Speaker 1: As 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 going to be nothing new here for you, but
Speaker 2: you can make your own decisions.
Speaker 3: I conducted interviews for this series in Spanish and French.
Speaker 3: Then I transcribed them and translated them, and we had
Speaker 3: voice actors read them. So when you're listening to this,
Speaker 3: please remember that everything you're hearing in English was recorded
Speaker 3: another language, and it's through the lens of my translation
Speaker 3: that you're hearing these people's words. As we always do,
Speaker 3: we have included the sources for this podcast in the
Speaker 3: show notes. I've also included a link to Primroses Legal
Speaker 3: aid fundraiser people would like to help out. Like most
Speaker 3: of you, I wasn't having a great day on the
Speaker 3: twentieth of January of twenty twenty five. I wasn't about
Speaker 3: to watch the inauguration, so I went for a run
Speaker 3: in the mountains Instead, I spent the next few weeks
Speaker 3: trying to focus on the things we could do, the
Speaker 3: things we had to do to get through four years
Speaker 3: of fascism. Just a few miles away from my house,
Speaker 3: I set out for my run, and unbeknown to me,
Speaker 3: my friend Primrose was staring down from the top of
Speaker 3: a thirty foot steel monument to hate Donald Trump had
Speaker 3: built the last time he was president. To be ir accurate,
Speaker 3: it was one that he had modified. There have been
Speaker 3: versions of the border wall in San Diego for decades.
Speaker 4: They said, no, yes, option, we need to take you.
Speaker 4: But you know, for me, I had to take it.
Speaker 5: It's because.
Speaker 4: I was scared to stay in Mexico. So they took
Speaker 4: us with under the bridge, I think the sewage. We
Speaker 4: were walking with our stomach like under the bridge to
Speaker 4: get to USA and Mexican borders. So they put ladder
Speaker 4: for us to your us. Those people, when they saw
Speaker 4: American immigration came, they just removed the ladder and me,
Speaker 4: I was on top, so I had yeah, I was stuck.
Speaker 4: Then I had no choice, and the kim Balish was
Speaker 4: crying like calm, let's go, let's go.
Speaker 3: At that time, I knew nothing about it. But her
Speaker 3: daughter Kim had already jumped. As a Biden presidency drew
Speaker 3: to a close. But before Trump began signing executive orders
Speaker 3: with pens, he tossed into the crowd. She'd made it
Speaker 3: to the US. Her mum was in the US as
Speaker 3: well the walls inside the border, but the people who
Speaker 3: had helped it get up to the top of the
Speaker 3: war had fled when border patrol arrived, taking their ladder
Speaker 3: with them. So Primrose was left atop the wall, the
Speaker 3: literal and metaphorical final hurdle in her long and dangerous
Speaker 3: journey that had begun in Zimbabwe, who went through South Africa, Brazil, Colombia, Panama,
Speaker 3: Costa Rica, Negaragua, Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico. But before we
Speaker 3: come down from the border wall, I want to take
Speaker 3: you back to the Missoak river bank of Maraganti. Last September, Paraya. Daddy,
Speaker 3: my fixer and I had woken up a no godly hour,
Speaker 3: and so had the jungle birds. Along with half the
Speaker 3: population of the village. We walked down to the river bank,
Speaker 3: carrying the engines and fuel tanks. At Piraguas. A few
Speaker 3: minutes later, a chorus of two stroke engines and smoke
Speaker 3: fired up. As the boats set off towards Bajo Jaquito.
Speaker 3: I stood in the bow, still trying to master the
Speaker 3: use of the pole. As we passed through the faster moving,
Speaker 3: shallower water. Daddy sat in the middle and laughed at me.
Speaker 3: Despite my best efforts, we arrived in one piece in
Speaker 3: Bajo Chiquito, and I launched myself from the bow into
Speaker 3: knee deep water on the rocky beach. In front of
Speaker 3: us stood hundreds of people patiently waiting for the piragueros
Speaker 3: to take them north and out of the jungle. Stretched
Speaker 3: like a snake all the way through town. The line
Speaker 3: of migrants must have totaled one thousand people. I walked
Speaker 3: backwards away from the boats, the only foreigner not leaving
Speaker 3: look for people i'd met the day before. About halfway
Speaker 3: down the line stood Primrose and Kim, and I stopped
Speaker 3: while we chatted for a bit about what the boat
Speaker 3: ride was like, what they could expect next.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm going there. Yeah, yeah, I'm going to Nadist.
Speaker 6: Do you have family, yeah, no, you just make your
Speaker 6: American life.
Speaker 3: It's okay.
Speaker 4: I think I'm just trying. No, it's only me and
Speaker 4: my daughter.
Speaker 3: Despite this, they had found community on the journey. I
Speaker 3: can't describe how scary it must be for two women
Speaker 3: to set out on this journey alone. It takes an
Speaker 3: awful lot to embark on that journey and to be
Speaker 3: able to trust people when everyone is a potential threat.
Speaker 3: But if there's one thing I learned in a jungle,
Speaker 3: it's in the hardest times and the hardest places, the
Speaker 3: only way forward is together. Primos reminded me of this,
Speaker 3: telling me how complete strangers had helped her.
Speaker 4: Very nice, especially the Spanish people.
Speaker 5: They are very nice.
Speaker 4: I don't want to life was if you need help,
Speaker 4: you forgot them for your Look the other ones they
Speaker 4: might run away by the other ones.
Speaker 5: They just for your They.
Speaker 4: Even give us tablets on the road, give us energy drinks,
Speaker 4: give my daughter sweets for enage. They push us like,
Speaker 4: let's go, guys, let's go, let's go. You make it,
Speaker 4: and we really make it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that's really nice to hear. I asked Primrose
Speaker 3: a question I asked everyone there. What did she hope
Speaker 3: for when she got to America? What was her American dream?
Speaker 3: What do you hope for her in America? What do
Speaker 3: you want to do in America.
Speaker 4: I want to go to school, then she can I
Speaker 4: see something in life. I don't wish my daughter to
Speaker 4: go big to sam Or.
Speaker 3: No, yeah, not at all. No, it's very hard.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's really really Towrogate Gradi.
Speaker 3: I saw them a few days later, Las Blancas Afred
Speaker 3: sat with a group of little Venezuelan children playing a
Speaker 3: game where we throw bottletops into a broken half cinder block.
Speaker 3: We talked about the struggle they face to pay for
Speaker 3: the bus north, and we didn't record anything that day,
Speaker 3: but as I was leaving for the evening, Kim asked
Speaker 3: me if I could buy her a drink. I generally
Speaker 3: try not to splash my money around because I don't
Speaker 3: have enough money to help everyone, and I still have
Speaker 3: some scars from ridiculous concept of objectivity that would lead
Speaker 3: some editors not to commission a story from me if
Speaker 3: I gave the subject a gift. But this time I
Speaker 3: felt like buying her a drink, and I let her
Speaker 3: select the biggest bottle of cold soda she could find
Speaker 3: in the little store in the camp there. I told
Speaker 3: her and her mum to stay in touch and wrote
Speaker 3: my number on a piece of my notebook, tore it
Speaker 3: out and gave it to them. Months later, Kim was
Speaker 3: holding the same scrap of paper, looking up her mum
Speaker 3: stuck on the border wall. A whole lot had changed
Speaker 3: since I last saw them. A few days after my
Speaker 3: scripted podcast and the Daddy and Gap was released, the
Speaker 3: United States elected Donald Trump as his forty seventh president.
Speaker 3: It was a ship month all round that My phone,
Speaker 3: as it often does, lit up with mesthews from my
Speaker 3: daddy and friends asking me what this meant and if
Speaker 3: Trump was going to close the border. I didn't really
Speaker 3: know how to answer those questions, because if it's one
Speaker 3: thing we know about Trumps, he changed his mind every
Speaker 3: few weeks. As we got closer and closer to the
Speaker 3: day he was inaugurated, they got more and more concerned.
Speaker 3: Most of them hadn't made it out of southern Mexico.
Speaker 3: Many of them had told me that things there were
Speaker 3: even worse. In the jungle. They'd all been robbed, some
Speaker 3: of them had been sexually assaulted, some of them kidnapped,
Speaker 3: and some of them killed. I'd heard about all of
Speaker 3: these things every day from September last year to January
Speaker 3: this year. In the middle of a run or when
Speaker 3: I was having dinner meeting a friend for a coffee,
Speaker 3: my phone would ring and I'd be confronted with terrible injustice,
Speaker 3: and I'd be totally powerless to set it right. As
Speaker 3: time went on, I heard from fewer and fewer of them.
Speaker 3: I assume their phones were stolen, but there are, of
Speaker 3: course more upsetting explanations as to why they might have
Speaker 3: stopped contacting me. Noemi, little girl who wanted to visit
Speaker 3: Minnie Mouse video called me once from Tappajula with a
Speaker 3: little tiny toy bear that I'd given her and that
Speaker 3: she kept with her on the whole journey. It may
Speaker 3: be happy to see them and a silly little bear
Speaker 3: carved from soapstone that had traveled the lengths of South
Speaker 3: America with them. Every few weeks after I'd left, I'd
Speaker 3: get photos of the bear in a different country. As
Speaker 3: a little Osito worked its way closer to Disneyland, some
Speaker 3: people who worked at Disneyland had reached out to offer
Speaker 3: suggestions about tickets. Other people had reached out offering to pay.
Speaker 3: I was, despite the odds, hoping that one day I
Speaker 3: could help one little girl see her American dream come true.
Speaker 3: When we spoke. She was with her mum and they
Speaker 3: were trying to log onto CBP one hoping for an appointment,
Speaker 3: but it wouldn't work on their old Android phones. I
Speaker 3: tried to find shelters with reliable internet that would take
Speaker 3: them in, and called friends and endious almost every week,
Speaker 3: passing along questions or looking for resources. I spent hours calling,
Speaker 3: finding it hard to except that the capacity for mutual
Speaker 3: aid was so overwhelmed that nobody had a safe space
Speaker 3: for little girl and her mom. I'm wondering if it
Speaker 3: still felt like a pepper Pig adventure or if even
Speaker 3: little indominitable Miami was scared now. Even from where I
Speaker 3: was was fast internet and a weather friends across the
Speaker 3: Western Hemisphere, I couldn't find the help people needed, and
Speaker 3: it made me increasingly angry and anxious the more I tried.
Speaker 3: It sucked, but there was still a chance, however slim,
Speaker 3: that one day I might get to see Miami meet
Speaker 3: Minnie Mouse. So I kept trying, and so did her mom.
Speaker 3: Then one day I got no response from her mum's
Speaker 3: WhatsApp when I messaged her. Nobody picked up the phone
Speaker 3: when I tried to ring. I still haven't had a response,
Speaker 3: but periodically, I'll keep trying. Even the last messages and
Speaker 3: photos are gone now, after my wordsapp updated, Like so
Speaker 3: many of the people who I shared my food with,
Speaker 3: whose little children held my hand in darkness of the jungle,
Speaker 3: who I desperately wished and wish I could do more for,
Speaker 3: they're gone.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 3: That's what strong borders means. It means brave little girls
Speaker 3: disappearing so a politician who knows nothing of their struggles
Speaker 3: can point to a statistic. I've listened to the interview
Speaker 3: I conducted with them so many times since last September.
Speaker 3: I still can't really work out anyone with a heart
Speaker 3: could hear that and think they wanted to live in
Speaker 3: a world where that little girl wasn't safe. But that's
Speaker 3: what people voted for. I guess I don't think they did. Actually,
Speaker 3: I can't think they did. I think people liked them,
Speaker 3: and that's what they voted for. But nonetheless, here we
Speaker 3: are now, sitting in a country that didn't want to
Speaker 3: help the little girl who flexed he around muscles to
Speaker 3: show me how strong she was after climbing the mountain
Speaker 3: into the most dangerous land migration route in the Americas,
Speaker 3: and told me, it was for her all an adventure.
Speaker 3: Her mother gave a different account.
Speaker 7: There are.
Speaker 1: I didn't want to cry because I didn't want her
Speaker 1: to see me cry. But sometimes I would explode because
Speaker 1: it's hard for your child to ask you for water,
Speaker 1: to ask you for food, and you don't have any
Speaker 1: to be in a place where you walk. You walk
Speaker 1: from five in the morning, it's five in the afternoon.
Speaker 1: You're walking, you don't know what to do, going through
Speaker 1: more than one hundred rivers and asking God not to
Speaker 1: rain and not wanting it to get worse. It rained
Speaker 1: and the girl got a fever. She got a fever.
Speaker 1: But well, God is good that we pray a lot.
Speaker 1: I say that we don't know God so much in
Speaker 1: the church from the process and the process that we
Speaker 1: are in, and we don't know we can be so
Speaker 1: strong until we go through that storm and we see
Speaker 1: that He protect us. He knows that He was always
Speaker 1: there watching over us, taking care of us at all times.
Speaker 3: I don't want to dwell on this too long because
Speaker 3: talking in public about grief is something I'm bad at.
Speaker 3: One of my friends died fighting in Ukraine this year.
Speaker 3: A colleague died just weeks before we'd planned a trip together.
Speaker 3: Some of my Burmese friends died fighting. But even as
Speaker 3: someone who talks to soldiers for a living, nothing really
Speaker 3: compares to the death toll inflicted by the US border regime.
Speaker 3: The little village in England where I grew up, there
Speaker 3: are memorials in every town a village for the young
Speaker 3: people who died fighting in the World Wars. If we
Speaker 3: built those at the border, they'd soon be towering far
Speaker 3: above the wall that does so much of the killing.
Speaker 3: Things are as bad now as they have ever been.
Speaker 3: The wall constructed in the San Diego sector that Trump
Speaker 3: administration has proposed will wave environmental and cultural protections and
Speaker 3: push migrants further into the desert. In the desert, further
Speaker 3: from help, further from water, more of them will die.
Speaker 3: Speak to migrants all the time, the ones who stayed
Speaker 3: in Mexico, even the ones who took the Venezuelan governments
Speaker 3: offerers of flights home. As much as they ask about America,
Speaker 3: they also ask about each other. Do I know what
Speaker 3: happened to the Angolans who shared their food too generously?
Speaker 3: They say, no, I haven't heard from them. What about
Speaker 3: the Venezuelan trans girl who braided their children's hair. Well,
Speaker 3: she's still braiding hair, but she hasn't made it to
Speaker 3: the US. Gradually she did make it, and then she
Speaker 3: was immediately deported back to southern Mexico. How about Rose,
Speaker 3: they say, the Boliviana who came all on her own
Speaker 3: and founder found me along the trail, only to be
Speaker 3: separated from them again. I haven't heard from her in
Speaker 3: a year. Universally, they're happy to hear about Kim and Primrose.
Speaker 3: They're glad to hear that someone made it, that somebody
Speaker 3: can make it. Because of the more than one hundred
Speaker 3: pages I tore out of my notebook with my phone number,
Speaker 3: they are two of the three people who let me
Speaker 3: know they made it here. So let's hear from Primrose
Speaker 3: about what it looks like to make it here, how
Speaker 3: it feels to have the best outcome of anyone I met.
Speaker 3: Let's pick up at Last blancas they now shattered migrant
Speaker 3: reception center. We're a hundred language for weeks and months
Speaker 3: trying to get together in the money to pay for
Speaker 3: a bus to the Panama Costa Lika border.
Speaker 4: I think I spent seven days in Banamah. What's short
Speaker 4: with money? So I went into immigration trying to ask
Speaker 4: them if you can they can help me to take
Speaker 4: a bus to Costa Rica, of which they say, no,
Speaker 4: you have to pay your sixty dollars you're in your daughter,
Speaker 4: which one to India?
Speaker 5: So I pay that?
Speaker 4: So I ask you people man, the people I know,
Speaker 4: they helped me with money. So from Banama we took
Speaker 4: a bus from Banama to Costa Rica.
Speaker 3: This is a very common story. People borrow money from
Speaker 3: a huge range of friends and relatives along the way
Speaker 3: they hope to get to the US, work hard, and
Speaker 3: be able to pay it back. The whole process takes
Speaker 3: every penny they've earned in their life and generate significant
Speaker 3: amounts of debt. In most cases. This is made worse
Speaker 3: by the fact that on arrival they will wait months,
Speaker 3: if not years, for work permit, and their immigration judge
Speaker 3: could stop the clock on this at any time for
Speaker 3: any reason. Primros and Kim's case, Costady can move them
Speaker 3: through it to territory quickly, as they do with nearly
Speaker 3: all migrants. Next they arrived in Nicaragua.
Speaker 4: Yeah, to Nicaragua. Then in Nicaragua, I think we walk
Speaker 4: from Costa Rica border to Nicaragua border. Then we walk again.
Speaker 4: I think it was it was walk from yeah to
Speaker 4: Nicaragua bars tam in Us.
Speaker 5: We just walk. Then we when we reached.
Speaker 4: There, we paid again to wander Us. Then there's also
Speaker 4: place we walked from Hondas. From nicarag got to wander
Speaker 4: Us by Steminas. I think it just was the old day.
Speaker 4: Then from wander Us Guatemalam. Yeah, in Guatemala we spent
Speaker 4: it three days again because it was tough Guatemala. People
Speaker 4: they really need asking for a lot of money. So
Speaker 4: my life was like asking people, asking people and do
Speaker 4: it and do it? Reach Mexico.
Speaker 3: Then exhausted and broke, she in came made it to Mexico.
Speaker 3: That you only began in Zimbabwe and took them from
Speaker 3: there to South Africa, then to Brazil and across the continent.
Speaker 3: Now they had just warn more country to go before
Speaker 3: they made it. But I say, where to find out
Speaker 3: this one country is the one that so many migrants
Speaker 3: don't make it out of.
Speaker 4: Then in Mexico, my life was like in this because
Speaker 4: the day we charging a lot of money in In fact,
Speaker 4: when we reach Mexico, we reached Tapatola and not before Tapatola,
Speaker 4: I just forget the name. So they took us in
Speaker 4: the bush where.
Speaker 5: We paid money.
Speaker 4: Again, when we paid money, they started seaching us. If
Speaker 4: we don't live CAUs, then they walk with us. It
Speaker 4: was two of midnight. They walk with us till they
Speaker 4: get a transport to take us to Tapatola. So when
Speaker 4: I reached Tapatola, I you know people. We were giving
Speaker 4: information to each other. So I was also following other people,
Speaker 4: like from Cameroons in Venezuela. So when we reached Tabachelo,
Speaker 4: we reached Tarpacholo on the ted of October twenty twenty four.
Speaker 3: Tapatula in the south of Mexico. It's where thousands of
Speaker 3: migrants sent up. The Mexican government that had a policy
Speaker 3: of trying to keep people there and began offering them
Speaker 3: free bus rides north. They had a CBP one appointment.
Speaker 3: But unlike places like Tijuana, where there have been migrants
Speaker 3: gathered for many decades, there are not as many services
Speaker 3: in Tapatula, and the shelters and services that exist there
Speaker 3: are overwhelmed by the demand. The volume of migrants and
Speaker 3: the relative absence of services leaves a space open for abuse.
Speaker 3: That's what happened to Primrose and Kimberly. They ended up
Speaker 3: paying someone who they thought could help them navigate the
Speaker 3: complicated and convoluted system of registration in Mexico, the CBP
Speaker 3: one app and then traveling north to the USA and
Speaker 3: ultimately being able to make their asylum claim. Finally, in
Speaker 3: the end, what they got was the opposite of help.
Speaker 4: Then the agents charged us four thousand each, which is
Speaker 4: me four thousand in the main twitter four thousand of
Speaker 4: which I was I wasn't lift that month other people
Speaker 4: that we're paying. So I just talked to the agent.
Speaker 4: Then I said, okay, you please go down a little
Speaker 4: bit because I'm a single party. And then I don't
Speaker 4: have anyone to help me with that kind of money.
Speaker 4: Then he said, okay, three point five. So I started
Speaker 4: asking people because the people I know, maybe they can
Speaker 4: help me. So I have a lady helped me with
Speaker 4: the money, which is she gave me four thousand years.
Speaker 4: Then my mom saw my land. I was saving a
Speaker 4: land with which she saw which leaves money. Then she
Speaker 4: said even also he is stuff to get another man
Speaker 4: to complete seven thousand. So we asked someone to send
Speaker 4: it to America. Goes in Mexico, they don't receive money
Speaker 4: from Africa, so I find someone here in America to
Speaker 4: receive the money, so send it to me in Mexico.
Speaker 4: But when I paid the man, the agent took me.
Speaker 4: He said that way, I'm going to take you. So
Speaker 4: you sent the guys, which there were four mixed and guys.
Speaker 4: So they come to feature us. We were six seven. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I don't even know it.
Speaker 5: They took us.
Speaker 4: So they took us to the to the bush which
Speaker 4: is Guajaradella. I can't even remember, is it. Yeah, I
Speaker 4: think so. I spent day from October up to January.
Speaker 3: In the background here you're here splashing. That's came playing
Speaker 3: in the pool. A little apartment complex where they were
Speaker 3: living in East La I just common for migrants to
Speaker 3: share a flat with someone else. Didn't have much in
Speaker 3: the way of furniture. But the last time I saw
Speaker 3: primaries came. It was by the Tuquessa River in Last Plancas. There,
Speaker 3: the brown water was something to be afraid of. Migrants
Speaker 3: died crossing the river every day, away by the fast
Speaker 3: moving water and relying only on strangers to hold them
Speaker 3: as the current tried to pull them in. A few
Speaker 3: times I walked out into that river I felt the
Speaker 3: tug of the current on my boots. I wondered what
Speaker 3: it must be like higher up in the mountains. At
Speaker 3: six foot three. The river I crossed never came above
Speaker 3: waist high. It's deeper higher up. But even then, reaching
Speaker 3: out my hand to carry someone's bag or grab a
Speaker 3: child's hand as they came from other direction and struggle
Speaker 3: to keep their toddlers and their few possessions out of
Speaker 3: the current, I get little jolts of fear when I
Speaker 3: stepped on a wet rock. His Primrose talking about that
Speaker 3: part of her journey, I wasn't good.
Speaker 8: My daughter.
Speaker 4: She was strong, she was strong, but she was crying also,
Speaker 4: but she had what wound all over the body. Even me,
Speaker 4: I was crying myself. I was like, I want to
Speaker 4: just put myself in the water, then I can just go.
Speaker 4: The Jane was tough, really really tough. The mountain, the stores,
Speaker 4: the river.
Speaker 5: It's not easy.
Speaker 4: It Oh, it's not a very I don't even recommended
Speaker 4: someone to say you use that and give no. And
Speaker 4: even myself I did know about it. Yeah, I was
Speaker 4: regretting myself.
Speaker 5: I was crying.
Speaker 4: I was like, God, I don't know my family and
Speaker 4: my family they don't know where I am right now.
Speaker 3: Back in Los Angeles, primers told me that she'd fallen
Speaker 3: in the river and two Venezuelan men had jumped in
Speaker 3: to pull her and came out total strangers on their
Speaker 3: own journey, had risked their lives to help a woman
Speaker 3: and child who didn't know, with whom they couldn't even speak.
Speaker 3: The river kills people who drink it too. The concentration
Speaker 3: of human waste and human remains in the water makes
Speaker 3: it incredibly dangerous to drink, even for people dying of thirst.
Speaker 3: I couldn't stop thinking of that river and how much
Speaker 3: it scared people, Feeling so grateful the Kimberley could still
Speaker 3: enjoy the water after all of that. Next time, I said,
Speaker 3: they could take the train down to San Diego and
Speaker 3: we could all go to the beach. Let's go back
Speaker 3: to Mexico. Now to Guadalajara, where many migrants told me
Speaker 3: that of all the things they had endured, including the jungle,
Speaker 3: things were the worst of all. Promoters arrival in Mexico
Speaker 3: had not been great, and having paid one person, she
Speaker 3: was now being held by another group and asked for
Speaker 3: yet more money.
Speaker 4: They were kid nipping me they were asking for fifteen
Speaker 4: thousand dollars each. They said, you're not going to take you.
Speaker 4: I think I was.
Speaker 5: Crying, Kim. She was also crying.
Speaker 4: The other people they will get money paid and leaves,
Speaker 4: I think from my group. For the people they were
Speaker 4: kids nipping. It was only me left in the Kim
Speaker 4: and I was crying depression. I think of him, but
Speaker 4: I tried. I tried, you want to escape, run away?
Speaker 4: I feel down and my leg was something else. I
Speaker 4: didn't even go to hospital. My leg was swollen, and
Speaker 4: the way they would treat us it was paid, especially
Speaker 4: when I came the other one once touching me the
Speaker 4: whole board like. I was like, please, if you want
Speaker 4: to do something, you can do it to me. And
Speaker 4: plus don't do it in front of my daughter because
Speaker 4: she was also crying. Disturbing. I didn't even go to hospital.
Speaker 4: I asked them to go to hospital. They refuse. Yeah, James,
Speaker 4: I'm too emotional. I'm sorry because.
Speaker 3: Primrose understandably had trouble even recounting this story. It's not
Speaker 3: the sort of memory that's easy to share. But just
Speaker 3: when things seemed to be beyond repair, when it seemed
Speaker 3: like there was nothing to hope for it was Kimberly
Speaker 3: who came through to help her mom.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they no, So Kim Malish was like, uh, lending Spanish,
Speaker 4: so she was understanding some of the winds.
Speaker 5: So she's just telling me.
Speaker 4: This guy also was like, why can't you leave this
Speaker 4: woman because she doesn't live money. Because those people they
Speaker 4: took my phone, they even break it in front of
Speaker 4: my eyes. The fhe I was heaving from Africa.
Speaker 3: Kim Spanish was pretty good by the time I met
Speaker 3: them in Los Angeles this summer. Went out for dinner
Speaker 3: and I asked him what she'd liked to eat. She
Speaker 3: said she wanted to try seafood and practice her Spanish.
Speaker 3: So we went to a Mexican seafood place complete with
Speaker 3: cabaina decord taxi dirmy fish on the wall, and the
Speaker 3: waitress kindly helped Kim order in Spanish, patiently showing her
Speaker 3: different menu items and smiling is Kim read them off.
Speaker 3: It was a happy moment for me and what I
Speaker 3: didn't think i'd ever be having when I moved here
Speaker 3: in the bush Era, but that part of southern California
Speaker 3: has always been a welcoming place for me. When I
Speaker 3: was in my twenties and racing bugs for a living. I'd
Speaker 3: fly into Lax and often ended up spending the night
Speaker 3: at Union Station or Alvera Street before taking a train
Speaker 3: to San Diego. I speak Spanish. I always felt like
Speaker 3: the people I met there were such a better reflection
Speaker 3: of la than the betrayal we see of it in
Speaker 3: the media. Now. A decade and a half later, sitting
Speaker 3: in a Mexican restaurant, when a lady from Nadie helped
Speaker 3: the little girl from Zimbabwe speaks Spanish, it felt like
Speaker 3: a little glimpse of the way we're told things are
Speaker 3: here and the way they can be in working class communities.
Speaker 3: A nation built by migrants, yes, on stolen land, but
Speaker 3: one that nonetheless welcome people who needed help and took
Speaker 3: the time to help them. Sadly, not everyone was helpful
Speaker 3: on Kim and Primrose's journey, and when her captors realized
Speaker 3: she had no money to pay them, they eventually just
Speaker 3: decided to let her go.
Speaker 4: I think on January seven or fifth, I don't remember.
Speaker 4: Then they just took us. Then they just doumbus. I
Speaker 4: don't even know. Then a star I saw an immigration
Speaker 4: immigration officer with the guy with the car. Then I
Speaker 4: stop him. Then I translate to ask him to Then
Speaker 4: they said, okay, get inside the car. They took us
Speaker 4: to immigration, so we get a pass from there to
Speaker 4: another town. Because I was like shifting, shifting, shifting, asking
Speaker 4: to I get to Joanna. But those guys before they
Speaker 4: told me like, wherever you go, even if you are
Speaker 4: here in Mexico, we put a tracker for you, so
Speaker 4: if you tell anyone, if we find you're going to
Speaker 4: kill So me, I was scared. Yeah, I was scared.
Speaker 4: So I didn't tell you, even the immigration officer.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah. Do I get to te Joanna?
Speaker 4: So we get to John on the trendred of Chanuy.
Speaker 4: So I just asked the Mexicans people. Then there's a
Speaker 4: guy also said okay, I would try to help you,
Speaker 4: but you need to pay ye. Then I said I
Speaker 4: don't leave money. Said if you don't leave money, we
Speaker 4: can't help you. So I was like, I'm only asking people,
Speaker 4: asking every people to help me, and the other people
Speaker 4: they were just opening me was I said, people, we
Speaker 4: look where I am with my daughter, I'm far, but
Speaker 4: my family, the other family, especially my my other family
Speaker 4: member the way, don't even know where I am M.
Speaker 4: So those guys from to Joanna, they said, guys, if
Speaker 4: you're much crossing today, you're not going to crosscous. Look
Speaker 4: the president, you said, he's going to shut down all
Speaker 4: the borders.
Speaker 3: In between November and January, non stop roomors circulated in
Speaker 3: giant whatsap groups. Trump was closing the border, Biden was
Speaker 3: opening it. Most migrants didn't have the means to get
Speaker 3: to the southern border even if they tried. CVP one
Speaker 3: remained mostly useless, and people spent days, weeks, months refreshing
Speaker 3: it to no avail. Those who did get appointments would
Speaker 3: find them canceled once a new administration came into office.
Speaker 3: Their reward for doing things in the so called right
Speaker 3: way was to be left with no options in a
Speaker 3: country where they were anything but safe and far from home. Mostly,
Speaker 3: my friends in the jungle have retained their incredibly good humor.
Speaker 3: Delithroil and friends video caught me once when I was
Speaker 3: on a hike. They started laughing at me sweating going uphill,
Speaker 3: and paused a conversation to shout encouragement for a while.
Speaker 3: A year after I left the jungle, I would still
Speaker 3: be more than how happy to welcome these people as
Speaker 3: my neighbors. But it seems unlikely I ever will. Border
Speaker 3: crossings have dropped dramatically. They're not that's the administration sometimes
Speaker 3: claims zero, but they are lower. People die crossing the
Speaker 3: border still. Sometimes the volunteers you've heard in my last
Speaker 3: series have to hike miles into the desert and sift
Speaker 3: through sand and rocks to search their remains. Once nature
Speaker 3: scatism like leaves blowing around the canyons. Sometimes I'm there
Speaker 3: with them. Sometimes we all wooden crosses up mountains. So
Speaker 3: don't have names on the map to mark the places
Speaker 3: where people's dreams died. Those people don't get a viral
Speaker 3: video or a story in the New York Times, because
Speaker 3: even at a time where people are more engaged than
Speaker 3: they ever have been in my lifetime in advocacy for migrants,
Speaker 3: there's still not much attention paid to the actual border
Speaker 3: that every single migrant has to cross Tomorrow. That's what
Speaker 3: we're going to talk about. But let's hear from Primrose
Speaker 3: about had that same day, January twentieth, went for her.
Speaker 4: Then they took us to the boat to the border,
Speaker 4: but we couldn't get in the gates while they were closed.
Speaker 4: Then they said no, we have an option. We need
Speaker 4: to take you. But you know, for me, I had
Speaker 4: to take it risk because I was scared to stay
Speaker 4: in Mexico. So they took us with under the bridge,
Speaker 4: I think the sewage. We were walking with our stomach
Speaker 4: like under the bridge to we get to USA and
Speaker 4: Mexican borders. So they put ladder for us to help
Speaker 4: us to but we paid them three fifty three fifty.
Speaker 5: They charge.
Speaker 4: I found the other people they also we were fifteen
Speaker 4: years We were fifteen. Yeah, then the yop us to jump.
Speaker 9: The departy.
Speaker 10: Some of us are illegal and some are not wanted.
Speaker 10: Our work contracts out and we have to move on
Speaker 10: six hundred miles to that Mexico border. They chase us
Speaker 10: like outlaws and rustlers, like thieves. Goodbye I one, goodbye.
Speaker 9: Rosalidados and egos, Jesus and Maria. You won't have a
Speaker 9: name when you ride the big airplane, and all we
Speaker 9: will call.
Speaker 11: You will be departy.
Speaker 3: On the twenty eighth day of January nineteen forty eight,
Speaker 3: a plane took off from Oakland, California. On board with
Speaker 3: a crew, an Immigration Nationalization Service officer, and twenty eight
Speaker 3: people who had come to the US to work in
Speaker 3: the Brasero program. They were being sent to Elcentra, where
Speaker 3: they were to be deported to Mexico. The pilot, Frankie Atkinson,
Speaker 3: had found a job flying DC three's as a civilian
Speaker 3: after flying the legendarily dangerous Hump route between India and
Speaker 3: China in the Second World War. His wife, Bobby, herself
Speaker 3: the daughter of a migrant mother, was filling in that
Speaker 3: day as the usual flight attendants weren't available. On board
Speaker 3: with twenty eight passengers, all headed back to Mexico after
Speaker 3: United States, where they come to work, had decided it
Speaker 3: didn't need or want them any longer. The plane never
Speaker 3: landed in El Center. It was overdue for maintenance and
Speaker 3: its left engine court fire. Then it's wing ripped off
Speaker 3: above co Linger, not so far from the fields where
Speaker 3: many of them had worked for year after year. The
Speaker 3: passengers were pulled out of the plane into the sky.
Speaker 3: Most of them had never flown before. They must have
Speaker 3: been nervous before they took off, and now their worst
Speaker 3: fears were coming true. And those who survived the loss
Speaker 3: of pressure and being ripped from the cabin, in some
Speaker 3: cases still strapped to their seats must have had that
Speaker 3: very worst fears confirmed as they plummeted toward the ground
Speaker 3: that had only stopped being part of Mexico one hundred
Speaker 3: years and four days before. Their bodies or parts of
Speaker 3: them were scattered through the canyon as the plane slammed
Speaker 3: into the ground. There weren't enough seats for all the passengers,
Speaker 3: and so three of them were forced to sit on
Speaker 3: their luggage at the back. The plane was over its
Speaker 3: maximum wake capacity, and that might have been why the
Speaker 3: white smoke began pouring out of its left engine over
Speaker 3: Colinger Frankie, the pilot had survived crashes in this time
Speaker 3: of the Air Force, so hopefully he was able to
Speaker 3: keep his pastures and crew calm until the engine burst
Speaker 3: into flame. Some witnesses reported seeing people jump from the
Speaker 3: plane after its left wing tore off and began to
Speaker 3: plummet towards the ground, but it's just as likely that
Speaker 3: they were pulled out. The plane hit the ground about
Speaker 3: a mile east of Fresno County Industrial Road camp or
Speaker 3: incarcerated people were being forced to work. In Mates were
Speaker 3: immediately dispatched to comb the hills through remains of people
Speaker 3: aboard the plane. Locals like Red shoulders whose rinds are
Speaker 3: plane crashed on, rushed up there to join them, and
Speaker 3: they hoped to help the survivors. On finding none, they
Speaker 3: began to fight the fire. Around the wreckage. Prisoners found luggage,
Speaker 3: women's shoes, and babies, clothes, them bodies, some of them
Speaker 3: still in their seats, littered throughout the canyon. Only sixteen
Speaker 3: sets of remained whoever identified, including the entire crew and
Speaker 3: the irons guard. Bobby, identified by her engagement ring, was
Speaker 3: pregnant at the time. She was buried with Frankie in
Speaker 3: New York. Frankie's co pilot, Martin Ewing, was buried with
Speaker 3: military honors. Frank Chaffin, the ins agent, was buried back
Speaker 3: in Berkeley. The remains of the twenty eight deportees, or
Speaker 3: whatever had been found of them, were buried on mass
Speaker 3: in Holy Cross Cemetery in Fresno. Hundreds of local Latino people,
Speaker 3: most of whom didn't know that, turned up towards to
Speaker 3: twenty eight coffins, some of which were empty, be interred
Speaker 3: in the eighty four for a hole in the ground
Speaker 3: that was reserved for them. The hole was covered with
Speaker 3: dirt and eventually with grass, and there they remained without names,
Speaker 3: without their families being told, for three quarters of a century.
Speaker 3: The next day, The New York Times reported on the
Speaker 3: story the worst aviation accident in California history. The names, ages,
Speaker 3: and hometowns of the crew and the irons agent were given,
Speaker 3: along with quote twenty eight Mexican agricultural workers. Wives apparently
Speaker 3: were unremarkable, and even in death, they didn't deserve the
Speaker 3: dignity of being mentioned by name. Like people, It's a
Speaker 3: story that, eighty years later, is only too familiar. The
Speaker 3: song we up in this episode with was written by
Speaker 3: an American anti fascist folk musician named Woody Guthrie. Like
Speaker 3: many of his songs, it's a protest song. It recalls
Speaker 3: the plane wreck. There's one home recording of him singing
Speaker 3: it to a tune that isn't used to sing a
Speaker 3: song today. It was only uncovered a few months ago.
Speaker 3: Guthrie has moved to write it when he noticed that
Speaker 3: in a reporting on the crash none of them migrants
Speaker 3: who were being deported on the plane were named. He
Speaker 3: wrote the song as a poem because at a time
Speaker 3: his Huntington's career had made it hard for him to
Speaker 3: sing and strum the guitar. Later, a student of Colorado
Speaker 3: A and M named Marty Hoffman set the poem to
Speaker 3: a Mexican Branchera melody. It didn't become popular as a
Speaker 3: song until Guthrie's friend Pete Seger began performing get at concerts.
Speaker 3: Hoffman had played it to him when Sega had visited
Speaker 3: the campus Ballad club. Guthrie, whose guitar famously carried the
Speaker 3: slogan this machine Kills Fascists, was in declining health by
Speaker 3: the time he wrote the poem in nineteen forty eight,
Speaker 3: and he never lived to hear it sung. Hoffman, who
Speaker 3: died by suicide in Red Rock, Arizona, where he was
Speaker 3: teaching on the Navajo Reservation, died right as Joan Bayez
Speaker 3: was recording the song in the studio. Today, it's one
Speaker 3: of Guthrie's best known works, of course, when he wrote
Speaker 3: the song to his discuss, Guthrie didn't know the name
Speaker 3: to the people on the plane. He imagined them in
Speaker 3: his poem as Juan Maria Rosalita, the sort of people
Speaker 3: he might meet on any given day as a touring
Speaker 3: musician who was finally received by working people wherever he went.
Speaker 3: I know a juan A Maria and a rose from
Speaker 3: the Darien Gap. I've also searched in the hills and
Speaker 3: the mountains, so the remains of people whose names I
Speaker 3: don't know eighty years later. So the song resonates with me.
Speaker 10: Father's old father.
Speaker 9: He waited that river.
Speaker 8: Other before him have done just the same.
Speaker 3: They died in the hill, and they died.
Speaker 8: In the valley, somewhere to heaven without any name. Goodbye
Speaker 8: to my one good prose a leader adius me amvil
Speaker 8: presusbody else.
Speaker 12: You won't have a name.
Speaker 13: When you ride the big airway.
Speaker 3: All they will call you will leader. Before the twenty
Speaker 3: five men and three women aboard came to the US
Speaker 3: to fill labor shortages after World War Two as a
Speaker 3: result of an agreement between the two states called the
Speaker 3: Brassero Program. The Mexican government didn't want to lose its
Speaker 3: whole agricultural workforce. I wanted to ensure that workers in
Speaker 3: the US would send a portion of their wages home,
Speaker 3: so it held these wages in accounts, which some of
Speaker 3: them never saw again for years. The Mexican government refused
Speaker 3: to extend the program to Texas because of racist violence there.
Speaker 3: People who entered the program waited months, and when they
Speaker 3: crossed the border, they were subject to abusive searches, spraying
Speaker 3: with DDT and in some places zyclon B same gas
Speaker 3: used in the gas chambers the Holocaust was used to
Speaker 3: hose down their clothes. When they got to the US,
Speaker 3: many of them worked in very poor conditions. Many chose
Speaker 3: not to wait and instead crossed without papers. Some farmers
Speaker 3: hired them for much less than the minimum Bressello program
Speaker 3: wage and put them to work in worse conditions in
Speaker 3: the program permitted. Others worked their alloted contracts in the program,
Speaker 3: and they stayed, hoping to make a better life in
Speaker 3: the USA or to earn some money they could keep
Speaker 3: before they went home. Many of them came and went
Speaker 3: several times, returning home until them need to make more
Speaker 3: money overwhelmed the desire to remain and work their heroes
Speaker 3: or parcels across Mexico. The Mexican government wanted those who
Speaker 3: travel without a contract to be barred from being hired,
Speaker 3: and in many case government officials in Mexico accepted bribes
Speaker 3: to allow worker to enter the program. Just as it
Speaker 3: is today, everyone made money apart from the migrants Basserro's
Speaker 3: letters were censored to prevent them asking their families to
Speaker 3: join them, but nonetheless a racist panic about undocumented migration began,
Speaker 3: especially after Frankie and thousands of others return from the
Speaker 3: war and the manpower shortage was not so acute. This,
Speaker 3: combined with demands from the Mexican government, led to Eisenhower
Speaker 3: eventually adopting a program whose name is a slur to catch, detain,
Speaker 3: and deport Mexican people to parts of their birth country
Speaker 3: they'd never been to, far from the border, far from
Speaker 3: their families and communities. The operation, which focused on rapid
Speaker 3: deportations and border regions, is often cited as an inspiration
Speaker 3: for today's border issue. Seventy six years after Guthrie wrote
Speaker 3: his song, very little has changed in the way the
Speaker 3: legacy media covers migration. Maybe that's why everyone from Dolly
Speaker 3: Parton to Bob Dylan, Chris Christofferson, will and Jennings, Johnny Cash,
Speaker 3: Willie Nelson, and Bruce Springsteen a sung a version of
Speaker 3: this song. Here's Johnny Cash describing the song before a
Speaker 3: TV performance.
Speaker 8: Johnny Cash, I understand this is a true story. This
Speaker 8: is from our album The Highwayman. Jona Rodriguez was on
Speaker 8: an album as well. On this song, you understand it
Speaker 8: is a true story what it got wrote this about
Speaker 8: a plane crash in was it Los Bato's Canyon, taking
Speaker 8: a plainload of Mexicans back after they worked for whatever
Speaker 8: they could get in this country. It's one of those
Speaker 8: old stories about malfreedment of aliens.
Speaker 3: One of those old stories. He says, it seems so
Speaker 3: hopeful in nineteen eighty seven, like we wouldn't be writing
Speaker 3: anymore because most people could accept that nobody should treat
Speaker 3: other people like that. Anyway. That was before country music
Speaker 3: was entirely dominated by boot liquors. And here I am
Speaker 3: playing it to you again, eighty years after it was written,
Speaker 3: because it is still relevant. Dolly Parton's singing it.
Speaker 13: My father's own father, he waited that room. They took
Speaker 13: all the money he made in his life.
Speaker 4: My brothers and.
Speaker 13: Sisters come working the fruit trees. They rolled the truck
Speaker 13: till they took down down. The airplane caught fire over
Speaker 13: Lascatto's Canyon, a fireball of lightning that shook all he
Speaker 13: who are these dear friends are scattered like dry leys.
Speaker 13: The radio set. They weren't yes, the poem.
Speaker 7: Good Night tom.
Speaker 3: I as a song puts it. The bodies of the
Speaker 3: workers were scattered like dry leaves across Los Gatos Canyon.
Speaker 3: The bodies of those twenty eight people, the parts that
Speaker 3: were recovered, were buried in a mass grave at the
Speaker 3: Holy Cross Cemetery in Fresno, mark later thanks to a
Speaker 3: donation with a small plaque calling the Mexican nationals, although
Speaker 3: one of them was also Spanish. The hard work of
Speaker 3: finding these people's names was taken up by people not
Speaker 3: even alive when that plane crashed. Many of their relatives
Speaker 3: did not even know they were buried there until Carlos Rascon,
Speaker 3: the Fresno Diocese director of Cemeteries, and Tim Hernandez, an
Speaker 3: author and professor at UTL Paso, dedicated themselves to naming them.
Speaker 3: In twenty thirteen, a new headstone was directed with their
Speaker 3: names and as Sarah Many, which packed the cemetery. Hernandez
Speaker 3: had found after years of hard work, by locating one
Speaker 3: of their nephews a copy of El Faro, a local
Speaker 3: Spanish language newspaper, which provided a list that was more
Speaker 3: accurate than that in the Fresno County Records Department. It
Speaker 3: wasn't until September twenty eighth, twenty twenty four, when I
Speaker 3: just left Primrose and Kimberly in Las Blancas, that a
Speaker 3: proper memorial was built for them in the Canyon. Families
Speaker 3: traveled from across the US and Mexico to open the memorial.
Speaker 3: Some of them were funded by Woody Guthrie's grandchildren. The
Speaker 3: names of all twenty eight of them were included. They
Speaker 3: were Miguel ne Grete, Alvarez, Francisco Jamas, Duran, Santiago Garcia, Elisondo,
Speaker 3: Rosalio Padia, Estrada, Bernabe, Lopez, Garcia, Ramon Parerees Gonzalez, Tomas
Speaker 3: Alvigna de Garcia, Salvador Sandoval, Ernajui, Lupe Ramerez, Lara Severo, Medina,
Speaker 3: Lara Elias, Trujill Massias, Jose Rodriguez, Massias, Tomas Padia, Marquez,
Speaker 3: Luis Lopez, Merdina, Manuel Calderon, Marino, Luis Queves, Miranda, Martin, Razo, Navarro, Ignacio, Perez, Navarro,
Speaker 3: Roman Choa Choa, Apollonio Ramirez, Placentia, Alberto Carlos, Regosa, Jui,
Speaker 3: Lupe Ernandez, Rodriguez, Maria Santana, Rodriguez, Juan Valenzuela Ruiz, Whenceeslao
Speaker 3: Flores Ruiz, Jose Valdivia Sanchez, Jesus Mesa, Santos, Baldomero, Marcus Torres,
Speaker 3: Francis c. Atkinson, Lillian k Atkinson, Marion h Ewing, and
Speaker 3: Frank E. Chaffin. Think about the song an Awful Lot.
Speaker 3: The first time I heard it was known a CD
Speaker 3: compilation of Spanish anarchist songs. The fundamental decency of giving
Speaker 3: a deceased name, treating them like people, not a human waste,
Speaker 3: seems so basic, and yet three quarters a century later,
Speaker 3: reporting hasn't got any better. A few times in my
Speaker 3: years at the border, I've searched for people and the
Speaker 3: remains of people whose names I don't know, just as
Speaker 3: some of my friends have erected little wooden crosses, some
Speaker 3: with names and some without, to people who he never
Speaker 3: got to meet but somehow still grieve. There are lots
Speaker 3: of people whose names and faces are Dodo who never
Speaker 3: made it to the USA. They didn't even get an
Speaker 3: anonymous story. The people who die for the American cream
Speaker 3: are totally ignored in the coverage of migration. The real
Speaker 3: cost of our border externalization, little children and loving parents
Speaker 3: who have to die so politicians via the Party can
Speaker 3: brag about secure borders are completely invisible to most people
Speaker 3: in this country. Seventy seven years less, one week after
Speaker 3: Times published its story which are raised People killed in
Speaker 3: the Los Gatos Canyon, it published a video. The video
Speaker 3: shows Primrose lying on the floor in agony. She climbed
Speaker 3: the wall on the ladder and then fell into the USA.
Speaker 3: On landing, she broke her leg. The story, just like
Speaker 3: that story in nineteen forty eight, doesn't name her or Kim.
Speaker 3: It refers to a group of migrants and calls Primros
Speaker 3: one woman too fair. The piece did interview other migrants,
Speaker 3: but as is often the case, and migrants from Africa
Speaker 3: get the worst treatment of all. The piece and the
Speaker 3: hundreds of other social media posted a video from other outlets.
Speaker 3: Don't tell readers about the persecution and torture Primrose faced
Speaker 3: at home about the fact she doesn't know where her
Speaker 3: father disappeared to and that her whole family is in hiding.
Speaker 3: It doesn't bother to mention that she and Kim walk
Speaker 3: for six months to get to the border, that they
Speaker 3: were kidnapped, robbed, and traumatized on the way doesn't even
Speaker 3: give their names. Unlike the people who died in Los
Speaker 3: Gatos Canyon, Primos is here to tell us how it
Speaker 3: feels to see her pain turned into pay views by
Speaker 3: outlets with huge global platforms.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's you, to be honest. Even now, I feel
Speaker 4: it's embarrassing me because when I was in Texas, like
Speaker 4: if I made people they say, are you not the
Speaker 4: one will feel downe For me, it's like something else
Speaker 4: because I was not a appie for the person who
Speaker 4: put me in social media. Even even when I go
Speaker 4: to the comments, some of the comments were paid and
Speaker 4: the other people they don't even know what was really
Speaker 4: happened to me. I was running for my life. But
Speaker 4: people they just come into whatever they want. So that
Speaker 4: video even now I'm not even happy. Yes, I know
Speaker 4: people they make money with my video. Maybe sh you
Speaker 4: was supposed the person who posted me was supposib maybe
Speaker 4: to close my face or to do something. And a
Speaker 4: lot of people they even don't know where I am.
Speaker 4: But because of that video, it went viral even in
Speaker 4: my country. People that were sending messages.
Speaker 5: That's why.
Speaker 4: Uh, the other people they went to my mom and
Speaker 4: started torture DA because they they taught maybe I'm in country,
Speaker 4: but because of that video, they went to disturb my mom.
Speaker 4: She's not even where I grew up now in the
Speaker 4: or she just move. She's somewhere else now. So I
Speaker 4: don't even know who posted the video, and.
Speaker 5: I think I need to.
Speaker 4: I don't know what to get it, buddy, I'm very
Speaker 4: angry with the personal all posted the video. Maybe they
Speaker 4: should maybe asking me, or to find me, or to
Speaker 4: hide my face in the way Kim malistay my daughter
Speaker 4: when you ask you about the video, she cries to
Speaker 4: be honest, just.
Speaker 3: Like those people who died in the plane crash. Promos
Speaker 3: reserves better. I first saw the video of her falling
Speaker 3: on TikTok. I think I feel like it was shared
Speaker 3: by the Wall Street Journal, but I haven't been able
Speaker 3: to locate the post again. Where I saw a friend,
Speaker 3: someone else saw a way to make a bug. It's
Speaker 3: a kind of extractive reporting that I spent my whole
Speaker 3: career trying not to replicate. The Times and plenty of
Speaker 3: other outlets have what they see is high standards of
Speaker 3: journalistic objectivity. I don't think it will surprise anyone that
Speaker 3: I fall afoul of those, which is fine. I don't
Speaker 3: want to be trying to find the middle ground between
Speaker 3: someone running for her life and someone trying to make
Speaker 3: money from her misery. Nonetheless, we have to live in
Speaker 3: a world where the vast majority of people get their
Speaker 3: information from outlets who see migrants of stories and a
Speaker 3: political issue, not as people. We have to live with
Speaker 3: the consequences of that. We're seeing them all now every day.
Speaker 3: This isn't a story about the New York Times. A
Speaker 3: long time ago, I realized my career wasn't going in
Speaker 3: the direction that was going to put me on the
Speaker 3: mast head of those big newspapers, because I care about
Speaker 3: people like Primrose and Kimberly and not about big newspapers.
Speaker 3: This is a story about Primrose and Kimberley, so let's
Speaker 3: hear why they left Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe, if you don't know,
Speaker 3: has been ruled by the same party since nineteen eighty
Speaker 3: the ZENOPF. ZENOPF has been led for three decades with
Speaker 3: Robert mcgaby. It has been the only party to hold
Speaker 3: the presidency since independence. The office has only changed hands once,
Speaker 3: when mcgaby's former VP replaced him after mcgaby resigned and
Speaker 3: a threat of impeachment and a coup. The opposition has
Speaker 3: taken different forms over time, but never managed to dislodge
Speaker 3: one party rule. When it has got close, it has
Speaker 3: been with extreme violence. I think Premise knows only too well.
Speaker 4: It's not like we just it's a luxury to come
Speaker 4: to America for beggars. If I wanted to come to
Speaker 4: America for bigger I would maybe go and apply for
Speaker 4: the visa.
Speaker 3: But us is a.
Speaker 4: Youth is people who wants to change our country. They
Speaker 4: don't even make you to find a way to go
Speaker 4: to make a visa because the zimbabwe Zee a tough country,
Speaker 4: especial for us young people, young generation. They can even
Speaker 4: kill you in Simbabwe. We can't even protesting for our
Speaker 4: rights in Simbabwe because we skied for the government is
Speaker 4: running the country, which is NPF. We are really scared.
Speaker 4: I if people, a lot of people lose a lot
Speaker 4: of friends. Kidney killed me also in Zimbabwe, they even
Speaker 4: tortured me wanting to kill me. So that's why even
Speaker 4: I don't even know it's Kimbalda's father since twenty seven,
Speaker 4: I don't even know where it is. Maybe it's dead
Speaker 4: or it's not even dead. I don't even know where
Speaker 4: is because they also run away. Even now as I'm
Speaker 4: speaking right now, I'm stressed, like I don't even know
Speaker 4: where it's my father, Yeah, I don't even know where
Speaker 4: he is. Also, it just so our governments, our Zimbabwe,
Speaker 4: it's a relative for us. Yeah, they don't give us
Speaker 4: time or they don't give us as a young generation.
Speaker 4: They think themselves and then they are they are families
Speaker 4: and they econ on me. There's no even if you
Speaker 4: go to school, there's no jobs. There's a lot of
Speaker 4: graduates people staying home. They a vendas podcas, no jobs.
Speaker 5: Nothing.
Speaker 4: If you want to stay in the ends for your rights,
Speaker 4: they tortured you, killed you disappear. There's a lot of
Speaker 4: people will disappear in Szimbabwe just before see your needs
Speaker 4: to change.
Speaker 3: Under Mugabe, Zimbabwe experience rapid economic decline and hyperinflation at
Speaker 3: various times. Mugaby has blamed his own form of colonial powers,
Speaker 3: which is reasonable and a quote gay mafia, which is
Speaker 3: what you get when you have a single manachar to
Speaker 3: your state, ruling by whim from the moment of liberation
Speaker 3: until just two years before his death from rus Like
Speaker 3: many in her country, like many people from all over
Speaker 3: the world, wanted a better future. It was something she
Speaker 3: and her family had advocated for. Having seen people she
Speaker 3: loved disappear, never knowing if they were alive or dead,
Speaker 3: never even getting the closure of a funeral, she decided
Speaker 3: she couldn't risk leaving Kimberly alone, and so she took
Speaker 3: her daughter and fled it. Fled to South Africa, but
Speaker 3: violence followed them there.
Speaker 4: Especially in South Africa. People are killed with Sonofobia. People
Speaker 4: are killed, you know, so it's not also even safe
Speaker 4: for us to stay in South Africa.
Speaker 5: That's why, especially in me. To be honest, the Jena
Speaker 5: was not even planned.
Speaker 4: I was just asking people and when I reached brass people,
Speaker 4: they were just talking, let's godless, collless. But I was
Speaker 4: also following those people do I get here? So it's
Speaker 4: not like we came here for luxury or for what.
Speaker 1: For me.
Speaker 5: I just came here for my life. I just ran
Speaker 5: for for my life.
Speaker 4: I just need my life in my daughter's life, because
Speaker 4: if I died today, I don't know if anybody can
Speaker 4: look after my daughter, especially when in my country, because
Speaker 4: things are tough for my mom.
Speaker 5: Of course, my father just disappeared.
Speaker 3: What people can't easily travel around the world. Concept like xenophobia, bigotry, sexism, homophobia.
Speaker 3: They're not just American issues. They're global issues. And that's
Speaker 3: why we say nobody's free until everybody's free.
Speaker 5: We just grew up in a.
Speaker 4: Poor family. So but it's tough to be honest. It's
Speaker 4: a relative.
Speaker 14: For me.
Speaker 4: I'm not even one hundred percent, Okay, I'm still lots
Speaker 4: of memories trace Yeah, and I remember one of my friends,
Speaker 4: her name was Memory. She died also, we were together,
Speaker 4: died in the Zimbabwe when they kidnaped us for five days.
Speaker 5: So she just died. Listen to us twenty twenty twenty TWENTYA.
Speaker 3: She just died.
Speaker 5: Because we were fighting for our future.
Speaker 11: Yeah, but.
Speaker 5: It's tough.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's me talking to Primrose on that river bank
Speaker 3: about but why she left South Africa.
Speaker 5: I'm just flying. No, it's only me and my daughter.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Was it hard to see a future for her there?
Speaker 5: It's very hard.
Speaker 3: Explain the situation there.
Speaker 8: The.
Speaker 4: Situation where in where the situation for me, it was tough.
Speaker 4: I just ran away to South Africa. In South Africa
Speaker 4: was not safe. Solophobia and uh, they almost secure me
Speaker 4: and my boyfriend and even my my big father was
Speaker 4: abusive too much. Because of the politics. I'm opposition party,
Speaker 4: So it was now even in South Africa, I was
Speaker 4: not safe at all. It was those people. They were
Speaker 4: like following me and my daughter. So I spent three
Speaker 4: months on the road coming here. I leave South Africa,
Speaker 4: I think fourth of July till now I'm in Panama.
Speaker 5: I'm still walking.
Speaker 3: Yes, that was September. She finally entered the USA in January,
Speaker 3: crossing into a very different country than the one she'd
Speaker 3: set out for. Her story is unique. Every migrant story is,
Speaker 3: but it's not unusual. He spent as much time talking
Speaker 3: to migrant society. You will learn a lot about the
Speaker 3: hardships regular people face all over the world. You'll also
Speaker 3: learn about the dreams people have and how little they
Speaker 3: really differ. Let's take, for example, the protest we recently
Speaker 3: saw in Nepal. Those didn't come as a huge shock
Speaker 3: because I met dozens of Nepalese political opposition members. Here's
Speaker 3: when I spoke to us. We sheltered in the porch
Speaker 3: of nmber our house in Bahjiqito in a rainstorm last September.
Speaker 3: The little room was filled with sleeping pads and tired bodies.
Speaker 3: I spent a lot of time there sitting on the
Speaker 3: floor talking to people. A new story is one of
Speaker 3: many I heard just in that one room, from all
Speaker 3: over the world.
Speaker 15: Yeah, because it's not safe in my country. That's why
Speaker 15: I want to go to the States, because there is
Speaker 15: right and freedom.
Speaker 3: Yeah, what makes it not safe in your country?
Speaker 7: Yeah?
Speaker 15: There are many political reasons. Yeah, and I am from
Speaker 15: a different political like Congress. Okay, I'm from Congress. That's
Speaker 15: a small member, not a big plans to man, but
Speaker 15: that Opposit party, you know, yeah, they won, they won the.
Speaker 7: Constitution.
Speaker 3: So yeah, so they think you uh yeah, Okay, if
Speaker 3: you wanting how someone come from the mountains in Nepal
Speaker 3: to a small village in the Panamanian jungle and to
Speaker 3: be briefly sharing a tiny room with people from Venezuela, Cameroon, China,
Speaker 3: and Bolivia, all seeking the same thing.
Speaker 15: His hell, I took a plan from Nepal to Dubai,
Speaker 15: he said, there two months, okay.
Speaker 7: Then after that I went to Qatar.
Speaker 13: Yeah.
Speaker 7: From Qatar, I went to Brazil. I stayed in Refusiician
Speaker 7: for at least two weeks, yeah.
Speaker 16: Yeah.
Speaker 15: Then after that I came out from Brazil, took a bus,
Speaker 15: then traveled for two much a long time, maybe twenty
Speaker 15: four hours or twenty five hours.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 13: Ye.
Speaker 15: Then I went to I caught some friends. They took
Speaker 15: me to Bolivia. We need to cross through jungle, but
Speaker 15: it was small, not a long way.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was good.
Speaker 15: And after Bolivia I took the ride to bus. I
Speaker 15: took at least maybe forty eight hours in a bus.
Speaker 12: Yeah.
Speaker 17: Wow.
Speaker 15: Man. Then I went to the border of Peru and
Speaker 15: there was some boat to take us across, and I
Speaker 15: went across to Peru, stayed in a hotel that night.
Speaker 15: Then after that it came out and again wrote the
Speaker 15: bus for twenty six hours to Lima. Then after Lima
Speaker 15: again twenty six hours to Tulcan. Then after Tulcan, I
Speaker 15: got a taxi and that taxi was to cross the
Speaker 15: border to equad Okay, and so I went to Effader
Speaker 15: in that taxi and they came Cousino.
Speaker 7: Well yeah, we stayed for two to.
Speaker 15: Three hours in the hotel. Then at night again traveling wow.
Speaker 15: Then again traveled to Colombia. After Colombia, rode another bus
Speaker 15: and rode to Colombia and Panama borders to Nicoli. Nicoli
Speaker 15: to Nicoli and we stayed maybe one week in Nicoli.
Speaker 15: After that, I took a board to or from Kapurana.
Speaker 13: Uh.
Speaker 7: There was some bikes. The pike took us to a
Speaker 7: camp at the border.
Speaker 4: Oow.
Speaker 7: At the camp, I raised nearly at six pm.
Speaker 15: Then after some people came there and they were responsible
Speaker 15: to cross the border to Panama.
Speaker 7: Then we walked to at nine pm. We walked through May.
Speaker 7: We walked to till here forty four hours.
Speaker 13: Wow.
Speaker 12: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I asked a Nuke what he had to say to
Speaker 3: people in America, because he had excellent English and I
Speaker 3: have this platform to share. He was more than aware
Speaker 3: of the US just course her own migrants, and he
Speaker 3: said he'd been watching videos about it.
Speaker 15: Well, that's everyone is human being. Yeah, yeah, because we
Speaker 15: have some problems, so we need to live our country right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we need to be.
Speaker 7: Kind to each other. Yeah, we need to be kind. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I haven't heard from Minuke since then. I have no
Speaker 3: idea where he and his friends are or how the
Speaker 3: journey across three continents ended. Like so many other migrants,
Speaker 3: he disappeared for me in the massive humanity heading north.
Speaker 3: I still think about all the people I haven't heard from.
Speaker 3: Sometimes I'll see people who look like them and I'll
Speaker 3: get excited. But if they're in the USA now, they're
Speaker 3: probably afraid of going out. Much became all this way,
Speaker 3: they rest their lives, They saw people die, and now
Speaker 3: once again the hiding from men in masks with guns.
Speaker 3: His Rose, young woman from Bolivia. Think about Rose a lot.
Speaker 3: She was a young mum traveling alone, trying to find
Speaker 3: a better future for her family and risking her life
Speaker 3: in the process. She seemed young and happy most of
Speaker 3: the time, but she had a sort of tiredness in
Speaker 3: her eyes that really stayed with me after several conversations
Speaker 3: we had in Baja Jigito. I don't really know why.
Speaker 3: It just seemed so sad that she was away from
Speaker 3: her kids, and someone who so obviously was predisposed to
Speaker 3: joy looked so tired and sad all on her own there.
Speaker 3: It felt like her only chance had a better future.
Speaker 3: She was very open about how hard it all was.
Speaker 3: I remember one day I didn't feel like recording, just
Speaker 3: sitting on the side of the raised walkway in Bajra
Speaker 3: Juqito with her feet in the hot, wet mud, watching
Speaker 3: people walk by talking with her like I talked with
Speaker 3: any other friend about our homes and our families and
Speaker 3: the election that was two months away. At that point,
Speaker 3: she was hanging out with a group of Venezuelans in
Speaker 3: but they must have been separated because they've asked me
Speaker 3: about her since, just like so many other people, I
Speaker 3: have no idea where she is. It seems so sad
Speaker 3: to me that we've made a word where a woman
Speaker 3: who wants the future for kids has to risk her life,
Speaker 3: maybe lose it for a liner, just to come here
Speaker 3: and ask for help and then still be denied, and
Speaker 3: then if she gets here, to be chased, harried and harassed.
Speaker 11: Yes, the situation there in Bolivia right now, we're practically
Speaker 11: economically well, we're in very bad shape. It's kind of
Speaker 11: like Venezuela. What motivates me to travel is more than
Speaker 11: anything work because there you can't work, you can't earn enough,
Speaker 11: you know, you have to work a lot, but they
Speaker 11: pay you very little, you know, so there's a lot
Speaker 11: of a lot of poverty. So that's what motivates me
Speaker 11: to keep going to work in another country, to migrate,
Speaker 11: because I also have a family, they have children. So
Speaker 11: that's what motivates me to go to another country to work.
Speaker 11: It's the future for them, yes, a better future for them,
Speaker 11: for my children.
Speaker 3: I asked her to share her journey. How have been
Speaker 3: just to get this little wet village that welcomes people
Speaker 3: in the middle of the jungle.
Speaker 11: We left Friday morning to go to the jungle. Right, Well,
Speaker 11: let me explain honestly, it's not easy. It's very hard
Speaker 11: because I've seen quite a few people. There are many
Speaker 11: pregnant women, there are women with children. There are elderly people,
Speaker 11: there are adults. There are people who come with crutches.
Speaker 11: There are people who break bones if they're feet fall
Speaker 11: off the edge. There are people who faint. There are
Speaker 11: quite a lot of people and have difficult situations because
Speaker 11: you have to climb a hill which takes at least
Speaker 11: day out. You have to climb. You have to carry
Speaker 11: your backpack, your food, your clothes, your supplies, everything you
Speaker 11: need for the journey, your water. So it's very hard,
Speaker 11: very hard. And you go up up and you arrive
Speaker 11: at what is the border of Panama with Columbia, which
Speaker 11: is called the Flags. You get there and from there
Speaker 11: you have to go down down, down. That takes at
Speaker 11: least another eight hours. You have to go down all day.
Speaker 11: On Friday, it took us all day. We had to
Speaker 11: sleep on the side on the edge of a river bank.
Speaker 7: More or less.
Speaker 11: There were about two hundred of us, if I'm not mistaken,
Speaker 11: we are about two hundred people, one hundred and fifty
Speaker 11: two hundred people traveling and sleeping there. We camped two
Speaker 11: hundred of us. Yes, there are children. There are babies
Speaker 11: two months old, one month old, three months old.
Speaker 3: One year old.
Speaker 11: So there are children, and they are really the ones
Speaker 11: who suffer the most on this journey. Yes, So that
Speaker 11: night we slept. The next day, which would be Saturday,
Speaker 11: we came back again at six in the morning. We
Speaker 11: set off walking all day. We had to climb hills.
Speaker 11: We had to cross rivers that come up to your shoulders,
Speaker 11: up to your neck. They really come up. There are
Speaker 11: quite a few rivers. There's mud, there are mountains. There
Speaker 11: are those rocks that you slip on and die. There
Speaker 11: are mountains that you have to climb. Of course, if
Speaker 11: you don't want to go meet God, you have to
Speaker 11: climb mountains that are slippery with stones rocks, and you
Speaker 11: keep going like that. All day downriver, walking walking walking.
Speaker 11: There are people who got left behind, There are people
Speaker 11: who came with children. They get stuck, they faint right.
Speaker 1: It's very hard, it's very difficult.
Speaker 11: And I know that all of us who immigrated here
Speaker 11: are doing the same thing. We are not bad people.
Speaker 11: We are good people. We do it for a purpose
Speaker 11: which is our family, right, our children. We need a
Speaker 11: good economy to support our family, our children.
Speaker 3: But I asked rays if there was a dream that
Speaker 3: kept her going.
Speaker 11: Yes, I have a dream to go there because just
Speaker 11: like everyone else, like every person, I need to get
Speaker 11: ahead financially to provide for my children, to get ahead.
Speaker 11: So my dream has always been to be there. You know,
Speaker 11: I set that all for myself before, but I didn't
Speaker 11: think it would be like this, so difficult. And once
Speaker 11: you're in there, well there's nothing you can do but
Speaker 11: get out, move forward, get out of there, because you
Speaker 11: can't go back, you can't retreat.
Speaker 5: You have to get out.
Speaker 11: So my dream is that to provide for my children.
Speaker 11: I have two sons waiting for me, I have my
Speaker 11: family and my dad and my brothers. So for that
Speaker 11: reason we set off to go there. We are still
Speaker 11: going there.
Speaker 3: The American dream is such a nebulous concept. Often it's
Speaker 3: used as a byword for exceptionalism and the idea that
Speaker 3: the US offers a true meritocracy. You were, hard working
Speaker 3: people can thrive in the marketplace of ideas that isn't true.
Speaker 3: But dreams don't have to be true, not they have
Speaker 3: to be that far fetched. Most people come into America, no,
Speaker 3: that work hard in the fields, cleaning homes. So maybe
Speaker 3: as a lion cook the hands and knees and back
Speaker 3: will do the labor that allows for privileged Americans to
Speaker 3: still believe in their version of the American dream, the
Speaker 3: one where millionaires become billionaires. But the chance to work
Speaker 3: and be paid to speak, and not fear consequences, to
Speaker 3: be able to feed your kids enough that they grow
Speaker 3: up healthy and strong. Those are dreams too. They're dreams
Speaker 3: that people are willing to risk their lives for, and
Speaker 3: dreams that I've seen them chase up and down mountains
Speaker 3: in the jungle and in the freezing cold and the
Speaker 3: baking heats of the deserts and mountains of California. But
Speaker 3: now even those who achieve their humble dreams are in
Speaker 3: danger of losing them and tomorrow, I want to talk
Speaker 3: about the end of the American Dream and the beginning
Speaker 3: of an American nightmare for millions and migrants who are
Speaker 3: already here. Every time I hear the various versions that
Speaker 3: Woody Guthrie song, I think about the friends I made
Speaker 3: the jungle, who, as a song says, maybe went to
Speaker 3: heaven without any names. So before I go, I want
Speaker 3: to share the whole Miami's American Dream one more time,
Speaker 3: because I think it's important not to forget what the
Speaker 3: entire force of the most powerful state in the world
Speaker 3: has dedicated itself to destroy.
Speaker 11: Why am I meaning me, me me?
Speaker 3: It could be an a par of thousand euros.
Speaker 11: A Caroline, Animia.
Speaker 3: Acidia, Amidia h for Rose, Miami and Primrose and the
Speaker 3: dozens of other migrants I met in the jungle. The
Speaker 3: goal was to get here. Some of them had friends
Speaker 3: they wanted to stay with, but many did not. They
Speaker 3: just wanted a chance, a chance to work and be
Speaker 3: paid a fair wage, a chance for their kids to
Speaker 3: have a dream and a future, a chance to sleep
Speaker 3: safely at night. Once they got across that line, over
Speaker 3: that wall, or across that river, they wanted to make
Speaker 3: their case for a silent to ask for help and
Speaker 3: someone to keep them safe, to give them an opportunity
Speaker 3: to build their lives again. But even for the very
Speaker 3: few who made it, the risks weren't over. Within hours
Speaker 3: of taking office, Trump had begun signing executive orders that
Speaker 3: would make life for migrants on the way to the
Speaker 3: USA and those already here even more difficult. To the
Speaker 3: cheers of the crowd, he signed in order that kept
Speaker 3: TikTok online, pardon the people who stormed the Capitol on
Speaker 3: January sixth, twenty twenty one, and attempted to rescind birthright
Speaker 3: citizenship from the children of migrants. He ended steviep Won
Speaker 3: and with his sharpie of the building of mole walls
Speaker 3: and the resulting death of more people who came here
Speaker 3: to ask for help. Within days of Trump taking office,
Speaker 3: federal agents from ICE, the DEA, the FBI, and other
Speaker 3: agencies had begun a campaign if made for social media raids.
Speaker 3: In Colorado, they raided apartment buildings which had played a
Speaker 3: load bearing role in right wing conspiracies about tender ragwa
Speaker 3: months before. At universities, they grabbed young men and women
Speaker 3: off campus for the crime for opposing genocide. People entering
Speaker 3: the country were stopped and had the device's searched, not
Speaker 3: just for evidence of crime, but also for evidence of
Speaker 3: mocking the president or the Vice president. Trump added various
Speaker 3: organized crime groups the list of foreign terrorist organizations and
Speaker 3: attempted to totally ban asylum, including for the people fleeing
Speaker 3: those very organizations. People who had waited months for an
Speaker 3: appointment on CBP one now had their appointment canceled. They
Speaker 3: were left totally without hope, at risk, and with nowhere
Speaker 3: to go for help. Trump used to border Emergency declaration
Speaker 3: to justify his proclamation and quickly followed up with more
Speaker 3: military deployments, wall construction, and a huge increase in the
Speaker 3: funding for state surveillance. People still cross, but their numbers
Speaker 3: decreased if many of them were quickly deported back to Mexico.
Speaker 3: Here's Kirsten is it law promos his lawyer explaining the
Speaker 3: new system.
Speaker 14: So there are no new asylum cases. In other words,
Speaker 14: people who cross at the southern border are now detained,
Speaker 14: only to be removed immediately basically or as soon as possible,
Speaker 14: under what's called two twelve F authority. It's under the
Speaker 14: Immigration and Nationality Act. Trump has used this authority, which
Speaker 14: basically broadly says that if the President finds a certain
Speaker 14: class of immigrants or the entry of immigrants would be
Speaker 14: detrimental to the interests of the United States, they may,
Speaker 14: by proclamation, you know, suspend all entry have said immigrants.
Speaker 3: So whereas people used to get credible.
Speaker 14: Fear interviews or were parolled into the United States to
Speaker 14: be allowed to fight an asylum case, none of that
Speaker 14: is happening anymore. And people are, if anything, only screened
Speaker 14: for what's called Convention against Torture screenings to just determine, like, hey,
Speaker 14: are they going to be tortured by their government or
Speaker 14: with the acquiescence of their government if they returned to
Speaker 14: their home country. But even then they are not allowed
Speaker 14: to remain in the United States or fight any relief
Speaker 14: in the United States. That just means that they will
Speaker 14: be deported to a third country.
Speaker 3: For people inside the USA, the situation wasn't much better.
Speaker 3: First as a trickle and then as a torrent, we
Speaker 3: started to see videos of masked, unidentified men jumping out
Speaker 3: of unmarked vehicles to grab people, many of whom were migrants,
Speaker 3: and detain them. In most cases, these were federal agents
Speaker 3: from ICE and other federal agencies like the FBI, the ATF,
Speaker 3: and the DEA, whose offices were detailed to support ICE.
Speaker 3: An increasing number of cases, they were people imitating ICE
Speaker 3: for migrants, many of whom had fled totalitarian regimes where
Speaker 3: people were disappeared by the state, they were reminder of
Speaker 3: what they'd run away from, the place they had come
Speaker 3: to be safe, started to feel like the place they
Speaker 3: had to leave because it wasn't safe. Primrose case, things
Speaker 3: were a bit different. When Kifton filed a motion to
Speaker 3: appear remotely, she got an extremely unusual response.
Speaker 14: In ruling on my WebEx motion, I was emailed the
Speaker 14: order of the judge along with a notice that primos
Speaker 14: should self deport.
Speaker 3: So judges are.
Speaker 14: Sending out these notices with routine other orders in cases
Speaker 14: where the immigrant has counsel is fighting their case.
Speaker 3: It's obvious they're fighting their case.
Speaker 14: Yeah, So it's one of the things where you just
Speaker 14: feel very strongly this administration's influence.
Speaker 3: Are they obliged to do that or is that a
Speaker 3: choice that the judge is made. No, not at all.
Speaker 14: It's it's okay, not at all, and in fact it's
Speaker 14: completely inappropriate. The immigration bar is taking a different approach
Speaker 14: to it. Some are filing motions to recuse, telling the judges, hey,
Speaker 14: you need to recuse yourself. You're you're a non neutral judge.
Speaker 14: To send this up out in the middle of the
Speaker 14: case is absurd. It's a due process violation. They're entitled
Speaker 14: to a neutral judge.
Speaker 3: Think just one of the many areas where things are
Speaker 3: not as they have been. The Trump administration has flouted
Speaker 3: rules and even court orders, sent migrants to hoard Salvador's
Speaker 3: megaprisons that god a place where torture is routine and
Speaker 3: where few people have ever left. They attempted to bring
Speaker 3: criminal charges against migrants to justify their actions, and eventually
Speaker 3: ended up in a prisoner change with the Maduro regime.
Speaker 3: At the same time, my daughter's government began offering quote
Speaker 3: unquote humanitarian flights to Venezuelans and Mexico, and some even
Speaker 3: took to navigating the Daian Gap southwards to return to Columbia,
Speaker 3: where they thought they might have some chance at a
Speaker 3: decent life in the USA, a country with more guns
Speaker 3: than people. Everyone seemed to be holding their breath and
Speaker 3: worrying that we'd seen an increase in lethal violence. But
Speaker 3: after a few weeks, thankfully that hadn't happened. But more
Speaker 3: and more where I stated showed up, local people also
Speaker 3: showed up. They called them are number of things, fascists, cowards,
Speaker 3: and then people began to organize, following ICE agents around
Speaker 3: and announcing their presence, identifying their hotels and making noise outside,
Speaker 3: picking up neighbors kids, and getting their groceries so people
Speaker 3: wouldn't need to expose themselves to the risk of arrest.
Speaker 3: If ICE agents were spotted, people alerted their communities. It
Speaker 3: is across the US. People began to form networks to
Speaker 3: take care of their neighbors. Some of this came from
Speaker 3: lifelong activists, but much of it did not. People even
Speaker 3: began using apps normally used for suburban racism like nextdoor
Speaker 3: and ring to call out the presence of ICE. Raids
Speaker 3: were reposed and ICE agents were shouted out across the country,
Speaker 3: but they still kept going. It wasn't until June that
Speaker 3: we saw the first mass protest. Everyone wondered if we'd
Speaker 3: be in for another hot summer like twenty twenty. CBP
Speaker 3: officers had been deployed to LA to conduct a series
Speaker 3: of loud and once again curated for Instagram Braids. Board
Speaker 3: of Patrols El Centro Sector Chief patrol Agent Gregory Bavino,
Speaker 3: became the faith of the operation even before Trump had
Speaker 3: taken office. Just a day after Congress had certified the
Speaker 3: results of the election, Bavino had sent sixty five agents
Speaker 3: six hours norse of the border to push the boundaries
Speaker 3: of what people would accept. In California's Central Valley, not
Speaker 3: so far from Los Gatos Canyon, he led Operation Return
Speaker 3: to Sender, accosting Latino farm workers at convenience stores and
Speaker 3: on the way to work. Bavino claimed the operation was targeted,
Speaker 3: but reporting from cal Matas showed CBP had no prior
Speaker 3: records for seventy seven of the seventy eight people had arrested. Bavino,
Speaker 3: who has bestowed the title of Premiere Sector on the
Speaker 3: part of the border he oversees, has five agents on
Speaker 3: a team dedicated to producing videos. He likes to praise Eisenhower,
Speaker 3: whose Operation WAG often flew migrants to our center before
Speaker 3: they were sent back to Mexico. The plane which crashed
Speaker 3: in Los Gato's Canyon was headed there. Bovino has a
Speaker 3: long history of these raids, dating back to at least
Speaker 3: twenty ten in Las Vegas, and he is very much
Speaker 3: the face of the new border patrol approach. While ICE
Speaker 3: numbers are growing, CBP still has several times more offices,
Speaker 3: and indeed some reporting suggests that ICE offices and some
Speaker 3: offices might be replaced with CBP personnel. Border Patrol notionally
Speaker 3: operates within one hundred miles to the border, an area
Speaker 3: which includes all US coastline and the entire shore of
Speaker 3: the Great Lakes, and even then this one hundred miles
Speaker 3: is an interpretation and not a hard legal blog. This
Speaker 3: remint covers two thirds of the population and gives them
Speaker 3: a widely way to infringe on the Fourth Amendment. This
Speaker 3: has been the case for decades since the Department of
Speaker 3: Home Land Security was founded after nine to eleven, but
Speaker 3: mass protests against CBP has been rare. We've seen it
Speaker 3: on occasion, the lesson you'd think for an agency with
Speaker 3: such a broad remit in a country that seems so
Speaker 3: proud of the first ten amendments to the Constitution. In
Speaker 3: La though people weren't having it following a series of
Speaker 3: violent raids, Border Patrol agents hadn't been met with protest
Speaker 3: across the city. They'd responded with tear gas, projectile weapons,
Speaker 3: and threats. They'd arrested Dennis wuerta leader of the Service
Speaker 3: Employees United International, one of the largest unions in the country,
Speaker 3: as well as dozens of other Angelinos. They'd shut tear
Speaker 3: gas out of moving vehicles and a naunched projectiles into
Speaker 3: the faces of reporters and bystanders alike. Seeing this, doing
Speaker 3: what I do. I got on a train to Los Angeles,
Speaker 3: but within being southern California, it took like five hours.
Speaker 3: Are they throwing or shooting?
Speaker 12: Did you get hit?
Speaker 3: You're okay? I'm going to that tree on the right.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: After getting off the train in LA, and before I
Speaker 3: met my friend Charles McBride to work of some coverage together,
Speaker 3: I walked around Olverda Street, grabbed a coffee, and spoke
Speaker 3: to some of the local folks. There were tags all
Speaker 3: over the walls and windows of the buildings around the
Speaker 3: train station, but that's always been how LA has expressed itself.
Speaker 3: All I heard from people I met there was support.
Speaker 3: One man expressed to me that his anxiety made protests
Speaker 3: very uncomfortable for him, but he was glad to see
Speaker 3: people standing up. Obviously, crimes against property are something that
Speaker 3: parts of Los Angeles take very seriously. It's a spiritual
Speaker 3: home of conspicuous consumption. But in this instance, it seemed
Speaker 3: everyone I've met either didn't care or was so mad
Speaker 3: they didn't care. From mid morning to early the next day, LAPD,
Speaker 3: who are not supposed to assist CBP but who can
Speaker 3: enforce state law, chased angry kids around their own city,
Speaker 3: its skid row and downtown LA. Tear Gas flooded the streets,
Speaker 3: and so did young people from across town. In between
Speaker 3: the tear gas and pepper bulls, I managed to talk
Speaker 3: to a few of them. Their stories were similar. They
Speaker 3: were those kids whose better futures had bought their parents here.
Speaker 3: They were citizens raised in the USA to believe in
Speaker 3: the right to free speech and assembly, something they were
Speaker 3: now using to make their voices heard.
Speaker 16: I mean, my family, they're you know, susceptible to all
Speaker 16: the ice rays and stuff like that, and you know,
Speaker 16: being a citizen here, I feel like it's my duty
Speaker 16: to come out here and you know, speak out and
Speaker 16: know for those who can.
Speaker 3: It made me think of Primrose and Kimberly and the
Speaker 3: future they might both have I sincerely hope that one
Speaker 3: day at Kimberly and every other kid I met the
Speaker 3: jungle would feel brave enough to be out here and
Speaker 3: just by everything, be strong enough to stand up against
Speaker 3: state violence. Unbeknown to me, Primrose and Kim weren't that
Speaker 3: far away. They had a check in with ICE at
Speaker 3: the DTLA federal building that day, and as they rode
Speaker 3: by in a bus past the protesting crowds, Kim said
Speaker 3: to her mom, look, it's uncle James. Her mom, of course,
Speaker 3: told her it couldn't have been, but she was right.
Speaker 3: It was. After nine months only speaking on the phone,
Speaker 3: can believe somehow recognize me. It might be being wrapped
Speaker 3: up in a helmet and a plate carrier. When they
Speaker 3: first arrived, they went to stay with someone they knew
Speaker 3: in Texas. I plan to go and visit them there
Speaker 3: and accompany them to their court hearing. At this point,
Speaker 3: I say, agents had already begun snatching people in the
Speaker 3: corridors of the courthouses after the government withdrew their cases
Speaker 3: and placed them in expedited removal proceedings, which meant mandatory detention.
Speaker 3: There's not much any of us can do about this,
Speaker 3: but I didn't want them to be alone. Then I
Speaker 3: got COVID and couldn't go his curse in explaining how
Speaker 3: this process works.
Speaker 14: So INA Section two thirty five applies to people who
Speaker 14: entered within less than two years, Like you said, they
Speaker 14: can be then subject to what's called expedited removal. That
Speaker 14: means that they have to take a credible fear interview
Speaker 14: and be detained, and that they only get to fight
Speaker 14: a case if they pass their credible fear interview. They
Speaker 14: do not qualify for an immigration judge bond, so they
Speaker 14: only get out if ICE lets them out, which of
Speaker 14: course Ice is letting nobody out. So the administration wants
Speaker 14: to have people detained under this authority, this two thirty
Speaker 14: five authority, as much as possible, to have them have
Speaker 14: to fight their case detained and either lose the will
Speaker 14: to do so and or not be able to afford
Speaker 14: an attorney, because detained cases move along a lot quicker
Speaker 14: and are very costly as well for that reason. So
Speaker 14: what they're doing is anybody who was here two years
Speaker 14: or less but was parolled in so they're in the
Speaker 14: regular immigration court proceedings. They got out there under two
Speaker 14: forty proceedings that's called so DHS attorneys in court are
Speaker 14: terminating those proceedings. They're asking the judge to terminate the
Speaker 14: two forty proceedings, so then that case is closed and
Speaker 14: then they immediately restart a case under section two thirty five.
Speaker 3: The hearing went relatively smoothly. Their lawyer, who is now
Speaker 3: working for whatever Primrose could fundraise able to help them
Speaker 3: make their case. They left with another heroic schedules. Soon after,
Speaker 3: they decided to move to La to stay with another
Speaker 3: friend after the housing situation in Texas fell through. They
Speaker 3: were living in East LA when they had their next
Speaker 3: ice checking.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I was living an appointment and you said they
Speaker 4: went back to get some documents and they made you
Speaker 4: wake out. Yeah, yeah, I went there, I think around
Speaker 4: af eight two four pm. At first they came and
Speaker 4: give me my papers. They said, go to chat with
Speaker 4: which is close to where you stay. Then too came
Speaker 4: here in La downtown. So when I walk away, I
Speaker 4: realized there was no other documents.
Speaker 5: Then I woke.
Speaker 7: I go big.
Speaker 4: I said to Kim, I let's go big inside. Then
Speaker 4: I go to the reception. Then I asked the lady
Speaker 4: and she was the ruder it first. Then She took
Speaker 4: my documents, then said, oh okay, let me go and
Speaker 4: find it. Three hours, four hours, not big. Then she
Speaker 4: came in and called me, I think four pm. Then
Speaker 4: the ice officer is just telling me I'm going to Detainia.
Speaker 4: I said, oh why, I said, oh, we are going
Speaker 4: to explain more.
Speaker 5: We are going, I said, oh, okay.
Speaker 3: Like thousands of other migrants who are trying to do
Speaker 3: as they're asked, Primros has detained her check in along
Speaker 3: with Kim. Previously, she'd been given ice check ins in
Speaker 3: Riverside despite living in East LA. I'd helped her navigate
Speaker 3: the four and a half hour bus route to get
Speaker 3: there on time. Wondered how on earth, someone who doesn't
Speaker 3: have a friend here, or who doesn't speak English, she's
Speaker 3: expected to do this. She went out of her way
Speaker 3: to make sure she was there and she had her
Speaker 3: documents in order. Despite all of this, but she and
Speaker 3: Kim believe were detained anyway, It's not hard for me
Speaker 3: to see why people in La were mad.
Speaker 4: Then they took me to Santana. We were just sitting.
Speaker 12: Not even.
Speaker 5: One Ice officer comes to me nothing.
Speaker 4: I was just sitting And the other thing, they just
Speaker 4: took my phone same time they switched it off. Then
Speaker 4: I said, can I tell even one of my friends,
Speaker 4: maybe they they are worried, and now said no, no,
Speaker 4: we are going to give you a phone. Later on
Speaker 4: I said, okay, So in Sanna they took us in
Speaker 4: a hotel to sleep. Then the following day they took
Speaker 4: big us to Sundernard Detention Center, not even one officer.
Speaker 4: I was being asking the securities. They said, we don't
Speaker 4: even know. We spent the whole day sitting doing nothing.
Speaker 4: We were just sitting. Then they took us, I think
Speaker 4: around the six pm pack to Los Angeles. Then when
Speaker 4: that's why I saw the ICE officer. Then she explained
Speaker 4: to me we are going to detain. You are going
Speaker 4: to put you somewhere because the rules are changing every day.
Speaker 5: I even asked you, did I do something well? She
Speaker 5: said no.
Speaker 3: I've heard this from a lot of migrants. The ICE
Speaker 3: agents managing their non detained docket, as opposed to those
Speaker 3: enforcement removal or detention, seemed to be struggling to keep
Speaker 3: up with the pace of the changes in rules. Many
Speaker 3: of the migrants I'd heard from had decent relationships with
Speaker 3: the officers who do their check ins and they can't
Speaker 3: understand why other officers working for the same organization would
Speaker 3: detain them even though they're doing exactly what they're asked
Speaker 3: to do. They are doing things quote unquote the right way,
Speaker 3: but that's not enough for an agency desperately driven by
Speaker 3: quotas and the desire to purgenation of people who had
Speaker 3: risked their lives to become Americans. Let's hear how this
Speaker 3: felt for Primrose.
Speaker 5: Then, said Duyev lawyer. I said yes.
Speaker 4: Then she said okay, it's fine, so she'd give me
Speaker 4: another documentary to sign. Then I signed, like they are
Speaker 4: going to detain me. Then I ask you for how
Speaker 4: long they are I don't think you guys will you
Speaker 4: are going and going to stay more than fourteen days?
Speaker 4: Made less than fourteen days. I said, okay. Then I
Speaker 4: asked your phone to call a lawyer. She gave me
Speaker 4: a phone. Then I conduct the lawyer. The lawyer the
Speaker 4: phone was off. Then I tried to conduct one of
Speaker 4: my friends. Then the aunts, I said, we wanted to
Speaker 4: go to the police to ask you because we were
Speaker 4: worried because your phone was.
Speaker 7: Off, and.
Speaker 4: The ice officer, the ice officer the bother I was
Speaker 4: gaving a GPS. So my GPS was off for the
Speaker 4: way phoning. Uh the person way up to me in
Speaker 4: Texas looking for me. Then he also replaced, I'm also
Speaker 4: looking for you. I don't even know where she is.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So people they were worried, maybe I will someone kidnap you.
Speaker 4: Something happened to me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, so you and another ice officer is also
Speaker 3: looking for you.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the other officer, we're looking for me. They were
Speaker 4: even sending messages on their up yeah, yeah, asking where
Speaker 4: are you charge your GPS? And the other ice officer
Speaker 4: was detaining me. Then I even explained to her. She said,
Speaker 4: oh no, no, it's okay. Then she took the scissor.
Speaker 4: Then she cut the GPS.
Speaker 5: She cut it off.
Speaker 4: They know we Spain. I think one hour it was
Speaker 4: around saving. Then they said okay, or there someone is
Speaker 4: coming to take you and your daughter, So to take
Speaker 4: you somewhere which is safe with your child. I ask
Speaker 4: a way those people they said, we don't know, we
Speaker 4: don't know. Then I said, oh okay. Then they searched me.
Speaker 4: They said, do you want to take your big They
Speaker 4: said no, no, it's fine. I can ask if someone
Speaker 4: because I know I was saving, I'll was key for
Speaker 4: the apartment.
Speaker 3: Primrose, like many people seeking asylum, had to wear a
Speaker 3: GPS and tag part of ices Alternatives to Detention program.
Speaker 3: There are various parts of the program, including facial recognition
Speaker 3: check ins via a smartphone app, home visits, and the
Speaker 3: Intensive Supervision Parents program, which is administered by Behavioral Interventions
Speaker 3: A Geogroupsubsidiary ICE AP as it's known, includes an app
Speaker 3: through which people can check it, as well as the
Speaker 3: GPS monitors and smart watches which can monitor GPS and
Speaker 3: do facial recognition. Very obviously, they're not being used in
Speaker 3: a systematic way, as one branch of ICE was detaining
Speaker 3: Primrose while another was using a GPS tag to try
Speaker 3: and find her. All of the GPS devices used to
Speaker 3: altern Things to Detention represent massive surveillance overreach, an invasion
Speaker 3: of privacy, and a huge government dragnet of data they
Speaker 3: can use to track down migrants and the people they're with.
Speaker 3: Despite this, they're also better than detention, which is where
Speaker 3: Primros ended up, but not directly.
Speaker 4: Maybe they are going to depot to me. I can't
Speaker 4: go with the keys. Then they took my big so
Speaker 4: I'll gry. I'm going to put somewhere after one hour,
Speaker 4: they took us to Lax Airport. They put us in
Speaker 4: a hotel. It was around twelve year twelve feear that time. Indeed,
Speaker 4: they said, okay, so when you can nave a shower,
Speaker 4: then you can nave a nap. So me I was
Speaker 4: in the shower in the kimber.
Speaker 5: She was.
Speaker 4: Already on the bed sleeping. Then the lady came in said,
Speaker 4: make fast, we are going to We want to go
Speaker 4: back to pick another person where we came from. Ah,
Speaker 4: then I wake, I awake him.
Speaker 5: She was crying. She was like, I want to.
Speaker 4: Sleep because she was leaving headache. Then they said no, no, no,
Speaker 4: it's okay, let's go, you're going to sleep where we
Speaker 4: are going. We spent the one night.
Speaker 5: Up and down.
Speaker 4: We came back again to La Downtown to pick another
Speaker 4: guy with his side with his son. Then they took
Speaker 4: us to San Diego Airport. I think we arrived there.
Speaker 4: I think it's five am to take the flight to
Speaker 4: San Antonio takes us. Then after that and then the
Speaker 4: other lead she was rude. The other one she was nice,
Speaker 4: she was fine. The other one, if you ask her,
Speaker 4: she was like, she was rude. Then I just keep quiet.
Speaker 4: Then I think at the airport, we spent three hours sitting.
Speaker 4: Then I was flight at eight am to San Antonio. Yeah,
Speaker 4: they took us to delay immigration. They welcome us, nice everything. Yeah,
Speaker 4: then they put us inside. But for me, I was
Speaker 4: I was crying to be honesty. Yeah, I was even crying,
Speaker 4: like you know, the only pace and make me strong.
Speaker 4: And it's came and it's a waste for here. Since
Speaker 4: our last year, since last year, your life is something else.
Speaker 4: I'm just moving from one place to another, moving from
Speaker 4: one place to another. You know, she's a strong girl,
Speaker 4: but sometimes you can see when you see it's sitting down, startying, crying.
Speaker 5: She just remind you something. Yeah.
Speaker 9: So yeah.
Speaker 3: The Florida Settlement governed detention of children by immigration authorities.
Speaker 3: It limits the time they can be held to twenty days,
Speaker 3: and established minimum standards for their detention and treatment. It
Speaker 3: was a lawsuit based on this Florida Settlement that eventually
Speaker 3: ended the Biden era policy of outdoor attention. The settlement
Speaker 3: is widely flouted, but it was the best hope. Promos
Speaker 3: and Kimberly had Kirstin their lawyer we heard from earlier,
Speaker 3: worked tirelessly to the man baby treated according to their rights.
Speaker 3: And how was it? You caught me a few times
Speaker 3: in Dali, right, like how Kim wasn't having a good.
Speaker 5: Time first week?
Speaker 4: It was hard even for both of us. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: even the food me, I wasn't even it. It was
Speaker 4: very hard for both of us. But you know, kids,
Speaker 4: she was like used to to.
Speaker 3: Primos called me a few times from detention. I pick
Speaker 3: up the phone to a robot voice and the number
Speaker 3: would identify itself on my phone as Federal detention or
Speaker 3: something like that. First, obviously I was afraid, but I
Speaker 3: had an idea of what it could be. Yet another
Speaker 3: connection that began with a little piece of waterproof paper
Speaker 3: in the jungle and was now nine months later, leading
Speaker 3: to a phone call from a prison for families in Texas.
Speaker 3: I'd pick up the phone and then I'd have to
Speaker 3: press one or two to accept the call. I always
Speaker 3: wondered what I was about to hear. I could tell
Speaker 3: she was trying to put on a brave face, but
Speaker 3: she sounded so small it was difficult, really hard to hear.
Speaker 3: She said Kim wasn't eating a food, which I've often
Speaker 3: heard is terrible. I spent hours trying to find out
Speaker 3: how to put money on their commentsary account so she
Speaker 3: could get something a little better casting for on and
Speaker 3: on to try and get them released. I remember at
Speaker 3: one point hearing from Primrose locked up with her daughter
Speaker 3: for the crime of asking this country for help on
Speaker 3: the fourth of July. It would be too cliche if
Speaker 3: I made that up. But nothing this year really seems believable,
Speaker 3: even a nice attention, which is a miserable place for anyone.
Speaker 3: Primrose and Kim had an especially hard time as most
Speaker 3: of the migrants they were detained with spoke Spanish.
Speaker 5: And the way.
Speaker 4: The other thing is like those people they were, especially
Speaker 4: in their room, they put me, all of them, they
Speaker 4: were Spanish, and me, I do anything understand the Spanish.
Speaker 4: I even asking the ice officer, can you please maybe
Speaker 4: because there's another lady also two ladies I think Africans.
Speaker 4: We were only four families, so we even ask them
Speaker 4: can you put us in one room so that we
Speaker 4: can understand each other, even especially for the TV. You know,
Speaker 4: kids their issues. So sometimes I even had a report
Speaker 4: to one of the lady. She was very rude to us.
Speaker 4: She came and speak something so me and you came
Speaker 4: we don't even understand like what she said. So I
Speaker 4: just saw people they're doing something. Then letter she was like, yay,
Speaker 4: I came here and I said this. Yeah, when you
Speaker 4: came here, you just speak Spanish. You didn't even explain
Speaker 4: with English, and of which may I don't understand English.
Speaker 4: So she just write a report to a boss. So
Speaker 4: a boss came and called me. Then I explained to you.
Speaker 4: Then she was like, oh okay. Then they called Yeah.
Speaker 4: She wanted to say no, no, no, I even explained
Speaker 4: to English. Then there's another woman inside my room. Then
Speaker 4: she spoke with the Spanish. I didn't even hear, but
Speaker 4: she was telling the officer no, no, no, this woman
Speaker 4: she's lying. She just came and speaks spanishye, and not English.
Speaker 4: So these people they were just sleeping. They didn't even
Speaker 4: know what to do because she just only spoke Spanish only.
Speaker 3: I've heard this from lots of migrants. They end up
Speaker 3: serving as translators for each other because the agency that
Speaker 3: is founded better than most countries' militaries seemingly won't provide them. Often,
Speaker 3: people who speak indigenous languages have to find a translator
Speaker 3: into Spanish or Russian or whatever other language. They have
Speaker 3: a colonial relationship with Other times there's just nobody to
Speaker 3: help them, and they're even more alone than afraid. Luckily,
Speaker 3: Primrose wasn't alone. She had came with her and as
Speaker 3: they always do, they looked out for each other. These
Speaker 3: aren't things the child should have to do. Certainly childish
Speaker 3: young at Kimberly, but in the end it was Kimberly
Speaker 3: who could help work out what was going on.
Speaker 4: Then the ice officer I started crying, like then they
Speaker 4: took me to psychologist and then they said no, no,
Speaker 4: it's okay. I think I even spent three days that side.
Speaker 4: They removed me in their room, then they put me back.
Speaker 4: So Kimbleage was leaning under standing Spanish. So sometimes you
Speaker 4: see olping me or Mammy they said this, and that,
Speaker 4: they said this, and that. I even write it not
Speaker 4: to complain, like when these people came, then we have
Speaker 4: to accommodate all of us, because it's not like, oh,
Speaker 4: we are all Spanish and we don't understand Spanish.
Speaker 3: And then it's being overcrowded and underfed. Migrants and ice
Speaker 3: facilities were often incredibly bored. I've heard of some of
Speaker 3: them trying to teach yoga or share stories, but for
Speaker 3: the most part, they're so afraid and isolated that they
Speaker 3: are forced to sit with their anxieties day after day.
Speaker 3: I can't imagine what this is like for parents. They
Speaker 3: have to try and maintain their own mental health and
Speaker 3: take care of their children.
Speaker 5: But to be honest, we were just sitting. So time goes.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, because I remember one day we went to place.
Speaker 4: We went to the gym to play I think Soca
Speaker 4: with game. I just fell down. I just felt down.
Speaker 4: They took me to hospa to I think I spent
Speaker 4: I think three hours then I wake up.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, because I think it's depression. So they put me
Speaker 4: in depression pills to get it out. Yeah, because my
Speaker 4: bibi was high every time and ever time different time. Yeah.
Speaker 5: But I asked my ice officer about my case.
Speaker 4: Then she just replied, I'm just waiting for us to
Speaker 4: close your case and we can start for asylum.
Speaker 5: So I was just sitting doing nothing.
Speaker 3: Despite what the detention was doing to her, Premiers remain
Speaker 3: determined to keep fighting her case. Every Thursday, an ice
Speaker 3: officer would come by and she would be able to
Speaker 3: ask about her case. She'd been looking forward to the
Speaker 3: only point in her week when she might get some
Speaker 3: good news or at least some news about what was
Speaker 3: happening to her. Why, Sally, that's not how it went.
Speaker 5: Yeah, there was ice.
Speaker 4: Officer was very loud, to be honest, everyone just walk
Speaker 4: away without and the people they were crying, complaining. Then
Speaker 4: it was like I went to him, straight to him.
Speaker 4: I wanted to ask him a question. He said, Hey,
Speaker 4: I don't have time. The only thing I can even
Speaker 4: tell you, guys, if you're tired of staying here, because
Speaker 4: they were putting papers for self deportation in our rooms,
Speaker 4: like if you want to deport it anytime, you can
Speaker 4: just sign you put your a number, your phone number, everything,
Speaker 4: then they can make you fine ticket here.
Speaker 3: In her lowest moment, Premier said she felt like giving up.
Speaker 3: Maybe it wasn't worth it. She thought, if you would
Speaker 3: do anything to get away from the hell of the
Speaker 3: detention center, that's the goal of these places, to break people.
Speaker 3: The Kible reminded her what they'd come all this way for.
Speaker 4: Because when I was in detention, there's a time I
Speaker 4: was like, I'm going to sign any deportation from Oh
Speaker 4: he's cream.
Speaker 5: She said, no, people, they are going to kill you.
Speaker 5: If you want to go back. Oh, it's fine. It's
Speaker 5: up to you.
Speaker 4: If you want to go, die, go not to me,
Speaker 4: sign your paper, not to my paper. You must sign
Speaker 4: yours then you can go. Don't sign my name. No,
Speaker 4: I do rather stay a year because I know people,
Speaker 4: because there's a lot of people happening in the a ice,
Speaker 4: especially in my country. Also, so she still remember everything.
Speaker 3: The depression, hunger boarder and misery that characterizes ye attention.
Speaker 3: It's not a bug, it's a feature. It's supposed to
Speaker 3: force people into breaking, into signing those papers, into getting
Speaker 3: sent back to whatever they came here to escape. However,
Speaker 3: the tenacity that bought Primroses far I hadn't left her,
Speaker 3: and she made sure to let them know she was
Speaker 3: not willingly going back.
Speaker 4: Then I said, no me, I'm not going anyway because
Speaker 4: my life is in danger. Then he said, I don't
Speaker 4: care even if they kill you, I don't even care.
Speaker 4: You have to take a reform and sign if you
Speaker 4: are attacked. Then I said, okay, at listen, tell me
Speaker 4: my kiss. Cause when they teached me, was like, everyone
Speaker 4: was asking me, wait, did they catch you?
Speaker 5: I explained.
Speaker 4: The other officer was like, so did they know, I said,
Speaker 4: I don't even know the name, but that officer, he
Speaker 4: was very rude.
Speaker 5: I don't care. Do you think I cay.
Speaker 4: I don't even care whether you go big to your country,
Speaker 4: whether they killed is none of my business.
Speaker 5: I gave my family.
Speaker 4: Oh so people were they were like shouted him, those spanishes,
Speaker 4: They were even crying, shouted him. He just walk away
Speaker 4: and believe us, So people just also starting to walk away,
Speaker 4: go around. We even writing not we prove like a complaint,
Speaker 4: but no one even coming.
Speaker 5: Your person? Do they day? They just come and call me.
Speaker 5: They are going to listening.
Speaker 3: Katered spent weeks calling, emailing and demanding the premieres on
Speaker 3: Kimberly be treated according to the rites under the Floorida settlement.
Speaker 3: I wasn't sure if it was a lost cause. It
Speaker 3: was the only option we had, and I was happy
Speaker 3: to Kimberley and like so many others in that detention center,
Speaker 3: had someone to fight for her. In fact, she had
Speaker 3: hundreds of people. People all across the country had donated
Speaker 3: to her legal aid fund. Here in San Diego, people
Speaker 3: put on shows and took collections to pay for her
Speaker 3: legal fees. Listeners to this show dipped into their pockets
Speaker 3: to support Primrose and Kimberly. Thanks to them, she had
Speaker 3: a chance to get out. Like many other legal rights
Speaker 3: at Migrant's House, Flores was being widely ignored, and it's
Speaker 3: likely that Trump have men will take a run at
Speaker 3: removing it altogether soon, but for now, in this one case,
Speaker 3: it's still applied. But even once I was conceded that
Speaker 3: Primrose and Kimberly had a right to be freed, they
Speaker 3: still took their time doing it.
Speaker 4: They listening on the tenth Yeah, remember you called me
Speaker 4: the fund the food. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I called Julia exactly.
Speaker 3: Before you were going to get out that week, but
Speaker 3: they took longer and long.
Speaker 15: Good.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the release felt like a victory, but she still
Speaker 3: faced the same difficulties she had before. Primrose could not
Speaker 3: legally work. She was still in La where border patrol
Speaker 3: and a baveno but conducting violent raids and people accused
Speaker 3: of no crime other than crossing the border between ports
Speaker 3: of entry. Because it was the summer, Kimberly still hadn't
Speaker 3: received her education, So that was July and I were
Speaker 3: in August. Now, yeah, you said, you know, work permit
Speaker 3: still hasn't come, right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, They clear everything. I was supposed to get my
Speaker 4: week permit on July July, but they clear everything like
Speaker 4: new everything. They just clear everything's all studying August.
Speaker 3: Yeah, November, now there's still no permit. His case in
Speaker 3: explaining in May of this year how this system works.
Speaker 14: You have a work permit clock, right, which is another
Speaker 14: absurd thing for assils that once they file their asylum application,
Speaker 14: they have to wait one hundred and fifty days before
Speaker 14: they can apply for a work permit. And of course
Speaker 14: they're expected to be independently wealthy during those five months
Speaker 14: or you know, or star over or I don't know
Speaker 14: what they're expected to do.
Speaker 3: Yeah, rely on the generosity of others, like exactly.
Speaker 14: So if you do something like try to change venue
Speaker 14: or a motion to continue, if you do something in
Speaker 14: your case that the judge perceives as not moving the
Speaker 14: case along and rather like kind of trying to stall
Speaker 14: it or possibly pausing it or slow it down, the
Speaker 14: judge will stop the work permit clock the days and
Speaker 14: it's a whole thing. So Primroses was stopped because the
Speaker 14: judge wanted her to get an attorney. So then usually
Speaker 14: when the case is set for a final hearing, that
Speaker 14: code adjournment code they call it. We have the access
Speaker 14: to the codes and what stops the clock and what doesn't.
Speaker 14: And it always restarts the clock because you move your
Speaker 14: case along because you're setting it for trial. It's obviously
Speaker 14: moving your case along. Hers was not restarted.
Speaker 3: That video is still on Primrose's mind as well, still
Speaker 3: comes up when she goes to a new church that
Speaker 3: meets new people, even eleven months later. One of the
Speaker 3: worst days of her life still follows her.
Speaker 4: And the person who posted me on my video please, uh.
Speaker 4: I don't know how to say, but the comments I
Speaker 4: was reading this was really big. And people they just
Speaker 4: judge people without if they know their status where they
Speaker 4: come from. Yeah, I can't control them, but deep down
Speaker 4: I'm not okay. And do you see it now I'm
Speaker 4: struggling for my knee. Yeah, and the other people they
Speaker 4: will laugh at me like yeah, yeah, but it's not funny.
Speaker 4: And I wish if the person maybe she was supposed
Speaker 4: to cover my face or to cover Kimbal's face.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I didn't want the time in La to
Speaker 3: entirely be defined by the detention. I didn't want them
Speaker 3: to think that everyone in this country doesn't want them here.
Speaker 3: I never really expect the government to make people feel
Speaker 3: welcome here. I think that's something we should do. These
Speaker 3: people are joining our communities. They risk their lives to
Speaker 3: come and live here with us, and it's us who
Speaker 3: should welcome them. We can't leave that to the whims
Speaker 3: of the electoral College. We have to do it ourselves,
Speaker 3: just like the people in Bajujiguito did.
Speaker 1: So.
Speaker 3: I drove up to La Primrose and Kim had another
Speaker 3: ice appointment, and I arranged to meet them after. I
Speaker 3: freaked out a little bit when I couldn't get through
Speaker 3: to them, but eventually I did. The Big Guy's building
Speaker 3: has no signal inside. It turns out their place in
Speaker 3: La Is where I conducted the interview you heard. I
Speaker 3: took them out for a manicure first, because it seemed
Speaker 3: like some thing that would make them feel taken care of,
Speaker 3: and I got Kim some bubblesa because she wanted to
Speaker 3: try it. Sitting in the little manicure shop, watching a
Speaker 3: Vietnamese lady take great care over their nails felt like
Speaker 3: another glimpse of the communities were supplied to build where
Speaker 3: people from all over the world can come and be
Speaker 3: safe by this time, I hadn't heard from Noemi for months,
Speaker 3: and I started to realize I might not ever again.
Speaker 3: So I decided I wasn't going to let Kimberle live
Speaker 3: so close to Disneyland and not go. One of my
Speaker 3: colleagues has foundamily who worked there. We got Primrose and
Speaker 3: Kimberly day passes. It felt really nice just to give
Speaker 3: them a day to be a family and not to worry.
Speaker 3: I didn't go with them and record. I wanted them
Speaker 3: to enjoy the day on their own, and by all
Speaker 3: accounts they did. Primosh be fixtored of them, smiling out
Speaker 3: said various riots and exhibit, and I felt a little
Speaker 3: bit better to help make someone's American dream a little
Speaker 3: less of a nightmare. Tomorrow, I want to talk more
Speaker 3: about welcoming people in our communities and taking care of them,
Speaker 3: because now more than ever, I think that's what we
Speaker 3: have to do. The week before you're hearing this, on
Speaker 3: a beautiful southern California winter morning, I met some friends
Speaker 3: in a parking lot near the border. We hopped into
Speaker 3: our trucks and drove along dirt road so we reached
Speaker 3: a pull up. Once there, we threw on packs and
Speaker 3: hiked straight up a steep hillside. Even in late November,
Speaker 3: the south facing slope was hot. We're all sweating. By
Speaker 3: the time we reached the GPS location we've been given,
Speaker 3: it wasn't hard to spot a dark patch on the
Speaker 3: landscape where someone's remains had returned to the earth. One
Speaker 3: friend had carried a heavy wooden cross up the mountain.
Speaker 3: We dug a hole in the rocky ground and then
Speaker 3: placed the white wooden cross in it. Silently, we filled
Speaker 3: the whole back up, stamped on the dirt until the
Speaker 3: cross stood right up. Then we decorated it with marawgolds
Speaker 3: and seashells and dried flower petals, doing the best we could.
Speaker 3: One friend carefully picked the petals off the flowers laid
Speaker 3: them on the arms of the cross. Another sprinkled poppy
Speaker 3: seeds into the ground. We stood in silence for a while,
Speaker 3: but the construction of the secondary border wall didn't halt
Speaker 3: for a minute in silence, and then together we paid
Speaker 3: our respects to Graciela Sonton Gormez Hernandez, whose last moments
Speaker 3: were spent looking at the same sky we were looking at,
Speaker 3: gazing down onto the two border walls that were built
Speaker 3: to separate us from her. She died in September in
Speaker 3: the heat wave. The same month or year before, I'd
Speaker 3: had to call nine one one for several migrants with
Speaker 3: heat stroke. I'd come across she died, a friend told me,
Speaker 3: with her clothes folded next to her, sheltering under a bush.
Speaker 3: Looking from the place we erected the lonely little cross,
Speaker 3: that was all we had left remember her. I could
Speaker 3: see four border patrols of ail at Santana's. She was
Speaker 3: just a few hundred yards from the wall from the road,
Speaker 3: but it took weeks for anyone to find her.
Speaker 17: Gracila Gomez presently, Gracila Sion Gomez LANs very Gracila Gormez
Speaker 17: LANs very same.
Speaker 3: Obviously, we arrived too late to help, but we arrived
Speaker 3: soon enough to ensure that least in death, she was
Speaker 3: afforded to dignity the world has denied her in life.
Speaker 3: Then I strapped half of fifty gallon barrels my backpack
Speaker 3: frame where my friends carried slabs to water bottles. As
Speaker 3: we walked. A construction vehicle above us reeled holes into
Speaker 3: the earth for pylons that would hold a second thirty
Speaker 3: at wall. On the sixty degree slope above the vehicle,
Speaker 3: a helicopter flew around, and then it flew back underneath it.
Speaker 3: We were at the date on water bottles and threw
Speaker 3: them in a barrel. I tried to dain all.
Speaker 13: See okay.
Speaker 3: Doing this for years, we said goodbye to a fair
Speaker 3: share of people who he never got to say hello
Speaker 3: to and whose faces we never got to see. Last summer,
Speaker 3: I helped search to the remains of a migrant who
Speaker 3: had passed away in a canyon deep in the desert.
Speaker 3: Every time I do this fills me with a deep sadness,
Speaker 3: especially with all the friends from the jungle who I've
Speaker 3: lost touch with since then. It could be easy to
Speaker 3: look at everything I've laid out in this series and
Speaker 3: feel hopeless.
Speaker 12: But I don't want you to.
Speaker 3: It could be easy to feel afraid as well, because
Speaker 3: now is the time that caring about other people is dangerous.
Speaker 3: It's possible currently for some folks to keep their heads
Speaker 3: stay and try and keep themselves safe, but to can
Speaker 3: find their actions to are angry posting on social media.
Speaker 3: But our politics shouldn't be about anger. It should be
Speaker 3: about love. Now more than ever, it's important to remember
Speaker 3: that we don't act on our love and our solidarity
Speaker 3: with angry tweets. We act on it by taking care
Speaker 3: of people. However many walls they build, however many masked
Speaker 3: men with guns they send. I don't believe it's within
Speaker 3: the power of the state to stop people caring about
Speaker 3: each other, and I hope that that care compels people
Speaker 3: to do something. In fact, I think seeing so much
Speaker 3: cruelty makes us all realize that it's up to us
Speaker 3: to care for one another. People have cared for Primrose
Speaker 3: and kim in all kinds of ways since they came here,
Speaker 3: and today we're going to hear from some of them.
Speaker 3: Friends bought Kimberly's school books where they were stuck in Mexico.
Speaker 3: Some other folks put on a burlesque performance here in
Speaker 3: San Diego to raise money for her lawyer. Hundreds of
Speaker 3: you reach into your pockets to help her pay for
Speaker 3: legal living expenses. When the state, both under Biden and
Speaker 3: under Trump, made her of Kimberly feel unwelcome, you didn't.
Speaker 3: I've carried my fair share of water into the desert
Speaker 3: under Biden administration as well. It was Biden's policies that
Speaker 3: left little Miomi stuck in Mexico, not Trumps. It was
Speaker 3: Biden's policies to detain people in the open air and
Speaker 3: left them with no food or water or shelter. And
Speaker 3: it was everyday people like my friends and I who
Speaker 3: fed them and sheltered them and took care of them.
Speaker 3: We took donations and dived into dumpsters to grab tents,
Speaker 3: who worked hard every day to build shelters, cook food,
Speaker 3: and give away clothing so that people could feel welcome
Speaker 3: and safe here. Not a single elected official gave out
Speaker 3: a single sandwich, much less made one in the months
Speaker 3: that thousands of people were detained outdoors in a cumber
Speaker 3: and salisigral. But people from churches, goodwaras latterday Saints people
Speaker 3: and Quakers as what as a whole lot of anarchists
Speaker 3: and crosspunks and just desert people with no particular politics did.
Speaker 3: I'm not saying this to pat Us on the back.
Speaker 3: I don't think any of us really wanted to be
Speaker 3: mentioned at all. Like many of us, some of my
Speaker 3: happiest memories were the days we fed strangers, then sat
Speaker 3: around fire, sharing stories and sometimes songs. Since then, I've
Speaker 3: been privileged to share the joys and struggles some of
Speaker 3: those people faced in their new lives here. I've attended
Speaker 3: their weddings. I've tried to help them understand that by
Speaker 3: action accents, but I've helped them come to turn to
Speaker 3: the fact you simply can't get around large parts of
Speaker 3: this country without a car. I'm saying this because I
Speaker 3: think it's important that whatever happens after this current administration,
Speaker 3: we can't ever go back to the way things were before.
Speaker 3: We can't let migrants to be invisible in our communities.
Speaker 3: We can't let them keep dying at the border. Let's
Speaker 3: talk about what carying looks like in Primrose's case. This
Speaker 3: time last year, I just released my Darien Gap podcast,
Speaker 3: and a few weeks later I received a direct message
Speaker 3: about my Patreon newsletter. It was from a guy called Matt.
Speaker 12: My name is Matt. I'm just a normal person who
Speaker 12: listens to a lot of podcasts.
Speaker 3: I didn't know him, and he didn't know me, but
Speaker 3: he listened to the podcast I made.
Speaker 12: I can still very vividly remember where I was when
Speaker 12: when I listened to that, which was I was coming
Speaker 12: back from a dirt biking trip in Michigan, and so
Speaker 12: I had a seven hour drive, and I was like,
Speaker 12: oh cool, here's a three hour podcast that I listened to.
Speaker 12: And then I started listening to it, and then I
Speaker 12: was just like I got into that mode where I
Speaker 12: was just like I couldn't not finish it, you know,
Speaker 12: I was like absolutely hooked and just needed needed to
Speaker 12: get all you needed to get all the way to
Speaker 12: the end, and was just really really moved by the
Speaker 12: whole thing.
Speaker 3: Like many Americans until ready to be late in Biden administration,
Speaker 3: that knew about immigration, but he hadn't really grappled with
Speaker 3: the fact that what secure borders means is killing innocent
Speaker 3: people in the jungle, in the desert and everywhere in between.
Speaker 3: That's how deterrence works, That's how it's post to work.
Speaker 12: Like I didn't realize that that was like intentional, and
Speaker 12: then hearing you know, hearing hearing yours, I was just
Speaker 12: sort of like, oh, right, Like just the fact that
Speaker 12: people would go to such a just such lengths of
Speaker 12: of danger on a journey just across a continent and
Speaker 12: knowing that once they get here, they're not even welcome. Right,
Speaker 12: We're going to intentionally put up this like kind of
Speaker 12: life or death obstacle. Course, I kept thinking about it,
Speaker 12: and the next day I was like, let me like
Speaker 12: see if you've done anything else on and I found
Speaker 12: a couple of your couple of your other your other
Speaker 12: episodes on it, and I was like, wow, this, this
Speaker 12: is this is wild. And that was you know you
Speaker 12: you were You're talking about the open air detention in
Speaker 12: the Hakumba area, and and I was like, this is crazy,
Speaker 12: Like this is just happening just right outside of San Diego.
Speaker 12: I mean, it's just wild.
Speaker 3: Matt felt like now that he knew this, he couldn't
Speaker 3: not do something about it, so he took some of
Speaker 3: his vacation time at work and came to southern California.
Speaker 12: The thing, though, was crazy is seeing all the equipment,
Speaker 12: you know, the equipment, if you can call that, left
Speaker 12: behind by the people traveling through these places where it's
Speaker 12: just like normal shoes and just like cheap Walmart backpacks
Speaker 12: and just you know, the just basic stuff that you
Speaker 12: would just like where to school.
Speaker 3: Matt joined friends of mine in the mountains, carrying water
Speaker 3: and helping with some techi shues we've been wondering about.
Speaker 3: He saw the wall, and he saw the damage. He
Speaker 3: does he saw the difficult terrain people have to cross
Speaker 3: just to get a chance to ask for help here,
Speaker 3: the ways they have to risk their lives even after
Speaker 3: they make it to the USA. He also got to
Speaker 3: experience the where they're helping other people helps us.
Speaker 12: As I was heading back home, I definitely had this
Speaker 12: feeling about like like way less disc bear getting together
Speaker 12: with people to just do something, to just do something
Speaker 12: useful to help people, even if it's just like in
Speaker 12: a tiny way, like even if somehow it doesn't help,
Speaker 12: but it's like it probably will. But importantly doing it
Speaker 12: with other people it made me feel a lot better.
Speaker 12: It made me not feel so like just everything is fucked,
Speaker 12: like the world is descending into fascism or when there's
Speaker 12: nothing I can do about it. It's like there are
Speaker 12: a lot of people who want to help. Doing stuff
Speaker 12: with them.
Speaker 3: Is like is good. Soon after, like all of us,
Speaker 3: he saw the board it bringing its violence into cities
Speaker 3: across the United States.
Speaker 12: I mean, like just masked federal agents, we assume, mostly
Speaker 12: refusing to identify themselves, just randomly picking people up. I mean,
Speaker 12: it's crazy and it's just a I mean I literally
Speaker 12: am a loss for work. I mean it's just it's
Speaker 12: so the opposite of what America is all about, straight
Speaker 12: up like fascism. Like I just I never thought I
Speaker 12: would live through something like this. I always just thought
Speaker 12: that's the kind of thing that happens in other countries,
Speaker 12: you know.
Speaker 3: I guess a lot of us thought that. A lot
Speaker 3: of us probably thought this kind of state violence was
Speaker 3: confined to other places and other times. We wondered, perhaps
Speaker 3: absent mindedly, what we might do in those places and times.
Speaker 3: For years, as a historian and a reporter, have thought
Speaker 3: about them, read about them, visited them. Now I'm living
Speaker 3: in them.
Speaker 12: It's always just sort of like in the same way
Speaker 12: that you would think, what would happen if I was
Speaker 12: in this I don't know, movie, Like it's not real, Just.
Speaker 3: Think like, oh, what if I was Jason Bourne Matt
Speaker 3: Night stayed in touch one day. He was in La
Speaker 3: owned business and I mentioned I've been helping Primos navigate
Speaker 3: the mass transit nightmare that is Los Angeles so she
Speaker 3: could get to her ice appointment. He oftener to stop
Speaker 3: buy if you needed a ride anywhere connected them. He
Speaker 3: saw her place and he offered to help I guess
Speaker 3: with furniture as well, then it was time for him
Speaker 3: to fly home every day like I do. He had
Speaker 3: to worry about someone he knew being snatched. The Florida
Speaker 3: Settlement doesn't stop ICE from redetaining people, and in LA
Speaker 3: they seem to be detaining anyone they could any way
Speaker 3: they could. Kim had been afraid to go out now
Speaker 3: because she didn't want to go back to detention. So
Speaker 3: once again, Matt decided he wanted to do something, and
Speaker 3: he asked if Kim and Primrose might like to come
Speaker 3: and stay with him on the East coast. That's not
Speaker 3: an easy choice to make.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 3: No only does it mean sharing your space, it also
Speaker 3: means taking yourself out of the safe group and accepting
Speaker 3: that the states I of Sarron might fall on you. Now,
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 12: I talked it over with my wife and we were like,
Speaker 12: you know, both wanted to do this, and but you know,
Speaker 12: we had to acknowledge like it might mean that like
Speaker 12: these assholes and masks show up at our house, like
Speaker 12: where our kids are, and are like gonna haul away
Speaker 12: this family. That might happen in like right over there.
Speaker 12: I mean, I don't like it, but I.
Speaker 7: I don't know.
Speaker 12: I've just I feel like you gotta do just gotta
Speaker 12: do something, you.
Speaker 3: Know, y end. He says, it wasn't a hard decision
Speaker 3: to make.
Speaker 12: I mean it was a lot easier because my wife
Speaker 12: was actually just like one hundred percent let's do it.
Speaker 12: And I was like, well, hold on a second, look,
Speaker 12: we should at least think through the outcome. She's like,
Speaker 12: I don't care whatever, just do it.
Speaker 3: Like a lot of people, Matt had always done things
Speaker 3: to help people, but nothing like this, nothing that directly
Speaker 3: put him in between someone who needed to be kept
Speaker 3: safe and the people who didn't want them to be safe.
Speaker 12: Yeah, I mean, nothing is dangerous.
Speaker 3: I mean.
Speaker 12: Charity stuff, but you know, sometimes with time, but usually
Speaker 12: just like giving money to people to you know, who
Speaker 12: need it or whatever. But you know, this is definitely
Speaker 12: the most like direct involvement to help someone who needs it.
Speaker 12: Certainly is the first time that I've exposed my family
Speaker 12: to any thing like this.
Speaker 3: So one day this autumn, Primos and Kimberley said goodbye
Speaker 3: to Los Angeles, got on a plane, flew to the
Speaker 3: East coast.
Speaker 12: I thought I was waiting at the right spot, but
Speaker 12: they let them out at a different there, so they
Speaker 12: actually walked past me. In the airport. They didn't even
Speaker 12: see it, but I eventually figured it out. Luckily, the
Speaker 12: airport is not that big, and so I could just
Speaker 12: sort of walk, just walk all the baggage. Claym Mary
Speaker 12: and I eventually found them.
Speaker 3: Then they went for sushi, then for ice cream, a
Speaker 3: perfect suburban stripmall American evening, the sort of evening people
Speaker 3: crossed jungles and deserts be able to enjoy, the sort
Speaker 3: of evening the hundreds of people I met in the
Speaker 3: jungle will never be able to enjoy. Of course, it's
Speaker 3: hard to sit in a cold stone and talk about
Speaker 3: the things people endure to come here. That's just sometimes
Speaker 3: it's still difficult to even comprehend what his new friends
Speaker 3: had been through.
Speaker 12: It's hard to answer, like you're asking me a good
Speaker 12: question about, like, well, what was it like et and
Speaker 12: it's like the difference the distance between, like our shared
Speaker 12: experience is so vast it's still often almost doesn't seem real.
Speaker 3: I've had that same thought. It's hard to hear stories
Speaker 3: from migrants and really think of them as human experiences,
Speaker 3: not just stories. That's why I go into the mountains
Speaker 3: and the desert. That's why I spent a decade asking
Speaker 3: gettus to send me to this daddy in. I didn't
Speaker 3: think I could understand migrants journeys if I hadn't experienced
Speaker 3: a little part of them. And I don't think we
Speaker 3: should write about migrants and not write about what they
Speaker 3: go through to get to a strip mall sushi place.
Speaker 3: Of course, Primrose isn't done with her interaction with immigration
Speaker 3: authorities yet. They've had visits from ICE in her new home,
Speaker 3: but not from enforcement removal operations.
Speaker 12: I mean, like they know where she lives. We told them,
Speaker 12: are she lives, so like she lives in my house,
Speaker 12: so you know, yeah, they might.
Speaker 15: I don't know.
Speaker 12: I mean, yeah, I guess I'm like not as afraid
Speaker 12: of that. I have to say that the ICE people
Speaker 12: in seem just like a bunch of cheery folks. Like
Speaker 12: it's seems pretty different than I mean, like I met
Speaker 12: many of them, yeah, part of this process, and they
Speaker 12: were not the like you know, plate carriers and guns guys.
Speaker 12: They were just like the you know, they work in
Speaker 12: the office and decide whether you get to move here
Speaker 12: or not, you know, yeah, yeah, and they were like
Speaker 12: very friendly and downright helpful.
Speaker 3: Promotes your settling in it. That's place now. But it's
Speaker 3: Matt explained, the struggle isn't over yet now, like.
Speaker 12: Our energy is more on how do we help her
Speaker 12: make her case because she has an asylum case that
Speaker 12: you know, she she needs to win and it's you know,
Speaker 12: I'm not a lawyer, but wow, sounds like what asylum
Speaker 12: is for literally running from a hostile government that she
Speaker 12: was protesting and was going to jail and torture her. Like,
Speaker 12: what what is asylum for?
Speaker 3: If not for that? Of course, interacting with the asylum
Speaker 3: system has shown that some of its absurdities, like the
Speaker 3: work permit clock for our bus rides to riverside, the
Speaker 3: endless changing regulation. So one has to navigate or trying
Speaker 3: to survive without the ability to legally work.
Speaker 12: In what way can you do this legally without some
Speaker 12: you know, group helping you, without like just somebody saying fine,
Speaker 12: I will take you and pay for your living expenses.
Speaker 12: What is the legal way to like seek asylum? You
Speaker 12: come here, they put you in jail, You stay in jail,
Speaker 12: which is fucking jail. Yeah they let you out of jail. Good, hooray,
Speaker 12: we're out of jail, and now you're homeless. Yeah, you
Speaker 12: have no possessions and no ability to legally work. At
Speaker 12: least let them work. I mean, come on, like, just
Speaker 12: let them get a legal job. That's just like the
Speaker 12: sort of bureaucracy version of the forcing people across the desert.
Speaker 12: It's like, well, okay, you won't die in the desert
Speaker 12: in this one. In this one, you will die or
Speaker 12: you will suffer under homelessness. More deterrence. You know, everyone
Speaker 12: always says, oh, what I support immigration, just got to
Speaker 12: be legal. You gotta do it the right way. But
Speaker 12: they have no idea what they're talking about, Like what
Speaker 12: is the right way. I believe everyone who says that
Speaker 12: has no idea what the right way is.
Speaker 3: Changing that making a law's line up with what anyone
Speaker 3: would see is basic decency isn't coming anytime soon. In
Speaker 3: the meantime, they have to navigate the asylum system. As
Speaker 3: many contradictions. Primo has never got any follow up care
Speaker 3: for her leg injury. The only way she could access
Speaker 3: care in her new home was once again totally impractical
Speaker 3: for someone without a car, just another example of how
Speaker 3: the system sets people up to suffer and fail.
Speaker 12: There's no way to get her to the doctor. Well, okay,
Speaker 12: there is a way, a way. Technically, we could drive
Speaker 12: like an hour and twenty minutes way out to this
Speaker 12: place that like as a thing with the ice that
Speaker 12: they will say like, well that's your approved like medical provider,
Speaker 12: Like I'm not gonna drive quarantine is each way to
Speaker 12: just do some minor thing. Yeah, so we pay out
Speaker 12: a pocket. So we go to a doctor and we
Speaker 12: go here's the problem we have. We don't have insurance.
Speaker 12: Let's get this done for as little money as possible,
Speaker 12: because in the United States, if you don't have insurance,
Speaker 12: it is going to costume. Yeah, it loves and mercifully.
Speaker 12: My wife and I both know a number of doctors
Speaker 12: that we can sort of run ideas by, and if
Speaker 12: we didn't have that, like, I don't know what we
Speaker 12: would do. It would not be good. I mean, well
Speaker 12: I know what we do. We would drive an hour
Speaker 12: and twenty minutes to the place and we would just
Speaker 12: be like, okay, doctor help. But like, because you know,
Speaker 12: we have connections and we are also willing to pay
Speaker 12: a little bit out of pocket. She needed to get
Speaker 12: some medicine. Medicine is super expensive. Yeah, so you go
Speaker 12: to the CBS and you're like, well, you know, oh
Speaker 12: we don't have your insurance on file, and we're like,
Speaker 12: I know, but how much is this going to really cost?
Speaker 12: And dude, drugs are so expensive?
Speaker 9: Like it's just.
Speaker 12: What are what are those people supposed to do?
Speaker 3: It's brokensistent and it's not one we can really rely
Speaker 3: on government to change whoever was in office.
Speaker 12: The Democrats don't have a great answer for this either.
Speaker 12: I wish they did. I mean, I will still vote
Speaker 12: for them because they're at least less bad. You know,
Speaker 12: what are the choices do you have? It's like, if
Speaker 12: there was a better party, I would be that one
Speaker 12: that I mean, if they had a chance of winning, right, yeah,
Speaker 12: no other party has a chance of winning. So yeah, man,
Speaker 12: I'm a Democrat and I will help the Democrats try
Speaker 12: to win elections. They push it in the direction that
Speaker 12: it needs to go. But the Democrats are part of
Speaker 12: the problem. I mean, like they're not radically changing policy.
Speaker 12: Is that would change this thing we've been talking about
Speaker 12: for the last hour.
Speaker 3: When I first moved to the US, George W. Bush
Speaker 3: as president. Soon after I got hi, Obama was elected
Speaker 3: and it was Thanksgiving. I didn't know much about Thanksgiving,
Speaker 3: and I didn't have much time for history that overlooks
Speaker 3: set a little lonely list them anyway. But the day
Speaker 3: before where it's riding my bike down the coast and
Speaker 3: I ran into some folks who were also riding their bikes.
Speaker 3: They asked what plans I had for the next day,
Speaker 3: and I told them I was just going to ride
Speaker 3: my bike all day and that's what I like to do. They,
Speaker 3: having just met me, invited me into their home the
Speaker 3: next day. They fed me and we talked for hours
Speaker 3: and became friends. A decade and a half later, on
Speaker 3: the night before Thanksgiving, my friends cooked as many beans
Speaker 3: as they could fit in their giant pot that we
Speaker 3: boiled above a propane burn and made from half a
Speaker 3: beer cake and the cold of the desert, some Curtish
Speaker 3: guys helped us ladle out scoops of hot stew for
Speaker 3: hundreds of people. I still don't go in for set
Speaker 3: like Colneliism very much, but I felt thankful to be
Speaker 3: in a position where I could welcome people now. That
Speaker 3: same year, on Christmas Eve, I was sitting on the
Speaker 3: tailgate of a pickup in the desert, kicking my feet
Speaker 3: so my toes wouldn't burn with cold. I spent the
Speaker 3: entire day building shelters for people out in the desert
Speaker 3: left therefore up to a week by the Biden administration.
Speaker 3: We'd handed out all our food again, but some folks
Speaker 3: who'd been taking care of their kids are trying to
Speaker 3: find a warm place how the desert went to sleep,
Speaker 3: had missed out on eating. So I'd find a few
Speaker 3: boxes of htrs, which are kind of like a worse
Speaker 3: but vegan version of MREs, and I took them from
Speaker 3: the truck and went over to the people who had
Speaker 3: missed dinner. They heated them up somehow on a piece
Speaker 3: of scrap metal over the fire. I can't really remember
Speaker 3: them thinking it was really janky. I struggled to describe
Speaker 3: how special it felt for me to be able to
Speaker 3: share a little of the welcome I received with other
Speaker 3: people like Matt. I feel more hopeful knowing that not
Speaker 3: only are other people just as upset as I am,
Speaker 3: but that alongside those other people, I can do things
Speaker 3: that I wouldn't have thought possible if I hadn't seen
Speaker 3: them with my own eyes, had done them with my
Speaker 3: own hands. From Obama to today, it's been up to
Speaker 3: us to welcome migrants. Obama set records for deportation, Biden
Speaker 3: beat them, albeit including Title forty two removals, and Trump
Speaker 3: will probably beat both this year. In the meantime, it's
Speaker 3: up to regular people to help one another. That shouldn't
Speaker 3: make us feel hopeless. It should make us feel strong.
Speaker 3: Matt's doing something remarkable, but I don't think he was
Speaker 3: in a very remarkable situation before. He was just a
Speaker 3: person lucky enough to have some spare time and some
Speaker 3: space to look after someone. But there are millions of
Speaker 3: people like that in this country. There are millions of
Speaker 3: people who are mad right now. The anger alone is
Speaker 3: not going to help us take care of people. That's
Speaker 3: what the priority should be right now. I don't want
Speaker 3: to paint Matt as the only person who helped Primrose,
Speaker 3: because hundreds of people help Primrose from the Mberalaan and
Speaker 3: the Jungles of Panama, and have fellow migrants WHI wash
Speaker 3: across Daddy and Gap, People across a continent took their
Speaker 3: time and their resources to help a stranger. I've heard
Speaker 3: of this from countless migrants as well. Some of them
Speaker 3: rode the train from southern Mexico up to the border,
Speaker 3: and people threw them food and warm jumpers to total
Speaker 3: strangers who they'd never met, who they'd never even got
Speaker 3: a chance to see, across thousands of miles. When states
Speaker 3: ignored their suffering, the hundreds of migrants I have talked
Speaker 3: to found food, shelter, and solidarity from ordinary people, and
Speaker 3: those people in their own way benefited too.
Speaker 12: It was enlightening to me that a it wasn't just me, Like,
Speaker 12: it's not just oh, I for some reason, I am
Speaker 12: the only one who's like really upset by all this.
Speaker 12: You know, there are other folks who are like this,
Speaker 12: but also just like a lot of other people are
Speaker 12: absolutely willing to take risks, be generous with their time
Speaker 12: and money, Like there's a lot of them. There's a
Speaker 12: lot of people who like want to help, and that
Speaker 12: kind of community.
Speaker 3: Aspect of it.
Speaker 12: It was a surprise to me that the doing it
Speaker 12: with other people was so powerful. Like I thought it
Speaker 12: was just about the doing the actual act of helping
Speaker 12: people somehow, but doing it with other people was just
Speaker 12: surprisingly good. Made me feel much more optimistic about our
Speaker 12: ability to get through this collectively.
Speaker 3: I asked Matt what he wanted people to know about
Speaker 3: his experience.
Speaker 12: Well, I mean, I guess what I would like people
Speaker 12: to know is it's not as hard as you might
Speaker 12: think to help folks like primos, Like it sounds insurmountable,
Speaker 12: like oh no, I'm exposed to all this risk and
Speaker 12: danger and legal hassle or whatever. But it's like it's
Speaker 12: not that complicated. It's like they fill out a forum
Speaker 12: and it just says like, oh, now I live here,
Speaker 12: and then once prove it, then there.
Speaker 3: The hard part is finding someone, especially now that migrants
Speaker 3: are more worried than ever to be out and in
Speaker 3: the community. Any database would be a risk for them.
Speaker 3: But maybe that's not a problem that someone can solve.
Speaker 12: It's kind of like an information sharing problem because like,
Speaker 12: these folks are all across the United States, and the
Speaker 12: people who could host them are similarly all across these states.
Speaker 3: But you don't have to take someone into your home.
Speaker 3: There are hundreds of things you can do wherever you are.
Speaker 3: You can feed people who are hungry, pick up someone's
Speaker 3: kids from school, or take their dogs for a walk,
Speaker 3: fix someone's car so it doesn't get towed or ticketed,
Speaker 3: or drive someone to a doctor's appointment. Creating safe communities
Speaker 3: for migrants is not a distinct act from creating safe
Speaker 3: communities for everyone. I've never been a big political theory reader,
Speaker 3: but I think I've learned everything I need to know
Speaker 3: about politics in refugue camps and the deserts and mountains
Speaker 3: and jungles that migrants traverse to get to this country
Speaker 3: in Panama, and met with the priest who houses migrants
Speaker 3: in California, have helped seeks and Quaker friends hand out
Speaker 3: warm food in the cold. We can come from a
Speaker 3: broad range of perspectives and still get to the same place.
Speaker 3: When someone needs help, you help them. And if we
Speaker 3: all do that, then when we need help, someone will
Speaker 3: help us. You don't have to wait four years to start.
Speaker 3: You can do it right now. While there are only
Speaker 3: some things we can do in the face of a
Speaker 3: government that doesn't want to help people like Primrose, there
Speaker 3: is an awful lot that we can do. For all
Speaker 3: the people who didn't make it to the USA from
Speaker 3: the jungle, we can help the people who did. We
Speaker 3: can also take this principle and make it a cornerstone
Speaker 3: of all our politics. The more people come to know migrants,
Speaker 3: the more they will see how broken our system is.
Speaker 3: The more people who see that, the more people will
Speaker 3: demand change. And I hope that they won't stop until
Speaker 3: we get a system that doesn't look at little children
Speaker 3: who aren't safe and say we don't want to help you,
Speaker 3: until we get assists to him, that doesn't make them
Speaker 3: walk across jungles and through deserts before they even get
Speaker 3: a chance to ask for help. Before we go, I
Speaker 3: thought I would play a part of the interview I
Speaker 3: did year. I speke Tristn on Monday, and he said
Speaker 3: his dad's still doing well.
Speaker 18: Truly, the migrants on this route are not here because
Speaker 18: they want to be. They are here because the economy
Speaker 18: and their countries is terrible or something. Everything is going
Speaker 18: badly on their countries. How can we mistreat them knowing
Speaker 18: that we won't not us never. This is a belief
Speaker 18: that we have. We are all children of God. God
Speaker 18: made the world and humanity, and we are not that different.
Speaker 18: We are all brothers.
Speaker 3: I want to leave the that's word today to primaries,
Speaker 3: because really is the story about her and him and
Speaker 3: the incredible tenacity encourage the show to get here.
Speaker 4: Even if I say I can me and myself, I
Speaker 4: can say thank you. I don't even know how to
Speaker 4: say thank you, but I'm just God knows. God, please
Speaker 4: blase those people who put ince on me and Kim.
Speaker 4: I thought maybe I'm alone, but I realized I'm not
Speaker 4: alone here if also people who helped me. You guys
Speaker 4: who helped me so much. I never even get helped
Speaker 4: even in my country the way I get to helped
Speaker 4: in America.
Speaker 5: And I'm really really glad.
Speaker 4: I'm very glad for those people who helped me. I
Speaker 4: have especially since when I was even in me, when
Speaker 4: I was in Mexico. In my prayers, i just say, God,
Speaker 4: just blase those people who put ince on me. You
Speaker 4: make me feel better. You put smile in my face
Speaker 4: and even came when you came here. I wasn't even
Speaker 4: heavy clothes to way nothing. They just only the clothes
Speaker 4: they gave us in detention when they detain us. That
Speaker 4: the clothes I was leaving I was when I want
Speaker 4: to wash it was a T shirt jacket. I just
Speaker 4: removed the top, then I washed the the inside the
Speaker 4: T shirt when it's dry. Then I we bothered and
Speaker 4: put in you when we were like.
Speaker 5: But for now, I'm.
Speaker 4: Really really appreciated a lot. I really appreciate a lot
Speaker 4: because my life is like changing now.
Speaker 3: So yeah, and it's.
Speaker 6: Like you were saying, the things came or he would
Speaker 6: be so different from the chances you had. Right, she
Speaker 6: can she speaks English, she speaks Spanish, she can go
Speaker 6: to school here.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Does that make you happy when you think about.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I'm Reyaby.
Speaker 4: Even if I even told you, Kim, I was asking
Speaker 4: you one day, I said, Kim, what if I die today?
Speaker 4: She was even mentioned your name, said, I would just
Speaker 4: ask him maybe I can just go to school?
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, wish.
Speaker 4: Also she was like, Mammy, I want to write my
Speaker 4: book when I start high school. I need to write
Speaker 4: my story of my life because we have been through
Speaker 4: a lot, but now we are happy. I don't want
Speaker 4: to live with your support. Guys, I'm really appreciated. Yeah,
Speaker 4: because if she go to school, I'm happy.
Speaker 19: I know she.
Speaker 5: I want you to heave a better life.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is it could happen here.
Speaker 19: Executive Disorder our weekly newscast covering what's happening in the
Speaker 19: White House, the crumbling world, and what it means for you.
Speaker 3: I'm Garrison Davis.
Speaker 19: Today I'm joined by James Stout and Sophie Lichterman. This episode,
Speaker 19: we are covering the week of November twenty fourth to
Speaker 19: December fourth.
Speaker 3: An extra long week.
Speaker 19: Somehow the squeezed a few more days in there to
Speaker 19: open us up. James, what are what are some important
Speaker 19: small stories we don't want to overlook?
Speaker 3: Okay? Yeah, yeah, a lot because of our extra long week, right?
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: The United States is flying manned ISR flights over Nigeria
Speaker 3: and possibly parts of the Sahel as well. It's not
Speaker 3: entirely clear because the flights kind of go dark once
Speaker 3: they take off. Sources familiar with the matter have suggested
Speaker 3: that you AV strikes might begin soon. It seems that
Speaker 3: the ISR flights are targeting Iswapan. J And I am.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna write about this on my Patreon, probably because
Speaker 3: I think it requires visuals and I think it's it's
Speaker 3: too much to go into in depth here. But if
Speaker 3: you want to check that out, you can. Can you
Speaker 3: explain some of those acronyms? No, I just love to
Speaker 3: find it's great when you report on military ship because
Speaker 3: it's just a wall of acronyms. Okay, I SR flights.
Speaker 3: These are intelligence flights, right, Intelligence surveillance reconnaissance. I believe
Speaker 3: it's an acronym they're looking for stuff for ua V.
Speaker 3: On manned aerial vehicle, there's a gender neutral term and
Speaker 3: I can't remember unpiloted aerial vehicle walk is back hard.
Speaker 3: That's the bid nearer thing, right when you get killed
Speaker 3: by an unaccountable drone, But it's gender neutral. The it's
Speaker 3: what that's the Islamic State williar in that part of
Speaker 3: the world, so like Province, West Africa Province. I think
Speaker 3: it stands for these are the targets of these flights
Speaker 3: and strikes and Jay and I am being another jahardest
Speaker 3: group that is not associated with the so called Islamic State,
Speaker 3: got it?
Speaker 4: Wow?
Speaker 3: Yeah, Okay, hit you with another acronym, A foyer. I
Speaker 3: think I think we know that. One fire by the
Speaker 3: Cato Institute has revealed that the FBI under Biden was
Speaker 3: investigating the SRA that's a socialist rifle association. It didn't
Speaker 3: bring charges against any of the members, but it did
Speaker 3: apparently investigate him for some time. Finally, the National Park
Speaker 3: Service has announced a new fee schedule and quote unquote
Speaker 3: modernized graphics for passes.
Speaker 1: Is this the horrific image you sent us?
Speaker 3: Yes, it's a picture of Donald Trump. Yeah, that's how
Speaker 3: they've modernized it. It's it's not very nice. I I
Speaker 3: know there are better things in the parks. I feel like, like,
Speaker 3: you know, half Dome is nice, the Yosemite Valley, Yeah,
Speaker 3: pretty cool. Shit in wrangle sint Elias that you could
Speaker 3: do instead.
Speaker 1: That's like him trying to rename that East Institute after himself.
Speaker 1: He just keeps trying to put his face and name
Speaker 1: on everything. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well, when you're a dying man, legacy becomes very important.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, exactly, But that's exactly it. The US Institute
Speaker 1: of Peace is being renamed for Trump.
Speaker 3: Really yeah, oh I know I miss that. Great cool.
Speaker 1: It's feeling very similar to that, whether he's just putting
Speaker 1: his face and name on everything.
Speaker 15: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So two things, right, electronic passes for parks it's phony
Speaker 3: a good thing, And a one hundred dollars up charge
Speaker 3: for non United States I think it's residents as opposed
Speaker 3: to citizens in the eleven most popular parks.
Speaker 1: How can they even check that?
Speaker 19: I might just ask like this, this sounds like a
Speaker 19: tourism thing, right, like they just wanted people to dinner,
Speaker 19: like visiting the States to pay more.
Speaker 3: To be clear, other countries do this. I still think
Speaker 3: it's bad. Like some of the Grand Canyon is part
Speaker 3: of a cultural patrimony of all of humanity. Yeah, the
Speaker 3: National Park Service itself is an exercise in set like colonialism.
Speaker 3: But we can talk about that forever. Yeah, I've seen
Speaker 3: some stuff with gate ranges, be like, I'm absolutely not
Speaker 3: asking feel green cord. Yeah, no, that's silly fear ranges.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I think they were just kind of assuming
Speaker 3: good faith. A lot of other countries do do this,
Speaker 3: It's not unusual. I still think it sucks. There's also
Speaker 3: an interagency pass. It's two fifty for non residents and
Speaker 3: eighty dollars for residents. So those are they're the big
Speaker 3: changes there.
Speaker 19: Speaking of big changes, a pretty big update in a
Speaker 19: case that has lasted nearly five years. This morning, Thursday,
Speaker 19: December fourth, a suspect was arrested in connection to the
Speaker 19: pipe bombs placed around the capital the night before January sixth,
Speaker 19: specifically at the DNC and rnc aad quarters in Washington,
Speaker 19: d C. This suspect has been identified as thirty year
Speaker 19: old Brian Cole Junior, from a Woodbridge, Virginia. Federal law
Speaker 19: enforcement sources have told The New York post that the
Speaker 19: suspect may have had quote unquote anarchist leanings unquote. This
Speaker 19: could mean anything, right, This could be anything from like
Speaker 19: anti government, violent extremism like militia movement type extremism, Boogaloo boys, accelerationist,
Speaker 19: as well as possible left wing anarchist leanings. Sure, it
Speaker 19: could be any number of things. There's still very limited
Speaker 19: information about this. Even in the like DJ press conference
Speaker 19: that just wrapped up a few minutes before we started recording.
Speaker 19: They're being pretty tight left about details. And I think
Speaker 19: about his gait, Well, yes, people are asking about his gait,
Speaker 19: and allegedly he had begun building explosive devices in twenty nineteen.
Speaker 3: Okay, okay, So like some some background.
Speaker 19: This arrest does partially discredit a report from The Blaze,
Speaker 19: which Robert has talked about on this show before, which
Speaker 19: falsely identified a former Capitol Police officer as the bomber
Speaker 19: based on Gate analysis.
Speaker 3: Yeah, if they prosecute someone else, the Blaze is going
Speaker 3: to get sued out of existence. So I would imagine they.
Speaker 19: Critical support to former Capital police officer puts the Blaze
Speaker 19: out of business. Wow, pour one out for Glenn Beck.
Speaker 19: But this suspect that lives at a home associated with
Speaker 19: both their parents. It's unclear if their parents are still married.
Speaker 19: Suspects dad runs a bail bond business, which the Sun
Speaker 19: is supposed to have worked for, and the mom is
Speaker 19: a real estate agent. Not much online presence can be
Speaker 19: found yet on Brian Cole Junior. I've spent hours looking
Speaker 19: and so far not much there. But we'll see if
Speaker 19: that changes over time.
Speaker 1: A developing story.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, we'll do a whole episode if it marriage
Speaker 3: it later, I guess sure. Talking of terrible indictment, Garrison,
Speaker 3: would you like to hear about a terrible indictment out
Speaker 3: of Texas?
Speaker 19: I'm going to say yes, but no, I don't know
Speaker 19: if i'd like to for what reasons? I feel like
Speaker 19: you're going to do it anyway, so I'll play along.
Speaker 3: Two Texas men have been indicted for a plan to
Speaker 3: invade a small island off hate, kill all the men,
Speaker 3: and sexually enslave all the women and children.
Speaker 1: What I'm sorry?
Speaker 20: What?
Speaker 3: Yeah? This is this is a wild one. The indictment
Speaker 3: says they we hope to quote lead an unlawful expeditionary
Speaker 3: force to the island of Gonave, which is part of
Speaker 3: the Republic of at For the purpose of carrying out
Speaker 3: their rape fantasies. Weisinberg and Thomas plan to purchase a sailboat, firearms,
Speaker 3: and ammunition, then recruit members of the District of Columbia
Speaker 3: area homeless population to serve as a mercenary force, as
Speaker 3: say invader Gnave Island and stage Acudaita. Weisenberg and Thomas
Speaker 3: intended to murder all of the men on the island
Speaker 3: so they could turn all of the women and children
Speaker 3: into their sex slaves. That is what is alleged in
Speaker 3: the indictment. Right be an interesting case. One of them
Speaker 3: had joined the Air Force in twenty twenty five to
Speaker 3: get some military experience, or was in the Air Force
Speaker 3: this year to get some military experience and has successfully
Speaker 3: been transferred to nearer to d C from where they
Speaker 3: hope to recruit unhoused people to service merceries.
Speaker 1: This is absolutely insane. Who are who are these two
Speaker 1: Texas men? Why do they think this is like a
Speaker 1: thing that can be like, all.
Speaker 3: Right, it's borderline something I considered not including because like
Speaker 3: the people are probably pretty unwell.
Speaker 1: It seems like are they just obsessed with like Eric
Speaker 1: Prince like, I don't, I don't understand.
Speaker 19: I don't.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Like, if the guy hadn't passed all the background
Speaker 3: checks to get into the air Force, I feel like
Speaker 3: this would be less remarkable. Right, But while planning to
Speaker 3: invade a small island and enslave everybody he got into
Speaker 3: the air force. That that in itself like like should
Speaker 3: be a story. And of course it is all alleged, right,
Speaker 3: it's all in an indictment. We don't know what the
Speaker 3: evidential basis for a lot of this is.
Speaker 1: Well, that was disturbing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's wild one. I guess we'll keep you informed.
Speaker 3: What Garson Garrison.
Speaker 1: I like, I like, can't even compute, Like, that's one
Speaker 1: of the most insane things I've heard in a really
Speaker 1: long time.
Speaker 19: Well, fors of economic news, let's has thrown to tariffs.
Speaker 1: Let's glow to tariff talk with me a.
Speaker 20: Rocking jazz rockety jazz bot rocking jazz rocky jazz bo.
Speaker 21: This is mea wong with tariff talk. So obviously, the
Speaker 21: biggest tariff news right now is the impending Supreme Court
Speaker 21: ruling on the legality of a broad swath of the
Speaker 21: terrorists that Trump has imposed using unbelievably dubious legal and
Speaker 21: economic authority. And by unbelievably dubious, I mean it is
Speaker 21: so patently illegal. It is an astounding demonstration of the
Speaker 21: complete advocation of the Supreme Court's pretensions at being one
Speaker 21: of the branches of government. That this hasn't already been overturned.
Speaker 21: But this is ruling has not dropped yet. Everyone's waiting.
Speaker 21: So in the meantime, what we have is a bunch
Speaker 21: of Trump administration officials have been going on TV and
Speaker 21: talking about trade policy, and they're saying something that we've
Speaker 21: been hearing for a while now, which is that they
Speaker 21: believe that they can use different set of legal authority
Speaker 21: to impose the same tariffs. Whether they can do this
Speaker 21: or not, is I mean, they shouldn't be able to
Speaker 21: do this, like all of that, All of the authority
Speaker 21: they're using is pretty ridiculous. But this has been This
Speaker 21: has been their strategy. They've been reiterating their strategy. On
Speaker 21: the other side, we've seen some interesting movement in terms
Speaker 21: of the opposition, which is that Costco has become sort
Speaker 21: of the biggest company to join in this trend of
Speaker 21: company and he's like going to court with lawsuits to
Speaker 21: try to recoup the money that they've spent on these tariffs,
Speaker 21: because if the Supreme Court ruling like overturns the legality
Speaker 21: of these terriffs, these companies can get their money back retroactively.
Speaker 21: Costco is the biggest company we've seen so far short
Speaker 21: of moved to attempt to do this remedy to the courts.
Speaker 21: So we will, we will, we will keep an eye
Speaker 21: on this. And this is you know, I think, I think,
Speaker 21: especially if this comes overturned, we're going to see a
Speaker 21: lot of companies trying to make moves for this. This
Speaker 21: is something that is going to piss off the Trump
Speaker 21: administration because they've been talking a giant game about how,
Speaker 21: oh these are going to fund the like two thousand
Speaker 21: dollars tariff checks you're never getting. Trump is literally talking
Speaker 21: about and this is the you know, this is an
Speaker 21: old sort of right wing thing, but he's talking about how, oh,
Speaker 21: terriff's revenue is going to replace income tax, which no,
Speaker 21: it's not like I just nonsense, gibberish numbers don't work.
Speaker 21: Orders the magnitude off just nonsense can't work.
Speaker 3: But you know, this is there.
Speaker 21: These are things that they're saying, and there's probably going
Speaker 21: to be an increasing conflict between the sectors of capital
Speaker 21: that just want their money back from these tariffs and
Speaker 21: the Trump administration, which you know, wants there's money for its,
Speaker 21: you know, nebulus political purposes. There's been some sort of
Speaker 21: interesting political developments in terms of Trump and Lula. So
Speaker 21: people will probably remember from listening to the show that
Speaker 21: there have been very very high turiffs on Brazil that
Speaker 21: are effectively political tariffs for actually putting one gi Air
Speaker 21: Bolscenaro in prison for you know, the mere crime of
Speaker 21: attempting to overthrow the government to install himself as the.
Speaker 12: Ruler of Brazil.
Speaker 21: Now there has been over the past few weeks there's
Speaker 21: been some sort of ratcheting down of a lot of
Speaker 21: the tariffs. There's been a bunch of goods that have
Speaker 21: been exempt from the teriffs as part of Trump's sort
Speaker 21: of widespread efforts to like lower food prices, because there's
Speaker 21: a bunch of food goods that are being exempt from
Speaker 21: this stuff. And there was also very recently we got
Speaker 21: an actual call between Trump and Lula which seems to
Speaker 21: have gone fairly well, you know, at least it seems
Speaker 21: to have been cordial. The two seem to both be
Speaker 21: coming out of it saying like, oh, we agree on things.
Speaker 21: It's going to go great. And this is to a
Speaker 21: large extent, an attempt to do a replay of Lula's
Speaker 21: positive relationship with the Bush administration the last time he
Speaker 21: was in power, where and this is you know, this
Speaker 21: has been a trend in the in the sort of
Speaker 21: the original pink tide and in this government where you
Speaker 21: have a kind of mix of the sort of pink
Speaker 21: tie center left governments in Latin America, where you know,
Speaker 21: Lula has traditionally been the one who's been sort of
Speaker 21: playing with the US more. And you know, as we're saying,
Speaker 21: right now, you have the US gearing up for, you know,
Speaker 21: like potentially a war in Venezuela, and there's been a
Speaker 21: whole bunch of conflict with Columbia. But Lula seems to
Speaker 21: be trying to sort of play the role that he
Speaker 21: played in the two thousands. We'll see how that goes.
Speaker 21: Trump is astonishingly significantly more unstable than George W. Bush,
Speaker 21: which is just good lord, oh god, okay, with enough,
Speaker 21: Oh my god. They finally found a president who is
Speaker 21: less coherent and more unhinged than George W.
Speaker 3: Bush.
Speaker 21: The final piece of news that we need to touch
Speaker 21: on is the US is chief trade negotiator gave an
Speaker 21: interview with Politico, and this is Perya who News basically
Speaker 21: talked to Politico and told them that Trump is considering,
Speaker 21: you know, is talking about leaving or renegotiating the USMCA,
Speaker 21: which is the trade agreements that he negotiated to replace
Speaker 21: NAFTA in twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: Roll this back again.
Speaker 3: This is his deal.
Speaker 22: He's talking about leaving or renegotiating his deal. This was
Speaker 22: his big thing in twenty twenty is big. One of
Speaker 22: his big things was, oh I abolished NAFTA. Oh I
Speaker 22: created this deal, and you know, I've one at the
Speaker 22: time was like, well, this is just like NAFTA with
Speaker 22: like the edges filed off, you know, but like this
Speaker 22: is sort of the point that we're at in Trumpian
Speaker 22: trade policy where it's like, ah, we're getting ripped off
Speaker 22: by Mexico and Canada in the trade deal that I saw.
Speaker 22: And as Garrison is fond of saying, the defining political
Speaker 22: question of our times, he was president in twenty twenty.
Speaker 21: Brother, you you did this, this this this was your
Speaker 21: trade deal, and somehow, somehow now you know, into in
Speaker 21: terms of real terms, right, this is actually a massive deal.
Speaker 21: So this deal has a six year term. It was
Speaker 21: negotiated in twenty twenty, which means just coming up next year.
Speaker 21: And this is a big enough deal that there's already
Speaker 21: sort of a full court press and the press. You
Speaker 21: can see the New York Times running it where every
Speaker 21: single faction of capital nhsicle fashion, but a whole bunch
Speaker 21: of factions of the capital are getting every single think
Speaker 21: tank and lobbying group and you know, like Policy Research
Speaker 21: Institute or whatever together to be like, please don't get
Speaker 21: rid of this. Because the thing about the us MCA,
Speaker 21: and this something we've talked about to some extent in
Speaker 21: terms of Canada and Mexico tariffs. But one of the
Speaker 21: really important things about the teriffs that have been imposed
Speaker 21: on Mexico and Canada on the terrorifraces are extremely high,
Speaker 21: is that those tariffs haven't been applied to goods that
Speaker 21: are covered by the USMCA. And this has been a
Speaker 21: crucial lifeline to allow trade to not be annihilated by
Speaker 21: those American tariffs. And if Trump pulls out of it
Speaker 21: and suddenly those goods are covered by these tariffs. It's
Speaker 21: going to be a really really significant economic hit for
Speaker 21: everyone in the world eventually, but for the US and
Speaker 21: Mexico and Canada, this is going to be a massive deal.
Speaker 21: And I want to kind of close on a kind
Speaker 21: of broader point about this for a second, which is
Speaker 21: that like, we're not pro NAFTA, Like no NAFTA was bad.
Speaker 21: Part of the reason theho administration was able to do
Speaker 21: this was because of the ways that NAFTA sort of
Speaker 21: hauled out and destroyed fast sections of the American working
Speaker 21: class and also the Mexican working classes has not been
Speaker 21: good for anyone really involved in this. One of the
Speaker 21: things that happens if you if you go into the
Speaker 21: economic literature. One of the episodes I did a while
Speaker 21: back talking about US and Mexico in history of like
Speaker 21: trade policy, they're sort of talks about this, which is
Speaker 21: that if you go back into the economic literature, all
Speaker 21: of the economics people have had to admit that the
Speaker 21: leftists from the nineties or whatever were right that this
Speaker 21: was not going to benefit the Mexican working class. It hasn't,
Speaker 21: you know. But on the other hand, Trump's sort of
Speaker 21: this is also not benefiting the Mexican or American working classes.
Speaker 21: Nothing that these people do on either side really do.
Speaker 21: If you want to look at what actual sort of
Speaker 21: resistance in NAFTA looks like, and what effective resistance NAFTA
Speaker 21: looks like, look at the Zapatistas whose rebellion was sparked
Speaker 21: by NAFTA and who went into revolt on the day
Speaker 21: that NAFTA went into effect. But Trump has been able
Speaker 21: to very effectively kind of be the person who comes
Speaker 21: in as I'm the champion of the workers, etc.
Speaker 3: Etc.
Speaker 21: Because I'm renegotiating the evil trade deals and now like
Speaker 21: our good American workers would no longer be exploited by
Speaker 21: like evil Mexican or Chinese workers, which you know, has
Speaker 21: been an extremely effective political strategy for him, and is
Speaker 21: you know, awsome. So this sort of this sort of
Speaker 21: like national fascist program that he's running is sort of
Speaker 21: based on, you know, on this kind of trade policy
Speaker 21: and on manipulating the sentiments of people who got like
Speaker 21: actually screwed over by by NAFTA. So yeah, that's where
Speaker 21: we're gonna kind of close on this. As Trump is
Speaker 21: thinking about pulling out that is a huge deal. And yeah,
Speaker 21: this has been teriff talk.
Speaker 1: Let's let's go to an ad break real quick. We'll
Speaker 1: be right back, and we're back, Arison, tell me, tell
Speaker 1: me something less horrific than what James just told us
Speaker 1: before me as tariff textion.
Speaker 3: I missed a pot. I missed a pot. Okay, do
Speaker 3: you do? You want to guess how they were making
Speaker 3: money for part of this and cording to the indictment,
Speaker 3: this is the Texas many why's been made the island?
Speaker 3: How are they making money?
Speaker 1: Crypto?
Speaker 3: No, it's worse than that. That's a good guest, Sophie.
Speaker 16: Mm.
Speaker 19: But you've said it's worse than that.
Speaker 1: Oh no, manipulating camgirls.
Speaker 3: In a sense, it appears they were producing child sexual
Speaker 3: abuse material.
Speaker 23: Oh yeah, wow, this is I mean, obviously it's still allegedly,
Speaker 23: but like, this is one of the worst things I've
Speaker 23: ever heard, and I don't even know how to react.
Speaker 15: Huh.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he was he received he was prosecuted under U
Speaker 3: C mjuh for that previously this year. Yeah, I was
Speaker 3: prosecuted in Uh. I'm just reading a Task and Purpose
Speaker 3: article which builds in the indictment. But the it says,
Speaker 3: so he's arrested in July and has since been court martialed. Ah,
Speaker 3: so good times, good times in the air the Air Force.
Speaker 19: Yeah, well I can't I can't believe the Air Force
Speaker 19: has done something wrong. Yeah, finally the first blaze on
Speaker 19: are prouder glorious Air Force. Maybe the biggest national news
Speaker 19: story kicked off the day before Thanksgiving, not just because
Speaker 19: of what happened, but then all of the fallout that
Speaker 19: has resulted from this incident, which James will report on afterwards.
Speaker 19: But let's go back to the day before Thanksgiving where
Speaker 19: two National Guard troops from West Virginia on assignment in Washington,
Speaker 19: d C. It's a part of Trump's crime crackdown were
Speaker 19: shot on patrol a few blocks away from the White House.
Speaker 19: Other Guard members fired back and tackled the shooter. One
Speaker 19: of the National Guard members, a twenty year old named
Speaker 19: Sarah Beckstrom, died from gunshot injuries on Thanksgiving. The other,
Speaker 19: twenty four year old Andrew Wolfe, has so far survived
Speaker 19: remains hospitalized.
Speaker 5: Wow.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 19: A twenty nine year old man, Romanula Locknwall is charged
Speaker 19: with first degree murder and assault with intent to kill.
Speaker 19: The criminal complaint alleges he shouted a la akbar as
Speaker 19: he fired Lockawall came to the United States as a
Speaker 19: part of Operation Allies Welcome in twenty twenty one, which
Speaker 19: moved US assets out of Afghanistan as the Taliban gain
Speaker 19: control of the region. Lockinwall was later granted formal asylum
Speaker 19: under Trump. This past April, friend of the alleged shooter
Speaker 19: told The New York Times that Lockerwall joined the CIA
Speaker 19: backed paramilitary squad Unit zero three to earn money for
Speaker 19: his family and get medical training, rather than for ideological reasons,
Speaker 19: and when he returned from stints with the zero Unit,
Speaker 19: his personality changed and he was less socially outgoing. To
Speaker 19: quote from the Times quote, Blockenwall told others in his
Speaker 19: village that he had been shaken by seeing so many
Speaker 19: bodies and bloodshed in.
Speaker 3: His role with the zero three unit. Quote.
Speaker 19: According to a volunteer who worked with his family, Blockenwall's
Speaker 19: mental health started rapidly declining in early twenty twenty three.
Speaker 19: He begun self isolated, withdrawing from work and family, stopped
Speaker 19: paying rent, and faced deviction in twenty twenty four. This
Speaker 19: volunteer wrote in an email to an immigrant nonprofit group,
Speaker 19: which was obtained by the AP In the New York Times,
Speaker 19: which reads that lock Andwell quote has not been functional
Speaker 19: as a person, father and provider since March of last year,
Speaker 19: twenty three. His behavior has changed greatly unquote. When Lockwell
Speaker 19: emerged from quote unquote dark isolation, it was to engage
Speaker 19: in quote unquote reckless travel, according to this volunteer, long
Speaker 19: seemingly pointless road trips across the country.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and he seems to be behaving in a way that,
Speaker 3: like you said, suggest he has some PTSD or.
Speaker 19: Like no PTSD from engaging in combat. This is very
Speaker 19: common among veterans and mental health support for specifically these
Speaker 19: people in this in this paramilitary unit probably doesn't exist, right,
Speaker 19: does not exist the same way it does for veterans
Speaker 19: of the United States military, which already is a lacking service.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that's that. Yeah, I mean these the ship
Speaker 3: that these guys did was dark. I've included in the
Speaker 3: in the show notes a linked to a Human Rights
Speaker 3: Watch report. But like, there's a reason that they weren't
Speaker 3: specifically under In theory, they were under the Afghan Ministry
Speaker 3: of Defense Command, but in practice they operated outside either
Speaker 3: chain of control. They did kill or capture missions. There
Speaker 3: are multiple reports of them killing everybody in a house
Speaker 3: and then it being the wrong house. Like really, stuff
Speaker 3: that is going to stay with someone, right and unless
Speaker 3: they're like, you know, pretty nuts, No, extremely horrifying, Yeah,
Speaker 3: terrifying stuff. Pretty much immediately after, the Trump administration began
Speaker 3: calling for various immigration restrictions based on this. Right Now,
Speaker 3: it's worth noting that luck Andwell entered the United States
Speaker 3: as part of Operation Allied Welcome, right, but then he
Speaker 3: received US asylum under the Trump administration, so that would
Speaker 3: have been this year, right, Like, I'm not entirely sure
Speaker 3: why he went asylum rather than a special immigrant visa,
Speaker 3: but both the pathways that are opened to Afghan people, right,
Speaker 3: SIV has some benefits, but also it had some different
Speaker 3: things that they'd have to jump through, Like one of
Speaker 3: them would be a believe to get an officer to
Speaker 3: write a recommendation and maybe CIA folks on into doing that.
Speaker 3: So following this, the US immediately began to call for
Speaker 3: a crackdown on Afghan migrants. And as we'll see more
Speaker 3: broadly on migrants. I think it's important to contextualize this
Speaker 3: globally because it's part of a crackdown on a nation
Speaker 3: which is seen nearly half a century of war. Right,
Speaker 3: ninety percent of the ten million people who fled Afghanistan
Speaker 3: reside in Pakistan or Iran. I've reported on this before
Speaker 3: on this show, but Iran has deported more than a
Speaker 3: million Afghan people since twenty twenty three, right, and they
Speaker 3: have very few pathways to permanent residency anywhere. Among refugees,
Speaker 3: Afghan people have it particularly difficult. On Tuesday, the us
Speaker 3: CIS Citizenship and Immigration Services issued a memo ordering its
Speaker 3: employees to place on hold all asylum, green card and
Speaker 3: citizenship form applications from quote unquote high risk countries and
Speaker 3: to investigate all arrivals from them since twenty twenty one.
Speaker 3: They are also placing a hold on all forms I
Speaker 3: five eight nine, which is the application for asylum and
Speaker 3: for withholding of for removal, regardless of where the person
Speaker 3: is from. So we have this specific halt on asylum
Speaker 3: for Afghan nationals that comes first, and then following that
Speaker 3: we have these nineteen high risk countries. The high risk
Speaker 3: countries are listed in Presidential Proclamation one oh nine four nine,
Speaker 3: which was issue back in June. I'll just read out
Speaker 3: the name, so people who are aware Afghanistan Burma, Chad,
Speaker 3: Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, Barundi, Cuba, Laos,
Speaker 3: Sierra Leone, Togo, Tookmenistan, and Venezuela. If you recall us
Speaker 3: covering this back, then you will remember that the reason
Speaker 3: cited in that proclamation is percentage of visa overstays. This
Speaker 3: doesn't have anything to do with risk, right, other than
Speaker 3: risk of overstaying one's visa. They do not justify the
Speaker 3: inclusion of these countries based on the potential for people
Speaker 3: there to do terrorism, right, at least not all of them. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's worth pointing out. I guess that percentages visa overstates
Speaker 3: isn't that useful of a figure, because if you have
Speaker 3: ten people and one over stays, then that's only one person,
Speaker 3: But it's also a ten percent overstay rate, right, so
Speaker 3: it doesn't look at like raw numbers. Nonetheless, this would
Speaker 3: mean from the way I'm reading it, that any application
Speaker 3: with these people on it might be paused. So that
Speaker 3: could include like if someone had applied to have a
Speaker 3: spouse or family member come over and obtain legal status, right,
Speaker 3: or if someone was sponsoring someone or they were a
Speaker 3: duel national. They're like a bor Indian American for example.
Speaker 3: We will see how long this lasts. Trump has previously
Speaker 3: failed to get a total asylum ban, but for the meantime,
Speaker 3: like this is catastrophic for people attempting to seek asylum
Speaker 3: or permanent residency in the US. The only sort of
Speaker 3: upside that I can see on upside, but like you know,
Speaker 3: not terrible thing is that I don't think this would
Speaker 3: pause the work permit clock. So people have been listening
Speaker 3: to my series this week, they will have learned about
Speaker 3: the work permit clock. Right, because this is a government action,
Speaker 3: not an action from individuals. I don't think it would
Speaker 3: pause that clock. I guess to just wrap up the
Speaker 3: migrant crackdown stuff, Trump announced via a truth that quote,
Speaker 3: I am, as President of the United States here by terminating,
Speaker 3: effective immediately, the Temporary Protected Status program for Somalis in Minnesota.
Speaker 3: In the Thanksgiving message, he also repeated a number of
Speaker 3: claims about migrants and used a slurt to described him Walls. Yeah,
Speaker 3: he called him R word, and I think it is
Speaker 3: worth saying. Yeah. He has reiterated this multiple times on
Speaker 3: camera when Aspire reporters. Yeah, great stuff. And this is.
Speaker 19: Specifically in reference to reporting which has come out of
Speaker 19: Minnesota about a series of like fraudulent claims based on
Speaker 19: like COVID nineteen food and housing assistance programs this state
Speaker 19: was running, and people who were abusing those programs for
Speaker 19: their own financial benefit, and some of these specific instances
Speaker 19: are now being used to attack the entire Somali community
Speaker 19: in Minnesota.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's worth noting that the percentage of the Somali
Speaker 3: community which is on TPS is very small. It's probably
Speaker 3: a few hundred people. I don't know how those COVID
Speaker 3: assistance programs like overlap with once immigration status, right, but
Speaker 3: it's worth noting that. It's also worth noting, like I've
Speaker 3: linked to the statue in the show notes, the Somali
Speaker 3: TPS extends until March of twenty twenty six. It probably
Speaker 3: won't be renewed then, Right, That's what the Trump administration
Speaker 3: has been doing, is sunsetting TPS is for all kinds
Speaker 3: of people. The statute does not give the president power
Speaker 3: to end the TPS, certainly not on a state by
Speaker 3: state basis. Right. Yeah, that's a good point. The notice
Speaker 3: of revocation would appear in the Federal Register, and the
Speaker 3: TPS would then have sixty days if it was being revoked,
Speaker 3: that people would have sixty days to act on that information. Right,
Speaker 3: you can't just post it. That's not how this works.
Speaker 3: As of today, when I check the Federal Register, the
Speaker 3: last entry for the Somali TPS with its renewal last year.
Speaker 3: So there appears to have been no actual legal action
Speaker 3: taken on this, But nonetheless there has been ICE enforcement.
Speaker 3: Right there are videos of ICE officers specifically asking people
Speaker 3: if they are Somali in Minnesota, which is troubling. I
Speaker 3: think that's about all the ICE crackdown stuff. I have
Speaker 3: guess Greg Bavino's in Louisiana, I don't know. So there's
Speaker 3: been a lot of discussion this week and House hearings
Speaker 3: about the drone strike that began the United States campaign
Speaker 3: of drone strikes against small boats in both the Caribbean
Speaker 3: and the Pacific. Right so called narco terrorists jam yeah,
Speaker 3: so yeah, I think so called is doing a lot
Speaker 3: of work there. There seems to be a lot of
Speaker 3: debate about whether Pete Hegscess directly ordered a second strike
Speaker 3: on survivors from the first strike. Excess had denied this, saying, quote,
Speaker 3: the thing was on fire and it exploded. You can't
Speaker 3: see anything. This is called the fog of war. That's
Speaker 3: not the fog before yet. It's nobody means you're not
Speaker 3: at war. You're in a suit in a room watching
Speaker 3: a TV screen.
Speaker 19: Also, it doesn't revert to like literal smoke edge fog.
Speaker 19: I'm sorry, and this is like absurd.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a ludicrous claim, right. Yes, there have been
Speaker 3: times where I have been in places like for instance,
Speaker 3: I was in Java a couple of years ago and
Speaker 3: we were being bombed. Right the way for me to
Speaker 3: get information, it was better for me to like go
Speaker 3: online and find stuff because the access to information on
Speaker 3: the ground in conflict times can be difficult. That's not
Speaker 3: the case when you're in DC watching a screen readout right.
Speaker 3: That is why we have people who are not in
Speaker 3: combat making these decisions. The White House has claimed that
Speaker 3: Admiral Bradley, who was JSOCK commander at the time, ordered
Speaker 3: the strike to Cotton Today claimed that two people in
Speaker 3: the video were trying to roll the boat to get
Speaker 3: back in the fight. What that's not a thing that
Speaker 3: one can do, like they're not in just to be
Speaker 3: clear they're not in like a kayak here, like this
Speaker 3: is in what I would call a cigarette boat, like
Speaker 3: a fast speedboat. You can't roll those like that.
Speaker 19: I don't understand they were not engaged in combat.
Speaker 3: No, Like, I don't see any evidence that these people
Speaker 3: were equipped to like certainly not to fight against a drone.
Speaker 18: Right.
Speaker 3: No, Why does this matter?
Speaker 15: Right?
Speaker 3: Because these people are dead regardless.
Speaker 16: Yeah.
Speaker 19: Why does the emphasis on this second strike matter more
Speaker 19: than simply attacking them the first time? Why is could
Speaker 19: this result in haig Seth being in yea a degree
Speaker 19: of trouble? Why there's a defensive about this second strike?
Speaker 3: Fair question? It is a very clear violation of the
Speaker 3: US military's own Law of War manual, which I have
Speaker 3: linked and the Geneva Conventions to kill someone who's demonstrably
Speaker 3: order to combat right out of combat i e. A
Speaker 3: shipwrecked sailor, i e. A wounded soldier who's thrown away
Speaker 3: their weapon. These people were very clearly not fighting. From
Speaker 3: every report that we've seen, this has been part of
Speaker 3: the way that war is conducted for centuries, like picking
Speaker 3: up shipwrecked sailors after sinking about, etc. I'm not saying
Speaker 3: this has always happened. The US has done double tap
Speaker 3: strikes for a long time. Yeah, there has been I
Speaker 3: should just clarify, guess there has been some debate about
Speaker 3: the SEMA antics of the word double tap. First of all,
Speaker 3: that's not important. What is important is that they killed
Speaker 3: people who were not fighting, who are out of combat,
Speaker 3: and who are clinging to a burning shipwrecked boat. A
Speaker 3: double tap does generally refer to a strike and then
Speaker 3: a subsequent strike which is focused on killing the people
Speaker 3: who came to rescue the people hitting the first strike.
Speaker 3: There was no one to rescue these people. But I
Speaker 3: don't think that, like, that's not what's at stake here, right,
Speaker 3: That is, it doesn't matter what term we use to
Speaker 3: describe this other than war crime. There were double taped
Speaker 3: strikes at the time that I spoke about when I
Speaker 3: was in ri Java, where they did bomb ambulance crews,
Speaker 3: and yeah, that shit is absolutely reprehensible. But what happened
Speaker 3: here is also reprehensible as it's being recounted to us.
Speaker 3: Eventually this video will come out, I'm sure. More broadly,
Speaker 3: the United States seems to be signaling intent to continue
Speaker 3: its campaign against my daughter, saying it will begin land
Speaker 3: strikes quote unquote soon. What yeah, like this is extremely worrying,
Speaker 3: right like, yeah, tramp of course a great peace president
Speaker 3: who has ended what is it like nine wars? Trump
Speaker 3: the dove, I think is what he personally perfect. It's
Speaker 3: a hell of a visual. The people of Venezuela are
Speaker 3: the ones who are going to suffer, right Like, It's
Speaker 3: not going to be the regime officials for the most part. Yeah,
Speaker 3: Venezuela's a vast, mountainous jungle country. It's an easy place
Speaker 3: for us to do land war, not a particularly easy
Speaker 3: place for US to do drone warfare either. You know,
Speaker 3: I've written a lot about the United States Duran campaign
Speaker 3: in Syria and the disaster that was right in the
Speaker 3: amount of what they considered to be acceptable civilian casualties.
Speaker 3: We don't have any indications from this DoD or like
Speaker 3: from HEXF that like he will seek to minimize those
Speaker 3: right like this this could be shaping up to be
Speaker 3: a disaster for the people of Venezuela.
Speaker 19: I mean, yeah, I find it unlike that haig Seth
Speaker 19: will actually fall into trouble international law because of this.
Speaker 19: People always get away, and I mean you can see
Speaker 19: how Trump already pardoned number of work criminals earlier this
Speaker 19: year and in his first administration, right, and in his
Speaker 19: first administration.
Speaker 3: Yeah, as much fun.
Speaker 19: As it is to be like haha, like this, I
Speaker 19: like to see old peate haig Seth wiggles way out
Speaker 19: of this jam.
Speaker 3: Yes he will. I think he's expected to do so
Speaker 3: quite easily. I mean international doesn't exist for people in
Speaker 3: the global North. It's a thing that they do to
Speaker 3: prosecute African people for the most part. But yes, very
Speaker 3: unlikely that we will see hag Seth in the Hague
Speaker 3: for this still bad though. We'll go on another ad
Speaker 3: break and be right back.
Speaker 12: All right, we are back.
Speaker 19: We would like to now expand and clarify some of
Speaker 19: our previous previous discussion of Zoron's White has meeting with
Speaker 19: Donald Trump and some statements around ice raids and ice detainers.
Speaker 19: Let's start by clarifying this one hundred and seventy serious
Speaker 19: crimes number. Yeah, while answering a question, Zoran said, quote,
Speaker 19: we discussed ice and New York City, and I spoke
Speaker 19: about how the laws we have in New York City
Speaker 19: allowed the city government to speak to the federal administration
Speaker 19: about roughly one hundred and seventy serious crimes unquote. This
Speaker 19: one hundred and seventy number is in reference to Local
Speaker 19: Law fifty eight Administrative Code nine Dash one three to one,
Speaker 19: which was passed in twenty fourteen and strengthened New York
Speaker 19: sanctuary laws and required that they only honor ice detainers
Speaker 19: when presented with the judicial warrant issued by an article
Speaker 19: time refederal judge or federal magistrate judge based on probable cause,
Speaker 19: and when the subject of the detainer and warrant is
Speaker 19: either listed in a terrorist database or has been convicted
Speaker 19: of a violent or serious crime. Now, the term violent
Speaker 19: or serious crime refers to a list of approximately one
Speaker 19: hundred and seventy crimes which is listed in Local Law
Speaker 19: fifty four. I think there's a five year limit as well, right,
Speaker 19: Like it has to be within five years. So there's
Speaker 19: a number of like they like stack on each other. Yeah,
Speaker 19: Like there's This is just a one of many like
Speaker 19: amendments strengthening their sanctuary laws. And I'm mentioning it specifically
Speaker 19: to clarify where the one hundred and seventy number comes
Speaker 19: from and where people can find all of the criminal
Speaker 19: codes that are listed, which is again, approximately one hundred
Speaker 19: and seventy crimes. Yeah, and the change that this local
Speaker 19: law did is that this person doesn't have to just
Speaker 19: be accused of one of these crimes, but actually be
Speaker 19: can or listed in a terroor stateabase.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And these are mostly like violent felets. Yeah. The
Speaker 3: law that Garrison refers to lists them by penal code number.
Speaker 3: So I'm working on expanding those into a list of
Speaker 3: words that human beings can understand. Yeah, sure, just because
Speaker 3: I think people generally don't understand sanctuary protections. Sanctuary laws
Speaker 3: are not like a They're not the same in every state,
Speaker 3: They're not the same in every city in every state,
Speaker 3: and I think a lot of people have an understanding
Speaker 3: of them, which could do with being improved. So I'm
Speaker 3: going to probably do a whole episode on that. I
Speaker 3: think with regard to the list of crimes in New York,
Speaker 3: I would prefer to do that as a print piece
Speaker 3: because it's just better if someone could find it on
Speaker 3: the internet, and that doesn't work as well with podcasts
Speaker 3: other stuff regarding this, Just so people are aware, right like, federally,
Speaker 3: one could be deported for a huge range of crimes
Speaker 3: from violent crime to thefto over ten thousand dollars to
Speaker 3: a vast range of quote unquote crimes involving moral turpitude.
Speaker 3: The problem, of course, is that we have fifty different
Speaker 3: states with fifty different sets of laws, and we have
Speaker 3: to map federal regulations onto them. There is some Supreme
Speaker 3: Court case law about how we do that. Crimes involving
Speaker 3: moral turpitude can be things that you might consider extraordinarily minor,
Speaker 3: like turnstile hopping. Yeah, I'm going to do a whole
Speaker 3: episode on these, because again, I think you could see
Speaker 3: in that press conference, so when Zoran spoke about immigration,
Speaker 3: Trump tried to move the topic to deporting criminals. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and the people who are being deported as criminals, whilst
Speaker 3: the DHS twitter feed wants to highlight people who've been
Speaker 3: convicted of murder and things, and that's by far look
Speaker 3: at an EDU case. Yeah, And I think that's why
Speaker 3: he mentioned the one hundred and seventy like serious urvolent
Speaker 3: crimes and like specifically that those are the ones that
Speaker 3: the New York Sentuary laws do have this quote unquote
Speaker 3: cooperation on and like in a meeting, Zorn said that
Speaker 3: he and Trump talked about how current ice operation in
Speaker 3: New York City, I quote unquote very little to do
Speaker 3: with serious crime, with these crimes listed on these detainers. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and that's a broad thing across the United States, right,
Speaker 3: Like even we spoke about this a couple of weeks ago.
Speaker 3: But like, if you look at Charlotte right where they
Speaker 3: have they are legally bound to honor all ICE detainers
Speaker 3: by HB ten, you've still got Ice out and about
Speaker 3: raiding people, and you have sheriffs complaining about Ice not
Speaker 3: picking people up right the detainer, I guess I should
Speaker 3: explain what a detainer is as well. A detainer is
Speaker 3: an extra forty eight hour hold. It doesn't mean that
Speaker 3: you just like lock them up forever. It means that
Speaker 3: you hold them for forty eight hours such that ICE
Speaker 3: can come in and collect the person. Because ICE is
Speaker 3: so focused on I don't know what you want to
Speaker 3: call it, grabbing people off the street. Yeah, it seems
Speaker 3: that they're not collecting these people. There's been some pushback,
Speaker 3: like on straight up economic grounds in some states because
Speaker 3: the detaining people is quite expensive, right, so detaining people
Speaker 3: for long periods of time and it's just not showing up.
Speaker 3: I can see how not to give support to sheriff's
Speaker 3: departments or whatever. But like rural sheriff's departments which are
Speaker 3: on limited budgets, would start to get pissed off after
Speaker 3: a time about holding people. But yeah, that is what
Speaker 3: a detainer is, got it. ICE doesn't necessarily have to
Speaker 3: abide by local sanctuary laws. And what we have seen
Speaker 3: is that, like, cops are cops, and they will make mistakes,
Speaker 3: and if someone gets handed over, you can't take them
Speaker 3: back if the cops fuck that up.
Speaker 19: Yeah, I mean, and this is part of the other
Speaker 19: things that Zaron campaigned on to like strength and sanctuary protections,
Speaker 19: And specifically in the section of his policies on quote
Speaker 19: unquote trump proofing New York City, he talks about like
Speaker 19: ending a legal ICE cooperation on Riker's Island or ICE
Speaker 19: is currently stationed, which does go against sanctuary laws, and
Speaker 19: you've talked about ending that as well as providing one
Speaker 19: hundred and sixty five million dollars in funding for immigration
Speaker 19: legal defend services in the cities, which would be a
Speaker 19: massive increase and what is currently provided. Yeah, as well
Speaker 19: as just like limiting interactions with police, right is the
Speaker 19: more you interact with the police, the more likely is
Speaker 19: that you might accidentally or quote unquote accidentally get put
Speaker 19: into trouble even though you know, police in New York
Speaker 19: are not supposed to ever ask someone that what their
Speaker 19: immigration status is or or cooperate with ice requests that
Speaker 19: do not you know, fall under this specific container law.
Speaker 19: But I mean in terms of like ways to limit
Speaker 19: interactions with police, this goes back to some very basic
Speaker 19: ideas on like, you know, addressing the economic conditions that
Speaker 19: create crime in the first place, as well as the
Speaker 19: Department of Community Safety, which is soron intends to create
Speaker 19: which will provide new mental health services, crisis response, and
Speaker 19: homeless outreach outside of the NYPD.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Like, not criminalizing homelessness and not criminalizing parking are
Speaker 3: probably two of the most meaningful things that you can
Speaker 3: do to limit police interaction a specifically police interactions from
Speaker 3: documented people.
Speaker 19: Yeah, and I mean in terms of like turnstile hopping
Speaker 19: or like fair evation. It's it's complicated in New York. Mean,
Speaker 19: this isn't gonna be something that they honor a detainer for.
Speaker 19: But in terms of like you know, just talking about
Speaker 19: like the Yeah, how weird and specific each state's laws
Speaker 19: are like turnstile hopping can be a misdemeanor crime in
Speaker 19: New York due to like theft of services.
Speaker 3: It can also just be a civil in fracture.
Speaker 19: It can, but it's up to the officer to decide
Speaker 19: whether they want this to turn into a criminal misdemeanor
Speaker 19: or a civil infraction and just pay one hundred dollars fine.
Speaker 19: Even this is like cause confusion among like immigrants and
Speaker 19: immigrant rights attorneys over like dealing with like old old
Speaker 19: fair ofvation cases and being like, does this now like
Speaker 19: disqualify me from certain things or does this, like you know,
Speaker 19: present a threat of being deported if I if I
Speaker 19: declare this and like whatever, like citizenship or the green
Speaker 19: card meeting, they may they may have scheduled. Yeah, and yeah,
Speaker 19: not not criminalizing fair ovation would be huge. And if
Speaker 19: someone's able to make you know, free buses, that'll do,
Speaker 19: you know, a considerable dent in preventing cases where ferivation
Speaker 19: could be used as a pretext federally support someone.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, because that person or that person could leave
Speaker 3: New York and be somewhere else, right, or they could
Speaker 3: just get swept up in ice workplace raid, and that
Speaker 3: could be used as a pretext like there are many
Speaker 3: reasons why even if it's sanctuary protected, that person could
Speaker 3: still be vulnerable because of that prosecution.
Speaker 19: Like you said, yeah, I mean, and then those sorts
Speaker 19: of raids are still happening in New York.
Speaker 3: An attempted rate happened in Connell Street. Yeah, last week.
Speaker 19: It was prevented from being carried out by people who
Speaker 19: literally blocked Ice from leaving the parking garage that they
Speaker 19: were in, and the NYPD then arrested a few protesters.
Speaker 19: It remains to be seen how Zoron will handle incidents
Speaker 19: like this going forward. He still does not become the
Speaker 19: mayor for but thirty days, right, but a spokesperson for
Speaker 19: the mayor elect has said that Zoron quote has made
Speaker 19: it clear, including to the President, that these raids are
Speaker 19: cruel and inhumane and failed to advanced genuine public safety.
Speaker 19: New York City's more than three million immigrants are central
Speaker 19: to our city strength, retality, and success. The Mayor Electromaine
Speaker 19: Steadfast and his emumitment to protecting the rights and dignity
Speaker 19: of every single New Yorker, upholding our sanctuary laws, and
Speaker 19: de escalation rather than use of unnecessary force unquote, believe
Speaker 19: that last sentence could be read as in reference to
Speaker 19: the police conduct while handling antiites protests, yeah, quote unquote
Speaker 19: de escalation rather than use of unnecessary force. But this
Speaker 19: is not something that they have talked about much.
Speaker 1: Curious to see when he's actually the mayor, what will
Speaker 1: happen here?
Speaker 19: Yeah, yeah, I mean, and that's that's that's a part
Speaker 19: of like what governing is going to look like in
Speaker 19: this case, which is kind of sure, it's hard to say.
Speaker 19: We've never really had a high profile like you know,
Speaker 19: dsa person who previously advocated like defunded or abolishing the
Speaker 19: police become the mayor of a city.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I think this kind.
Speaker 19: Of relates to like so much of what the project
Speaker 19: in New York is around New York City DSA and
Speaker 19: zoron to rather than just like you know, be like
Speaker 19: chasing electoral cars and then crashing once you have control.
Speaker 19: Exortins weren't just in like actually running the city and
Speaker 19: providing a legitimate example that democratic socialst policies can deliver
Speaker 19: on promises for workers and improve life in New York.
Speaker 19: And if this project succeeds, it can be pointed to
Speaker 19: and replicated by others. And there's a very strict focus
Speaker 19: on like making sure that he's able to succeed on
Speaker 19: a section of like economic policies. He's not in a
Speaker 19: federal position, right He's not running on abolishing ice, as
Speaker 19: he can't as the mayor of New York And like,
Speaker 19: I think it's very unclear right now, like what a
Speaker 19: politics of abolishing ice really looks like outside of like
Speaker 19: this like contemplative, like reflective and like judgmental politics, which
Speaker 19: falls further and further away from like taking steps to
Speaker 19: do action.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, I mean a politics abolishing GUS looks like
Speaker 3: the United States up until two thousand and one, right,
Speaker 3: like we didn't have ice.
Speaker 19: Well, but like from now, like what would it mean
Speaker 19: to actually stop the quotations completely?
Speaker 3: Like what will that look like? What can be done
Speaker 3: politically to do that? Right?
Speaker 19: And Zorin's not doing this because Soron's the mayor of
Speaker 19: New York City. He cannot run for president. People in
Speaker 19: his orbit could run for the House and set it
Speaker 19: and push forward bills to do this, and they might
Speaker 19: over time, But like there is a difference between being
Speaker 19: the mayor of a local municipality and like what are
Speaker 19: legitimate politics of actually stopping our current process of deportations,
Speaker 19: what that really looks like and how to actually achieve that,
Speaker 19: which a very little thought is being put towards among
Speaker 19: the American left right now, And it kind of it
Speaker 19: falls back on these like reflective or like contemplative statements.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there have been proposals put forward for a long
Speaker 3: time on what it would look like to create better
Speaker 3: legal pathways and fewer deportations, right, like those who existed. Sure,
Speaker 3: like you can look specifically at what people were trying
Speaker 3: to get Biden to do in twenty twenty, right, which
Speaker 3: he obviously completely failed to do and in effect made
Speaker 3: things much worse. But like those policy proposals exist, and
Speaker 3: they're well thought out and well planned from people who've
Speaker 3: been working into space for decades. Right, Danni can do
Speaker 3: is like what they call in political science, like the
Speaker 3: coketails effect, totally right. As a very popular candidate, people
Speaker 3: can ride on his coattails. And I think it's important
Speaker 3: in that sense that he continues rhetorically to oppose what
Speaker 3: Ice is doing, which, like that statement you read, did right,
Speaker 3: But it's very important that he if he's able to
Speaker 3: successfully have his administration in New York and we will
Speaker 3: see how shit goes in that regard. But if he
Speaker 3: is and there is an electoral project that can arise
Speaker 3: based on that, then like it is very important that
Speaker 3: they remain in lockstep that like, we are not going back,
Speaker 3: We're not gonna have a Democrat com president in twenty
Speaker 3: eight and just do a Joe Biden again right where
Speaker 3: things get worse. So in that sense, I think it
Speaker 3: like it needs to be something that everyone in that
Speaker 3: movement retains. I guess, like not uniformity is the wrong word,
Speaker 3: you know, but you know what I mean literally that
Speaker 3: it continues to be something of a norse staff for
Speaker 3: whatever is emerging to the left of the DNC.
Speaker 19: Yeah, And like I did also, like I guess clarify
Speaker 19: some things I would have said last week and not
Speaker 19: claiming that sheerly the the process of honoring these detainers
Speaker 19: will like vaguely in a causal sense, results in less
Speaker 19: ice raids in the city. I mean, these detainers are
Speaker 19: they are legally required, even under sanctuary laws, to be
Speaker 19: to be followed. And I think part of what Zora
Speaker 19: was doing was trying to redirect the president's thought away
Speaker 19: from these larger raids to these specific serious crimes. And
Speaker 19: I think in some of this is based on Trump
Speaker 19: kind of has like the last person in the room
Speaker 19: syndrome off He kind of just likes or or follows
Speaker 19: or parrots whoever the last person in the room was.
Speaker 3: And like what they told him.
Speaker 19: I'm not saying that like honoring these these legally required
Speaker 19: detainers is like is simply harmon direction in that sense.
Speaker 19: This is more so in reference to the ongoing negotiations
Speaker 19: between Momdani and Trump to limit ICE action in the
Speaker 19: city outside of these detainer requests, which do address serious crime.
Speaker 19: Which Trump and Mom Donnie saw as a point of
Speaker 19: commonality on is they want New York to be a
Speaker 19: safe place for people, focusing on that as opposed to
Speaker 19: these general ICE raids. And there's been like some slight
Speaker 19: movement on this. Raids have continued, but there's been slight
Speaker 19: movement in terms of Trump at least for now, pulling
Speaker 19: out of his plans to deploy National Guard to assist ICE. YEA,
Speaker 19: and like that is the single point where we see
Speaker 19: some movement on. And this will be something that in
Speaker 19: terms of raids like on Connall Street. Well, we'll see
Speaker 19: if this actually makes a larger impact once he takes
Speaker 19: office and continues these negotiations.
Speaker 3: If National Guard or assisting ICE, is that like because
Speaker 3: they can't directly do the immigration enforcement, right, Well, I
Speaker 3: mean assisting ICE in the way that they haven't washed
Speaker 3: in DC. Yeah, like in terms of like quote unquote
Speaker 3: protecting officers or quote yes.
Speaker 19: Yeah, and you know the proposals to do so in
Speaker 19: Chicago and Portland, which are cotton like legal limbo. But
Speaker 19: I mean that the Portland was more specifically for the
Speaker 19: ICE facility, Yeah, protecting federal building, this kind of deal,
Speaker 19: versus in Washington, d C. They were like on patrol
Speaker 19: with ICE, Like they were like roving.
Speaker 3: Around and doing roadblocks and shit.
Speaker 19: Yeah, and like much of this quote unquote crime crackdown,
Speaker 19: as Bridgetes reported on our show, really is actually a
Speaker 19: way to do like enhanced immigration enforcement.
Speaker 21: Yeah.
Speaker 19: There's a lot of fear in New York and discussions
Speaker 19: with people in New York and like how are we
Speaker 19: going to handle this happening here?
Speaker 3: Yeah? And this is like the one point of moment
Speaker 3: that we've seen is Trump pulling out of these plans,
Speaker 3: which previously we're quite certain he wants to like go
Speaker 3: one by one and like invade these cities. Yeah, New York.
Speaker 3: You also have the like the added factor that like
Speaker 3: New York is technically in that border enforcement zone, right,
Speaker 3: So I mean as is Chicago. Yeah, I guess most
Speaker 3: of these places have been Chicago, Portland is Los Angeles.
Speaker 3: Is because of the Laketown Los Angeles, they deployed border patrol. Right,
Speaker 3: that's another thing that it could happen in New York.
Speaker 3: But like the far hasn't on a massive scale, but yeah,
Speaker 3: it remains to be seen. Right, Like Trump has this
Speaker 3: like operation at Large that Buveno controls that he could
Speaker 3: deploy to New York and it'll be yeah, provided to Boston,
Speaker 3: where Michelle Bouch has like taken a different approach, right,
Speaker 3: like and yeah, I guess we'll We'll have to continue
Speaker 3: waiting and seeing. It's really heartening to me that people
Speaker 3: showed up in New York as well, you know, like
Speaker 3: oh yeah, that people in New York showed up on
Speaker 3: Canal Street like that is uh yeah, and prevented ICE
Speaker 3: from doing any detentions or arrests. Yeah, And I think
Speaker 3: like they like the ICE eventually had to leave to
Speaker 3: New Jersey, Is that right? Like they had to go
Speaker 3: through the tunnel or whatever, like the tunnel, yeah, the
Speaker 3: tunnel of shade. Yeah yeah, but like that that is
Speaker 3: like that is what kept those people safe.
Speaker 6: Rightly.
Speaker 3: They didn't have to wait for Eric Adams or man
Speaker 3: Downey or anyone else, like it was members of their community.
Speaker 12: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, which is cool talking of communities. They want to
Speaker 3: want to talk about the campus campus community and have
Speaker 3: freedom of speech. He's under threat on our campuses. Well,
Speaker 3: freedom of religion is under threat, James, Okay, religion to
Speaker 3: freedom to so tired, freedom to tire, to cite a
Speaker 3: vibe space interpretation of the religion.
Speaker 19: I mean, yeah, this unfortunately, this story did infringe upon
Speaker 19: my freedom to not read horrible college essays Garrison.
Speaker 3: That is a freedom that I have not had for
Speaker 3: many years.
Speaker 19: No, no, and this is why I'm interested in your
Speaker 19: thoughts on this. A transgraduate instructor has been suspended from
Speaker 19: the University of Oklahoma after issuing a failing grade to
Speaker 19: a students assignment right a six hundred and fifty word
Speaker 19: response to a study on if gender conformity is linked
Speaker 19: to popularity or bullying in middle school. This twenty year
Speaker 19: old psychology major, a junior, wrote in her response that
Speaker 19: she does not consider bullying a problem because quote God
Speaker 19: made male and female and made us different from each
Speaker 19: other on purpose and for a purpose unquote. The response
Speaker 19: was entirely personal opinion. It does not even properly cite
Speaker 19: specific like scriptures in the Bible. If, like, if I
Speaker 19: was to write like an unhinged like like a Christian response,
Speaker 19: least the least you could do is site specific things.
Speaker 3: Should that be valid? No, but even this was not done.
Speaker 1: It's like Bible fanfic.
Speaker 3: These are the vibes I get from genius.
Speaker 19: Well, yeah, she just gestured her own interpretation of biblical
Speaker 19: gender roles, right sure, sure, quote women naturally want to
Speaker 19: do womanly things because God created us with those womanly
Speaker 19: desires in our heart unquote.
Speaker 3: So she's women and know like like females. I guess
Speaker 3: maybe maybe she was going for a.
Speaker 19: It's it's all circular reasoning like this all based on
Speaker 19: based on these like biblical gender roles, and later the
Speaker 19: essay goes on to self contradict itself on ideas of
Speaker 19: gender norms versus gender stereotypes, and it's all just very
Speaker 19: poorly written. James, did you read the whole essay. No, Okay,
Speaker 19: it's not it's not long. We are not going to
Speaker 19: read it all on air.
Speaker 3: I'll read it right now.
Speaker 19: I want you to read the whole thing and just
Speaker 19: just give me the chat your immediate thoughts. I dropped
Speaker 19: it in the zoom chat.
Speaker 3: You have to understand that I might experience like what
Speaker 3: it's called a trauma reaction. It's only two pages, so
Speaker 3: it's based on a review of an article, based on
Speaker 3: a review of an academic study. Yeah, on if gender
Speaker 3: conformity impacts bullying or popularity in middle school. Okay, Jesus Christ,
Speaker 3: that's what she said, but not yet she has excited
Speaker 3: him specifically. No, she never said Jesus yeah God mm
Speaker 3: hm ah, hell yeah. I love it when they get
Speaker 3: into like Hebrew. Oh yeah, yeah, yes, I'm just skinned
Speaker 3: penulta paragraph. What class is this in psychology? A psychology course?
Speaker 3: I would assign this for a psychology close. H wow. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Can I just read like the last part out loud?
Speaker 3: Okay, Sophie, you can. You can read the last part.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: My prayer for the world, and specifically for American society
Speaker 1: and youth is that they would not believe the lies
Speaker 1: being spread from satan that make them believe they're better
Speaker 1: off as another gender than what God made them. I
Speaker 1: pray that they feel God's love and acceptance as who
Speaker 1: He originally created them to be.
Speaker 3: So if you really inhabited that role beautifully.
Speaker 19: Thank you, thank you previously and like the paragraph of four.
Speaker 1: Do you want me to do it? Yeah, I unfortunately
Speaker 1: feel like I could really embody this horrific person. Society
Speaker 1: pushing the lie that there are multiple genders and everyone
Speaker 1: should be whatever they want to be is demonic It
Speaker 1: severely harms American youth. I do not want kids to be.
Speaker 19: Teased bullying stuff yet, So, James, as a college college professor,
Speaker 19: what is your thoughts on this?
Speaker 3: It's just a bad response to the question, right that
Speaker 3: there is not a single citation the person has not
Speaker 3: done what they were instructed to do. They have just
Speaker 3: it's a classic example of that you have answered the
Speaker 3: question you wanted me to ask, not the question I
Speaker 3: have asked. Genre Sure, and in this case, like I'm
Speaker 3: presuming there was some kind of rubric for grading, Like
Speaker 3: it seems like a like a the sort of assignment
Speaker 3: that you would set once a week, right, I don't
Speaker 3: know if it's an online course or they're just using
Speaker 3: an online LMS, but the comment is clearly from an
Speaker 3: online LMS.
Speaker 19: Yeah, they do have the rubrick, and that TPUSA published.
Speaker 19: The rubrick was that you must write this six hundred
Speaker 19: and fifty word reaction paper demonstrating that you have read
Speaker 19: the assigned article and includes a thoughtful reaction to the
Speaker 19: material presented in the article. Please remember that your reaction
Speaker 19: paper should not be a summary, but rather a thoughtful
Speaker 19: discussion of some aspect of the article. Possible approaches to
Speaker 19: reaction papers include a discussion of why you feel the
Speaker 19: topic is important and worthy of study or not, or
Speaker 19: an application of the study or results to your own experiences.
Speaker 3: That's a broader prompt than I had otherwise imagined. Yeah.
Speaker 19: Other section is Reaction papers are graded on a twenty
Speaker 19: five point scale and are evaluated based on the following
Speaker 19: Does the paper show a clear tie to the assigned
Speaker 19: article ten points, Does paper present a thoughtful reaction or
Speaker 19: response to the article rather than a summary ten points?
Speaker 19: And is the paper clearly written five points. The best
Speaker 19: reaction papers illustrate the students have read the assigned materials
Speaker 19: and engaged in critical thinking about some aspect of the article.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean the way you would do that is
Speaker 3: to reference the article more than in the first line
Speaker 3: of your paper and then never again, right sure, which
Speaker 3: is what this person has done here. Look, at no
Speaker 3: point do they quote from the article, mention anything specifically
Speaker 3: the article says other than that it was very thought provoking.
Speaker 3: And then like they've seen the word gender and just
Speaker 3: gone off like a dog after a squirrel, right, like, yes,
Speaker 3: and then completely gone off on one about god.
Speaker 12: Yeah, that's a pretty broad prompt.
Speaker 3: It's broader than I would generally write a prompt, but
Speaker 3: that's okay with different approaches. They haven't specifically said in
Speaker 3: the prompt that they want people to cite their sources,
Speaker 3: which I normally do. But yeah, they haven't really shown
Speaker 3: any engagement with the article.
Speaker 19: Right Like, this isn't a fresh ofment, this isn't a
Speaker 19: software this is this is a junior well well into
Speaker 19: this semester. The response from the instructor was, quote, please note,
Speaker 19: I'm not deducting points because you have certain beliefs, but
Speaker 19: instead I'm deducting points where you're posting a reaction paper
Speaker 19: that does not answer the questions for the assignment, contradict itself,
Speaker 19: heavily uses personal ideology over empirical evidence in a scientific class,
Speaker 19: and is at times offensive. While you are entitled to
Speaker 19: your own personal beliefs, there is an appropriate time or
Speaker 19: place to implement them in your reflections. I encourage all
Speaker 19: students to question or challenge the course material with other
Speaker 19: empirical findings or testable hypotheses, but using your own personal
Speaker 19: beliefs to argue against the findings of not only this article,
Speaker 19: but the findings of countless articles across the ecology, biology, sociology,
Speaker 19: et cetera. Is not best practice unquote yeah so.
Speaker 3: Again this is a science class. I guess right late,
Speaker 3: Like this is not a scientific response. It is yeah, no,
Speaker 3: entirely vibespased.
Speaker 19: Before becoming a national news story, this grade was reviewed
Speaker 19: and approved by another instructor. This isn't just one instructor
Speaker 19: who happens to be trans This isn't just their personal grade.
Speaker 19: This was reviewed by another instructor. But on Thanksgiving TPUSA
Speaker 19: used this story to start a media blitz targeting this
Speaker 19: quote unquote mentally ill professor, this graduate student instructor, which
Speaker 19: has resulted in her being placed on leave as the
Speaker 19: university reviews this incident concerning illegal discrimination based on religious beliefs.
Speaker 3: That's not what that is, right, Like, like, I have
Speaker 3: watched the short form video about discrimination many times of
Speaker 3: my years instructing students, and like, this person wasn't discriminated
Speaker 3: against because of their beliefs. They were discriminated. They weren't
Speaker 3: discriminated against. They were graded for their response which was poor, for.
Speaker 19: Failing to follow the rules of these and again not
Speaker 19: not even as like a freshman who needs more clear
Speaker 19: like you know, first year uniche, Like, no, yeah, this
Speaker 19: is this is this is a psychology major in her
Speaker 19: junior year.
Speaker 3: Yeah, writing this response as a part.
Speaker 19: Of it, as a part of a pscient as a
Speaker 19: scientific psychology course where it's not about science at all.
Speaker 19: You're just talking about your own impression of what God
Speaker 19: wants out of gender roles and citing not not even sighting,
Speaker 19: but like pointing towards the whole spirit and the heavenly Father.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and some Hebrew shit that you've translated. I know
Speaker 3: that most instructors who teach at universities now are very
Speaker 3: concerned about exactly this, right, about a student writing a
Speaker 3: paper which is just bad and then them going to
Speaker 3: the pretty much tp USA specific right and being like, yes,
Speaker 3: it came against me because they hate Jesus, and I
Speaker 3: can imagine that that is worse for trans and gender
Speaker 3: not conforming and otherwise absolutely instructors from conversations right like.
Speaker 19: No, absolutely, and like TPUSA first gained popularity for its
Speaker 19: like professor watch lists where people could report their like
Speaker 19: woke liberal professors, and this is this is the core
Speaker 19: part of the TPUSA model, is attacking academics and people
Speaker 19: who work in university in this instants like cause speculation
Speaker 19: of like how much of this essay was genuine versus
Speaker 19: was this intention only bad essay to provoke this response,
Speaker 19: which we can't we can't wonder. But the student has
Speaker 19: like risen to the ranks of like a minor conservative
Speaker 19: celebrity in these in these past two weeks. Yeah, because
Speaker 19: of this incident and is doing like TPUSA, like speaking,
Speaker 19: speaking appearances, news appearances. There's been dozens of articles across
Speaker 19: right wing outlets on this. It's it's turned into a
Speaker 19: legitimate story for them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I do want to say, well, like it appears Garrison,
Speaker 3: I discussed this before, but it appears that this person
Speaker 3: is a grad student and not like a ten year
Speaker 3: professor adjunct, yes, certainly not tenured, right, Sure, therefore they
Speaker 3: are much more vulnerable and they have many fewer protections
Speaker 3: than a tenured professor would have. I don't know if
Speaker 3: they unionize. It depends on where they're teaching, right, But.
Speaker 19: Like University of Oklahoma, that is questionable.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean possibilities points to know, But like, this
Speaker 3: is a series is fucking problem for anybody teaching in
Speaker 3: these fields, right, especially graduate students. Like I say especially,
Speaker 3: I mean imagine you're a graduate student on a student visa, right, Like,
Speaker 3: how do you approach teaching this when you know that
Speaker 3: you could end up on the TPUSA Instagram.
Speaker 19: It's trying to chill speech, right, This is this is
Speaker 19: part of what they're doing. They're turning this into a
Speaker 19: free speech crusade for religious discrimination. But what this is
Speaker 19: actually doing is chilling speech at universities by making it
Speaker 19: so you can't teach certain topics, especially if you happen
Speaker 19: to be trans to yourself. Otherwise TEPA USA in the
Speaker 19: right wing media system is going to turn your life
Speaker 19: into a living nightmare.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I've repeatedly seen a First Amendment cited and ref
Speaker 3: to this This has not got anything to do with
Speaker 3: the First Amendment. Like, the First Amendment doesn't give you
Speaker 3: the right to get a good grade for saying what
Speaker 3: the fuck you want? That's that's not in the First Amendment.
Speaker 3: But yeah, like Garrison said, it is chilling speech. Good news.
Speaker 3: Oklahoma University Workers United is a union sick okay, cool,
Speaker 3: and it includes grad student instructors unclear okay, hit us
Speaker 3: up o uwu and let.
Speaker 19: Us know before we close, I do want to mention
Speaker 19: another story that's happened this week, which is gonna prompt
Speaker 19: of a future episode probably next week. The online gambling
Speaker 19: platform cal She. I've never said it before. I'm saying
Speaker 19: Calsh has that a serial partnered with c Cashi. I
Speaker 19: you don't even know what you're talking about anymore. But
Speaker 19: the online gambling platform cal she is partnered with CNN
Speaker 19: and CNBC this past week to allow the news companies
Speaker 19: to use qute unquote real time prediction data for TV
Speaker 19: news segments and online content. This is not entirely surprising
Speaker 19: if people have been watching CNN like I have, like
Speaker 19: a complete maniac, because specifically this this past November and
Speaker 19: like this whole election season, news pundits on CNN have
Speaker 19: been using betting odds in place of polling data to
Speaker 19: weigh the likelihood of candidate's winning elections. This has become
Speaker 19: an increasingly common practice, specifically at CNN, and now it
Speaker 19: appears it's spreading to other news platforms like CNBC. How
Speaker 19: She announcement of the scene and partnership reads quote. CNN
Speaker 19: chief data analyst Harry Enton is an expert in translating
Speaker 19: what data and polling are saying on any given issue,
Speaker 19: and through this integration, he can tap into real time
Speaker 19: prediction markets data to better inform and fact check his
Speaker 19: reporting unquote what back checking his reporting with gambling data?
Speaker 19: Gambling odds from people who are betting on like if
Speaker 19: people are going to starve in Gaza, right, this is
Speaker 19: this is the sort of stuff that they bet on on. Caliche,
Speaker 19: not just who wins elections. Absurd, Jesus.
Speaker 1: I like that you've pronounced the day of this company
Speaker 1: several different see.
Speaker 19: I used to call it heal.
Speaker 3: This is the problem.
Speaker 19: I think it's I think it's Calshi. I think I
Speaker 19: think Calshi is correct.
Speaker 3: There's one possible benefit to this. Will it stop Nate
Speaker 3: Silva being so fucking annoying. No, it'll cause them to
Speaker 3: be more annoying games.
Speaker 19: How can you not see that this is this is
Speaker 19: a part of the nayverification of everything good and this
Speaker 19: this is what I want to talk about in the
Speaker 19: full piece. But but no, there was there was a
Speaker 19: Sena news segment in October twenty twenty five where this
Speaker 19: data analyst talked about how the odds of Democrats winning
Speaker 19: the midterms are going down via citing the Calshi odds,
Speaker 19: and then he did like three minutes of analysis using
Speaker 19: selective midterm voting data from twenty seventeen to twenty eighteen
Speaker 19: to support the movement in the gambling odds.
Speaker 3: Like that was the core piece of data. He was
Speaker 3: trying to explain, what the fuck? How big is this marketplace?
Speaker 19: Pretty big?
Speaker 3: Pretty big? Okay, so I couldn't just come in with
Speaker 3: like five hundred bucks and tip it.
Speaker 19: No, no, no, I mean it depends on what you're
Speaker 19: doing for like these sorts of big these like big races.
Speaker 22: No.
Speaker 19: But part of the real problem is is if you're
Speaker 19: just tuning in to CNN and reading the graphics, it's
Speaker 19: really hard to tell that this that these are gambling odds. Yeah,
Speaker 19: you're just seeing big percentages and they're only gonna mention
Speaker 19: that it's from quote unquote betting markets or prediction markets
Speaker 19: like once at the beginning of the segment. After that
Speaker 19: they treat the numbers like actual polling data. So it's
Speaker 19: really really manipulative. And unless you're like super paying attention
Speaker 19: to this whole segment, it'd be very easy to interpret
Speaker 19: these gambling numbers as genuine as genuine poll information. Wow,
Speaker 19: it's incredibly dangerous to democracy and uh overall kind of
Speaker 19: bad and fucked up, and it's gonna be spreading.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 19: The Calshi competitor poly Market partnered with X Everything app
Speaker 19: and Yahoo Financed earlier this year to integrate their quote
Speaker 19: unquote prediction data into content on x and Yahoo Finance.
Speaker 3: It's only going to become more and more common.
Speaker 1: Well, you're gonna you of a long form episode on.
Speaker 3: This, I will Yeah, this sucks. I'm just looking at
Speaker 3: this website now.
Speaker 1: It sucks. I don't like this at all.
Speaker 3: If you would like to email us, you can do
Speaker 3: so by reaching out to cool Zone tips at proton
Speaker 3: dot me.
Speaker 19: That does for us that it could happen here. We
Speaker 19: reported the news, and now you can bet on the news.
Speaker 15: We reported the news.
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 3: It Could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
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Speaker 1: episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.