneck of migration in Tijuana
Speaker 20: and all over the border because of Title forty two.
Speaker 20: For the last three years, no one's been able to move.
Speaker 20: And if they just open it up to two hundred people,
Speaker 20: that's not really going to address any of the bottleneck.
Speaker 7: Right There's like, I think, is it sixteen thousand people
Speaker 7: are waiting like an asylum application right now?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 21: Yeah.
Speaker 20: I hear different numbers throwing around, like ten, thy, fifteen, sixteen,
Speaker 20: and nobody really knows because there's like a network of
Speaker 20: official shelters, and there's a bunch of unofficial shelters, and
Speaker 20: there's a bunch of Russian dudes staying in hotels in airbnbs.
Speaker 20: But I think, yeah, tens of thousands. I think sixteen
Speaker 20: is an accurate number.
Speaker 7: I think it's intructive here to listen to the Fox
Speaker 7: News coverage of this and how much Secretary of my
Speaker 7: Orcus tries to panda to them.
Speaker 20: Want to be very clear, our borders are not open.
Speaker 22: Home in Security Secretary Alejandro Majorcis said when Title forty
Speaker 22: two expires at midnight tonight, anyone who arrives at the
Speaker 22: southern border will be presumed ineligible for asylum and face consequences.
Speaker 22: But withholding facilities already overwhelmed, the administration is ratcheting up
Speaker 22: tough rhetoric while also clearing the way for mass releases
Speaker 22: into US communities with no way for authorities to track people.
Speaker 22: You said at the beginning that you've prepared for this
Speaker 22: moment for almost two years. So why is part of
Speaker 22: that plan and honor system.
Speaker 1: Oh, it is not an honor system.
Speaker 20: They are a subject of our apprehension efforts.
Speaker 22: But under parole release authorized by the US Border Patrol
Speaker 22: Chief last night, migrants do not receive an alien registration
Speaker 22: number for authorities to track them. They don't even get
Speaker 22: a court date. Instead, migrants are asked to turn themselves
Speaker 22: into Ice within sixty days to start immigration proceedings on themselves.
Speaker 2: The American people are watching this.
Speaker 10: They know what they see.
Speaker 23: They see a wide open border.
Speaker 22: Florida's Attorney General is suing the administration, arguing the parole
Speaker 22: plan is identical to a policy a federal judge struck
Speaker 22: down earlier this year.
Speaker 1: You have confidence in the lawfulness of our actions.
Speaker 22: Plans to release migrants at bus stops, gas stations, and
Speaker 22: supermarkets was first detailed last year, according to a memo
Speaker 22: uncovered by the Florida Legal Proceedings. Today, Texas Governor Greg
Speaker 22: Abbott sent a busload of migrants to the Vice President's Residents.
Speaker 7: Greg Abbot's disgusting antics aside, there was a real attempt
Speaker 7: by the Biden deministration to come to Republican side on
Speaker 7: migration that we can see clearly here in the hours
Speaker 7: before we expected Title forty two to die. Folks like
Speaker 7: me who cover the border made plans the day before.
Speaker 7: On the tenth, Majorcas announced the Title forty two would
Speaker 7: be enforced up until eleven fifty nine pm Eastern time,
Speaker 7: and in San Diego, Border Patrol offices closed down the
Speaker 7: port of entry at Sandy Sedra, the border town just
Speaker 7: south of San Diego, for a training exercise in which
Speaker 7: they lined up in front of the cars waiting to
Speaker 7: cross the border with plexiglass shields and riotgear. Meanwhile, in
Speaker 7: between the two thirty football offenses that divide San Asidra
Speaker 7: from Tijuana, Board of Patrol began corraling migrants Afghans, Colombians, Vietnamese,
Speaker 7: Koreans and Golan Sudanese Tagiks and Congolese people all shared
Speaker 7: little more than a few tarps and cardboard boxes for
Speaker 7: shelter as they waited for something to happen. Despite having
Speaker 7: months to repair in years to plan, it appears at
Speaker 7: Department of Home Land Security totally failed to create so
Speaker 7: much as a scrap of shade or shelter, and instead
Speaker 7: chose to house people detain pending processing in the open air.
Speaker 7: In tomorrow's episode, We'll hear from some.
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Speaker 24: going off, not going likely, and Elma see im for
Speaker 24: the sky and Mama said, some push free and for
Speaker 24: them must smile them. No, no, i'must and Red vie
Speaker 24: Gannata gonna watch me. Hey man, grateful man, grateful I
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Speaker 24: a live got a'll want give me everything for some
Speaker 24: five Yeah love sakries pick up to dom, I got
Speaker 24: to eat on combakom sin Yeah man, that's it one
Speaker 24: love Oh.
Speaker 7: On the eleventh of May this year, title forty two
Speaker 7: finally ended. I stually began to write this episode the
Speaker 7: day before, on the tenth of May, but it was
Speaker 7: that day the DHS announced that Title forty two would
Speaker 7: be enforced until eight fifty nine pm Pacific or midnight Eastern.
Speaker 7: They kept Title forty two in place for every single
Speaker 7: minute they could, and that same day, five hundred active
Speaker 7: duty troops arrived in El Paso and one thousand more
Speaker 7: set off for other border towns to join the two thousand,
Speaker 7: five hundred troops already deployed to the border. According to
Speaker 7: a press release from the Apartment of Homeland Security.
Speaker 12: CBP and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement are further expanding
Speaker 12: detention compared, ramping up removal flights, and shifting agents and
Speaker 12: officers to high priority regions along the southwest border. This week,
Speaker 12: CBP opened two new holding facilities, and the Department of
Speaker 12: Health and Human Services is increasing its bed capacity to
Speaker 12: prepare for a potential increase in unaccompanied children. DHS also
Speaker 12: launched targeted enforcement operations and high priority regions along the border,
Speaker 12: including El Paso, to quickly process migrants and place them
Speaker 12: in removal proceedings. DHS last week also announced over two
Speaker 12: hundred and fifty million dollars in additional assistance for communities
Speaker 12: receiving migrants.
Speaker 7: On the ground. This assistance and planning didn't exactly meet
Speaker 7: the task at hand, albeit the specific call out of
Speaker 7: El Paso does suggest that they saw their task as
Speaker 7: not looking bad. In the right wing media hitse Mordiere
Speaker 7: recorded after a couple of hours walking around talking to
Speaker 7: people at Santisedra, where Customs and Border Protection had detained
Speaker 7: around five hundred people in between the two thirty foot
Speaker 7: fences that make up the border between Santisedro and Tijuana.
Speaker 7: I'm just for people familiar with said, you've got like
Speaker 7: in the Tijuana River Valley park by International Hill, where
Speaker 7: border patrol are holding people in between the two border fences.
Speaker 7: For those who thought we didn't have a border wall
Speaker 7: or weren't having a border wall, we have at least two,
Speaker 7: sometimes three, but right here we have two. People are
Speaker 7: being put in between these fences by border patrol. So
Speaker 7: I just spoke to some young Colombian women who had
Speaker 7: crossed about fifteen miles east of here and then being
Speaker 7: relocated here and there in between these border walls. They
Speaker 7: don't have running water. What food and water they have
Speaker 7: appear to be in surpied by volunteers on the northern side.
Speaker 7: They've just been given space blankets, but a lot of
Speaker 7: people are literally sleeping under bin bags right now. Blankets.
Speaker 7: It's pretty brief. There's one portal toilet sort of thing
Speaker 7: that we can see about five hundred people, So I
Speaker 7: kind of give you an idea of the conditions. Obviously
Speaker 7: those don't live up to the detention conditions at border
Speaker 7: patrol are supposed to hold people under. But here we are,
Speaker 7: I guess have just said that they're calling an ambulance.
Speaker 7: There have been a number of medical emergencies that nearly
Speaker 7: always are in these situations because you're holding people, you know,
Speaker 7: old people, young people, sick people, and they're in the
Speaker 7: sun all day, they're in the cold all night. If
Speaker 7: it rains, they get wet. If it's hot, they get hot,
Speaker 7: if it's cold, they get cold. Their little children were
Speaker 7: just asking me for a blanket a minute ago. She's
Speaker 7: always a pretty bleak thing. If you've not been here,
Speaker 7: you'd be forgiven for not knowing that. We have a
Speaker 7: double layer of wall separating us from our neighbors in Tijuana.
Speaker 7: Both sections are now the Trump period design. But we're
Speaker 7: standing in a place we're not so very long ago,
Speaker 7: Nancy Reagan stood and said she hoped that they wouldn't
Speaker 7: be a fence here for very long. Now there are
Speaker 7: two towering walls and their little children stuck sleeping in
Speaker 7: the dust between them. Or the aid to these people
Speaker 7: had to go through the wall, too, and that meant
Speaker 7: no hot meals because the gaps are smaller than a plate.
Speaker 7: Someone tried to bring tents, but they wouldn't fit. Everything
Speaker 7: from food to clothes to medical supplies had to go
Speaker 7: through the gaps in the wall. Hamara you Sephi, a
Speaker 7: volunteer from the Partnership for the Advancement of New Americans,
Speaker 7: described to me what she saw that night.
Speaker 14: I see about five hundred beautiful, smiling faces of people
Speaker 14: who are desperately trying to get to safety. And they're confused.
Speaker 14: They don't know what's going on. They don't know how
Speaker 14: long it will take them. You know, they many of
Speaker 14: them are aware that something is happening today. Many of
Speaker 14: them are asking, does this mean that I'll be turned back?
Speaker 14: What is going on? I see, you know, people who
Speaker 14: don't even have many kids, don't have shoes, they don't
Speaker 14: have I talked to individuals who lost everything on them.
Speaker 14: They don't have jackets. They're trying to cover themselves with
Speaker 14: any kind of covering that they have, some of them
Speaker 14: using trash bags, others using scarves and other types of
Speaker 14: things to cover themselves from the sun. We are in
Speaker 14: San Diego, so it's quite sunny here.
Speaker 7: The first thing I noticed on arrival was it dozens
Speaker 7: of hands sticking through the wall holding phones and charges.
Speaker 7: That's because people need to use the CBP one app
Speaker 7: to interact with border enforcement, but they've been detained by
Speaker 7: the same border enforcement in between two walls and an
Speaker 7: open field where there obviously isn't any electricity. They also
Speaker 7: need their phones to stay in touch with their families,
Speaker 7: to let them know they survived a difficult and dangerous
Speaker 7: journey and that they're now technically inside the USA. Here's
Speaker 7: the advert a CBP broadcast in Spanish to encourage asylum
Speaker 7: seekers to download the app before they put them in
Speaker 7: a place they couldn't charge their phones.
Speaker 5: Attencion migrane at.
Speaker 12: Attention migrants in Mexico City or further north in the country.
Speaker 12: Why do you need to download CBP one. It's a
Speaker 12: free and legal way to get an appointment guaranteed at
Speaker 12: a port of entry. It's a clear way to solicit asylum,
Speaker 12: and you have the possibility to work while your case
Speaker 12: is being processed. If you present without an appointment, you
Speaker 12: can be prohibited from entering the US for five years.
Speaker 12: You will be subject to expedite a deportation unless you
Speaker 12: comply with the strict requirements of the asylum process. In
Speaker 12: the majority of cases, it is assumed that migrants do
Speaker 12: not comply with the requirements for asylum, and you won't
Speaker 12: have the right to work unless you comply with the
Speaker 12: strict requirements. Again, if you are now in Mexico City
Speaker 12: or further north, download CBP one.
Speaker 7: As we heard yesterday, CBP one has been an a
Speaker 7: mitigated disaster and has shown a very clear bias towards
Speaker 7: certain types of wealthy and white asylum seekers. Despite that
Speaker 7: it seems to have been the only plan in place
Speaker 7: the end of Title forty two. The hundreds of people
Speaker 7: detained in between defenses humbly didn't have appointments, and with
Speaker 7: no way to charge their phones, they couldn't make them.
Speaker 7: It's not clear of making them would have helped, as
Speaker 7: it seems that they were already being detained and thus
Speaker 7: they would have to file defensive asylum claims, effectively stopping
Speaker 7: the repatriation process by claiming that they couldn't safely be
Speaker 7: sent back to their country of origin. This is opposed
Speaker 7: to making an affirmative asylum claim that people should have
Speaker 7: been able to make at the border. With a CBP
Speaker 7: one appointment, these would not have to be argued with
Speaker 7: the threat of repatriation hanging over the person making the claim. Volunteers,
Speaker 7: local people, a mosque group, and a church group all
Speaker 7: showed up soon after CBP began dumping more people in
Speaker 7: between the fences. An hour after my own arrival. I'd
Speaker 7: given away all the charge cables that I had in
Speaker 7: my truck, which is a lot more charge cables than
Speaker 7: I thought I had in my truck, and all my
Speaker 7: charge bricks acrued over six years of getting free shared
Speaker 7: at the consumer electronics show in Las Vegas. Later, I
Speaker 7: came back with a massive solar generator that I'd like
Speaker 7: to use when I'm living off grid, But I still
Speaker 7: need to write stuff. Even all my home electronics ephemera
Speaker 7: and the combined efforts of nonprofits, religious and mutual aid
Speaker 7: groups couldn't really make much difference to five hundred people
Speaker 7: from around the world, mostly families with children being held
Speaker 7: between the two fences. When it got hot, they got hot.
Speaker 7: When it got cold, they got cold. When the wind blew,
Speaker 7: they got dust in their eyes, and everything was constantly dirty.
Speaker 7: The only hot food volunteers could get to them was pizza.
Speaker 7: Some of the detained people had cash, and they were
Speaker 7: able to order door dash on the Tijuana side, but
Speaker 7: again the meals had to fit through a hole barely
Speaker 7: wider than my arm. The only way to get clean
Speaker 7: was with wet wipes, and there was only one bathroom.
Speaker 7: There was no shade or shelter either, and the only
Speaker 7: way people could construct shelters were through tying tops to
Speaker 7: the border wall itself. I like Kaber, one of the
Speaker 7: volunteers who came to help, describe what they saw when
Speaker 7: participating in mutual aid a couple of days after, but.
Speaker 8: It was definitely was I don't think it really struck
Speaker 8: me into you after everything, and you know, after I
Speaker 8: left several hours later. But I mean, I am right
Speaker 8: about the situation at the the kind of matter of
Speaker 8: fackness of there's just several hundred people, including children, just
Speaker 8: kind of between this fence and they're just stuck there
Speaker 8: with nothing, and the sort of matter of factness of
Speaker 8: that all was I think that's struck me the most,
Speaker 8: and it's been a much challenge in the process.
Speaker 7: In the days before the end of Title forty two,
Speaker 7: confusion had reigned at the border. A lot of people
Speaker 7: I talked to mentioned that they thought they had to
Speaker 7: cross before the end of Title forty two or they
Speaker 7: would be ejected and not able to apply for five
Speaker 7: years at a Title eight. This misunderstanding might in part
Speaker 7: be due to some of the misleading rhetoric put out
Speaker 7: by MAJORCAS and others, which focused on the harsh penalties
Speaker 7: for crossing between ports of entry an attempt to appear
Speaker 7: strong on the border to their colleagues in DC. They
Speaker 7: didn't place as much emphasis on the right to present
Speaker 7: and claim asylum at a port of entry. But as
Speaker 7: we saw yesterday, it's virtually impossible to actually do that,
Speaker 7: and Tijuana is already full of thousands of people trying
Speaker 7: to do that exact thing. Given a set of circumstances,
Speaker 7: it makes sense that many people took the days before
Speaker 7: the end of Title forty two and the final chance
Speaker 7: to cross before Title forty two ended. I spoke to
Speaker 7: Diana Rodriguez from Colombia about her understanding of what was
Speaker 7: going to happen.
Speaker 25: Later that night, Dianna Rodriguez the Columbia.
Speaker 7: Diana was with two friends, all of them wearing little
Speaker 7: daisies in their hair and sharing a tarp shelter they'd
Speaker 7: made by tying a blue top against the wall so
Speaker 7: they could get some shade in privacy. I asked her
Speaker 7: where the flowers had come from. You hear the rest
Speaker 7: of into your voice by cherin.
Speaker 26: Oh, the flowers, the flowers are well, there are these
Speaker 26: little flowers, flowers that are growing here, like in the garden.
Speaker 26: So when we went and took a walk over there
Speaker 26: and we found them, we put them on and they're pretty.
Speaker 26: We call these the little yellow flowers of hope, and
Speaker 26: they match the color of our bracelets. We picked them
Speaker 26: on the day we arrived, and we knew that we
Speaker 26: needed a little bit of encouragement. We got the yellow bracelets.
Speaker 26: Because we arrived on Tuesday, everyone got the same bracelet.
Speaker 7: I asked, Diana, which you'd heard about title forty two,
Speaker 7: which is ending a few hours after we talked, Yes,
Speaker 7: it's the end.
Speaker 26: Of title forty two. Title forty two is the one
Speaker 26: that endorses mass deportations. Yes, and well it's a question
Speaker 26: of you not just getting deported, but being repatriated. In
Speaker 26: other words, after this they do a full repatriation. But
Speaker 26: right now you are not registered in the system. But
Speaker 26: what they do is that they only return you. They
Speaker 26: don't register you. But let's say, on the basis of
Speaker 26: Article eight, is that a few at least we are
Speaker 26: invading American territory, then we are in effect breaking a law.
Speaker 26: And what Article eight does is that they deport you.
Speaker 26: They put you in the registered database saying that you
Speaker 26: broke the law, and they punish you for five years
Speaker 26: and you lose the right to request your asylum through
Speaker 26: legal channels.
Speaker 7: Law people at another camp in cu Cumba heard the
Speaker 7: same thing from Colombians, and it seems like there are
Speaker 7: even news pieces run on domestic television explaining that the
Speaker 7: US planned to return many Colombians in the coming months
Speaker 7: and this might be the last best chance to cross
Speaker 7: the border without permanent consequences. You got caught in a
Speaker 7: Cumba volunteers estimated that two thirds of the people corraled
Speaker 7: under the deasert son from Colombia. Of course, in recent years,
Speaker 7: there has been instability and violence there, which also drives migration.
Speaker 7: One of my sources also mentioned a lot of Colombian
Speaker 7: people had seen misleading information about immigration law on TikTok.
Speaker 7: Two days had passed since Janna arrived. She came with
Speaker 7: one of the girls she was now sharing a tarp with.
Speaker 7: I met another when they were all dumped in the
Speaker 7: camp together. In the days before they were detained here,
Speaker 7: they crossed three countries on their way to what they
Speaker 7: it was a better life for young women like them.
Speaker 7: I asked them to describe that journey for me.
Speaker 26: Yes, eight days, eight days more or less walking from
Speaker 26: Columbia from El Salvador to Guatemala, then New Mexico. To
Speaker 26: hear all that time walking and taking the bus. There's
Speaker 26: a part fifteen or twenty minutes from here where the
Speaker 26: wall ends, and we crossed there. There was a Mexican
Speaker 26: patrol and when they changed shifts, we ran and here
Speaker 26: we are on American soil. We arrived on foot and
Speaker 26: the police brought us here. They opened the gate and
Speaker 26: dropped us here.
Speaker 7: Along the way. She said, they've run into a lot
Speaker 7: of people. The migrant journey north is such a common
Speaker 7: trick that people living along the way have found a
Speaker 7: way to make a buck, but also a way to
Speaker 7: make a difference. It's not uncommon for migrants to be extorted, robbed,
Speaker 7: or threatened. It's also not uncommon for them to be
Speaker 7: fed by strangers, perhaps handing off bags with food in
Speaker 7: them to passing trains or buses, or perhaps given a
Speaker 7: place to sleep for the night by someone they might
Speaker 7: never see again.
Speaker 26: Parts where we were extorted, they took all the money
Speaker 26: we brought, They robbed us, they stole our passports, they
Speaker 26: stole our documents. So it's always quite dangerous. Let's say
Speaker 26: that it's dangerous to take this journey. Yes, just as
Speaker 26: we have met some bad people along the way, we
Speaker 26: have also met some very good people, people who have
Speaker 26: given us a hand, people who have helped us, people
Speaker 26: who have collaborated with us in ways you least expect.
Speaker 7: I asked Dianna what she hoped for now she was
Speaker 7: technically inside the USA.
Speaker 26: Yes, let's say the hope is that they will listen
Speaker 26: to our case, listen to our case, and let us
Speaker 26: fight the case inside. Yes, because we want to be
Speaker 26: able to explain the conditions we are in and the
Speaker 26: reasons that those of us who are here came here,
Speaker 26: things like extortion, kidnapping, and because our lives are in
Speaker 26: danger in Colombia. So we wish that they at least
Speaker 26: listened to our case and let us plead our cause.
Speaker 7: Before we started recording, Deanna asked what network I was with.
Speaker 7: I thought that was in stute Qui question. Networks like
Speaker 7: Fox show up at the word, although I didn't see
Speaker 7: any Fox National reporters on my trip. Certainly local news
Speaker 7: channel kus I was there, but they're reporting on the
Speaker 7: ground differed from their xenophobic and outright incorrect online coverage.
Speaker 7: I asked Deana what you'd want to say to folks
Speaker 7: who might have had their perspective influence by the contentt
Speaker 7: demonization of migrants by right wing media.
Speaker 26: There are many people who, let's say, are in a
Speaker 26: mindset of not wanting migrants, and they view them with contempt.
Speaker 26: Because wherea xenophobia exists, it's hard for us because we
Speaker 26: suffer along the way. We would like you to change
Speaker 26: your way of seeing things and your way of thinking
Speaker 26: so that you don't look at us with contempt. We
Speaker 26: have a saying in Columbia that says that he who
Speaker 26: was born in a golden cradle never suffers or never
Speaker 26: sees what he does not know. So it's hard when
Speaker 26: you're born in a golden cradle and you don't see
Speaker 26: beyond what you have. So there are people that in
Speaker 26: our case, in my case, I lived a very hard
Speaker 26: life where you see the war between armed groups. They
Speaker 26: exist outside the law and they can control an area,
Speaker 26: and you see the kidnapping, you see the rape of girls, recruitment, extortion, death. Yes,
Speaker 26: so it's hard when we experience that and people say
Speaker 26: things like these migrants are coming to invade our country,
Speaker 26: we also ask them to treat us as people, because
Speaker 26: if we are here, it is not because we want
Speaker 26: to invade a territory. It is because we want to
Speaker 26: come to fight for a better future for our children
Speaker 26: without stepping on anyone. Nobody wants this. But where we
Speaker 26: come from, we receive travelers with open arms. And it's
Speaker 26: hard when one is a migrant, when one lives the
Speaker 26: experience of being a migrant, it is a very hard
Speaker 26: thing to be a migrant, having to endure cold, hunger, rain, sun,
Speaker 26: that is all these things, and then arriving here and
Speaker 26: seeing of contempt. It's hard. It is very hard. So yes,
Speaker 26: the important thing is that people must know that being
Speaker 26: an immigrant is not easy. Being an immigrant is not easy.
Speaker 7: One of her friends, who she was sharing a top with,
Speaker 7: leaned over to give an example.
Speaker 26: Everyone despairs because everyone wants to leave, so everyone sees
Speaker 26: each other as enemies. So let's say, for example, right now,
Speaker 26: when they are sending cars to collect people to process,
Speaker 26: so everyone there thinks, I hope they take me. Then
Speaker 26: when they don't, it gets to a point where, yes,
Speaker 26: where you despair. I mean it's desperate, but well everyone
Speaker 26: everyone is in the fight together, all in the fight.
Speaker 7: I have to get another dusting down from a cbpah
Speaker 7: and who really like to RaSE his squad bike passing
Speaker 7: Mutulaid tables. Spoke to a man from Angola. I leave
Speaker 7: his name out, as he preferred for me not to
Speaker 7: share it. He'd been into Juana for three days, he said,
Speaker 7: I was waiting his chance to plead his case for asylum.
Speaker 12: No, it's just me and my sister. We suffered a lot.
Speaker 12: There were bandits. We came here to be safe. It's
Speaker 12: no way to live. People broke into our house to
Speaker 12: violate women, to look for people and I was injured, then, Yeah,
Speaker 12: why did I leave to come here? Over there? They're
Speaker 12: not they're not the means to live.
Speaker 7: We didn't get a chance to talk for long, and
Speaker 7: some of the recording I got wasn't very good. He
Speaker 7: was waiting in line for food, and to be quite honest,
Speaker 7: I don't like prodding people to share their trauma, but
Speaker 7: with so many journalists crowding the border asking him to
Speaker 7: do just that, it tends to be what people offer.
Speaker 7: Lots of African migrants can be quite cautious of the
Speaker 7: media because talking to the media at home could get
Speaker 7: them in trouble. I spoke to a friend of mine
Speaker 7: himself a migrant from Africa. He said that if migrants
Speaker 7: don't to be English or Spanish, it can be very
Speaker 7: hard for them to get information, and there aren't as
Speaker 7: many nonprofits set up to serve them as there are
Speaker 7: for Spanish speaking people, for example. They can often end
Speaker 7: up isolated and alone. I did get a better chance
Speaker 7: to talk to a Jamaican man called Joseph. It's his
Speaker 7: singing you've heard at the start of this episode. Mostly
Speaker 7: we talked about things in America, about how he lost
Speaker 7: his phone on his journey we got him another one
Speaker 7: at Walmart and about things like football and music. I
Speaker 7: didn't record all of that because sometimes it's nice to
Speaker 7: just talk to people. Hopefully it makes their dair a
Speaker 7: bit brighter and gives them some information maybe they could help.
Speaker 7: He did let me record a bit of an interview
Speaker 7: and some of him singing. He was pretty guarded on
Speaker 7: the recording, but as you can hear in this clip,
Speaker 7: we had a good time when we weren't recording.
Speaker 27: Up up.
Speaker 10: You know it's journally is it going on yelling gen length?
Speaker 24: But Molly, it's going off, not going lengthy, and let
Speaker 24: me see Ian for this sky and me I'm pre
Speaker 24: my mama says something push free and glow and read
Speaker 24: for them, say might smile them, No normals do and
Speaker 24: read beIN gonna talk.
Speaker 10: Can I watch me? Hey man? Grateful man, grateful? I
Speaker 10: went not and go my smile. Yeah.
Speaker 24: Once there is life. God, I want to give you
Speaker 24: everything for some fune. Yeah, love suck pick up to
Speaker 24: job me a car. I got to eat and come back.
Speaker 24: I'm seeing Yeah, man, that's it one love.
Speaker 10: Oh that was beautiful. Yeah, I'm I'm I'm Joseph.
Speaker 7: And asked him about some of the stuff we spoke
Speaker 7: about before, but he didn't want to share it.
Speaker 24: Yeah, that's the whole testimony, Me and you and God
Speaker 24: have to go into church for that.
Speaker 10: But I'm gonna give you that the next time.
Speaker 7: Okay, buddy, all right, just experienced a lot of personal
Speaker 7: harm from conflict back home in Jamaica. I had a
Speaker 7: difficult journey here with his five year old son.
Speaker 10: Yeah, it's rough. It's rough out there, man, you know
Speaker 10: it's rough.
Speaker 7: How did you come like you come? I asked him
Speaker 7: how his young son had dealt with the journey. It's
Speaker 7: not a safe or easy one for an adult, let
Speaker 7: alone for a little child.
Speaker 24: It's like he's just kind of scary, broll he pulled you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's good.
Speaker 10: You have my energy inside.
Speaker 1: That's good.
Speaker 10: Yeah.
Speaker 7: Are you how's he finding it here in the camp?
Speaker 10: Oh? Yeah, that camp. I don't know why. That guy
Speaker 10: is just like me.
Speaker 24: We just don't make anything better us. Yeah, what's it's
Speaker 24: working here? Because you guys give it a strength and
Speaker 24: supporting us.
Speaker 7: You know, Joseph wanted me to know that he wasn't
Speaker 7: giving up his home. He loves Jamaica, but he also
Speaker 7: wants a better life for his son.
Speaker 24: It's not that, it's not that. It's not like I'm
Speaker 24: giving away my home. My home is a good place. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 24: it's a good island, nice place to be.
Speaker 7: Of course, his perspective is very common, and it's one
Speaker 7: that often gets left out of reporting. Coming to the
Speaker 7: USA is a very hopeful act. It's not abandoning your
Speaker 7: family or your home. It's trying to make their lives better,
Speaker 7: in your life livable. Joseph was quite guided with this story,
Speaker 7: and that's fine. It's his to share as much as
Speaker 7: little as he wants. I came to the USA without
Speaker 7: having to get persecuted or hurt, and people who don't
Speaker 7: look like me should have that same right as well. Sadly,
Speaker 7: coming to the USA is also scary and confusing, even
Speaker 7: for me with three university degrees and all the intersectional
Speaker 7: privilege I have and fifteen years living here, and I've
Speaker 7: recently minted US passport. Now, I worried for years that
Speaker 7: maybe I'd made a mistake on a form or missed
Speaker 7: some kind of deadline. Speaking of deadlines, what none of
Speaker 7: the migrants could tell us, what they all wanted to
Speaker 7: ask about, was exactly what was happening to them as
Speaker 7: Title forty two expired. A Congolese lady asked me if
Speaker 7: her passport would be confiscated. A lady from Senegal asked
Speaker 7: if she needed to pay a bribe like the one
Speaker 7: she'd paid in Mexico. It wasn't really clear at first
Speaker 7: if these people were being detained and under what process
Speaker 7: they were being received. Would they be sent back to
Speaker 7: Mexico and a Title forty two repatriated under Biden's interpretation
Speaker 7: of Title eight, or given the right to plead their
Speaker 7: case with international and US law suggests it should be
Speaker 7: able to CBP made people sit in lines all day
Speaker 7: with no indication of when they would be taken to
Speaker 7: the porta Entry for processing. Sometimes I heard people saying
Speaker 7: if everyone didn't sit down, there will be nobody process
Speaker 7: that day. But the only food, water, and medical attention
Speaker 7: available to the migrants was that which could be passed
Speaker 7: through the wall, and they had to get out of
Speaker 7: their lines to receive this aid. I'll let Kaber describe
Speaker 7: what this looked like.
Speaker 8: And they had people waiting in lines that you had
Speaker 8: to sit in a line and sign spot and but
Speaker 8: it wasn't always clear if these how those lines actually
Speaker 8: worked because they would kind of take people for some
Speaker 8: lots of places. I think they might have been prioritizing
Speaker 8: from children, people with some kind of medical needs or
Speaker 8: something like that that you would never know when they
Speaker 8: were going to come, and we didn't seem to know
Speaker 8: us that they were going to choused to take. We
Speaker 8: assume we didn't know exactly we were taking them, but
Speaker 8: we assume they were taking the point of entry in
Speaker 8: Senna Secret, which is beout a mile away, and so
Speaker 8: moment always happened when they come and get a group
Speaker 8: is like three or four people from that group would
Speaker 8: sprint over to the world because we still had their
Speaker 8: phones and side people wasn't going to wait for us
Speaker 8: to get the funds.
Speaker 7: One thing a lot of people we talked to shared
Speaker 7: was that there was another camp, which we later found
Speaker 7: house as many as eight hundred single men. It's fairly
Speaker 7: usual to keep single men apart from families, but keeping
Speaker 7: them in an inaccessible place without adequate food or water
Speaker 7: is not usual. The camp was further west, and despite
Speaker 7: repeated requests from myself and others, including those delivering aid,
Speaker 7: we were not allowed to access it. One pair of
Speaker 7: Jamaican twins. Both young men told me they had walked
Speaker 7: up there and that things were very bad. People were
Speaker 7: only given one small water bottom the granola bar every day,
Speaker 7: they said. One person told me they'd heard people eating grass.
Speaker 7: I asked CBP's press office for information on this, but
Speaker 7: they didn't respond. Here's one clip of a man trying
Speaker 7: to explain how bad things were there. It's hard to
Speaker 7: communicate across language barriers, and with a war between you,
Speaker 7: it's even harder. But I could tell he was very
Speaker 7: concerned for the folks that we couldn't get to. Despite
Speaker 7: myself and others trying, and me addressing this issue directly
Speaker 7: and emails to CBP, I never got any response on
Speaker 7: why people were not allowed to help the single men
Speaker 7: in the other camp.
Speaker 10: Just not helping.
Speaker 28: What little water, chocold nothing else, No food, no water, blankets,
Speaker 28: blows nothing.
Speaker 7: I'll go try and go up there. Even with these
Speaker 7: camps being pretty desperate places, folks look after one another.
Speaker 7: We spoke a lot with one lady who spoke English.
Speaker 7: She was there with her own family, but she was
Speaker 7: also looking after two Tagik children who'd come alone. Their
Speaker 7: mother spoke a little English, so she relayed news to
Speaker 7: the children by calling their mother and having her translated
Speaker 7: for her children. Other folks took it upon themselves to
Speaker 7: try and walk to the camp for single men with water,
Speaker 7: and people constantly helped us find the owners of phone
Speaker 7: by wandering through the rows of people sheltering under taps
Speaker 7: and space blankets to look for people who had left
Speaker 7: us their devices to charge. In Nucumber, a town an
Speaker 7: hour or so east of San Diego, things were worse.
Speaker 7: Cumber's home to a cute hotel, a lovely lake, a
Speaker 7: hot spring, and an awful lot of big rugs. When
Speaker 7: the border war was being built in Earnest before the
Speaker 7: twenty twenty election, they skipped some of the harder areas.
Speaker 7: Perhaps they figured it would be too hard to cross there,
Speaker 7: it's not perhaps they wanted to maximize the mileage before
Speaker 7: election day. Well it didn't help much, but either way,
Speaker 7: for some reason, the wall just takes a little break
Speaker 7: in her Cumber and this makes crossing marginally easier there. However,
Speaker 7: the boulder fields, scorching hot days and cold nights make
Speaker 7: it anything but easy. On Thursday night, the eleventh of May,
Speaker 7: locals in a Cumber became aware that CBP were holding
Speaker 7: people on a dirt road in the open desert, just
Speaker 7: a few miles east of town and a few hundred
Speaker 7: feet from the wall. The people held they didn't have
Speaker 7: access to toilets, running water, or shelter. With every hour
Speaker 7: that went past, the number of people grew. The biggest
Speaker 7: camp soon held over a thousand people desperately trying to
Speaker 7: scratch out a little shade in the desert. Other smaller
Speaker 7: camps popped up. One was apparently in someone's yard, and
Speaker 7: the people of this tiny desert town sod about helping
Speaker 7: as best they could. Soon they were joined by volunteers
Speaker 7: from all over the county. Katie was one of those volunteers.
Speaker 7: She doesn't live in a cumber but her friends do
Speaker 7: and her family sometimes spends time there. Once she heard
Speaker 7: about what was happening, she knew she had to help.
Speaker 7: I let her describe her feelings after she saw the
Speaker 7: posts on, and then drove out to Kumba to see
Speaker 7: what she could do to help.
Speaker 25: At first, I was just super touched by the activation
Speaker 25: and the carrying, and my son was asleep, comfortable in
Speaker 25: his car seat, you know, in our Mercedes van, and
Speaker 25: my husband is still trying to get citizenship after being
Speaker 25: here since he was two years old. So and we're
Speaker 25: married and he pays taxes. And when I saw our
Speaker 25: friends activating, I just told him tomorrow's Mother's Day and
Speaker 25: I need to come back here, and it's not safe
Speaker 25: for you here. So when I first arrived, I thought
Speaker 25: it was kind of odd that everything was organized around
Speaker 25: a random road that has a gate, and there were
Speaker 25: five only five border patrol at the time, and about
Speaker 25: that was a larger camp. So I want to say
Speaker 25: at least eight hundred people, maybe a thousand. I didn't
Speaker 25: see them all because many of them were received their
Speaker 25: donations and the assistance and went back to their shelters.
Speaker 7: A few days after the migrants arrived, I camped out
Speaker 7: in Hucumber. I was cold in my sleeping bag at
Speaker 7: night and dizzy in the sun in the day. It's
Speaker 7: not a place where you'd want to be stuck outside
Speaker 7: the law, but it's a place where fifteen hundred or
Speaker 7: so people were held for days, little more than the
Speaker 7: shelters they built out of career certain mesquite to protect
Speaker 7: their families from the elements. They slept on the dirt
Speaker 7: or in cardboard boxes left over from the foodolunteers fed
Speaker 7: them and under whatever folks and tiny desert count could
Speaker 7: find to give them. By the time I arrived, the
Speaker 7: migrants were gone and volunteers were cleaning up. The landscape
Speaker 7: was dotted with impressively constructed brush shelters. Volunteers from her
Speaker 7: Cumba set up tables to distribute food, blankets, water, and clothing.
Speaker 7: Other volunteers stayed away from the camp itself and spent
Speaker 7: time packing things into individual sizes, perhaps combining hats and
Speaker 7: socks and maybe a toy for child in one bag,
Speaker 7: or breaking down costco packages of snacks into individual portions.
Speaker 7: It's not necessarily the most rewarding task, but it's an
Speaker 7: important one. I asked Marissa, another volunteer who had previously
Speaker 7: worked in San Diego for the Forest Service, what she
Speaker 7: felt when we were cleaning out some of those shelters
Speaker 7: together a couple of days later.
Speaker 29: I don't know the best way to say this, but
Speaker 29: what hit me deeper was when this might seem strange,
Speaker 29: but when I saw women's sanitary napkins.
Speaker 26: Or the diaper or.
Speaker 29: The babies like it was kind of like a fabric
Speaker 29: padded crib basinet type thing that suddenly hit me on
Speaker 29: a deeper level. Would make me emotional because it's like
Speaker 29: then you start to realize, like, wow, what if that
Speaker 29: was me and my child or I'm not a mother,
Speaker 29: but I can only imagine what that must be like
Speaker 29: for them to be going through these things as a
Speaker 29: as a woman, being on your period and being out
Speaker 29: and not having anything, you know, going to the bathroom
Speaker 29: out there. What do you use when you don't have
Speaker 29: those supplies?
Speaker 4: So yeah, it just.
Speaker 29: That was when it hit me deeper and I knew
Speaker 29: I was doing the right thing by being out there
Speaker 29: and helping in whatever way I could. I don't when
Speaker 29: it comes to the politics side of it, when it
Speaker 29: comes to like legality and just different aspects of it.
Speaker 29: In that way, I don't have necessarily an opinion one
Speaker 29: way or another. I'm not educated enough to feel like
Speaker 29: I can argue one way or another or defend one
Speaker 29: position or another. I went out there purely for my
Speaker 29: love of humanity, and I think being able to support
Speaker 29: in whatever way I can that was the way that
Speaker 29: I felt like I could serve and be a support.
Speaker 7: Katie hadn't expected to meet migrants at the camp when
Speaker 7: she first showed up, She knew it was important not
Speaker 7: to flog the camp with volunteers, and the help was
Speaker 7: needed packaging and preparing aid drops, which she was happy
Speaker 7: to do. But in the end she traveled up to
Speaker 7: the camp with a friend who spoke Portuguese so they
Speaker 7: could help translate and distribute supplies. I asked her what
Speaker 7: it was like to see the supplies she'd purchased a
Speaker 7: few hours before end up in the hands of people
Speaker 7: who but you needed them.
Speaker 25: They don't even have a grocery store in Hukumba. They
Speaker 25: have one mini mart with nothing in it, and that
Speaker 25: was sold out the first day. So these people who
Speaker 25: we would look at without a lot of resources, passing
Speaker 25: the abundance of what they actually have, well, I saw
Speaker 25: a lot of families there. I could tell that there
Speaker 25: were leaders within the group because they were helping organize
Speaker 25: as much as the volunteers were. And unfortunately there was
Speaker 25: language barriers, you know, and so those that could speak
Speaker 25: multiple languages, whether they were border crossers or volunteers, were
Speaker 25: together in it and or and that was part of
Speaker 25: that organization that I'm talking about, you know. And it
Speaker 25: was actually a very calm scene when we first came
Speaker 25: up I saw my son's hat that I donated and
Speaker 25: a little boy hugging this jaguar stuffed animal, and the
Speaker 25: jaguar was really significant to my friend and I when
Speaker 25: we found it. So it was really touching just to
Speaker 25: like see the things that we were bringing being literally
Speaker 25: being distributed, like sometimes when you think you're helping. I
Speaker 25: worked for a door to door campaign when I was
Speaker 25: in my teens and I got fifty percent of what
Speaker 25: I raised, and it was like disheartening, and you're like, oh,
Speaker 25: this is how it works. And in this case, money
Speaker 25: that I directly you spent on resources that were needed
Speaker 25: was going directly to the people.
Speaker 7: In all likelihood, people crossed in a specific spot because
Speaker 7: someone dropped them there telling them it would be easy.
Speaker 7: In fact it was anything but people die crossing around here.
Speaker 7: In the dirt around Cucumber, I found discarded flight circtineries
Speaker 7: and documents from Turkey, Nicaragua, Columbia, Mexico. There were also
Speaker 7: little children's toys, shoes, and hundreds of empty water bottles
Speaker 7: which we diligently picked up. But none of the more
Speaker 7: than one thousand people who the Boarder Patrol held in
Speaker 7: this camp had planned for what they got, which was
Speaker 7: several days being detained in the desert by CBP with
Speaker 7: intefficient water, no shelter, and very little food, and no
Speaker 7: information on what was happening or how long they could
Speaker 7: expect to be there. Sadly didn't get there in time
Speaker 7: to speak to any of them. I was in Arizona
Speaker 7: looking for border vigilantes and wondering what CBP had been
Speaker 7: doing to migrants there where they have the full support
Speaker 7: of local law enforcement and a large percentage of the
Speaker 7: aging population. To my surprise, he didn't find much. It
Speaker 7: seems like most people had crossed in the San Diego
Speaker 7: County area. Many had flown or walked to Tijuana. Of course, migrants,
Speaker 7: just like us, have accessed the news and to weather
Speaker 7: forecast and maps. Crossing in Arizona, a place known for
Speaker 7: cruelty and very hot weather, doesn't make any sense when
Speaker 7: California offers a better political and weather climate, and with
Speaker 7: the mixed messages coming out of immigration law, these folks
Speaker 7: may not have been intending to evade border patrol, but
Speaker 7: to come to the USA and take their legal right
Speaker 7: to claim asylum. I spoke to Sam, a volunteer with
Speaker 7: extensive on the ground experience in humanitarian crises about what
Speaker 7: he'd seen at the camp.
Speaker 1: Oh, my name is Sam Schultz.
Speaker 7: He said, many of the people who found themselves in
Speaker 7: Cucumber had likely been told by people smugglers, but this
Speaker 7: was an easy way into the US. In the end,
Speaker 7: it was anything but.
Speaker 30: They I mean, I know they didn't expect that they
Speaker 30: organic waltz across the border at a normal check station,
Speaker 30: but they thought it was going to be.
Speaker 1: They were sold in bill the goods.
Speaker 30: So let's put it back, Yes, that's it, And so
Speaker 30: I mean, I feel sorry for anybody who's take advantage
Speaker 30: of all like that. But most of the people that
Speaker 30: I met again who are not Colombians, were of the
Speaker 30: wealthier side of the on their countries. I met Tomspecks,
Speaker 30: some Kazakis, a bunch of people from India, a couple
Speaker 30: of Pakistani guys, minery.
Speaker 1: I mean, they didn't get here cheap.
Speaker 7: The wall behind the people in Hookumba cost twenty five
Speaker 7: million dollars a mile. On average. The border patrol agent
Speaker 7: drove around in f one to fifty rapped to trucks
Speaker 7: that started eighty thousand dollars and each make a starting
Speaker 7: salary of over sixty thousand dollars in their first year.
Speaker 7: Surveillance towers that dot the desert, including one which provided
Speaker 7: a tiny scrap of shade to migrants to restic under
Speaker 7: its solar panels, can cost a million dollars apiece, but
Speaker 7: people in the Cumba received only one small water bottle
Speaker 7: each day despite the punishing weather. Although Customs and Border
Speaker 7: Protection did not seem to make any plan to shelter
Speaker 7: migrants in a cumber, they did plan to have contractors
Speaker 7: paid forty dollars an hour to take them away. I
Speaker 7: found a job advert for a Southwest Border Transportation and
Speaker 7: security officer at ISS Action Security. The agency photograph transporting
Speaker 7: migrants in Hakumba. The job posting, which was posted two
Speaker 7: weeks before the end of Title forty two, has a
Speaker 7: description that includes patting down all detainees and applying appropriate
Speaker 7: restraints prior to boarding vehicles. The process through its migrants
Speaker 7: become detainees normally involves processing which had not been done
Speaker 7: in Nucumber, But it seems that presumption of ineligibility announced
Speaker 7: on the day Title forty two ended came into effect here.
Speaker 7: This might seem a minor distinction, but it's important It
Speaker 7: means that people have to file a defensive asylum claim
Speaker 7: and not an affirmative one. They have to plead why
Speaker 7: they shouldn't be deported rather than why they have a
Speaker 7: right to stay. Many of the people who have been
Speaker 7: trying to cross before the end of Title forty two,
Speaker 7: like Diana, because they felt they would face a less
Speaker 7: serious penalty. Many of them flew to Twinea. I walked
Speaker 7: from further south in Mexico or even in Central America.
Speaker 7: I likely spent their entire savings on a trip to
Speaker 7: the gap in the wall near Heucumber that ended with
Speaker 7: them being held by border patrol in the open desert.
Speaker 7: Was next to nothing in the way of shelter, sanitation,
Speaker 7: or sustenance. As a way to quantify this, I want
Speaker 7: a reference to UCSD US Immigration Policy Center report apparently
Speaker 7: had some pretty problematic practices, but anyway, these are results
Speaker 7: from its survey. When asked whether border patrol gave them
Speaker 7: enough water for the day, over half of the asylum
Speaker 7: seekers that we interviewed, approximately fifty three percent said no.
Speaker 7: Border patrol distributed one water bottle to each migrant in
Speaker 7: the morning. When asked whether border patrol gave them enough
Speaker 7: food for the day, All of the asylum seekers said no.
Speaker 7: Border patrol did not distribute any food. When asked whether
Speaker 7: border patrol provided adequate sanitation such as toilets, all of
Speaker 7: the asylum seekers that we interviewed, meaning one hundred percent,
Speaker 7: said no. Bordert troll provided one porter body for the
Speaker 7: entire encampment. When asked where the border patrol provided adepriate shelter,
Speaker 7: such as shade to protect them from the sun, all
Speaker 7: of the asylum seekers that we interviewed said no. Border
Speaker 7: patrol did not provide any shelter. When asked whether border
Speaker 7: patrol provided blankets to keep them warm at night, all
Speaker 7: but one of the asylum seekers we interviewed said no.
Speaker 7: Border patrol provided blankets some migrants, but the overwhelming majority,
Speaker 7: did not receive blankets. Altogether, two thirds of the asylum
Speaker 7: seekers we interviewed said that they agree or strongly agree
Speaker 7: with the statement. If I did not receive food and
Speaker 7: water from volunteers, I would not get enough food and
Speaker 7: water from border patrol to survive. These aren't exaggerations, as
Speaker 7: we'll see, several migrants did come very close to losing
Speaker 7: their lives in the five or more days that CBP
Speaker 7: detained people out in the open along the border. Medical
Speaker 7: incidents in this kind of attention are far from uncommon.
Speaker 7: A lawsuit filed against Customs of Border Protection by the
Speaker 7: Southern Border Communities Coalition regarding their actions this week, stated
Speaker 7: that quote, many migrants have fallen into medical distress because
Speaker 7: of the conditions, and CVP has been slow to provide
Speaker 7: access to medical attention, often only responding at the insistence
Speaker 7: of advocates. As a result, one woman suffered life threatening allergies,
Speaker 7: a child suffered an epileptic seizure, and a man suffered
Speaker 7: an unattended infection on his leg. Medical attention was slow
Speaker 7: to arrive, and when it did arrive, it was often insufficient. Kay,
Speaker 7: but describe the conditions they saw a couple of days
Speaker 7: after the end of Title forty two.
Speaker 8: That's really the partct that hard inter state. The conditions
Speaker 8: there were not safe or sanitary. I guess this is
Speaker 8: sort of related to medical issues, but there was that's been,
Speaker 8: you know, to their credit. A suspect has been reported
Speaker 8: in the media that there was a single portable toilet
Speaker 8: for anywhere from I guess there's probably a twilet to
Speaker 8: four hundred people there. I heard a couple of different
Speaker 8: citations of how often this toilet is serviced and cleaned
Speaker 8: and the waste removed anywhere from once or twice a
Speaker 8: week to once every week or two weeks. Either way,
Speaker 8: that's not remotely sufficient for four hundred people using the
Speaker 8: bathroom multiple times a day in this single portable like
Speaker 8: just a construction site toilet. It was right next to
Speaker 8: the phone charging station on the other side of the wall,
Speaker 8: and I would just feel sick if I got if
Speaker 8: I sit too close to it. It was really vile.
Speaker 8: It was not safe. It is not a way for
Speaker 8: people to be helping. And I do know, I think
Speaker 8: a lot of thankfully people stop using it, but then
Speaker 8: they don't have any you know, a privacy or that
Speaker 8: that's still not you know, a sanitary situation to be
Speaker 8: in since I mean, they don't have a future space anywhere.
Speaker 8: So that's definitely one of the way is that people
Speaker 8: intention to help safe.
Speaker 7: He's Samara who hear more from tomorrow describe being another
Speaker 7: medical incident.
Speaker 14: And the call that I got this morning was of
Speaker 14: a woman who was rushed out because she had an
Speaker 14: emergency situation, taken to the hospital. The hospital didn't know
Speaker 14: what to do with her, so they sat her right
Speaker 14: back here in the middle of the night, in the
Speaker 14: middle of the night, and they brought her here. She
Speaker 14: doesn't have any documents. CBP didn't get a chance to
Speaker 14: process her yet, so she doesn't even have any proof
Speaker 14: that she actually came to the port of entry and
Speaker 14: try to seek asylum. And she was just sleeping right here.
Speaker 14: And she has burns all over her body, has an infection.
Speaker 14: I read the the seven medications that they gave her,
Speaker 14: and she speaks daddy. She's from avon Astan. Her husband
Speaker 14: got taken by the Taliban, and she escaped, running for
Speaker 14: her life. And she's here and she has sunburns all
Speaker 14: over her face and she has nowhere to go. She
Speaker 14: thought she was still detained. She actually thought she was
Speaker 14: still detained. She was just trying to get back to
Speaker 14: the other side of the border. She thought she was
Speaker 14: still in Mexico. No one explained anything to her. They
Speaker 14: brought her back here in the middle of the night,
Speaker 14: and she was freezing, and so we brought That's why
Speaker 14: I came out here. I talked to her. The other
Speaker 14: folks who were out here didn't know why she was
Speaker 14: just sleeping here, and I came out and tried to
Speaker 14: translate it, and now we have her at a hotel.
Speaker 7: Cable witness one of the emergencies described in the Southern
Speaker 7: Border Communities Coalition lawsuit when they visited the camp. He's
Speaker 7: him describing it in.
Speaker 8: Terms of you know, medical care as well. Like I said,
Speaker 8: one of the parts of the aid operation, I was
Speaker 8: my n most people. I think there's a permonation both
Speaker 8: of people who were you know and the true medicine
Speaker 8: as well as people who were like nurses volunteering their
Speaker 8: prime and mostly taking care of just kind of retained
Speaker 8: first aid for the most part. There was a situation
Speaker 8: where someone was having an ellergic reaction, a fairly severe one,
Speaker 8: and and I happen to carry an EpiPen, so I
Speaker 8: have simply give that to the one of one of
Speaker 8: the stegematics, and then they eventually did call this person.
Speaker 8: The reaction got severe enough that it was an an
Speaker 8: hour or so later at that nine one was called,
Speaker 8: I assumed by one of the volunteers, and uh Amber
Speaker 8: Villaince and Border Patrol came to open the gate and
Speaker 8: and bring this person in the country. They did eventually
Speaker 8: treat her, but it was a very it was a
Speaker 8: long time. I connunced it acceptance, which is someone as
Speaker 8: someone who has anaphlexis reactions food and it's had that
Speaker 8: happened many times in their life. That is absolutely terrifying.
Speaker 8: I cannot imagine how terrifying it would be to be
Speaker 8: experiencing uh A her wife priding situation, and when you
Speaker 8: worked for APPS and you know there's no authority about
Speaker 8: many parents 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 s while especially once.
Speaker 7: We're training, where volunteers weren't. Things were worse in Texas.
Speaker 7: And Rees Alvarez, an eight year old girl born in
Speaker 7: Panama to or On daur and parents, died in CBP custody.
Speaker 7: Roselle Rees, the girl's father, told NBC News that they
Speaker 7: gave authorities documents about the girl's medical conditions congenital heart
Speaker 7: disease and sickle cell anemia while they were in immigration custody.
Speaker 7: They said that a doctor there examined danideath and that
Speaker 7: she had contracted the flu. Alvarez, her mother said she
Speaker 7: spoke to both detentional authorities and medical personnel at the
Speaker 7: station multiple times to explain her daughter was complaining of
Speaker 7: pain and shortness of breath and that she was getting worse.
Speaker 7: I'll quite the next part directly from the NBC story.
Speaker 7: They never listened to me, she said. Veas said his
Speaker 7: daughter was in a lot of pain, a lot of pain.
Speaker 7: I begged them to call an ambulance, Alvarez said, adding
Speaker 7: the authorities told her the girl's condition wasn't serious enough
Speaker 7: to warrant calling an ambulance. Alvarez said her daughter begged
Speaker 7: authorities as well, telling them she could not breathe from
Speaker 7: her nose or mouth. Alvarez says that eventually her daughter
Speaker 7: lost consciousness and died in my arms. She said, authorities
Speaker 7: took the girl from her arms and put her on
Speaker 7: the floor trying to revive her. My daughter died there
Speaker 7: in the station, she said. Avare said she feels authorities
Speaker 7: did not do enough to help her little girl. My
Speaker 7: daughter is a human being. They had to take care
Speaker 7: of her, she said. Despite what you might have heard
Speaker 7: on the network news, the asylum process is anything but easy.
Speaker 7: I've had several visas, a green card and a US passport,
Speaker 7: and I can completly tell you the only easy way
Speaker 7: I've ever seen to come here is to be very rich.
Speaker 7: But even among the convoluted bureaucratic mess that is US immigration,
Speaker 7: the asylum process stands out as both rigorous and complicated.
Speaker 7: Asylum is a process by which people unable or unwilling
Speaker 7: to return to their country because of persecution or a
Speaker 7: well founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, politics,
Speaker 7: or membership of a particular social group may remain in
Speaker 7: a safe country. From the eleventh of May onwards, migrants
Speaker 7: at the border were assumed ineligible for asylum. If they
Speaker 7: cross between points of entry, they must enter the defensive
Speaker 7: asylum process to prevent themselves from being deported. What this
Speaker 7: means for people we heard from earlier is that they
Speaker 7: are now taken for whatever God forsake and holding area they'rein,
Speaker 7: and bust to a processing facility where they are interviewed
Speaker 7: by an asylum officer to determine if they have a
Speaker 7: credible fear of persecution. They may need to provide a
Speaker 7: translator if there is an interviewing agent who speaks their language,
Speaker 7: and if they're determined to have a credible fear they're
Speaker 7: told to check in with the US Customs and Immigration
Speaker 7: Office and sometimes given a notice which may or may
Speaker 7: not be dated to appear in court. My colleague Joe
Speaker 7: tried to get into one of these hotels to talk
Speaker 7: to one of the people we'd spoken to at the border,
Speaker 7: but he was pretty quickly shut down.
Speaker 15: Yeah, how you doing either, I'm a freelance journalist. I'm
Speaker 15: here reporting for my boss, James Stout, he's at iHeartMedia.
Speaker 15: I'm wondering if you're letting media in here to see
Speaker 15: the causa.
Speaker 10: Okay, also the act you guys and I took the
Speaker 10: strict any of this area here? Okay.
Speaker 1: Well, if you're going to set up, it has to
Speaker 1: be on the side of the line.
Speaker 10: Because they have a line of traffic.
Speaker 23: Yeah, and it's very dangerous for your ka.
Speaker 10: So like beyond here, past the college. Yeah, from here
Speaker 10: over okay, cool, I'll.
Speaker 31: Say how you're way.
Speaker 16: Thank you.
Speaker 7: One of the folks we'd met was able to stay
Speaker 7: in touch for our WhatsApp and share the hotel rules
Speaker 7: with us. They were pretty strict. Migrants are confined to
Speaker 7: their rooms, they can't have visitors, and they can't even
Speaker 7: order food delivery from the hotel where they're hosted by
Speaker 7: Catholic charities. Migrants need to get to their sponsor in
Speaker 7: the United States if they have one. If they don't
Speaker 7: have one, they can be sent just about anywhere. I've
Speaker 7: heard of East African folks having ended up in Alaska,
Speaker 7: for example. Once they get to where they're going to be,
Speaker 7: they check in with US Customs and Immigration Services in
Speaker 7: their new location, and they're given a special phone which
Speaker 7: also tracks their movements. They may have a DNA sample
Speaker 7: take and in addition to fingerprints. Later, sometimes years later,
Speaker 7: they attend a court hearing or two to determine their
Speaker 7: eligibility to stay. I've heard of lawyers charging from five
Speaker 7: thousand dollars to twelve thousand dollars for these hearings, and
Speaker 7: nonprofit legalists and services are totally overwhelmed. At the moment,
Speaker 7: the system's massively backed up, and court dates are being
Speaker 7: given as far out as twenty twenty seven already. They
Speaker 7: may or may not be able to work during that period,
Speaker 7: and under the table work is getting harder and harder
Speaker 7: to find. Even if they do find work on less
Speaker 7: than minut wage, it can be very hard to say
Speaker 7: about five thousand dollars for a lawyer. A Migrants who
Speaker 7: can't find nonprofit help are at a significant disadvantage when
Speaker 7: it comes to their asylum hearings again private security contractors,
Speaker 7: this time from Allied. We're transporting migrants to the hotel
Speaker 7: and guarding it. Like CBP, the private contractors you guard,
Speaker 7: transport and incarce rate migrants or rely on the broken
Speaker 7: in immigration system to make money. Unlike CBP, the agents
Speaker 7: themselves aren't well paid. Nineteen dollars an hours are going
Speaker 7: rate for Allied, not much higher than San Diego's sixteen
Speaker 7: dollars and thirty cents minimum wage. But the company itself
Speaker 7: is huge. It's the third last year as private employer
Speaker 7: in North America after Walmart and Amazon. Allied guards are
Speaker 7: at prisons, airports, and shopping malls across America, and it's
Speaker 7: alleged that some are underpaid, in sufficiently trained, and improperly vetted.
Speaker 7: The company grosses over twenty billion dollars, and it's affiliates
Speaker 7: of frequent political donors. All across this story, you'll see
Speaker 7: this Allied Security iss action, security people, smugglers, customs and
Speaker 7: border protection contractors who build the wall pieces, and contractors
Speaker 7: who install the wall pieces, General Atomics, who sell CBP drones,
Speaker 7: and the Israelian American companies who sell the surveillance technology.
Speaker 1: To the government.
Speaker 7: All these people make money, but the poorest people in
Speaker 7: the world are the only ones losing money, and sometimes
Speaker 7: they're lives when they cross our southern border. Tomorrow we're
Speaker 7: hear from some of the people who made no money
Speaker 7: and looked after the migrants and will continue to support
Speaker 7: them through the asylum process.
Speaker 17: Try and carpool, try and shove into cars as best
Speaker 17: you can, just so that we don't have a mile long.
Speaker 13: Line of cars.
Speaker 17: We have trash bags, we have gloves, we have things
Speaker 17: that we're bringing up there, so what we have cars
Speaker 17: of you can get all of that out of.
Speaker 10: Once we pull over.
Speaker 29: We're also setting up a couple.
Speaker 10: Of pop ups.
Speaker 7: Hoocomber, California, is a tiny town. You've probably never heard
Speaker 7: of it. It's actually really charming. There's a hot spring
Speaker 7: and a gorgeous hotel, a few stores selling trinkets that
Speaker 7: kind of thing. There's a lovely lake fed by the spring,
Speaker 7: and on this sunbake morning, there are about fifty people
Speaker 7: outside an old petrol station nervously pounding bottles of water,
Speaker 7: applying sunscreen, and getting ready to head out to the
Speaker 7: desert to clear up the ad hoc migrant camp that
Speaker 7: has held as many as fifteen hundred people out in
Speaker 7: the open when Title forty two ended and Border Patrol
Speaker 7: made no plans to keep them anywhere. It was a
Speaker 7: diverse bunch of people hidden beneath sun hats. There's an
Speaker 7: Australian film producer who was at a conference in Orlando
Speaker 7: and booked a fly over, a grad student painter. The
Speaker 7: folks who were in the Hookumber Hotel who organize this
Speaker 7: whole thing, they're friends from the hospitality industry in San Diego.
Speaker 7: There were students and mums and dads and about the
Speaker 7: entire population of this tiny desert town. There were also
Speaker 7: two form international aid workers who are in a tower
Speaker 7: where you can look at the desert, which is actually
Speaker 7: a much cooler thing than it sounds. And there's also
Speaker 7: a museum of boulders right next to it. You should
Speaker 7: probably check them out during the area. I spent the
Speaker 7: day helping out in Acumber after the refugees, some of
Speaker 7: them in handcuffs, have been taken by private contractors to
Speaker 7: be processed by CBP's Office of Field Operations. We met
Speaker 7: at a petrol station in the middle of town. The
Speaker 7: space where the pumps should be was filled with tons,
Speaker 7: and I do mean tons of bottled water, masks, hand
Speaker 7: sanitized or and other necessary supplies. When I'd arrived the
Speaker 7: night before around ten pm, the eerie green and yellow
Speaker 7: lights reflecting from the roof had lit up the palace
Speaker 7: of water like some kind of giant lava lamp, and
Speaker 7: driving across the desert, the town looked like it was glowing.
Speaker 7: The town certainly has had a bit of a glow
Speaker 7: up in the last few years. Three business partners purchased
Speaker 7: their cumber hot Springs Hotel, a down in the mouth
Speaker 7: property that had once been a glamorous desert resort, and
Speaker 7: they've been restoring the place for nearly two years. Inadvertently,
Speaker 7: they also purchased a lot of land and a few
Speaker 7: other rundown buildings in a town that were sold as
Speaker 7: a lot with the hotel. It was in one of
Speaker 7: these buildings, the old gas station, that they set up
Speaker 7: a de facto mutual aid hubbo almost overnight. The hotel's
Speaker 7: not finished yet, and they probably didn't make much progress
Speaker 7: on it during the week when they were feeding more
Speaker 7: than a thousand people in the desert. The town's lake,
Speaker 7: fed by a natural spring, an old bath house used
Speaker 7: to be attractions. Today the bathhouse of roof has fallen off,
Speaker 7: but it still makes a pretty cool coincert venue, and
Speaker 7: the whole town offers commanding views of the border wall,
Speaker 7: which sadly is only a couple of hundred yards from
Speaker 7: the main street. When I arrived in Cucumber, everything was close.
Speaker 7: The mini mark was sold out, the hotel was still
Speaker 7: being worked on, and the hotel kitchen was churning out
Speaker 7: food for volunteers at the clean up effort. I asked Marissa,
Speaker 7: one of the volunteers I met that day, about her
Speaker 7: first impressions on arriving at the meeting point.
Speaker 29: I was incredibly impressed by what the people of Hukumber
Speaker 29: and the hotel group of individuals that have organize this,
Speaker 29: Like I couldn't believe seeing their donation depot in that
Speaker 29: old car wash, just to how well organized everything was,
Speaker 29: and that they provided so much for the volunteers, and
Speaker 29: they just the level of love and compassion and was Yeah,
Speaker 29: it was an amazing opportunity to be part of very humbling.
Speaker 7: I've been there since late the night before after visiting
Speaker 7: border crossings in California and Arizona, and Jeff, one of
Speaker 7: the co owners a hotel kind you let me put
Speaker 7: up my truck in some desert behind his house. Now,
Speaker 7: I'm a person who enjoys sleeping outside, and I do
Speaker 7: it as often as I can. I try and camp
Speaker 7: police once a month. But that night I was cold,
Speaker 7: even underneath my down blanket, and I couldn't help but
Speaker 7: think of how desperate it must have been to spend
Speaker 7: nearly a week out there with nothing but in my
Speaker 7: last base blanket and some thorny bushes to keep you warm.
Speaker 7: It's certainly not the welcome that one would expect from
Speaker 7: their richest nation on Earth, which had three years to repair.
Speaker 7: For the day, Title forty two ended to get a
Speaker 7: bit of background, or I spoke to Natalie.
Speaker 21: So the previous owner bought it at an auction, and
Speaker 21: I don't think that the previous owner didn't realize how
Speaker 21: much she was getting, and he kind of just like
Speaker 21: neglected a bunch of it, you know. And then he
Speaker 21: was older, and so he finally sold off the hotel.
Speaker 21: He thought he was just buying the hotel, but he
Speaker 21: buying all the land as well, so they when they
Speaker 21: bought the hotel, they acquired all the land and they're
Speaker 21: actually putting money into it and fixing everything up, which
Speaker 21: is really wonderful.
Speaker 7: The hotel in Lake and hot Spring really are wonderful.
Speaker 7: But the scene that had played out there on the
Speaker 7: eleventh of May with anything but within a short period
Speaker 7: of time, more than a thousand people of all ages
Speaker 7: and nationalities will be held in the open desert and
Speaker 7: left defend large for themselves. I let Natalie describe the
Speaker 7: space there in.
Speaker 21: There's lots of cactuses everywhere, so there's environmental like a
Speaker 21: watch out where you're walking that it's hot. It's hot
Speaker 21: in the day and really cold at night. Because it's
Speaker 21: the high desert, there can be gusts of wind that
Speaker 21: can just take over, get dust in your eyes, your hair,
Speaker 21: everything is. You're just filthy and lack of food. I mean,
Speaker 21: there's no resources. You're in the middle of nowhere.
Speaker 7: I talked to a lot of the volunteers, many of
Speaker 7: whom have been in the desert for Mediet Week. It'd
Speaker 7: first been made aware of the impending humanitarian crisis late
Speaker 7: on Thursday night, but one of the people working on
Speaker 7: the renovation of the Hotsprings Hotel got a call about it.
Speaker 7: Within a few hours, the hotel z owners and all
Speaker 7: their staff were running what became very nearly the only
Speaker 7: source of food, shelter, and water for more than a
Speaker 7: thousand people trapped and held in the desert by CBP.
Speaker 7: I spoke to Sam, another volunteer, to get a sense
Speaker 7: of response. Now, Sam is a kind of guy who
Speaker 7: just looks like he's a home in the desert, his
Speaker 7: wire brim hat, boots, and long cleaved shirt and pants.
Speaker 7: Told me he spent plenty of days under the baking
Speaker 7: sun out here, and his redness with an isoprople alcohol
Speaker 7: spray to disinfect people's boots after walking in an area
Speaker 7: that was likely covered in human shit, told me he'd
Speaker 7: been around one or two situations like this in the past.
Speaker 30: I spent a great deal of my life as his
Speaker 30: second career, working for in developmental relief logistics in Southeast Asia,
Speaker 30: mainly working with large age organizations for example, World Food Program,
Speaker 30: Doctors without Borders.
Speaker 1: Shoe units, many many different place things.
Speaker 7: In the context of that kind of experience, it's easy
Speaker 7: to understand why people come to the United States, but
Speaker 7: I asked Sam to put the situation here into perspective
Speaker 7: for me. It's understandable that folks came to the US,
Speaker 7: but why into a tiny desert town of five hundred people.
Speaker 30: These people were radically unprepared for what they were going
Speaker 30: to go through because they were sold to BILLI Goods
Speaker 30: by coyotes on the other side about what was going
Speaker 30: to happen to them, you understand. So they had really
Speaker 30: no idea what they were getting into at all. And
Speaker 30: so there was not anything in the way of life
Speaker 30: threatening situations for any of those people in any meaningful way,
Speaker 30: a great deal of discomfort.
Speaker 1: It could have turned.
Speaker 30: Very badly at these people here had not stepped up
Speaker 30: because the border patrol.
Speaker 1: Was completely overwhelmed.
Speaker 30: Yeah, and so there was never that bad of a
Speaker 30: situation here compared to what I have seen in other
Speaker 30: places in the past.
Speaker 7: A sound pointed out the migrants were now gone, but
Speaker 7: we were still surrounded by times of supplies. But at
Speaker 7: the time there was no way of knowing the scope
Speaker 7: or scale of the need, and people reacted as best
Speaker 7: they could.
Speaker 30: Actually, it was overkilled, but you had no way of
Speaker 30: knowing right at the time.
Speaker 1: There's just no way to know. How do you know
Speaker 1: ahead of time?
Speaker 30: You always ask for as much as you can get,
Speaker 30: because why would you not.
Speaker 1: I mean, you never know.
Speaker 30: You don't know how many children with babies are on
Speaker 30: the other side of that wall right now.
Speaker 1: Might be zero, might be five hundred. You have no idea,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 7: Before anyone knew how if this was going to end,
Speaker 7: or really what even was going on, dozens of people
Speaker 7: across the county decided to help. One of them was Katie.
Speaker 7: Here she is describing some of the volunteers she worked alongside.
Speaker 25: There was a hard hodgepodge of people and as volunteers
Speaker 25: and leading it were some of the owners of a
Speaker 25: hotel out there and that was the main organizers. But
Speaker 25: who showed up were people from the town, people that
Speaker 25: I knew and recognized. There were some really devout, like
Speaker 25: they're twenty four hours a day, and then there was
Speaker 25: some coming in and out. But I met people from
Speaker 25: all over the county and most of them answered the
Speaker 25: call through instagram of the hotel.
Speaker 7: All those volunteers called their friends, who called their friends,
Speaker 7: who gradually coordinated response. Natalie first became aware of this,
Speaker 7: as many volunteers did, through an Instagram post by Melissa,
Speaker 7: another the three co owners of the Comba Hotel. On
Speaker 7: Thursday night, just as title forty two was ending, Natalie
Speaker 7: saw the post and decided to help. At first, she
Speaker 7: wanted to leave right then at one am as soon
Speaker 7: as she'd seen the post, but often consulting her family,
Speaker 7: she decided to make her own post, asking for people
Speaker 7: to bring supplies that were needed. Soon she was overwhelmed
Speaker 7: by the response.
Speaker 21: Yeah, I mean immediately, even at one in the morning,
Speaker 21: I was getting messages because I posted it. That's when
Speaker 21: I posted the story. I immediately got messages from front
Speaker 21: say I'll bring a blanket over.
Speaker 5: What's your address? Yeah.
Speaker 21: Everyone just kind of rallied and started bringing supplies over,
Speaker 21: collecting money as well. Some friends started collecting money and
Speaker 21: then bought stuff and brought loads of food and things
Speaker 21: to my house.
Speaker 7: Her husband ferried the supplies to Komba, where they were
Speaker 7: joined by donations from all over the county in the
Speaker 7: old petrol station. Like Natalie, Katie also saw a post
Speaker 7: and immediately felt compelled to help. She called a friend
Speaker 7: and some members of her family instead about raising funds
Speaker 7: and buying supplies.
Speaker 25: So I met my friend at a cafe and in
Speaker 25: that in the meantime, and I don't know how much
Speaker 25: of this is really important. So in the meantime, I
Speaker 25: text my mother and my two sisters who live on
Speaker 25: the East Coast, and just it was late at night
Speaker 25: for them, and I just said, I would love for
Speaker 25: you to send prayers, because.
Speaker 5: That's something that I believe in.
Speaker 25: I believe in prayer or intention and thought reality. So
Speaker 25: and some of it was just because I felt so touch,
Speaker 25: like praying for the community that I love too. And
Speaker 25: the next thing I know, like my venmo was blowing
Speaker 25: up and there was one thousand dollars in my venmo
Speaker 25: send from my family members. And so by the time
Speaker 25: my friend arrived, we were like, let's go, and we
Speaker 25: filled our car with Amazingly, we found like organic, there's
Speaker 25: grocery outlet, right, So we found organic soup for you know,
Speaker 25: dollars something a can, and we spent a few hundred dollars.
Speaker 25: And the next morning we met early and we stopped
Speaker 25: in El Cone on the way and we spent all
Speaker 25: the rest on We went to three or four thrift
Speaker 25: stores and bought every blanket and hat and baby carrier
Speaker 25: because we have both focused on motherhood in our careers.
Speaker 7: I asked people I spoke to about a week later
Speaker 7: how the experience had impacted them.
Speaker 21: It was overwhelming, just the way the community really came
Speaker 21: around and supported the people in Cucumber that were just
Speaker 21: finding help. You know, after we finished cleaning up, when
Speaker 21: we were back at the gas station, the Amazon driver
Speaker 21: was delivering, like I think he delivered three hundred and
Speaker 21: fifty boxes, and so we had to open them up
Speaker 21: and sort them, and there was so much food. I
Speaker 21: think that it was insane amount of food, and it
Speaker 21: was awesome. It was really cool just to see how
Speaker 21: many people stabbed.
Speaker 32: Up and donated.
Speaker 7: I like some of the people I saw in Santa Sedro. Natalie, Katie,
Speaker 7: Sam and Marissa are not part of an NGO or
Speaker 7: a mutual aid collective. They're just people who wanted to help,
Speaker 7: and that describes most of the people in Hucomber. Whether
Speaker 7: some of them did have previous and regular volunteer experience
Speaker 7: with excellent groups like Border Kindness. I asked Katie to
Speaker 7: reflect on the mutual aid approach and the absence of massive,
Speaker 7: multimillion dollar organizations.
Speaker 1: Yeah, wasn't there.
Speaker 25: Race, No, they weren't there. We were told that the
Speaker 25: Red Cross couldn't come unless Border patrol called, and Border
Speaker 25: patrol told us that they weren't allowed to call the
Speaker 25: Red Cross.
Speaker 7: That's a pretty expanded The one institution that did show
Speaker 7: support to people in ucumber was one that you might
Speaker 7: not expect, given the support for this cruel immigration policy
Speaker 7: by almost all the Democrats in DC. But things are
Speaker 7: different when you can see the results of these policies
Speaker 7: with your own eyes. Perhaps that's why I didn't see
Speaker 7: a single elected official in my entire week at the border.
Speaker 7: But one person I missed who everyone mentioned was a
Speaker 7: lady who worked for California Senator Steve Pidea. I won't
Speaker 7: name her as I don't have her permission, but hopefully
Speaker 7: one day soon we'll be able to interview her. I'll
Speaker 7: let Katie describe the role this woman played.
Speaker 25: There was someone from Steve Padia's team, and that's the
Speaker 25: woman I rode with, and she was incredible. Her her
Speaker 25: brother in law is the chef at the hotel, so
Speaker 25: I think, I mean, she might have came anyway, but
Speaker 25: she came faster and there was true connection and she
Speaker 25: stood up to the border patrol and said, you know,
Speaker 25: said we're allowed. We're here on behalf of the senator. So,
Speaker 25: I mean I saw some like had had like arguments
Speaker 25: about our right to be there, and most of us didn't.
Speaker 25: Weren't paying attention to that. We were paying attention to
Speaker 25: the people that we were, you know, around and no
Speaker 25: one that was out there didn't believe that we should
Speaker 25: be out there and that more help should be out there.
Speaker 7: Sadly, part of that familiarity with the system this woman
Speaker 7: brought to the team also meant a familiarity with the
Speaker 7: cruel and arbitrary nature of it. Katie says that they
Speaker 7: had to organize for that as well.
Speaker 25: So my friend and I we ended up writing in
Speaker 25: her truck, so in Steve Padia's Senator Padilla's assistant truck.
Speaker 25: So we had the opportunity to ask some questions that
Speaker 25: probably everyone out there wanted to know, including the migrants,
Speaker 25: And it was like, what will happen in what's the
Speaker 25: process from here? And how do you know that these
Speaker 25: people are being tended to? And I literally heard her
Speaker 25: on the phone getting as many bodies on the ground
Speaker 25: to start going to those centers where they're being taken
Speaker 25: to make sure that they were, that we would follow
Speaker 25: them through the entire process as best possible, monitoring their
Speaker 25: well cared for that they were well cared for as
Speaker 25: well cared for as possible in a system and a
Speaker 25: process like that.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 25: Yeah, but she literally said they're going to be busted
Speaker 25: off and putt in cages, and that they would do
Speaker 25: their best to make sure that that no one was
Speaker 25: split up and that everyone was fed, showered, and they
Speaker 25: weren't allowed to bring anything with them, So a lot
Speaker 25: of the cleanup was all of the things that everyone
Speaker 25: donated that had to be left behind, including some of
Speaker 25: the stuffed animals.
Speaker 7: For all the volunteers I spoke to, the chance to
Speaker 7: be of service was empowering. Here's Natalie discussing that, Yeah.
Speaker 21: I mean, well, like and so many times do you
Speaker 21: like feel overwhelmed with like so much suffering in this world,
Speaker 21: and like what can one person do?
Speaker 10: You know?
Speaker 21: And so it did feel good that to actually see
Speaker 21: an immediate impact, like I'm doing this and this is
Speaker 21: a result, because sometimes you can just get discouraged, you know,
Speaker 21: like we're just one person.
Speaker 32: What can we really do?
Speaker 21: And can we really make an impact and just seeing
Speaker 21: that and being able to see directly how that one
Speaker 21: person can impact, you know, can rally. Like the scene
Speaker 21: how my friends came together, you know, went shopping, bought things,
Speaker 21: gathered money, collected money. You know, my really good friend Sam,
Speaker 21: she went to her local bar after she collected a
Speaker 21: bunch of money, went and dropped stuff, supplies off at
Speaker 21: my house. She was just down at her local bar
Speaker 21: and just chatting with them and like, oh, what did
Speaker 21: you do today, And so she told them, oh, I
Speaker 21: collected money and I bought supplies, and then the people
Speaker 21: She ended up collecting about two hundred more dollars at
Speaker 21: the bar from people hearing her story. And so then
Speaker 21: the next day she went and bought more supplies and
Speaker 21: she actually ended up driving them out herself. She ended
Speaker 21: up doing like three drips just from her own talking
Speaker 21: to people and collecting. So just like the little impact
Speaker 21: that you know, everyone just kind of coming together and
Speaker 21: making a difference.
Speaker 7: Santas Dre a pretty diverse range of San Diegans came
Speaker 7: to help. On the first night, I personally left at
Speaker 7: about one in the morning after spending almost two hours
Speaker 7: trying to leave but needing to get charge phones back
Speaker 7: to their owners by loudly in Spanish and French, then English,
Speaker 7: describing the backgrounds on the phone or the color of
Speaker 7: their case. It wasn't a great system, and by the weekend,
Speaker 7: Caber and others had seen that more help an organization
Speaker 7: was needed and they decided to plan a response. He's
Speaker 7: Caba describing how they prepared for that.
Speaker 8: Yeah, yeah, we met target near my area. Anxiety. Maybe
Speaker 8: I'll just grab some I was paying attention to people
Speaker 8: and what supplies they were saying was needed. A particular
Speaker 8: store near me has like a wall of travel size
Speaker 8: time prodestionally just scoop out one hundred hands and past
Speaker 8: and things like that.
Speaker 7: Caber met up with some other members of a local
Speaker 7: mutual aid group. I'll make sure to include donation links
Speaker 7: for all the groups I've mentioned at the end of
Speaker 7: this series, so please make sure to listen right through
Speaker 7: 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 Truth hygiene kits and guderate and and a
Speaker 8: bunch of friends and papers because because the kids that
Speaker 8: are between the walls don't really have actually do unfortunately,
Speaker 8: so so that those were those went really fast and
Speaker 8: so we got a whole bunch of bags of all
Speaker 8: those kinds of supplies and then we drop down the
Speaker 8: border from there.
Speaker 7: By the time they arrived, various organizations had organized areas
Speaker 7: along the wall for different kinds of aid to be
Speaker 7: passed through. Everything from clothes to food to medical supplies
Speaker 7: and toilet paper was piled up given out the.
Speaker 8: Watch donations and you know, organized the toilet paper, food,
Speaker 8: everything like that, and peopleould just come up to the
Speaker 8: wall and if their family needed something, they would just
Speaker 8: kind of point to it and were asked us if
Speaker 8: we were able to, you know, if there was a
Speaker 8: common languae there. So yeah, we just kind of you know,
Speaker 8: do things as people needing them. I know that I
Speaker 8: helped them out some prints and pads of paper and
Speaker 8: those where those tons of kids all came running over
Speaker 8: from the whole all the parts of the camp when
Speaker 8: they heard that there was there were twys being given out.
Speaker 8: So that was it was it was heartbreaking, but it
Speaker 8: was also you know, it made me smile.
Speaker 7: Through smiled because of the need to use CBP one
Speaker 7: and of course they need to stay in touch with
Speaker 7: families back home. There was a constant and overwhelming demand
Speaker 7: for phone charging. News reporters took phones back to charge
Speaker 7: in their cars. Some people bought charge bricks and power strips,
Speaker 7: and mutual aid groups wrote names on the back of
Speaker 7: the phones using painters tape and sharpie so they wouldn't
Speaker 7: get separated from their owners. By the second day it
Speaker 7: was a better system, but on the first day it
Speaker 7: was chaos. I let Kaber, who spent a whole day
Speaker 7: charging phones, described the system that volunteers came up with
Speaker 7: to mitigate that also a 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 you know, have any kind of amenities or anything.
Speaker 8: So we had a system where they would pass the
Speaker 8: phone through, and we had we would we would put
Speaker 8: a piece of tape on it with their name and
Speaker 8: give them a piece of tape with their name, the
Speaker 8: same name, and then they would give us that if
Speaker 8: they came back a couple hours later and give us
Speaker 8: the tape back, and we would match their names and
Speaker 8: in the phone, and and that was It worked well.
Speaker 10: Enough.
Speaker 8: I mean it was still extraordinarily chaotic process. I mean,
Speaker 8: we had we always had at least one hundred phones
Speaker 8: on our side of the wallet any given time, and
Speaker 8: and some people had you know, some people had chargers,
Speaker 8: some people didn't. Some people had Android or Samsung or
Speaker 8: or the iPhones, and some people had wall adaptors, and
Speaker 8: some people didn't have the wallet says, So we kind
Speaker 8: of had to every phone that came through was we
Speaker 8: had to find a way to get it, you know,
Speaker 8: basically chained into the set of generators that we had,
Speaker 8: which was do we have our power strips and we
Speaker 8: have to write cables and and we have space on
Speaker 8: those cables, and and I think it was it was
Speaker 8: a bit of a puzzle the whole time. The only
Speaker 8: part of it that really overwhelmed me was we did overload.
Speaker 8: Someone brought a bunch of USBC power strips and we
Speaker 8: blew out one of them, and so there was now
Speaker 8: eight phones attached to it that I had to find
Speaker 8: new spaces for. And I was just like that was
Speaker 8: the really point where I was just I was just
Speaker 8: frustrated by the you know, this whole situation. And in
Speaker 8: addition to the fact that I'm just the phones were
Speaker 8: plug that plug in the net strip had been charging
Speaker 8: for who knows how long since that been is I
Speaker 8: think short, sparticular or whatever happened to it.
Speaker 7: It was chaos, but it was a good nature chaos.
Speaker 7: Over several days that migrants would attained in the open
Speaker 7: with no shelter and inadequate sanitation, just about two miles
Speaker 7: from the discount mall where you can buy cheap Ralpherend's
Speaker 7: shirts if that's your jam. People showed up in ever
Speaker 7: increasing numbers. The American Friends Service Committee helped organize volunteers
Speaker 7: into groups to distribute food, package up wet white snacks, medicines,
Speaker 7: give out tops, and do just about anything else that
Speaker 7: they could, or anything else that they could fit into
Speaker 7: ziploc bags. It could be passed through gaps in the wall.
Speaker 7: At least people who had been immigrants themselves or who
Speaker 7: were the children of immigrants were not to be numerous
Speaker 7: among the volunteers. I spoke to one of them.
Speaker 23: My name is Lantai.
Speaker 33: I'm a part of Asian Soliday Collective, a grass with
Speaker 33: organization here in San Diego. I've been cooming over here
Speaker 33: since yesterday. I came here around five six yesterday, and
Speaker 33: then I came back through here this morning and been
Speaker 33: here since. I got home at twelve last night and
Speaker 33: woke up, dropped my kid off, and came right back
Speaker 33: with more supplies. I've been reaching out to family, friends
Speaker 33: and community to help donate supplies and things like that, food, whatever,
Speaker 33: whatever they may have.
Speaker 23: And I've pretty much been driving around city.
Speaker 33: And collecting from from folks that can't make it so
Speaker 33: I could bring it down here myself.
Speaker 23: So that's what I've been doing.
Speaker 7: LUNCHA explain to me why it was so important to
Speaker 7: show up my community.
Speaker 33: I'm pretty sure they they they're sympathetic to this because
Speaker 33: I'm coming from I'm a first generation uh Cambodon American
Speaker 33: here in the US, and when my parents and my
Speaker 33: family fled their country, they went through this as well.
Speaker 33: So somebody somewhere came and provided to support, provided to
Speaker 33: aid the donations for them to be able to make
Speaker 33: it to America to crossover, and able to provide out
Speaker 33: here for for me growing up out here, you know.
Speaker 33: So it's just I just sympathize with it, with the
Speaker 33: whole thing. I mean, I mean, everybody should should should
Speaker 33: feel the same way. Because somewhere down the line, our
Speaker 33: families went through similar situations. If you're not an indigenous,
Speaker 33: then then then your family somewhere down down to history
Speaker 33: went through the same thing.
Speaker 23: So you know that everybody should have a heart for
Speaker 23: this and be able.
Speaker 33: To come down here and and and and donate or
Speaker 33: donate their time or supplies, whatever the case may be.
Speaker 23: You know, come out in help.
Speaker 7: He also explained why he feels it's important to encourage
Speaker 7: empathy for refugees.
Speaker 33: Well, it's it's you have to, you have to, you
Speaker 33: have to be keep in mind, there's there's this families
Speaker 33: out here, there's this young children, there's babies. I mean,
Speaker 33: it takes a lot for for for a mother to
Speaker 33: pick up her infant child and to leave where she's
Speaker 33: coming from.
Speaker 23: So that just says a lot about where.
Speaker 33: What's going on where she's coming for for her to
Speaker 33: to to trek and to go through this, to to
Speaker 33: sit out here in the cold and stuff.
Speaker 23: Because if she would rather endure her endure this.
Speaker 33: And and and and take the risk and the chances
Speaker 33: that means where she's coming from is not as you know,
Speaker 33: she's willing to take that risk.
Speaker 7: Latest that night I saw an Afghan family come to
Speaker 7: help the other Afghan families. Their kids talk to other
Speaker 7: Afghan kids separated by the border war. They passed crayons
Speaker 7: to the war and coloring books, and the little daughter
Speaker 7: asked her dad if she could give her watch to
Speaker 7: the Afghan girl being held in the camp. Her dad said,
Speaker 7: of course, I don't record or photograph people's children, certainly
Speaker 7: not without asking, and I wasn't about to interrupt them,
Speaker 7: but it was a very sweet moment. The father of
Speaker 7: the family had worked in the Army Corps of Engineers.
Speaker 7: He'd been to the border before to build this section
Speaker 7: of the wall. I didn't really need to ask him
Speaker 7: how it felt to see folks stuck behind it, but
Speaker 7: it said a lot that he and his family had
Speaker 7: taken the time to drive down, buy bags and supplies,
Speaker 7: and then come face to face with the people who
Speaker 7: needed them and hand them out. Like dozens of other folks,
Speaker 7: they tried to pass whatever they could through little gaps
Speaker 7: in the wall to make someone's day a little bit brighter.
Speaker 7: Another volunteer who we heard from yesterday came from a
Speaker 7: local group called Partner Hermira had been at the wall
Speaker 7: since five in the morning, and it was getting on
Speaker 7: for five pm. When we spoke. I normally asked people
Speaker 7: what they ate for breakfast, just to tune in the
Speaker 7: volume levels on the recorder a bit, but I'm going
Speaker 7: to include it this time, just so you can see
Speaker 7: how long her day had been and how hot she've
Speaker 7: been working.
Speaker 14: Okay, do you know what you want me to say? Second,
Speaker 14: we have a breakfast again. I don't remember anymore French
Speaker 14: showsts FRESD shosts, but my name is Hamaira y Safi,
Speaker 14: and I'm with a Partnership for the Advancement of New
Speaker 14: Americans PANA, or an organization in San Diego that fights
Speaker 14: for the full inclusion of refugees and those who come
Speaker 14: from refugee producing countries.
Speaker 7: We spoke about the emergency that had kept our hair
Speaker 7: all day.
Speaker 14: So in terms of this morning, I mean I was,
Speaker 14: I was, you know, very concerned because there was an
Speaker 14: asylum seeker who had an emergency and was rushed out
Speaker 14: of this place where now, like for example, where we
Speaker 14: are at right now, is people who are being detained
Speaker 14: and the most inhumane way possible. This is going against
Speaker 14: CBP's own protocols and policies as to how they're being
Speaker 14: detained with no they're not giving them food, they're not
Speaker 14: giving them bathrooms, they're not giving them basic, basic things
Speaker 14: that they need to survive. And so that's why the
Speaker 14: community is out here today to do that.
Speaker 7: Sadly, not everyone who showed up at the makeshift detention
Speaker 7: facility was showing up in solidarity. Local anti migrant activist
Speaker 7: and blogger Roger Ogden showed up.
Speaker 16: Now.
Speaker 7: Ogden might be familiar to some listeners due to his
Speaker 7: attempts to host he called a Patriot picnic and his
Speaker 7: advocacy for the removal of the historic murals in Chicago Park.
Speaker 7: Ogden organized gatherings in the park in twenty seventeen and
Speaker 7: twenty eighteen, and they resulted in a huge and overwhelming
Speaker 7: community response to defend the park. And this time Olden
Speaker 7: decided to keep to himself, but Natalie ran into some
Speaker 7: people who weren't quite as shy about their opinions.
Speaker 21: You know, a lot of the people in the community
Speaker 21: are you know, lower income, and you know, they are
Speaker 21: struggling in their own struggle on their and so I know,
Speaker 21: you know, maybe I don't know, it's like for those people,
Speaker 21: I don't know, like, yeah, it's hard.
Speaker 5: I don't know.
Speaker 21: I mean towards the end, like when I was walking
Speaker 21: to my car, this man, this man in a car
Speaker 21: like pulled up and he's excuse me, what's going on
Speaker 21: over there? And I was like, Oh, we're gathering, you know,
Speaker 21: supplies for the asylum seekers. And then I you know, like,
Speaker 21: if you're from here, you kind of if you're in Hookumba,
Speaker 21: you kind of already knew what was going on, and
Speaker 21: so him asking me that, I was kind of like,
Speaker 21: m and then he just started laying into I've had illegals,
Speaker 21: you know, have broken into my house a few times.
Speaker 21: Why are you supporting illegals? And I'm like, we're trying
Speaker 21: to let like make sure that people don't die, and
Speaker 21: he just kept going off on me, and so he,
Speaker 21: you know, his the whole.
Speaker 5: All the talking.
Speaker 21: Points that people have about not allowing people to seek
Speaker 21: asylum here, and so I just walked away.
Speaker 7: Maurica didn't run into the same kind of vocal opposition,
Speaker 7: but she said in her conversations and attempts to process
Speaker 7: everything she'd see, she ran into some of the sort
Speaker 7: of need jate responses. So people can only really make
Speaker 7: about immigration when they haven't looked the cruelty that they're
Speaker 7: advocating for in the face.
Speaker 29: It took me a little while to kind of work
Speaker 29: through just how I felt about it on an emotional,
Speaker 29: maybe a spiritual level.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 29: I spoke with family and friends about it, about my experience,
Speaker 29: and it's difficult to I found it difficult to explain
Speaker 29: my experience because I don't know that somebody can really
Speaker 29: truly understand that unless they've actually been out there and
Speaker 29: done it themselves. Because the arguments or they're kind of.
Speaker 5: Debate, so to speak.
Speaker 29: What they would come back at me with when I
Speaker 29: was sharing that is, but we don't have enough food
Speaker 29: or housing to be able to support that many people
Speaker 29: coming in. And I'm like, but we just had so
Speaker 29: many people and so much money put out there to
Speaker 29: help in a very short amount of time. Look how
Speaker 29: many donations were donated, how much money was contributed in
Speaker 29: a short amount of time from not that many people.
Speaker 29: I'm like, obviously we do have the money, Obviously we
Speaker 29: do have the food. So where's the breakdown? Like, is
Speaker 29: it our system that just doesn't allow for that happened?
Speaker 29: I don't know, And that that's where I don't understand
Speaker 29: it enough.
Speaker 5: But I feel like.
Speaker 29: It just made me realize that I don't know that
Speaker 29: anybody that I spoke to afterward really understands it enough,
Speaker 29: either because their arguments or they're a defense. And what
Speaker 29: they tried to share on the opposite side of me
Speaker 29: going out there and supporting just felt like it was
Speaker 29: just something to say, you know, and like what they
Speaker 29: what they hear from the general media out there, and
Speaker 29: they also don't really they can't quite grasp it, so
Speaker 29: they're just kind of throwing something out there, I guess,
Speaker 29: is what what it felt like.
Speaker 7: Kaber also ran into some less in charitable San Diegans,
Speaker 7: this time down in Santasiedra.
Speaker 8: Yeah, so I guess the first part is why they
Speaker 8: might have how they might have found us there, which
Speaker 8: is there's a local news organization in San Diego which
Speaker 8: is kind of a I would describe as a local
Speaker 8: equivalent of something like one American News, which is really
Speaker 8: unfortunate because we already have American News here, but they
Speaker 8: are pretty well known for kind of a lot of
Speaker 8: like misinformation, kind of scared wandering about and has people
Speaker 8: immigrants scenes and all that sort of sort of thing,
Speaker 8: but with kind of a local news sort of aesthetic
Speaker 8: to it, and they were, as far as I could tell,
Speaker 8: they were really the only identify the media that were
Speaker 8: there throughout the day. I read articles eventually made me
Speaker 8: realize there were other reporters there, but they were identifying
Speaker 8: themselves the way that has I was. But they sign
Speaker 8: was one cameraman just shooting b 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. Everyone who I was
Speaker 8: around I was. I was kind of you know, oriented
Speaker 8: mostly with kind of like sort of like anapist mutual
Speaker 8: aid people. And and you know, when they saw the
Speaker 8: Kaside truck, they were like, okay, I'm wanted to their
Speaker 8: mask on, you know. And I'm still in in ninety
Speaker 8: five with me, so I'm more of that. And I
Speaker 8: I had a you know, slightly identifying logo on my
Speaker 8: sweatshirt which I take over so that you know, that
Speaker 8: image wouldn't show up.
Speaker 7: Now k us I have drifted further and further right
Speaker 7: since twenty twenty along with their relatively miniscule viewership. These days,
Speaker 7: they engage in fake news culture war stuff, like repeating
Speaker 7: the recent false accusations that Target was making tuckable swimming
Speaker 7: costumes for kids, or labeling everyone in the asylum process
Speaker 7: illegal immigrants. It's sadly pretty standard for writing news organizations now.
Speaker 7: Kaba thinks that some of the people who saw footage
Speaker 7: on k Usi, or perhaps found the location posted on
Speaker 7: Ogden's blog, came down to the border.
Speaker 8: That's where that's the one started to see people you know,
Speaker 8: kind of went buy and we could tell that they
Speaker 8: weren't advantage because like when people who like playing people
Speaker 8: who weren't even necessarily volteer, which are on buy and
Speaker 8: so like, hey, I just went watching man I brought
Speaker 8: a pitch of manner and they bring up a matter
Speaker 8: and then they drive away. But the people who are
Speaker 8: doing who are like here where I think you know,
Speaker 8: kind of some kind of intimidation where you know, the
Speaker 8: approach directly they would just kind of get out of
Speaker 8: their exceptionally large entivies and and just kind of just
Speaker 8: kind of watch and they would kind of, you know,
Speaker 8: get a little bit closer at a time and then
Speaker 8: you know, a little bit closer and kind of whispered
Speaker 8: to each other and you know, point at things, and
Speaker 8: you know, it's just kind of they were just watching,
Speaker 8: and you know, they got close enough that I could
Speaker 8: read their shirts, and and the shirts had a slogan
Speaker 8: that's associated with a Christian nationalism slogan, so as this
Speaker 8: whole family is kind of kind of sad that the
Speaker 8: kids wore wearing shirts too, and and so I kind of, yeah,
Speaker 8: I figured out that that's what was going on. And
Speaker 8: I never talked to them. I didn't approach them, but
Speaker 8: I stood when I was something to get closer closer,
Speaker 8: I kind of positioned myself in between the rest of
Speaker 8: volunteers and and this group and and just kind of,
Speaker 8: you know, didn't really stare at them, just kind of
Speaker 8: looked at them 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 I would just you know, stood
Speaker 8: and position myself in a way that indicated 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 any
Speaker 8: wine or you thrill anyone or like what everyone do.
Speaker 8: And eventually one of the people who is either volunteer
Speaker 8: or work for like one of the m gas contestently
Speaker 8: tell there was something going on. So she went over
Speaker 8: and had a conversation with them that I couldn't hear,
Speaker 8: and eventually they decided to leave. And I think she
Speaker 8: was just kind of trying to be diplomatic, but just
Speaker 8: sort of like ask them if they wanted to help,
Speaker 8: and if they don't want to help, and you know,
Speaker 8: you go be somewhere else, I suppose. And and it was,
Speaker 8: I mean, the sort of one amusing part, if you
Speaker 8: call it, that was that they apparently in the complaint
Speaker 8: to this person about me, because they said that I
Speaker 8: had been watching them and I was I'm traditionally profiling
Speaker 8: them because they were white, and I realized that this interview,
Speaker 8: but just for the listeners, I am very very white myself.
Speaker 7: I think it's important when we discuss volunteering to honor
Speaker 7: how hard this kind of experience can be on people. Obviously,
Speaker 7: the trauma associated with seeing people brutalized by the state
Speaker 7: and capital. It's not the same as being brutalized by
Speaker 7: state and capital yourself, but that doesn't mean it's easy.
Speaker 7: I asked Natalie to reflect a little on children's toys
Speaker 7: we found in the shelter when we were cleaning up
Speaker 7: the camp, like.
Speaker 21: As a mom, like I have my own children, and
Speaker 21: it just really its emotional.
Speaker 5: It's like it's just.
Speaker 21: Like I'm like, who's who, Like childhood is playing with this,
Speaker 21: you know here in this space, and you know that
Speaker 21: no child should be ever in, you know, an encampment
Speaker 21: like that or it just no one should be living outside,
Speaker 21: no one should be doing that. But also it's like
Speaker 21: kind of like the humanity in a way like that,
Speaker 21: you know, even a child's going to play wherever child's
Speaker 21: going to play, and like that little toy of little
Speaker 21: hopefully it brought that kid some joy in that moment,
Speaker 21: you know, if it was there a little piece of
Speaker 21: home or someone gave it to him or what, you know,
Speaker 21: it was Yeah, the reality, it was like it was
Speaker 21: like a person, you know, like a little artifact of
Speaker 21: someone who was actually there, you know, like it was
Speaker 21: a little more tangible than you know.
Speaker 1: A sock.
Speaker 21: You know, that's not that's not I'm not think you
Speaker 21: know who wore that sock. But think of who who
Speaker 21: was playing with that toy?
Speaker 16: You know?
Speaker 5: Was it a little boy, a little girl? Hold were
Speaker 5: they did they bring up home? Are they missing it?
Speaker 21: When they When I saw they have that, she needed
Speaker 21: people to clean up, it was like, Okay, I took
Speaker 21: a day off of work and went out there and
Speaker 21: just felt overwhelming almost, I mean, and just one day
Speaker 21: of me working out there was really emotional. I can't
Speaker 21: imagine how you know, Melissa and all the people that
Speaker 21: were on the ground just dealing with it. I know
Speaker 21: they're just struggling a little bit and just processing it
Speaker 21: all has been really hard, you know, really hard. It's
Speaker 21: just just just how how privileged we are. You know,
Speaker 21: like no one leaves their country because they want to.
Speaker 21: They leave because they have to, but they feel like
Speaker 21: they have to. And you know, it's I mean, it's
Speaker 21: respecting and honoring and understanding the privilege that you're in
Speaker 21: and not taking it for granted because it's very easy.
Speaker 7: To both Katie Marisias said they don't really identify as
Speaker 7: political and that they wanted to be there as people.
Speaker 7: Sometimes often politics can become a complicated game of numbers
Speaker 7: and statistics, but it's important to remember that what this
Speaker 7: is really about is organizing in such a way that
Speaker 7: we can take care of one another, and that the
Speaker 7: most important politics of war is the politics of feeding
Speaker 7: how many people and maybe bringing a sad child of
Speaker 7: stuffed animal's Katie talking about the community response.
Speaker 25: I think I'm a really compassionate person, and I'm not
Speaker 25: very political in the sense that, like, I don't really participate.
Speaker 25: My life in my community's life is solution oriented. So
Speaker 25: I saw like that on a large scale, the like
Speaker 25: when people come together, we create solutions when and you
Speaker 25: don't wait for someone like the government to show up
Speaker 25: and fix it, because then people will die. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 25: I mean that's the reality is if that community didn't activate,
Speaker 25: there would have been a lot of dead people in
Speaker 25: the desert.
Speaker 7: Katie shared with me that she's been having a difficult time,
Speaker 7: feeling guilty for not having the language skills to do
Speaker 7: more and questing her own worthiness to be their helping
Speaker 7: But in the end, she said she felt that what
Speaker 7: she'd done was right and important. I'll leave you with
Speaker 7: her thoughts and tomorrow I'll be back to talk about
Speaker 7: the people who put everyone in this situation in the
Speaker 7: first place, the Department of Homeland Security.
Speaker 25: I think an important thing is like so many times
Speaker 25: we hear about things and we say, isn't that awful,
Speaker 25: and we kind of shut down because we don't feel
Speaker 25: empowered or we don't know how to help. And literally,
Speaker 25: a smile makes a difference. A feeling of like I
Speaker 25: see you and you belong on this planet makes a difference.
Speaker 25: And you know, little kids packing up canned goods and
Speaker 25: fruit snacks for other little kids. They didn't see those kids,
Speaker 25: but when the adult said they're gonna be so happy
Speaker 25: to get that package, they felt like they made a difference.
Speaker 25: And those little girls are gonna grow up and not
Speaker 25: be afraid to step up and make a difference. I
Speaker 25: think a lot of people think like they can't do enough,
Speaker 25: so they don't do anything. And if we all just
Speaker 25: do a little bit or what you can, then I
Speaker 25: think we would see a very large impact. Kumba is
Speaker 25: a town of five hundred and they just fed thousands,
Speaker 25: house thousands, clothed, thousands, hugged and welcomed thousands of human beings.
Speaker 25: And those people in that town don't have much excess,
Speaker 25: and they made a difference. And I was proud to
Speaker 25: be a part of that community in a way that
Speaker 25: I'm on the fringe of it, and it made me
Speaker 25: want to be even more a part of it. My
Speaker 25: feelings and intuition about that town were confirmed by watching
Speaker 25: the simplest action make an incredible impact on real lives
Speaker 25: and real people, and that this isn't demographics. It's real
Speaker 25: bodies that have beating hearts and breathe and we all
Speaker 25: share the same air in the same water, and we're
Speaker 25: all connected. And when you make one little drip in
Speaker 25: the bucket, it actually does make a difference. And I
Speaker 25: think that stops us sometimes when we think what we
Speaker 25: have isn't enough to give, but when someone has nothing,
Speaker 25: what you have is more than what they can imagine.
Speaker 7: The history of the border and its enforcement begins in
Speaker 7: fourteen ninety two with the colonization of what will become
Speaker 7: known as the Americas. It goes through the eighteen forty
Speaker 7: two Mexican American War and a sou indigenous people's lands
Speaker 7: without their knowledge or consent in the eighteen fifty three
Speaker 7: Gasden purchase, and of course through the eighteen eighty two
Speaker 7: Chinese Exclusion Act and numerous other explicit attempts to prevent
Speaker 7: non white people from moving to the USA. From there,
Speaker 7: it weaves its way through the Mexican Revolution and the
Speaker 7: firm World Wars German proposal to ally with Mexico to
Speaker 7: reclaim those territories it had lost in the decades before then.
Speaker 7: The Border Patrol story itself begins in May nineteen twenty four,
Speaker 7: and in the ninety nine years since it has encompassed
Speaker 7: everything from David Duke to nine to eleven in its
Speaker 7: journey to becoming the biggest and least accountable law enforcement
Speaker 7: agency in the federal government. People from the colonial periphery
Speaker 7: have always migrated to the metropol. It's why a man
Speaker 7: called fat Led singing a song about Vindulu is basically
Speaker 7: in my country's second national anthem, and why every four
Speaker 7: years France accepts black Frenchmen onto its football team before
Speaker 7: it returns to vilifying them in other forms of discourse.
Speaker 7: Migration to the United States is no different. Climate change
Speaker 7: in US imperialism have destabilized and impoverished nations from the
Speaker 7: Americas to Afghanistan, and driven people to the US border
Speaker 7: looking for a better life. What's distinct about the US
Speaker 7: is how obsessed it has become with keeping these people
Speaker 7: out and enforcing the longest land borders in the world.
Speaker 7: But the US border is much bigger than the land
Speaker 7: boundary between the USA and Mexico to the south, Canada
Speaker 7: to the north. If you're listening to this in the
Speaker 7: United States, the chances are that you live in the
Speaker 7: Border Enforcement Zone. This swath of territory outside the Constitution
Speaker 7: has been established since the Immigration and Nationality Act of
Speaker 7: nineteen fifty two. Established at a reasonable distance of the
Speaker 7: border would extend one hundred air miles around the outline
Speaker 7: of the country. Two thirds of the US's population live
Speaker 7: within this zone. Washington, d C. San Francisco, Chicago, New Orleans,
Speaker 7: and Boston are all within it, and that means that
Speaker 7: cbpagents can search vehicles and vessels to look for property
Speaker 7: that's in the country without the right documents. They can
Speaker 7: board public transportation or set up interior checkpoints and stop,
Speaker 7: interrogate and search citizens and non citizens without the need
Speaker 7: for a warrant. Within twenty five miles of the border,
Speaker 7: they can enter your property provide it's not a domicile.
Speaker 7: The Fourth Amendment, part of a foundational bill of rights.
Speaker 7: At US likes to tout that's what makes it different
Speaker 7: from the rest of the world. Doesn't apply when you're
Speaker 7: near the border. An all encompassing history of the border
Speaker 7: and its enforcement is beyond the skill this podcast. Even
Speaker 7: a history of the Southwest border could take up a
Speaker 7: whole bookshelf, but we will try and skim the high
Speaker 7: points here. Let's start with a Gadsden purchase, when a
Speaker 7: party of military surveyors first bumped into the Horn Autum
Speaker 7: elders as they attempted to draw a line dividing to
Speaker 7: Horn Autumn people from to Horn Autumn people. The southern
Speaker 7: border is no more obvious today than it was then,
Speaker 7: and of course, to the Autumn it was and remains
Speaker 7: an aberration that divides them from much of their ancestral
Speaker 7: and current homelands. It has over the years seen violent
Speaker 7: enforcement on members of the nation and a growing encroachment
Speaker 7: of the border patrol into today's to Horn Autumn Reservation,
Speaker 7: which is the second largest in the USA, only represents
Speaker 7: a fraction of the tribe's historical homeland. These surveyors were
Speaker 7: in the process of finalizing most of the California and
Speaker 7: Arizona border, a border I drove most of in the
Speaker 7: days after Title forty two. The southern border as it
Speaker 7: looks now was largely shaped by the Treaty of Guadalupihidalgo,
Speaker 7: which Mexico lost fifty five percent of its territory include
Speaker 7: all of what is today California, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah,
Speaker 7: and Nevada, and parts of what is today Colorado, Wyoming, Kansas,
Speaker 7: and Oklahoma. The Gaston Purchase of eighteen fifty three added
Speaker 7: more of southern Arizona. In New Mexico, the specific border
Speaker 7: in Santa Cidro withdrawn so that San Diego Bay would
Speaker 7: fall to the north of the line. The border in a
Speaker 7: cumba seems more arbitrary, a straight line in the desert
Speaker 7: that runs into a pile of rocks. Of course, long
Speaker 7: before the border divided San Asidra from Tijuana, this was
Speaker 7: Cumia Land, and despite the border, it still is. The
Speaker 7: name Tijuana derives from Tijuan, which means by the sea
Speaker 7: in Cumiai. Despite this, the Cumii and many other indigenous
Speaker 7: peoples were ignored when the border crossed them, and it's
Speaker 7: becoming harder and harder for them to cross it. In
Speaker 7: parts of desert, it can be pretty hard to see
Speaker 7: the border at all. In twenty twenty, while out with
Speaker 7: a group of Cumi people who are in ceremony to
Speaker 7: honor their ancestors whose burial sites have been and continue
Speaker 7: to be desecrated by border walk construction, it had to
Speaker 7: be worried of steppe over it to better frame my shots.
Speaker 7: The emerging Declaration Donald Trump made allowed war construction to
Speaker 7: sidestep legislation in place to protect archaeological and sacred sites,
Speaker 7: but it didn't allow me to sidestep into Mexico to
Speaker 7: get a better shot. Luckily, Bortac, a team of armed
Speaker 7: Border patrol agents who you might remember from Portland in
Speaker 7: twenty twenty, provided a guy ad dressed like he was
Speaker 7: in the Battle of Falluja to help me. I would
Speaker 7: say the border is a line in the sand, but
Speaker 7: at the time there wasn't a line that was visible
Speaker 7: at all in Valley the Moon, a few miles east
Speaker 7: to where that Bortec patrol guide shouted at people stepping
Speaker 7: too close in twenty twenty. The border wall is about
Speaker 7: waist high, rusty, and essentially comprised of a single strand
Speaker 7: of barbed wire in Hoocumber, the thirty foot trump wall
Speaker 7: pushes right up to a boulder pile and then stops
Speaker 7: the logic as much as there can be any logic,
Speaker 7: and spending twenty five million dollars a mile to desecrate
Speaker 7: sacred spaces and defile the landscape is that people will
Speaker 7: be deterred from crossing by the harsh landscape brutally hot
Speaker 7: days and brutally cold nights. This logic, of course, fails
Speaker 7: to consider not just where people are going, why they're leaving,
Speaker 7: the places they've come from. Risking one's life crossing the
Speaker 7: border makes sense only when one considers the danger that
Speaker 7: many people in places around the world face every day.
Speaker 7: It hasn't always been this way. Fear reference here in
Speaker 7: Reagan and Bush talking about migration in nineteen eighty, heait.
Speaker 34: I'm going to ask you what you would do about Cuba.
Speaker 16: But now we're going to call you.
Speaker 35: Now we're going to have some questions from the audience.
Speaker 4: Yes, my name is David Grosberg, and I'd like to
Speaker 4: know do you think that children of illegal aliens should
Speaker 4: be allowed.
Speaker 31: To attend Texas Public schools free or do you think
Speaker 31: that their parents should pay for their education?
Speaker 8: Who are you addressing that?
Speaker 35: I think you're first in this.
Speaker 8: He was looking right at you. I said that he
Speaker 8: was what I'd.
Speaker 36: Like to see something done about the illegal alien problem.
Speaker 36: That would be so sensitive and so understanding about labor
Speaker 36: needs and human needs that that.
Speaker 20: Problem wouldn't come up.
Speaker 5: But today, if.
Speaker 12: Those people are here, I would.
Speaker 36: Reluctantly say I think they would. They would get whatever
Speaker 36: it is that they're you know, what the society.
Speaker 8: Is giving to their neighbors.
Speaker 36: But it has the problem has to be solved. The
Speaker 36: problem has to be solved because as we have kind
Speaker 36: of made illegal some kinds of labor that I'd like
Speaker 36: to see legal, we're doing two things. We're creating a
Speaker 36: whole society of really honorable, decent, family loving people that
Speaker 36: are in violation of the law. And secondly, we're exacerbating
Speaker 36: relations with Mexico.
Speaker 7: The change.
Speaker 36: The answer to your question is much more fundamental than
Speaker 36: whether they attend Houston schools. It seems to me, I
Speaker 36: don't want to see a whole if they're living here,
Speaker 36: I don't want to see a whole. I think a
Speaker 36: six and eight year old kids being made, you know,
Speaker 36: one totally uneducated and made to feel that they're living
Speaker 36: with outside the law. Let's address ourselves to the fundamentals.
Speaker 36: These are good people, strong people.
Speaker 7: Part of my family is in Mexican.
Speaker 35: Then I added that I think the time has come
Speaker 35: that the United States and our neighbors, particularly our neighbor
Speaker 35: to the south, should have a better understanding and a
Speaker 35: better relationship than we've ever had. And I think but
Speaker 35: we haven't been sensitive enough to our size and our power.
Speaker 35: They have a problem of forty to fifty percent unemployment.
Speaker 35: Now this cannot continue without the possibility arising with regard
Speaker 35: to that other country that we talked about of Cuba
Speaker 35: and what it is stirring up of the possibility of
Speaker 35: trouble below the border, and we could have a very
Speaker 35: hostile and strange neighbor on our border. Rather than making
Speaker 35: them or talking about putting up a fence, why don't
Speaker 35: we work out some recognition of our mutual problems. Make
Speaker 35: it possible for them to come here legally with the
Speaker 35: work permit, and then while they're working and earning here,
Speaker 35: they pay taxes here, and when they go on to
Speaker 35: go back, they can go back and they can cross
Speaker 35: and open the border both ways by understanding their problem.
Speaker 7: The modern era of border enforcement began. As far as
Speaker 7: we can point a single date was Silvestre Reyes, that
Speaker 7: then sector chief of the Border Patrol in McAllen, Texas,
Speaker 7: and his operation Hold the Line. The community around McAllen
Speaker 7: had got tired of border patrol snooping around businesses and
Speaker 7: even schools in a Rio Grand valley, and instead Rayes
Speaker 7: deployed his agents forward in a sort of human fence
Speaker 7: along the Rio Grand. Rayes would later become the chief
Speaker 7: of the El Paso sector and a Democratic Congressman. He
Speaker 7: lost his seat to be to A. Rourke in twenty thirteen,
Speaker 7: but this strategy would long outlive his career with border patrol.
Speaker 7: The following year, on September seventeenth, nineteen ninety four, US
Speaker 7: Attorney General Janet Reno announced the start of Operation Gatekeeper.
Speaker 7: The first phase of the operation focus on the first
Speaker 7: five miles of the western border, including the place where
Speaker 7: I recorded all those interviews you heard earlier this week.
Speaker 7: According to a piece written a quarter of a century
Speaker 7: later in the La Times, the strategy was to deter
Speaker 7: migrants from illegally crossing in the first place, and for
Speaker 7: the who remained undeterred to encourage them to cross in
Speaker 7: more isolated wilderness areas to the east where they could
Speaker 7: be more easily captured. There were already fences in nineteen
Speaker 7: ninety four, first a chain link fence and then one
Speaker 7: made of helicopter landing mats left over from Vietnam that
Speaker 7: had horizontal struts that closely resembled and were used as
Speaker 7: a ladder. Anti migrant rhetoric was already there too. California
Speaker 7: Governor Pete Wilson became an outspoken advocate for Prop One
Speaker 7: to eighty seven, a ballot measure that cut off state
Speaker 7: services like health care and education to undocumented people. Here's
Speaker 7: a clip of Wilson's reelection ad.
Speaker 37: They keep coming two million illegal immigrants in California. The
Speaker 37: federal government won't stop them at the border, yet requires
Speaker 37: us to pay billions to take care of them. Governor
Speaker 37: Pete Wilson sent the National Guard to help the border patrol.
Speaker 8: But that's not all.
Speaker 16: For Californians who work hard, pay taxes, and obey the laws,
Speaker 16: I'm suing to force the federal government to control the
Speaker 16: border and are working to deny state services to illeg
Speaker 16: Enough is enough, Governor Pete Wilson.
Speaker 7: Under the operation, a much higher number of agents were
Speaker 7: deployed to the border. Apprehensions increased, and with them, so
Speaker 7: did funding for border enforcement. It was around this time
Speaker 7: that the narrative around the border began to change. It
Speaker 7: was also around this time, a few months earlier in fact,
Speaker 7: that the US, Mexico and Canada entered into the North
Speaker 7: American Free Trade Agreement, which made it easier than ever
Speaker 7: for capital to move across the border and take advantage
Speaker 7: of lower wages in Mexico. To learn a little bit
Speaker 7: more about Operation Gatekeeper, I spoke to one of the
Speaker 7: agents who was tasked with executing it.
Speaker 32: My name is Jen Budd and I'm a former senior
Speaker 32: Patrol agent with the United States Boarder Patrol. I was
Speaker 32: a senior intelligence agent as well at San Diego Sector Headquarters.
Speaker 7: Jenner Sin's left the Border Patrol, but she realizes the
Speaker 7: impact of Operation Gatekeeper on migrants was anything but positive.
Speaker 16: Yeah.
Speaker 32: Operation Gatekeeper started in nineteen ninety four, in October of
Speaker 32: nineteen ninety four, and to Campo in November of nineteen
Speaker 32: ninety five, and so right afterwards the fence was just
Speaker 32: getting to Takata. When I got there, so most of
Speaker 32: my class, I think we had I don't know, forty
Speaker 32: people graduate or something. Most of them went down to
Speaker 32: Imperial Beach and they had a wall there, and so
Speaker 32: that was the idea, is to fill the San Diego
Speaker 32: City area with as many agents and weapons and all this,
Speaker 32: and then that would push the traffic for that to
Speaker 32: the mountains, making it more difficult for them to cross,
Speaker 32: and some of them would get injured, and we knew
Speaker 32: some of them would die. So it was intentional. The
Speaker 32: death and the injuries, according to management, would deter future crossings.
Speaker 32: But of course that that's.
Speaker 8: Not the case.
Speaker 7: Alan Bersin, US attorney in San Diego, was named the
Speaker 7: so called Borders Are by President Bill Clinton a few
Speaker 7: years later to implement that same Gatekeeper strategy across the
Speaker 7: rest of the Southwest border. Burst In saw things a
Speaker 7: little differently.
Speaker 12: Neither side claims it, but Gatekeeper was probably the most
Speaker 12: important domestic achievement accomplished in a purely bipartisan manner through
Speaker 12: three administrations, and the greatest accomplishment since President Eisenhower and
Speaker 12: the Democrats put together the state highway system in the
Speaker 12: mid nineteen fifties.
Speaker 7: But in fact, while apprehensions did drop in San Diego,
Speaker 7: they spiked by five hundred and ninety one percent in
Speaker 7: the Tucson sector between nineteen ninety two and two thousand
Speaker 7: and four. The La Times quotes the non partisan Congressional
Speaker 7: Research Service as saying, one unintended consequence of this enforcement
Speaker 7: posture and the shift in migration patterns has been an
Speaker 7: increase in the number of migrant deaths each year. On average,
Speaker 7: two hundred migrants died each year in the early nineteen nineties,
Speaker 7: compared with four hundred and seventy two migrant deaths in
Speaker 7: two thousand and five. Many of those deaths are now
Speaker 7: in a sector that encompasses the Autumn Reservation. The desert
Speaker 7: there is particularly hard to cross, and the enforcement that
Speaker 7: began with Operation Gatekeeper pushes more and more people onto
Speaker 7: the reservation. Dahn Autumn people to travel between the United
Speaker 7: States and Mexico fairly easily a roads without checkpoints, to
Speaker 7: visit family, go to school, visit a doctor, or perform
Speaker 7: their traditional ceremonial practices. But after nine to eleven, the
Speaker 7: United States and its border patrol began a more visible
Speaker 7: and violent occupation of the reservation. It started with a
Speaker 7: vehicle barrier in two thousand and seven, and it continued
Speaker 7: with CBP's quote unquote virtual wall of surveillance technology, cameras
Speaker 7: and drones. The Israeli company Elbit Systems has built fixed
Speaker 7: surveillance towers which they pioneered in the West Bank on
Speaker 7: tribal land with the permission of tribal council. Meanwhile, other
Speaker 7: members of the nation strongly oppose the militarization of their
Speaker 7: homeland in the name of security of whatever homeland the
Speaker 7: Department of Homeland Security is securing. I'll quote hear from
Speaker 7: Todd Miller, whose excellent work on the border has required
Speaker 7: reading for anyone interested in the subject. Amy Juan and
Speaker 7: Nellie Joe David, members of the Horn Autumn, Hermagicum Writs Network.
Speaker 7: Tohrn joined a delegation to the West Bank in October
Speaker 7: twenty seventeen, convened by the Palestinian Organization stopped the war.
Speaker 7: It was a relief, one says, to talk with people
Speaker 7: who understand our fears, who are dealing with militarization and technology.
Speaker 7: In twenty seventeen, the Horn Autumn vice chairman Verlin Jose
Speaker 7: said that a war will be built quote over my
Speaker 7: dead body, and the tribe released a video saying there
Speaker 7: is no Autumn word for war. The sixty two miles
Speaker 7: of the border on their reservation would remain without one,
Speaker 7: they said. By twenty twenty, the Trump administration had fought
Speaker 7: through a wall on much of the border using what
Speaker 7: is known as the Roosevelt Reservation. This is a sixty
Speaker 7: foot wide strip of land that the federal government owns
Speaker 7: along the border in California, Arizona, and New Mexico. Although
Speaker 7: much of the Autumn Nation remains war free and some
Speaker 7: has what's called a vehicle barrier or a Normandy barrier,
Speaker 7: approximately one third of the Roosevelt Reservation is on tribal land.
Speaker 7: Since two thousand and five, realized the Act Environmental Survey
Speaker 7: and laws have been waived for border security, and this
Speaker 7: gave the Tramp administration a way to justify the destruction
Speaker 7: of Artum and Kumi burial grounds, swad or cacti that
Speaker 7: the Autumn Seas relatives, and other sacred sites along the border.
Speaker 7: Despite efforts by tribal members and allies to stop the construction,
Speaker 7: members of the Tahana Autumn Nation have been pepper sprayed beaten,
Speaker 7: tailed and shot by Border patrol. In two thousand and two,
Speaker 7: a Border patrol agent ran over and killed an Artam teenager.
Speaker 7: Last week, the same night I was waiting down by
Speaker 7: the border for the end of Title forty two, border
Speaker 7: patrol agent shot and killed Raymond Mattia, an ardum man
Speaker 7: who had called and asked him for help. He was
Speaker 7: shot thirty eight times just two feet from his front door,
Speaker 7: recording to his family. While mister Mattia's death is still
Speaker 7: being investigated, the Border Patrol has a long tradition of
Speaker 7: literally getting away with murder. This is because they investigate
Speaker 7: themselves using so called critical incident teams. I talked to
Speaker 7: Jen about what those teams do, and so.
Speaker 32: What they would do is they would get there first
Speaker 32: on the scene because we would call them first. We
Speaker 32: wouldn't call anybody else, we'd call them first. And then
Speaker 32: they come, They get rid of the witnesses, they set
Speaker 32: the scene up the way we want to be done,
Speaker 32: and they tell you the narrative that you're going.
Speaker 8: To stick with.
Speaker 32: You talk to your union reps, and it's all this
Speaker 32: giant cover up.
Speaker 7: Here's John call Us Free, a journalist who covered ci
Speaker 7: T cover ups talking to Democracy Now about how these
Speaker 7: teams work.
Speaker 27: Within the actual agency of the US Board Patrol, there
Speaker 27: is an investigated body called SIT, the Critical Incident Team.
Speaker 27: They are tasked with investigating incidents that involve border patrol
Speaker 27: and it can be anything from a car accident to
Speaker 27: in this case, an individual who's killed at the hands
Speaker 27: of the US Border Patrol. In this particular case of
Speaker 27: Anastasio Hernandez Rojas, border Patrol agents deleted video, they collected
Speaker 27: evidence at the scene. They were present in the hospital
Speaker 27: when Anastasio was being treated, They were present at the autopsy.
Speaker 27: They fudge reports, they deleted reports, They coached their own
Speaker 27: agents on what kind of testimony they were to give.
Speaker 27: They were present at every one of the depositions. They
Speaker 27: made sure that they were the victims in this case.
Speaker 27: And when I say that, what I mean is that
Speaker 27: Border Patrol agents SIT team agents make sure that Border
Speaker 27: Patrol agents are looked at as the victims in any
Speaker 27: sort of an incident, meaning that they are allowed then
Speaker 27: to use lethal force if a Border Patrol agent has
Speaker 27: rocks thrown at them or in the case of Anastasio,
Speaker 27: they alleged that Anastasio was violent and that he was
Speaker 27: kicking and punching, and he needed to be subdued. If
Speaker 27: we take a look at the videotape, that's not actually
Speaker 27: what happened. He's handcuffed, he's prone on the ground, his
Speaker 27: face is down, agents are on top of him. But
Speaker 27: if you read the reports in this case that were
Speaker 27: prepared by SIT, Anastasio was a violent man and needed
Speaker 27: to be subdued.
Speaker 7: In twenty twenty one, Border Patrol was ordered to disband
Speaker 7: these teams gentsas they simply moved them somewhere else and
Speaker 7: gave them a different name.
Speaker 32: So then they said that they disbanded them because we
Speaker 32: brought the truth out and how they did all this
Speaker 32: and we proved it. But what they actually did is
Speaker 32: they did a retention. So they had the Border Patrol
Speaker 32: agents resigned from the Border Patrol and move over to
Speaker 32: cbp OPR and we hired them under there. So the
Speaker 32: team that likely went to go investigate the tahonum Otum killing,
Speaker 32: I believe his name is Matia Matia Raymond Matia is
Speaker 32: likely the Border Patrol sit teams. So if the Border
Speaker 32: Patrol agents, a lot of people don't understand it's like
Speaker 32: a cult, you know, they always say you bleed green,
Speaker 32: you know, and you don't go back from green, and
Speaker 32: probably one of the few that ever left, you know,
Speaker 32: and tells the truth about it.
Speaker 7: Of Course, the vast majority of people whose families will
Speaker 7: never find justice because of these cit teams are not white,
Speaker 7: and of course Border Patrol has long rooted links to
Speaker 7: white nationalism. In nineteen seventy seven, about forty five minutes
Speaker 7: from San Diego and another forty five minutes from Komba,
Speaker 7: David Duke, grand Dragon of the Knights of the klu
Speaker 7: Klux Klan at the time, announced the official beginning of
Speaker 7: Clan Border Watch. Duke claimed there were hundreds of clansmen
Speaker 7: on the border, but local newspapers The Desert Sun reported
Speaker 7: that there were in reality at least ten are quote
Speaker 7: directly from the Desert Suns reporting at a time here,
Speaker 7: Duke said clansmen would refrain from direct contact with illegal
Speaker 7: aliens if any have found. He said, klansmen would not
Speaker 7: talk to them or contact them, but if any illegal
Speaker 7: crossings are scene, they're going to use CBE radios to
Speaker 7: relay the information to Border Patrol, Duke said. Duke of Metairie, Louisiana,
Speaker 7: claimed the clan has the support of the American people
Speaker 7: and helping the Border patrol stem the influx of illegal
Speaker 7: aliens into this country. He claimed. The illegal aliens take
Speaker 7: jobs away from US citizens. We feel this rising tide
Speaker 7: washing over our border is going to affect our culture,
Speaker 7: he told reporters at the time, in a statement that
Speaker 7: wouldn't sound out of place on Fox News today. In response,
Speaker 7: more than one thousand, five hundred brown Berries threatened to
Speaker 7: rally against Duke. A protest fire out numbering his patrols,
Speaker 7: popped up along the border. In the late nineteen seventies
Speaker 7: and early nineteen eighties, Texas Knights of the KKK leader
Speaker 7: Louis Beam, a Vietnam war veteran who had helped to
Speaker 7: organize and promote Duke's border stunt, established paramilitary camps around
Speaker 7: Texas and trained children as young as eight in the
Speaker 7: deadly guerrilla warfare tactics he learned overseas. He rallied white
Speaker 7: fishermen against Vietnamese migrants and burned their boats. In twenty nineteen,
Speaker 7: a Border patrol agent from Logales named Matthew Bowen was
Speaker 7: accused of knocking down a Guatemala man with his vehicle
Speaker 7: then lying to a quart about the incident. The prosecutors
Speaker 7: in the case showed the jury text Bowen sent, including
Speaker 7: one which called migrants quote disgusting, sub human shit unworthy
Speaker 7: of being kindling for a fire. In several text messages,
Speaker 7: Bowen references quote tonks. This is a derogatory term for
Speaker 7: border crossing migrants. The urging is determined a little bit unclear,
Speaker 7: but it seems to be derived from the sound of
Speaker 7: a flashlight hitting the back of someone's head. In argument,
Speaker 7: again submitting the texts, defense lawyer Sean Chapman wrote that
Speaker 7: he would argue certain terms are quote commonplace throughout the
Speaker 7: Border Patrols twos on sector. This is part of the
Speaker 7: agency's culture and therefore it says nothing about mister Bowen's
Speaker 7: mindset genses. This kind of language and attitude was not
Speaker 7: uncommon in her time in border patrol from the mid
Speaker 7: nineties to the early two thousands, but things have got worse.
Speaker 32: Since there have been some definite changes in the Border
Speaker 32: Patrol in the training from before nine to eleven to
Speaker 32: after nine to eleven, and what you also see so
Speaker 32: their vocabulary has changed, so like they refer to migrants
Speaker 32: and asylum secrecis invaders. We never use that term prior
Speaker 32: to nine to eleven, and we did have racist words
Speaker 32: that were used for there. I mean I use them
Speaker 32: as well. I'm not denying there.
Speaker 7: Of course, this kind of language isn't just restricted to
Speaker 7: border patrol.
Speaker 31: The US has become a dumping ground for everybody else's problems.
Speaker 5: Thank care.
Speaker 31: It's true, and these are the best and the finest.
Speaker 31: When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best.
Speaker 7: They're not sending you. They're not sending you.
Speaker 31: They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're
Speaker 31: bringing those problems with us. They're bringing drugs, they're bringing crime,
Speaker 31: they're rapists, and some I assume are good people.
Speaker 7: There has been white supremacist violence at the border ever
Speaker 7: since Duke and long before. Often it's been at the
Speaker 7: hands of groups outside of the state. Sometimes it's been
Speaker 7: at the hands of the state. In Arizona, groups like
Speaker 7: Arizona Border Ricon and Minutemen American Defense have terrorized border
Speaker 7: communities for decades, engaged renewed momentum from Trump's consistent demonization
Speaker 7: of migrants. I spent a bit of time looking for
Speaker 7: them in the desert in Arizona last week, but I
Speaker 7: didn't see much, not that I really wanted to. Interaction
Speaker 7: with these militias, probably far more often than we have
Speaker 7: documented evidence for, can be fatal, just like interaction with
Speaker 7: customs and border protection. Here's just one example culled from
Speaker 7: David Newitt's excellent book, and Hell followed with her. On
Speaker 7: May thirtieth, two thousand and nine, Sean of Ford, Jason
Speaker 7: Eugene Bush, and Albert Gacxiola, all members of Ford's vigilante
Speaker 7: group Minuteman American Defense, forced their way into Raoul Flores
Speaker 7: Junior's home in Aravika, Arizona, by pretending to be border
Speaker 7: patrol agents. The group planned to steal and sell drugs
Speaker 7: they thought Flora's had in his house. The FBI knew
Speaker 7: about this, but did nothing to stop them, Finding no
Speaker 7: drugs in the house. Civitilante's murder Flores and his nine
Speaker 7: year old daughter, Bricennia, Flora's wife and Brisenia's mother, Gina
Speaker 7: Marie Gonzalez, was shot three times. She played dead, but
Speaker 7: when attack has returned, she exchanged fire with them, using
Speaker 7: her husband's handgun. In doing so, she hit Bush. Bush
Speaker 7: had previously been charged with a September nineteen ninety seven
Speaker 7: execution of an Aryan Nation associate for the supposed crime
Speaker 7: of being a race traitor. Both Ford and Bush are
Speaker 7: currently on death row in Arizona. The KKAK was not
Speaker 7: the only group recruiting children for border patrolling. Since the
Speaker 7: mid nineteen eighties, the Border Patrol's Explorer program has recruited
Speaker 7: young men and women of high school age. The program
Speaker 7: is charted through Learning for Life, which is a subsidiary
Speaker 7: of the Scouts of America. For kids, often the children
Speaker 7: of immigrants living in border towns where industry has long
Speaker 7: since gone in a decent wage is hard to come by,
Speaker 7: the program offers the chance at a starting salary of
Speaker 7: sixty two thousand dollars twice a median income. In stide
Speaker 7: some of these towns, young Explorers will learn tracking, survival, shooting,
Speaker 7: and how to detain and process on documented migrants, people
Speaker 7: who in some cases are walking in the footsteps of
Speaker 7: their own parents. According to an article by Moraling Music
Speaker 7: in the Nation, young Explorers have to earn the writer
Speaker 7: their uniform by participating their sixty hour Basic Explorer Academy,
Speaker 7: of which they learned CPR drills and the methods of
Speaker 7: conducting vehicle stops. It also offers courses in radio communications,
Speaker 7: public speaking, report writing, and ethics and integrity, and introduces
Speaker 7: the youth to criminal juvenile immigration of Fourth Amendment law.
Speaker 7: While I was writing it, so checked out the San
Speaker 7: Diego sector page, which seems to show young people running, shooting,
Speaker 7: and one who looks like he's just been mased in
Speaker 7: the face. The next photo on the Facebook page dedicated
Speaker 7: to this Border Patrol sector shows a man in handcuffs.
Speaker 7: Above this is a video of someone dropping a chart
Speaker 7: from the top of the border fence. Without figures from
Speaker 7: the CVP, it's hard to tell of participation in the
Speaker 7: Explorers has dropped as public awareness of family separation assault
Speaker 7: now the behavior doesn't exactly fit with the Border Patrol's
Speaker 7: motto on a first has spread. I asked Jen for
Speaker 7: her take on the Explorer program.
Speaker 32: Well, I call it Border Patrol Youth because it reminds
Speaker 32: me a lot of the Hitler youth, where we go
Speaker 32: into their high schools and we get the kids that
Speaker 32: are in trouble, and typically they are Latino dominant high schools,
Speaker 32: and we teach them how to be Many Border Patrol agents,
Speaker 32: and we teach them to hate somebody else instead of themselves.
Speaker 32: We indoctrinate them into the same stuff that I was
Speaker 32: indoctrinating into. But it's even gone so far now as
Speaker 32: to they do the dog and pony shows at the
Speaker 32: elementary school, so they're getting them when they're like six
Speaker 32: seven years old, and they go there with you a
Speaker 32: little Border Patrol bulletproof vest and put them on them
Speaker 32: and take pictures and put it on social media, and
Speaker 32: they have them sit in their trucks and turn the
Speaker 32: signs on and all this other stuff.
Speaker 7: That indoctrination is crucial to border patrol culture. And to
Speaker 7: be honest, the reason I wanted to talk to Jen
Speaker 7: was to understand it better. In Ocomber, young border patrol agent,
Speaker 7: a woman giving volunteers right, I'm not about to get
Speaker 7: into a Border Patrol truck myself, and I wasn't going
Speaker 7: to get a response by asked the agent how she
Speaker 7: squared up her role in holding people in the desert
Speaker 7: with the fact that some volunteers said she'd spend her
Speaker 7: own money buying supplies. Jen said that this kind of
Speaker 7: behavior can be pretty common with young agents.
Speaker 32: I had intended to go to law school to be
Speaker 32: a civil rights attorney when I joined the Border Patrol,
Speaker 32: and for me, I ignored my core values and ignored
Speaker 32: that I was enforcing laws that sent thousands of human
Speaker 32: beings to their deaths because I felt like I was
Speaker 32: trying to survive. I was raped in the academy by
Speaker 32: a fellow agent, and they covered that up, and I
Speaker 32: was really trying to get out of the South and
Speaker 32: start my life. I oftould say, like, especially with female agents,
Speaker 32: they cause it ers five percent, because there's never been
Speaker 32: more than five percent women in the Border Patrol rates.
Speaker 32: And they say, oh, it's because it's very hard. It's
Speaker 32: not because it's very hard. I mean, it is very
Speaker 32: hard to get through, but it's also it's because they're
Speaker 32: sexually assaulting us all the time in the academy and
Speaker 32: halassing us. So I go back and forth in my mind,
Speaker 32: and I would imagine this young woman, you know, she
Speaker 32: has days where she arrests some pretty decent criminals every
Speaker 32: now and then once in a blue moon, but the
Speaker 32: majority of them, if she's paying attention and not completely
Speaker 32: self absorbed, she'll realize that they're not criminals, and their
Speaker 32: families just simply seeking asylum, so she at some point
Speaker 32: has to decide in her mind, is this what I
Speaker 32: got into?
Speaker 8: Is this what I want to do with my life?
Speaker 7: In the wake of nine to eleven and quite telling me,
Speaker 7: the Border Patrol moved from oversight by the Department of
Speaker 7: Justice to the new Department of Homeland Security. This move
Speaker 7: from Justice as security has been echoed, and it's recruiting,
Speaker 7: which once you heavily on those, it's humanitarian aid experience
Speaker 7: and now tries to appeal to veterans of the two
Speaker 7: decades of war that have accompanied the growth of DHS
Speaker 7: since two thousand and one. When the DHS was first established,
Speaker 7: the name struck many as problematic. In the two thousand
Speaker 7: and two article in The New York Times, Elizabeth Becker
Speaker 7: wrote that the name had worrying similarities to the way
Speaker 7: the Nazis talked about their fatherland, and it didn't really
Speaker 7: fit with the way Americans spoke. Nobody in two thousand
Speaker 7: and one was talking about the homeland. But two decades
Speaker 7: and billions of dollars later, it's hard to find much
Speaker 7: in the way of criticism of the agency in DC,
Speaker 7: despite the fact that the twenty twenty two budgets of
Speaker 7: CBP and ICE was sixteen and eight billion, respectively, and
Speaker 7: every year since two thousand and one, DHS has obtained
Speaker 7: more guns, more drones, and more surveillance technology that is
Speaker 7: inevitably used to spy on citizens as well as non citizens.
Speaker 7: In nineteen ninety five, there are about four thousand CBP agents.
Speaker 7: By twenty twenty there were twenty thousand, with seventeen thousand
Speaker 7: stations on the southern border. This is a slight drop
Speaker 7: from a peak of just over twenty one thousand under Obama,
Speaker 7: who is often called the deporter in Chief, is fondness
Speaker 7: for expelling people from the United States for crimes like
Speaker 7: having a PieP or financial misconduct, the so called aggravated
Speaker 7: felonies and crimes of moral turpitude that only exist for
Speaker 7: non citizens. These agents today have the ability to operate
Speaker 7: in what the ACLU calls a constitution free zone and
Speaker 7: can conduct suspicion free searches of electronic devices, use cell
Speaker 7: site simulators, and sweep up data about thousands of people
Speaker 7: never accused of any crime. One of the more notable
Speaker 7: examples of this happened only a few yards from where
Speaker 7: I was recording last week. In Santa Cudro. It's a
Speaker 7: story worth recounting in detail because it brings together the
Speaker 7: themes we've spoken about so far, demonization of migrants, government overreach,
Speaker 7: and a frank disregard for international and national law. In
Speaker 7: late twenty eighteen, I was enjoying a break from work
Speaker 7: in a caravan near in Sonata. If you think back
Speaker 7: to that time, right before the midterms, you might remember
Speaker 7: some of the rhetoric that's circulated around a large group
Speaker 7: of migrants making their way to the southern border. I'll
Speaker 7: play some of the clips from Fox that MPR cut
Speaker 7: together in their coverage of the issue.
Speaker 9: Sympathetic, overwrought coverage of this invading horde. Is calling it
Speaker 9: a caravan is a misnomer? In a frankly sickness.
Speaker 38: Or sampled that Chipper Morning show Fox and Friends.
Speaker 11: I've gotten so many email from people who said, don't
Speaker 11: call it a caravan, call it an invasion.
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 2: Is that fair?
Speaker 38: Host Steve Doocy put the question to conservative pundit Michelle Malkin.
Speaker 5: Of course it is.
Speaker 29: It is a full scale invasion by a hostile force,
Speaker 29: and it requires our president and our commander in chief
Speaker 29: to use any means necessary to protect our sovereignty.
Speaker 38: CNN's Brian Stelter found that Fox News featured segments using
Speaker 38: the phrase invasion more than sixty times this month about
Speaker 38: the migrants. On Fox Business Network, Lou Dobbs's program invoked
Speaker 38: it dozens of times. Trump ordered five thousand troops to
Speaker 38: the border. He tweeted yesterday, quote, this is an invasion
Speaker 38: of our country, and Trump has, without evidence, claimed gang
Speaker 38: members and criminals and Middle Easterners are among them. Over
Speaker 38: on Fox, guests have similarly, without supporting facts, suggested people
Speaker 38: from Isis and the Taliban be among those migrants. Even so,
Speaker 38: the network's chief news anchor, Shepherd Smith, tried to put
Speaker 38: on the brakes yesterday.
Speaker 39: Tomorrow is one week before the midterm election, which is
Speaker 39: what all of this is about. There is no invasion,
Speaker 39: No one's coming to get you. There's nothing at all
Speaker 39: to worry about.
Speaker 38: This month, Fox hosts and guests have repeatedly questions whether
Speaker 38: the migrants might bring in infectious diseases, again without evidence.
Speaker 9: Laura Ingram, we don't know what people have coming in here.
Speaker 9: We have diseases in this country we haven't had for decades.
Speaker 7: I'll leave you to process the incredible army of the
Speaker 7: network that killed the decent percentage of its viewers by
Speaker 7: denying that COVID was serious, or a disease, or the
Speaker 7: vaccines and masks are useful panicking about infectious diseases. Just
Speaker 7: two years before the pandemic began, the Tree of Life shooter,
Speaker 7: who we won't name here, who is currently facing a
Speaker 7: death penunty trial for murdering eleven people in a Pittsburgh synegogue,
Speaker 7: was obsessed with the caravan. The victims of the largest
Speaker 7: anti Semitic mass murder in US history included a beloved
Speaker 7: county doctor, a great grandmother, and a couple who'd gotten
Speaker 7: married at the same synagogue more than sixty years earlier.
Speaker 7: The shooter's last post on hate speech social media site gab,
Speaker 7: posted just minutes before the synagogue massacre began, spells it
Speaker 7: out with a reference to the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society,
Speaker 7: the Jewish nonprofit that resettles refugees in the United States.
Speaker 7: HIAS liked to bring invaders to kill our people. I
Speaker 7: can't sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw
Speaker 7: your optics, I'm going in. The shooter was obsessed with
Speaker 7: the idea that a caravan of migrants with not a
Speaker 7: group of people trying to save their own lives, but
Speaker 7: a coordinated and somehow Jewish led invasion and attempts to
Speaker 7: demographically restructure the United States. If you're ending where he
Speaker 7: got that idea from, He's America's favorite job seeker. Tucker
Speaker 7: Carlson on the caravan.
Speaker 11: Over the past month, a caravan of Central American migrants
Speaker 11: has gradually made its way up from Hunduras through Mexico
Speaker 11: all the way to Tijuana opposite San Diego. At one point,
Speaker 11: Mexican authorities claimed they broke up the group, and American media,
Speaker 11: of course dutifully reported that they did, But they didn't.
Speaker 11: That was just a pr gesture and a temporary one.
Speaker 11: In fact, during parts of the trip, Mexican police escorted
Speaker 11: the migrants northwards.
Speaker 1: In other words, the.
Speaker 11: Mexican government embedded illegal immigration into this country, as it
Speaker 11: has done for many years. Well tonight, the caravan is
Speaker 11: on our southern border. Rather than wait for the crossing
Speaker 11: station at Sanya Sidro to open, many of them just
Speaker 11: jumped the fence. Some waved Honduran flags when they got
Speaker 11: to the top. And that tells you everything. When you
Speaker 11: arrive in a country to contribute to it and to
Speaker 11: assimilate into its culture. You don't wave the flag of
Speaker 11: a foreign nation. That's what you do in triumph when
Speaker 11: you invade a country.
Speaker 7: On my way home from Mansonado in twenty eighteen, I
Speaker 7: saw that quote invading Horde in the Benito Juadi Sports
Speaker 7: Complex and probably turned around and went back. My instinct
Speaker 7: as a journalist is to couple things like this, but
Speaker 7: my instinct to the person is to help first. On
Speaker 7: the first day, I was there with two friends I
Speaker 7: know from the weird world of pro cycling. Things were
Speaker 7: pretty bad. We'd obtained a backpack full of stroop waffles
Speaker 7: that a friend who makes stroop waffles have given us.
Speaker 7: Once we gave those out, I talked to a few
Speaker 7: people about what they needed. We coordinated with mutual a
Speaker 7: groups in Tijuana and offered to support her for we could.
Speaker 7: In the next few weeks, my friends and I spent
Speaker 7: tens of thousands of dollars at a Tijuana costco, received
Speaker 7: thousands of dollars in donations from people we hadn't seen
Speaker 7: in years, and in one memorable instance, rigged up and
Speaker 7: projected as someone had tactically obtained from an office to
Speaker 7: a DVD player which we'd installed in the roof of
Speaker 7: a dilapidated nightclub full of little children and their mothers
Speaker 7: so they could watch Beverly Hills, Chihuahua and forget about
Speaker 7: the fact that the country they were traveling to was
Speaker 7: portraying these little infants as invaders. I have a lot
Speaker 7: of very complicated memories of those few weeks, little girls
Speaker 7: braiding my hair, little boys and girls trying to comprehend
Speaker 7: exactly how I could be this bad at football, and
Speaker 7: people from San Diego churches, tijuan anarchist kitchens, and mutual
Speaker 7: a groups around the region coming together to look after
Speaker 7: a group of people who'd been so heavily demonized by
Speaker 7: folks who had never met them or even been here.
Speaker 7: His Trump defending calling the CA caravan an invasion and
Speaker 7: simultaneously explaining why migrants low wage labor it's desirable for
Speaker 7: 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, uh in the mid terms, that here
Speaker 34: we go that well, if you don't mind, miss President,
Speaker 34: coming that this caravan was an invasion, as you know,
Speaker 34: consider it to be. As you know, miss President, the
Speaker 34: caravan was not an invasion. It's a it's a a
Speaker 34: group of migrants moving up from Central America towards the
Speaker 34: border with the US. Thank you. And why why did
Speaker 34: you why did you characterize it as such?
Speaker 16: Uh?
Speaker 1: Because I consider an invasion. You and I have a
Speaker 1: difference of a button.
Speaker 34: Do you think that you demonized immigrants? Not this election
Speaker 34: to try.
Speaker 10: I want them.
Speaker 20: I want them to come into the country, but they
Speaker 20: have to come in legally.
Speaker 23: You know, they have to come in Jim.
Speaker 20: Through a process.
Speaker 31: I want it to be a process, and I want
Speaker 31: people to come in.
Speaker 1: And we need the people.
Speaker 34: Your campaign, your campaign.
Speaker 23: You know why we need the people, does you?
Speaker 20: Because we have hundreds of companies moving in.
Speaker 23: We need the people.
Speaker 7: Trump, as you had a clip, used a migrant caravan
Speaker 7: as a prop for his racist and bigoted midterm campaign.
Speaker 7: It didn't work and he lost control of the House,
Speaker 7: but he did succeed in forcing these people to spend
Speaker 7: months in the cold, first in a sports stadium and
Speaker 7: then in an old nightclub, even as a migrant gradually
Speaker 7: reduced in number, with many finding work and new life
Speaker 7: in Mexico, some finding their way north. The long legacy
Speaker 7: of that caravan was only just starting. In the months
Speaker 7: have followed journalists who'd covered the caravan, as well as
Speaker 7: those who offered assistant to caravan members, so they felt
Speaker 7: they'd become targets of intense inspections of scrutiny by border officials.
Speaker 7: I got pulled into secondarily once during this time, and
Speaker 7: that was entering Mexaco. The worst I got was a
Speaker 7: chance to inspect my nineteen eighty pickup trucks oil pen.
Speaker 7: But for others, things weren't so easy. Homeland Security Investigation
Speaker 7: special agent turned whistleblower Wesley Peternak helped NBC to document that,
Speaker 7: under the umbrella of what was called Operation Secure Line,
Speaker 7: the Department of Homeland Security created a database of activists, journalists,
Speaker 7: and social media influences tied to the migrant cart When
Speaker 7: they crossed the border. Individuals in that database were often
Speaker 7: subjected to hours long screenings and in some cases had
Speaker 7: flagspaced on their passports. A PowerPoint slideshow which Peternac leaked
Speaker 7: to NBC seven lists some of the people, some of
Speaker 7: them have been guests on this show. They include ten journalists,
Speaker 7: seven of whom are US citizens. A US attorney forty
Speaker 7: eight people from the US and other countries who are
Speaker 7: labeled as organizers, instigators, or having unknown roles. The target
Speaker 7: lists also includes organizers from groups like Border Angels and
Speaker 7: Pueblos in Froontella's I asked journalist brook Bin Cowsey to
Speaker 7: describe her experience of increased border scrutiny in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 40: If you don't have a pre approved card, you have
Speaker 40: to like go through wait and line, waiting this long
Speaker 40: ass line, and then you know, you go and get
Speaker 40: vetted by CDP. They ask you some questions or they
Speaker 40: just wave you through, depending on what kind of day
Speaker 40: they're having or whatever. So in my case, I started
Speaker 40: getting pulled into secondary inspection more and more. So they
Speaker 40: would wave my car over and then take me into
Speaker 40: this secondary place where it's sort of like this back
Speaker 40: it's like a Quonsett pet sort of, and in it
Speaker 40: like all these cars drive in and out, and they'll
Speaker 40: they'll go through your things, they'll get in your face,
Speaker 40: you know, they'll do all kinds of stuff. And I
Speaker 40: don't there have to be cameras in there somewhere, but
Speaker 40: I've never seen any. So I just kept getting pulled
Speaker 40: into secondary more and more, as though I was this
Speaker 40: suspicious person, as though I was suspected of something, and
Speaker 40: every time I asked, they'd be like, I don't know,
Speaker 40: it's just random, ma'am, and ma'am, it's just random. So
Speaker 40: actually this started about twenty fourteen for me, but it
Speaker 40: started to escalate in twenty eighteen. Twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen
Speaker 40: started to escalate, and I was like, a fucking Trump administration,
Speaker 40: of course going to escalate right on.
Speaker 7: The Trump she said, Things got worse.
Speaker 40: From twenty seventeen through twenty eighteen. It kind of worked
Speaker 40: where you push back and I'd be like, you need
Speaker 40: to let me fucking go. You know, I'm century, I'm
Speaker 40: already pre checked. If you think that there's something wrong
Speaker 40: that I'm doing, and take my fucking century away, and
Speaker 40: I want to talk to your manager type stuff, right,
Speaker 40: So I was doing that that were until twenty eighteen,
Speaker 40: and then it started to get really gnarly.
Speaker 7: Eventually things came to a head the day before the
Speaker 7: migrants of the caravan were tea guessed. And I've seen
Speaker 7: most people remember from twenty eighteen.
Speaker 40: So but on that night, as I was coming back,
Speaker 40: I drove through and I did this century thing, you know,
Speaker 40: the usual stuff, and got pulled into secondary and this
Speaker 40: time it was really like gnarly. The time before that
Speaker 40: had also been really gnarly, like nobody hurt me, nobody
Speaker 40: did anything. But they got really close to my face,
Speaker 40: like brighten my face, you know, and started screaming at me,
Speaker 40: like screaming over me.
Speaker 5: And I kept going, I'd like to speak to.
Speaker 40: Your manager, you know, sir, like please, please get out
Speaker 40: of my face, sir. And it was it was gross,
Speaker 40: and they were going through my shit and that was gross.
Speaker 40: Like they didn't find anything, but it was just an invasive, hostile,
Speaker 40: disgusting thing. And that was when so I said, can
Speaker 40: I speak to your manager? Which is a magic phrase
Speaker 40: when you're a middle aged white woman. So I say this,
Speaker 40: and they bring over some guy and he goes, ma'am,
Speaker 40: can I help you?
Speaker 5: I'm like, yeah, what the fuck?
Speaker 40: You know, why are you treating me this way? Why
Speaker 40: did any of this happen? And he goes, oh, yeah,
Speaker 40: I'm sorry. Your name's on a list somewhere. You've been
Speaker 40: flat And I'm like, so every time I've crossed, I've
Speaker 40: been flagged. He's like yeah, and yeah, you've been there's
Speaker 40: a flag on your passport or against your name and
Speaker 40: that's why. And I said, well, why is there a
Speaker 40: flag against my name? And he goes, I don't know,
Speaker 40: You're going to have to do a Freedom of Information
Speaker 40: Act request or something.
Speaker 5: I don't even know if he knew I was a.
Speaker 7: Journalist sadly broke Glass Crossing twenty eighteen, and since I
Speaker 7: photographed those Cumi folks in ceremony near Camper, the border
Speaker 7: wall has only got longer. Every mile it stretches out
Speaker 7: means another mile into the desert people have to walk,
Speaker 7: and that means that more people won't walk out of
Speaker 7: that desert, Those people who lost their lives, and an
Speaker 7: attempt to save them. A mark with little red dots
Speaker 7: on the various maps, at attempt to put the humanitarian
Speaker 7: crisis into a visual form. Those dots begin in South
Speaker 7: America's people die traveling north, but they're sparse and isolated.
Speaker 7: Where that changes is the places I've been driving all week,
Speaker 7: Eastern California, southern Arizona. Places I know from years of hiking, climbing,
Speaker 7: and cycling. Places when one mistake can be fatal. I
Speaker 7: know from my friends who spend time resupplying water caches
Speaker 7: and searching for missing people, that you don't have to
Speaker 7: make any mistakes to die in the desert, especially if
Speaker 7: you're young or old, or sick or afraid to ask
Speaker 7: for help. These are the places we force people to
Speaker 7: travel through on foot to come here and create a
Speaker 7: better future for themselves. Dehydration, exposure, and drowning or rank
Speaker 7: highly as caused a death along the border. Last year
Speaker 7: saw a record for border death, and with Biden attempting
Speaker 7: to take a hard line going into twenty twenty four,
Speaker 7: and climate change and instability continuing to drive migrants north
Speaker 7: to the place that causes so much of that climate
Speaker 7: change and instability, there's no reason to believe things will
Speaker 7: get better. I want to point to one tragic loss,
Speaker 7: one of thousands, that happened not far from where I live.
Speaker 7: In February of twenty twenty, Juana Margarita and Paula Santosarthe
Speaker 7: were traveling by foot from Wahaka to their future in
Speaker 7: the United States along a trail sometimes known as the
Speaker 7: Shrine Trail. Their family told media back home that they
Speaker 7: were searching for us. When you are Americano, the American dream.
Speaker 7: Along their route is a small religious shrine which marks
Speaker 7: the last point from which you can see in Mexico.
Speaker 7: It's well inside the US, along a dry creek bed
Speaker 7: in the Laguna Mountains. It can be hot in the
Speaker 7: summer and cold in the winter. Last November I camped
Speaker 7: out there, and even with thousands of dollars in gear,
Speaker 7: I was dangerously close to cold injury. I've also rescued
Speaker 7: hikers with dehydration symptoms near here. The desert and the
Speaker 7: weather might be part of the story, but the desert
Speaker 7: doesn't kill people on its own. It's the border that
Speaker 7: forces people deep into the desert that kills them. The
Speaker 7: desert is just a tool for a system that uses
Speaker 7: death of a torrent. When the girls cross the border
Speaker 7: camp on the ninth of February, it was raining. As
Speaker 7: they climbed the Lagoona mountains, it started to snow. They
Speaker 7: huddled under a bolder for warmth, and the two men
Speaker 7: smuggling them across struck out to get Star reception and
Speaker 7: call nine to one one. By the time boor Star
Speaker 7: Border Patrol Search Trauma and Rescue team arrived, two of
Speaker 7: the girls had died as they tried to save Juana.
Speaker 7: Their request for air support was declined, and she died
Speaker 7: with one of the agents jack kits wrapped around her
Speaker 7: and another agent's beanie on her head. For some reason,
Speaker 7: the girl's remains were not recovered right away, and they
Speaker 7: were not rewarmed, and so they last their last chance
Speaker 7: at the American dream and not life. Today, their final
Speaker 7: resting place is marked by three crosses and a cash
Speaker 7: of supplies placed there by volunteers at the time I'm
Speaker 7: recording this, we don't know where all the folks we
Speaker 7: met at the border are now. Then we might never know.
Speaker 7: Not being able to follow stories is a sad part
Speaker 7: of this reporting. Sometimes you know its people all have
Speaker 7: my phone number, but they might not. Only more have
Speaker 7: their phones or the scrap of paper are wrote it on.
Speaker 7: Often these things can be taken for them in custody.
Speaker 7: What we do know is that on May eighteenth, exactly
Speaker 7: one week after Title forty two ended, Immigration and Customs
Speaker 7: Enforcement also known as ICE, tweeted a video of Customs
Speaker 7: Enforcement and Removal Operations agents walking down the corridor of
Speaker 7: a flight full of mass people. The caption read ICE
Speaker 7: conducted multiple removal flights, including Ecuador, Guatemala, and Honduras as
Speaker 7: part of dozens flights conducted each week. On the wall
Speaker 7: of my office, they write this. There are several propaganda
Speaker 7: posters from the Spanish Second Republic. One is as simple
Speaker 7: as it is heartbreaking. The poster depicts a squadron of
Speaker 7: fascist bombers and the dead body of a child. The
Speaker 7: slogan underneath reads, if you tolerate this, then your children
Speaker 7: will be next. The poster was, of course correct. It
Speaker 7: was the inspiration for songs for the Clash and the
Speaker 7: Man Three Preachers, which are what, in turn made me
Speaker 7: want to learn about the Spanish Civil War. The slogan,
Speaker 7: coined in nineteen thirty seven, feels as relevant today as
Speaker 7: it does then. It was one that folks on the
Speaker 7: border might as well have been screaming by twenty eighteen,
Speaker 7: but one that went ignored, just as it did in
Speaker 7: nineteen thirty seven. In twenty twenty, folks began to realize
Speaker 7: what it meant when border patrol drones circled the skies
Speaker 7: around Minneapolis and cell phone signal interceptors tracked citizens all
Speaker 7: over the US. When they came together to demand that
Speaker 7: the police stop murdering people. It became more real in
Speaker 7: twenty twenty three, when under DeSantis, Florida began the process
Speaker 7: of legalizing state kidnapping of trans and gender nonperforming kids
Speaker 7: from their loving families. But that all began when the
Speaker 7: state ripped Indigenous children for their families in nineteenth and
Speaker 7: twentieth centuries, who tried to destroy their culture by punishing
Speaker 7: them for wearing their clothes, speaking their languages, or using
Speaker 7: their names. Wasn't a big leap from there to Trump's
Speaker 7: family separation policy, which detained kids on their own, away
Speaker 7: from their families as a means of punishing the deterring migrants,
Speaker 7: and it's reached its obvious endpoint in Florida because despite
Speaker 7: all the people I think about kids in courages in
Speaker 7: twenty twenty, it's almost universal bipartisan agreement on treating people
Speaker 7: of our southern border like humans without rights. And because
Speaker 7: for two decades we've allowed the border surveillance industrial complex
Speaker 7: to grow to an unprecedented and uncontrollable scale. But what
Speaker 7: you us all changing things now will be very difficult.
Speaker 7: DHS aren't numbers many nations armies, and it's considerably better equipped.
Speaker 7: But unless people show up and take action, things are
Speaker 7: going to get considerably worse, regardless of who you vote
Speaker 7: for or what they say in order to get you
Speaker 7: to vote for them. As Katie said, little things can
Speaker 7: make a difference, and if you listen this far, I
Speaker 7: hope you'll take the time to try and do those
Speaker 7: little things. Before we go, I want to update you
Speaker 7: on what's happened in the week we've been publishing this.
Speaker 7: Although there are no longer people held out in the
Speaker 7: open in ho Goomba and sant Asedra, there are still
Speaker 7: many people trying to present themselves at the sant Asedra
Speaker 7: border to claim asylum. Today I was told they are
Speaker 7: about one hundred of them. They're waiting there, often for days.
Speaker 7: Most of them are getting turned away. They're all frustrated
Speaker 7: with CVP one which continues to be buggy, offer no
Speaker 7: appointments and struggle to photograph black faces. I also wanted
Speaker 7: to mention some of the organizations you can find and
Speaker 7: donate to if you'd like to support their efforts. They
Speaker 7: are the Asian Solidarity Collective, Alo Trolao, the American Friends
Speaker 7: Service Committee, Border Kindness border Lands Relief Collective, the Haitian
Speaker 7: Bridge Alliance, the Partnership for the Advancement of New Americans
Speaker 7: and PREVENKASA pr e v E NCASA. I'd also like
Speaker 7: to thank Joe Oriana his Twitter is at Joe or
Speaker 7: Photo for his reporting which very much contributed to this series.
Speaker 2: Hey, We'll be back Monday with more episodes every week
Speaker 2: from now until the heat death of the Universe.
Speaker 41: It Could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
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