Speaker 1: Hello podcast fans, and welcome to it could Happen Here,
Speaker 1: a podcast that today is hosted by me, James Down
Speaker 1: and Mia Wong him here. Hello, Hi, So what we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about today is situation on the border.
Speaker 1: We're working on a scripted episode which will take awayle
Speaker 1: because they always do, and you know, if we want
Speaker 1: that to be nice and sort of polished for use.
Speaker 1: But I did want to update everyone because I think
Speaker 1: that what's happening it has a sense of urgency to it,
Speaker 1: and certainly like some of the mutual aid requests have
Speaker 1: a real sense of urgency to them, and folks who
Speaker 1: follow me on Twitter dot com and sort of noticed that,
Speaker 1: like in between the ship posts, and I've been down
Speaker 1: at the US Mexico border for most of the tail
Speaker 1: end of last week and the start of this week,
Speaker 1: sort of depicting what's going on there, along with my
Speaker 1: friend Joe Joe Ariyama's who's a freelancer who we're going
Speaker 1: to be working with on the scripted series. And people
Speaker 1: can find Joe at Joe or Ori photo on Twitter.
Speaker 1: Joe's got some really good photos if you want to
Speaker 1: see kind of what's going on. But the longer than
Speaker 1: the short of it is that Title forty two ended
Speaker 1: on well, to begin with, exactly the moment that it
Speaker 1: ended was a subject of some contention. Right, we knew
Speaker 1: it was going to end on the eleventh of May.
Speaker 1: Title forty two, if folks don't remember, is a emergency
Speaker 1: public health measure. It's part of the United States Public
Speaker 1: Health Law, the United States Code Public Health something something.
Speaker 1: Then allows border patrol to expel people from the United
Speaker 1: States without giving them their due process, their asylum here.
Speaker 1: So basically they bounce the straight back to Mexico. Right.
Speaker 1: This has been in place since March of twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: We now know that the Trump mistation pressured the CDC,
Speaker 1: So in theory it was it came through the CDC, right,
Speaker 1: the Center for Disease Control under pressure from Drug Administration,
Speaker 1: direct pressure from from Pence and Stephen Miller.
Speaker 2: Was yeah, probably this was a Stephen Miller like, yeah,
Speaker 2: it's a primacy special.
Speaker 1: Yeah, bubblehead looking racist motherfucker has once again done something terrible.
Speaker 1: Not that some of his policies, As we'll get onto
Speaker 1: this in descripted episode, the Biden administration has like copy
Speaker 1: pasted some steep, some straight up Stephen Miller stuff in
Speaker 1: it in its transit bounds and is absolutely liable for
Speaker 1: I don't want to use the word chaos at our
Speaker 1: border because that plays into this fox to use narrative.
Speaker 1: There is a a very concerted plan to make people
Speaker 1: suffer more than it's necessary at our border, and it
Speaker 1: would have been very easy to avoid this. So title
Speaker 1: forty two. Basically there are no consequences for cross but
Speaker 1: it's also very hard to get asylum. The the CBP
Speaker 1: officer can like spontaneously decide to give you your rights. Basically,
Speaker 1: if you're like, come on, bro, I'm gonna get killed
Speaker 1: if I go home, then that person can kind of
Speaker 1: decide to liow you to be processed for asylum, which
Speaker 1: is what a lot of the Ukrainian folks got. Surprise, surprise,
Speaker 1: and I feel like we should.
Speaker 2: We should also mention that under like multiple legal frameworks,
Speaker 2: you have the right to request asylum. This is this
Speaker 2: is something that supposedly is inviolable, like you have the
Speaker 2: right as a human being to request asylum in a country.
Speaker 1: Yes, and it doesn't matter where you've been before, and
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter how you got there, and you don't
Speaker 1: have to do it at a port of entry. It doesn't
Speaker 1: matter how you enter the country or where you entered
Speaker 1: the country. Yes, yeah, and yeah, under multiple different international frameworks,
Speaker 1: you have the right to do this. But the USA
Speaker 1: has been denying that to people for three and a
Speaker 1: bit years, right, three years, Yeah, and something like that.
Speaker 2: And you know, I mean I also could just want
Speaker 2: to briefly mention this because I feel like there's this
Speaker 2: way in which people people people will talk about like
Speaker 2: one border regime and then never connect the dots between
Speaker 2: this one and the other ones. But like, for example,
Speaker 2: like this is something that happens all over the world. Yes,
Speaker 2: I mean like part part of like part of this
Speaker 2: sort of like crisis is going on into Dan right
Speaker 2: now is about like a ship ton of money. But
Speaker 2: at the end this is actually happened in Libya too.
Speaker 2: Is the Italian government paying the Libyan and sort of
Speaker 2: Sudanese parabilitaries a ship ton of money to like keep
Speaker 2: refugees like basically like trap to something sit enslave them
Speaker 2: in camps to keep them from like getting to Italy
Speaker 2: to try to request asylum. So yeah, this is a yeah,
Speaker 2: like Fredecks does this, like this this is sort of
Speaker 2: like a global.
Speaker 1: Yeah, terrible regime. The border like industrial complex is every
Speaker 1: bit as bad, if not worse, than the defense industrial complex,
Speaker 1: so we're more familiar with Like, border policing is something
Speaker 1: that really came post nine to eleven, right with the
Speaker 1: creation of DHS in the United States, But we have
Speaker 1: exported that shit everywhere. And like our border patrol agents, right,
Speaker 1: CBP has an office in lots of embassies, or like
Speaker 1: they train Dominican border agents on the border with Haiti,
Speaker 1: for instance, and are trained by our CBP people. CBP
Speaker 1: agents would deployed in Iraq, Afghanistan. Yeah, this is a
Speaker 1: global thing. And like where I guess where I am now,
Speaker 1: where I've been for a while is the place where
Speaker 1: that all began, right, and where we continue to see
Speaker 1: CBB innovating new and exciting ways to fucking take some
Speaker 1: of the most desperate people in the world and make
Speaker 1: them suffer and spend a shit ton of money and
Speaker 1: preventing them from accessing their legal right to asylum or
Speaker 1: detaining them while they do it. And so what has
Speaker 1: happened as so Title forty two was supposed to end
Speaker 1: on the eleventh of May, right that was when the
Speaker 1: federal COVID emergency ended, so there was no reason for
Speaker 1: it to exist anymore. There wasn't reason for it to
Speaker 1: exist to begin with.
Speaker 2: But yeah, or any know, I like, don't don't, don't
Speaker 2: think too hard about the fact that like that was
Speaker 2: the last that was basically the last COVID policy that
Speaker 2: was still in place.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like there were not vaccine mandates for the people
Speaker 1: meeting the migrants at the fucking border.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, like this this was this was this was
Speaker 2: never about public health, like no, you know, I mean,
Speaker 2: and in so far as you can extricate sort of
Speaker 2: like the sort of imperialist states public health measures from
Speaker 2: social cleansing stuff, which has been happening for generations and generations.
Speaker 2: But yeah, like this was this was not about that,
Speaker 2: like this, Yeah, this was just an immigration ban.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it became a sort of albatross by an
Speaker 1: administration who didn't want to be hit on border stuff. Right.
Speaker 1: They didn't want to They didn't want to drop it
Speaker 1: before the midterms. They initially pan to drop it in
Speaker 1: December twenty twenty two, which is obviously right after the midterms.
Speaker 1: They didn't we here we are in May, there was
Speaker 1: a complicated legal challenge, which there always is, and it
Speaker 1: doesn't matter because here we are right and it's supposed
Speaker 1: to drop on the eleventh for me, so we're all thinking,
Speaker 1: right midnight on the tenth of May, we'll be out there.
Speaker 1: We'll see what goes down. They announced the day before
Speaker 1: that it is dropping on midnight on the eleventh, so
Speaker 1: they're going to ring every minute out of it. And
Speaker 1: so in the days before, a number of migrants have
Speaker 1: told me that they understood that they basically had to
Speaker 1: get across before the end of Title forty two because
Speaker 1: it was their understanding that if they crossed under Title eight,
Speaker 1: they would be ejected and they wouldn't be allowed to
Speaker 1: return for five years and they would face felony charges.
Speaker 1: So they did this. I don't quite know often these
Speaker 1: this information spreads about like WhatsApp in camps, right, or
Speaker 1: sort of like a game of telephone in camps. So
Speaker 1: I don't quite know where this information came from, but
Speaker 1: it closely parallels something that mayorcus is as Secretary of
Speaker 1: Home lanun Security said in the press conference where he
Speaker 1: mischaracterized internationally Greac law. And he's done this multiple times, right,
Speaker 1: he himself someone who is a migrant to this country
Speaker 1: who apparently family left Cuba when he was one year old,
Speaker 1: has just some of the most dog shit statements on
Speaker 1: the record, and I've depicted some of those in the
Speaker 1: scripted episode. Folks can look up my piece I wrote
Speaker 1: for NBC a couple of years ago about the Biden
Speaker 1: administration's policy towards Haiti if they they want to see
Speaker 1: more of the dog shit stuff that he and Biden
Speaker 1: have said. So in the days before the end of
Speaker 1: Title forty two, a lot of folks started to try
Speaker 1: to cross right because of this information that they had.
Speaker 1: They ended up at least where I am, which is
Speaker 1: in southern California, right the sort of extreme southwestern border
Speaker 1: in the United States, literally the end of the wall.
Speaker 1: Folks were crossing like around the end of the wall
Speaker 1: right at low tide and turning themselves into border patrol
Speaker 1: asking to make their case for their right Twist Island.
Speaker 1: And I think sometimes when we think about migrants, you know,
Speaker 1: we made me think about people from South America or
Speaker 1: Central America, every single continent. I don't maybe not any
Speaker 1: like Australasians, but like just in it. In a day
Speaker 1: at one camp, I spoke to someone from Angola. I
Speaker 1: spoke to someone from Congo. I spoke to someone from Sudan.
Speaker 1: I spoke to a Kurdish guy. I spoke to people
Speaker 1: certainly from all over South America, Russians, Tagik people, Jamaican people,
Speaker 1: and like. For instance, just to give you a sense
Speaker 1: of like how global it is, I spoke to a
Speaker 1: Jamaican lady who is caring for a sixteen or seventeen
Speaker 1: year old pair of Tagik siblings who didn't speak any
Speaker 1: of the relevant languages for communication with border patroller with
Speaker 1: other people in the camp, so she would use her
Speaker 1: phone to call their mother, who spoke some English, give
Speaker 1: information to the mother who would translated back to these
Speaker 1: two young children. And all of these people had presented
Speaker 1: like there were a lot of afgun people too. I
Speaker 1: probably could have mentioned that up top, But like, these
Speaker 1: are the people who we fucking abandoned once and now
Speaker 1: we're trapping, trapping them in between little fences. And it's
Speaker 1: hot in the day, right Like I slept out in
Speaker 1: the desert last night and it was above one hundred.
Speaker 1: It's not that hot in San Diego, but in he
Speaker 1: cumber where they're also holding people, it's absolutely getting into
Speaker 1: triple digits every day, and it's cold at night, and
Speaker 1: it's a really inhospitable environment for people. So folks were
Speaker 1: held there, you know, up to a week in some
Speaker 1: cases and are now I think being processed by a
Speaker 1: border patrol. There was a ruling by a Florida judge.
Speaker 1: I'm not exactly clear on when because I was down
Speaker 1: at the border and my phone didn't work very well,
Speaker 1: but at some point right before Title forty two drop
Speaker 1: that they could have been released on humanitarian parole, which
Speaker 1: means in theory, they have to be released with a
Speaker 1: court date, right with a court date to a their
Speaker 1: asylum hearing, which will slow down the process of releasing them,
Speaker 1: right And so I've heard of court dates. I've heard
Speaker 1: of folks being released already kind of with court dates
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty seven, which this whole thing has just
Speaker 1: been like a disaster in terms of the federal response,
Speaker 1: right like, and in just the cruelest possible way. It was.
Speaker 1: Everyone could see this coming, right that there will be
Speaker 1: more people trying to cross. There are sixteen thousand people
Speaker 1: give or take in Tijuana alone, right, So it's just
Speaker 1: across from where I live. Waiting to come to the
Speaker 1: United States because they've been denied that right for three years,
Speaker 1: because they need somewhere safe to go, and because they're
Speaker 1: not safe there. And the best estimate we got for
Speaker 1: how many they could process from border patrol was two
Speaker 1: hundred a day at the Tijuana porta ventry or Sannysedra
Speaker 1: port of entry. Really, but we don't know. There's no
Speaker 1: clear I don't know how many people they're processing every day, right,
Speaker 1: but these people who do come in now have to
Speaker 1: have a hearing date before they can be released when
Speaker 1: if they get through. So I spoke to a young
Speaker 1: man and his son who I spoken to at the border,
Speaker 1: and he had been released into the United States where
Speaker 1: a charity in San Diego will provide him with two
Speaker 1: nights what like two nights of accommodation, right, and then
Speaker 1: it can't quite work out what then, like he's out
Speaker 1: on his own, you know, Like I guess we'll find
Speaker 1: out tonight. But he has to find a sponsor. I
Speaker 1: don't quite understand how he was released without a sponsor,
Speaker 1: but it seems like the system is kind of bungling
Speaker 1: things up, and these folks have to fund their own
Speaker 1: flights to wherever it is a sponsor is right, So
Speaker 1: they have family or community, they're having to work out
Speaker 1: how to get to that family and community, so be
Speaker 1: they're the greyhound or a plane or a train. So
Speaker 1: it's all in all a giant classifuck with very human consequences.
Speaker 1: Like I can't stress enough how like every possible demographic
Speaker 1: has represented old people, little tiny children, right, Like I
Speaker 1: was talking to a little Afghan girl, not really talking
Speaker 1: to we don't share any languages, but I was more
Speaker 1: just like making funny faces for a while and sort
Speaker 1: of pointing at things, and like it just breaks my
Speaker 1: heart that there are little children who like especially you know,
Speaker 1: she's a little girl. She's in Afghanistan. We told her
Speaker 1: shit ton of lies about Afghan women to justify twenty
Speaker 1: years of killing people and of certain people making money
Speaker 1: from killing people, and like this was supposedly they're like
Speaker 1: canard was that this was for Afghan girls and women, right,
Speaker 1: And here's an Afghan girl sleeping in the fucking dirt,
Speaker 1: like twenty twenty minutes from where I live. And I
Speaker 1: can't even give this kid like hot meal because I
Speaker 1: can't fit it through the bars of the fence. Like
Speaker 1: Everything that goes across to these people has to go
Speaker 1: through the bars of the fence. Right, So someone worked
Speaker 1: out that pizza pizza could fit through because flat right,
Speaker 1: people have been getting pizza. But other than that, they're
Speaker 1: getting you know, bottles of water, granola bars, you know
Speaker 1: things that fit through a fence, beef jerky. And they've
Speaker 1: been there for days in some cases. And that's a
Speaker 1: camp that's relatively accessible, right, I can pull off the interstate,
Speaker 1: drive down a dirt road and be there in like
Speaker 1: I say, twenty minutes. The camps are less accessible. We've
Speaker 1: heard the conditions are much worse. A couple of Jamaican
Speaker 1: guys told me that there was another camp that we
Speaker 1: weren't we tried to get access to, weren't able to
Speaker 1: get access to, that was further west from where we were,
Speaker 1: where people were hungry they're getting. This is all just
Speaker 1: from that source. I have reached out a border patrol,
Speaker 1: but as of today, they haven't got back to me,
Speaker 1: saying that they were getting a bottle of water and
Speaker 1: a granola bar every day, and that like some of
Speaker 1: these other folks had taken it upon themselves to like
Speaker 1: walk over there to try and get them food, right,
Speaker 1: people who are already not in the great situation themselves,
Speaker 1: and they kept asking why couldn't we go there, why
Speaker 1: couldn't we help them? Like it was very admirable right
Speaker 1: to see folks who are in a pretty bad way
Speaker 1: be like, hey, these people need help more than we do. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a situation. I think we should take a break
Speaker 1: for advertising then sorry, I h hopefully not for a
Speaker 1: drone or some shit. All right, we're back and this
Speaker 1: is another happy and exciting episode in which I tell
Speaker 1: you things that will brighten your day. So something I
Speaker 1: wanted to talk about because I think it's important is
Speaker 1: the mutual aid response to this, and it's been really
Speaker 1: really impressive. You know, I live in a place where
Speaker 1: the Democrats are absolute dog shit. Well we'll do. It's America, right,
Speaker 1: but like just the particularly cringe like cast real liberalism
Speaker 1: of San Diego Democrats is like as always on display. Right.
Speaker 1: I saw one of them tweeting today about how CBA,
Speaker 1: DHS and CBP are doing a great job and keeping
Speaker 1: us safe, and like, my like makes me want to
Speaker 1: say things I shouldn't say on the podcast, I guess.
Speaker 1: But what that means is that like our government isn't
Speaker 1: going to do shit, right, Like it is entirely on
Speaker 1: us to look after each other. And people have done that.
Speaker 1: The groups like American Friends Service Committee, which is a
Speaker 1: great organization which has really good stuff on the border,
Speaker 1: have been down there every single day, right, Like there
Speaker 1: have been days when I've left at one am there's
Speaker 1: still someone there. They've been giving people water, giving people food.
Speaker 1: A huge need that people have is to charge their phones.
Speaker 1: And the way that migrants interact with CBP, at least
Speaker 1: in theory, the way you get an asylum appointment is
Speaker 1: booking it through an app called CBP one. We've talked
Speaker 1: about this on the podcast before, but CBP one is terrible.
Speaker 1: It is a terrible app that doesn't work. And that's
Speaker 1: for people who have phones and Wi Fi. Right, if
Speaker 1: you are stuck in between two fences and a dusty
Speaker 1: piece of ground, how the hell are you supposed to
Speaker 1: charge your phone? You don't have Wi Fi, right, you
Speaker 1: may not have a data plan that works in that area.
Speaker 1: So a huge unmet need was charging charging phone. So
Speaker 1: we were able to get some donations from the team
Speaker 1: and buy a big charger. Other folks turned up with
Speaker 1: charges even all the news see to include like like
Speaker 1: Fox National weren't there, which is a good thing, but
Speaker 1: like and we could talk about that actually as well.
Speaker 1: My goods will specifically ask which news network you're with,
Speaker 1: which I think is that? I think that's good. I
Speaker 1: think it's good. They tell Fox News to fuck off,
Speaker 1: because yeah, someone who participates in your dehumanization doesn't also
Speaker 1: deserve to make money from your trauma. And so every
Speaker 1: news network that was there, right, all the local folks
Speaker 1: from San Diego were just constantly shuttling back and forth
Speaker 1: to their vans, charging phones constantly, constantly, constantly, and it
Speaker 1: became a bit of a cluster because obviously there's literally
Speaker 1: just hundreds of people in this small area, dozens of
Speaker 1: hands reaching to a defense. Charge my phone, Can I
Speaker 1: have my phone back? Charge my phone? And in the
Speaker 1: English and Spanish and French and command Gy and Vietnamese
Speaker 1: and all these other languages, right, So it was very
Speaker 1: hard to organize that. So folks came down, Folks from
Speaker 1: San Diego from different sort of mutual aid groups came
Speaker 1: down and they organized a system. Right, They got Painter's tape,
Speaker 1: wh the names of the people on the back of
Speaker 1: the phone. We had this huge ash battery that we
Speaker 1: were able to get and that they were able to
Speaker 1: charge people's phones, get them their phones back to them.
Speaker 1: And that is a crucial thing, right that in that scenario,
Speaker 1: not only is it your only way to communicate with
Speaker 1: border patrol, it's your only way to communicate with your family. Right.
Speaker 1: Like one guy had lost his phone, and so I
Speaker 1: just bought him a burner phone or you know, one
Speaker 1: of those Walmart phones so that he could call his
Speaker 1: family because the family didn't know where he was. Right
Speaker 1: last they'd heard he was in Mexico or maybe even
Speaker 1: further south. So the phones are super important. Other mutual
Speaker 1: aid groups have been getting blankets, right. I saw an
Speaker 1: Afghan family turn up and had they had crayons for
Speaker 1: the Afghan kids who were there, right, and like coloring
Speaker 1: books and things for children to do, because it's probably
Speaker 1: boring being a kid, and it's probably being a kid
Speaker 1: where like every day men with guns and camouflage gear
Speaker 1: turn up and they speak a language you don't understand,
Speaker 1: and then you don't know what they say, and then
Speaker 1: you stay there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I want to kind of just there are
Speaker 2: lots of things that could get called camps that are
Speaker 2: like not camps, right, Like this is like this this
Speaker 2: is not a camp in the sense of like there
Speaker 2: are buildings that you go into or even like there
Speaker 2: are tents. It's just like oh yeah, no, yeah, I
Speaker 2: think that's.
Speaker 1: A very good I think that I haven't mentioned. Thank you. Yes,
Speaker 1: this is people lying on the dirt. Occasionally they have
Speaker 1: a mylass space blanket. Occasionally they have a top. If
Speaker 1: they want to make any form of shelter, they have
Speaker 1: to use the only thing they have to use is
Speaker 1: the wall itself, right, so up against the wall, people
Speaker 1: have made like a lean to kind of situation with
Speaker 1: the top, right, But no, this is by no means
Speaker 1: suitable shelter. Literally, people are lying on the dirt like.
Speaker 2: It's just a cage, like in a desert. Like it's yeah,
Speaker 2: it's it's, it's, it's, it's it's it's the kind of
Speaker 2: thing that like, like you, it's the kind of thing
Speaker 2: you would put it in a park list movement. People
Speaker 2: would be like, oh, no, one would ever do that.
Speaker 2: She's like no, no, Like this is just sort of yeah,
Speaker 2: this is what US border policy is.
Speaker 1: It's these like just these open air cages. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: you wouldn't. Like, you know, I go to the zoo
Speaker 1: in San Diego and the animals have much better conditions
Speaker 1: than that. There's no running water. There was one porterloo
Speaker 1: toilet for five hundred people. Yeah, it's terrible. It is awful.
Speaker 1: It's little. It's people wrapping their babies in my love
Speaker 1: blankets and trying to get them to sleep at night,
Speaker 1: you know. And that's the same. It's several places up
Speaker 1: and down the border, right, they're starting to clear them
Speaker 1: out now, and so sort of Tuesday, Monday. So some
Speaker 1: people got there a week ago, I think, and they've
Speaker 1: been stay there for a long time. And yeah, like
Speaker 1: it's at no point does there seem to have been
Speaker 1: any consideration for even giving people shade or shelter or like, yeah,
Speaker 1: the very basics, and like I should reinforce it. In
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen, when Trump blocked a large group of migrants
Speaker 1: from entering in the United States, the government of Mexico
Speaker 1: did considerably better than this. It was by no means
Speaker 1: a good situation for those children at all, but they
Speaker 1: did better than this, which it's a bitterly extremely low
Speaker 1: bart clear, but we have failed to clear it completely
Speaker 1: as a country and that's kind of to our eternal shame,
Speaker 1: I think.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think and everything worth emphasizing about this
Speaker 2: is that it hasn't always been like this. There's there's
Speaker 2: this sort of image that's been instructed that this is
Speaker 2: always what the US border has been. It's no, I mean,
Speaker 2: it's not like it's not like American border policy has
Speaker 2: always been like good. But I mean, like in my lifetime,
Speaker 2: it wasn't like this.
Speaker 1: In the mid nineties there were four thousand border patrol agents. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's increased by a factor of ten, and its budget
Speaker 1: probably by more than that.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And you know, the consequences of this is just
Speaker 2: basically in order to appease a bunch of just sort
Speaker 2: of like fucking like turbo racist baked dipshits like who
Speaker 2: live in the suburbs and you know, have never have
Speaker 2: like never experienced a single hardship in their entire lives,
Speaker 2: Like fucking untold numbers of people are put through just
Speaker 2: inhuman suffering and for fucking nothing, just just like for
Speaker 2: for nothing, for like just dog shit electoral pandering.
Speaker 1: Yeah, by people who have never seen what goes on
Speaker 1: at the border. They've never experienced where these people come from.
Speaker 1: And yeah, it's they're just numbers to people in DC, right,
Speaker 1: And I would really urge people to not read immigration coverage,
Speaker 1: or watch immigration coverage, or listen to immigration coverage. It
Speaker 1: isn't written by people at the border, because this isn't
Speaker 1: a fucking issue about numbers. Every single one of those
Speaker 1: numbers is a person who has people they love and
Speaker 1: things that they've done and choices that they've made that
Speaker 1: got them there, And every single one of them is
Speaker 1: someone who deserves compassion and empathy. And it's not just
Speaker 1: another you know, like a number in an Excel chart,
Speaker 1: which is how it's treated. And yeah, it hasn't always
Speaker 1: been this way. This is a very recent innovation and
Speaker 1: it's I mean we've talked about this before as well,
Speaker 1: but right, this is the proving ground for state surveillance,
Speaker 1: state violence, fascism, all these things.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: The reason that you got surveiled by a drone if
Speaker 1: you went to a George Floyd protest in Minneapolis is
Speaker 1: because the Border Patrol already had one. The reason that
Speaker 1: cops listened into your phone if you went to some
Speaker 1: protest in twenty twenty is because of Border patrol technology. Right,
Speaker 1: they have these sting rate hours all up and down
Speaker 1: the border, Robert and I have seen them in Mexico, sorry,
Speaker 1: in Texas even yeah, and.
Speaker 2: I mean you know, even even stuff like this, this
Speaker 2: is the sort of recent laws in places like Florida
Speaker 2: and Texas that are you know, let the states steel
Speaker 2: trans kids, right like that. That's also stuff that was
Speaker 2: sort of like, yeah, like the prototype of that came
Speaker 2: from the I mean like it came from the border.
Speaker 1: There's it's also.
Speaker 2: Something that came from sort of like like anti black
Speaker 2: bullshit that like is sort of deeply rooted in like
Speaker 2: American family planning bullshit. But like, yeah, like that that's
Speaker 2: also another one of the places where like that stuff.
Speaker 1: Was tested and with indigenous folks, Like we've ripped indigenous
Speaker 1: certain for their families for decades, but yeah, we it's
Speaker 1: a deeply baked white supremacist system that that always does
Speaker 1: its experimenting on marginized people are very often at the border.
Speaker 1: But yeah, if you if you're worried about the government
Speaker 1: intercepting your communications with an abortion care provider, that has
Speaker 1: happened because at some point they've been allowed to do
Speaker 1: stuff to migrant that was equally bad, if not worse
Speaker 1: and and like this will hurt you even if you
Speaker 1: are like Kathy the liberal in Minnesota, Like when we
Speaker 1: let the state have these powers, they don't just use
Speaker 1: them benevolently, and that they weren't using them benevolently in
Speaker 1: the first place, like they say, innocent people who've done
Speaker 1: nothing wrong.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, like that's that's the thing about state
Speaker 2: power is and any any power the state has, inevitably
Speaker 2: they will one day use it on you. And so
Speaker 2: you can't let them take shit like this because you
Speaker 2: know they will. They will turn your entire society into
Speaker 2: a sort of hell garrison state.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's just I don't know that the inhumanity
Speaker 1: that your taxes pay for, if you listening to this
Speaker 1: in America, is abhorrent. It's disgusting, and yeah, you should
Speaker 1: do everything you can to stop it. And like this
Speaker 1: probably is one of the instances where like you may
Speaker 1: be able to do something of some value by writing
Speaker 1: to a politician. It's certainly one of the instances where
Speaker 1: if you live near the border, you can show up
Speaker 1: and make a very meaningful difference to someone's whole experience. Right,
Speaker 1: Like myself and Joe were down there when this this
Speaker 1: guy had lost his phone and like, you know, it
Speaker 1: wasn't that expensive to buy this guy a phone. Other like,
Speaker 1: people will remember Mandy and people will remember Alex, who
Speaker 1: are two guests I've had on different San Diego episode
Speaker 1: that they've both been down there. I know Alex gave
Speaker 1: his EpiPen to someone who needed an epipenn, like we
Speaker 1: acutely needed an EpiPen. Like things like that, you can
Speaker 1: maybe save someone's life, maybe just make someone's day a
Speaker 1: little bit less shit. You know, maybe you can let
Speaker 1: a kid kick a football and you'd have to deflate
Speaker 1: the football to get through the defense early. But like
Speaker 1: you know, you can give a doll to a little
Speaker 1: kid so they can play with it, or something just
Speaker 1: something that will for a moment take them out of
Speaker 1: the utterly miserable place that we forced them into. And
Speaker 1: if folks want to support that, I know I'd posted
Speaker 1: Mandy's cash app and Venmo and I think some people
Speaker 1: very generously did contribute, which is great. If you're not
Speaker 1: at the border. Look at Border Kindness, which is a
Speaker 1: group out of San Diego who I know are doing
Speaker 1: aid runs to Hocumber. I think the Hocumber Hotel Hucumber
Speaker 1: For those not familiar, Jacu Mba, the Hookcumber Hotel was
Speaker 1: housing folks and providing it there a huge amount of
Speaker 1: water and shelter to people. This morning. People can look
Speaker 1: at the American French Service Committee that I wrote about,
Speaker 1: and I know that Joe and myself have shared some
Speaker 1: Amazon wish lists that people have and that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: But it's it's a massive task, but it's not one
Speaker 1: that's like insurmountable. The amount of people I've seen show
Speaker 1: up to include like and you know, I'm not a
Speaker 1: religious person, and I'm not a person who particularly cares
Speaker 1: for organized religion either, but it does make me happy
Speaker 1: when I see like old church ladies in high heels
Speaker 1: with perms coming out like and like giving ordered to children,
Speaker 1: charging phones and seeing I think it's like, certainly, I've
Speaker 1: lived on the border for fifteen years. It's been a
Speaker 1: fundamentally radicalizing experience for me. Like I think you're supposed
Speaker 1: to grow old and grow out of your anarchist politics
Speaker 1: or whatever, But I don't know how anyone could live
Speaker 1: here and think that like police state good. It's and
Speaker 1: I think anybody who can get down here should it's
Speaker 1: good for you too, like, and I always think about
Speaker 1: how Oscar Wild has this thing about like how seeing
Speaker 1: people living on the streets like not only under mind
Speaker 1: stare humanity, but also his humanity because like seeing someone
Speaker 1: else suffering should make us feel bad, and so like
Speaker 1: he benefits when he helps someone, and like, you know,
Speaker 1: we're all lifted up, right, Like I I guess one
Speaker 1: of the things I struggle with most of the journalist
Speaker 1: is that, like that like feeling of living in comfort
Speaker 1: while other people can't, especially when it's such like it's
Speaker 1: one thing if I if I go somewhere, right, if
Speaker 1: I'm in Myanmar, and I'm aware that things are difficult, scary,
Speaker 1: and then I get on a plane and it takes
Speaker 1: two days when I come back. But just from like
Speaker 1: a personal like mental health perspective, seeing a little child
Speaker 1: sleep in the dirt, right, or someone asked me for
Speaker 1: fucking bin bag so they can keep their baby out
Speaker 1: of the rain, like a trash back or a kid
Speaker 1: without shoes, you know, and then going home to my
Speaker 1: relatively comfortable existence is really hard. And I think we
Speaker 1: should all have to face up to that because it's
Speaker 1: what it's what our government is responsible for and supposedly
Speaker 1: we've got the best fucking option in twenty twenty, right,
Speaker 1: this is the this is this is the good choice
Speaker 1: of the two. But it doesn't make any meaningful difference
Speaker 1: whether you choose Trample Biden to these people, really, because
Speaker 1: they both treat them like shit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like the kids are still in cages. And yes,
Speaker 2: you know, until until until the entire system that enables
Speaker 2: the ship is destroyed and it can be right like,
Speaker 2: and this isn't even this isn't even on the level
Speaker 2: of sort of like you know of sort of anarchist politics,
Speaker 2: right like this none of this ship existed twenty years ago,
Speaker 2: right like this is this is like wow, okay, I
Speaker 2: guess it's twenty four three, twenty five years ago. None
Speaker 2: of this ship existed even within like the framework of
Speaker 2: the nation state, right like, this is not a thing
Speaker 2: that you that we have to do, which we simply do.
Speaker 1: Not have to You could share politics with Bill Clinton
Speaker 1: and still.
Speaker 2: Ronald Reagan was better on the fucking border than any
Speaker 2: than any president who has been alive in my fucking lifetime.
Speaker 1: Right yeah, fucking Reagan. Dwight Eisenhower would have had serious
Speaker 1: concerns about the industrial complex we're building at the border.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like, this is not like this, this, this isn't
Speaker 2: this isn't like a particularly radical political thing, right, It's
Speaker 2: just that we've we've become sort of a nerd to
Speaker 2: this death state that's been built up around us, and
Speaker 2: you know, doesn't it doesn't keep anyone safe. It just
Speaker 2: fucking inflicts untold human misery. So fucking Greg Abbott can
Speaker 2: win an election.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and it costs us a lot of money, right, Like,
Speaker 1: your universal healthcare is an unman drone flying over some
Speaker 1: children run across a desert in Arizona right now, Your
Speaker 1: free university education is a border patrol smart camera in
Speaker 1: the desert that goes off every time a fucking deer
Speaker 1: walks past or it rains, like it. This stuff is expensive,
Speaker 1: and like, if you're in the US, you are paying
Speaker 1: for it. Yeah. I think the most sort of soft
Speaker 1: of liberals can see that this is right. And they
Speaker 1: did see that this shit was wrong in the Trump administration,
Speaker 1: and they do see this is wrong when they come right,
Speaker 1: Like I've some of the best mutual aid groups I've
Speaker 1: worked with are like middle aged folks from churches who
Speaker 1: have time and the means to help and just didn't
Speaker 1: realize that. It was like no one was coming and
Speaker 1: we had to do it ourselves. And when they did that,
Speaker 1: they were very effective. And so I would encourage folks
Speaker 1: who are in the border communities near the border, and
Speaker 1: near the border meets a different thing if your border
Speaker 1: patrol because their jurisdiction applies one hundred miles from the border.
Speaker 1: That's the other thing, right, the border will come to you. Yeah, Statistically,
Speaker 1: odds are.
Speaker 2: That you are the border already has come to you.
Speaker 1: Yes, that's yeah. Yeah. Two thirds of people in the
Speaker 1: United States are in the border patrol enforcement zone.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm in it, and I'm in like fucking Chicago,
Speaker 2: right well yeah, yeah, I think yes.
Speaker 1: People who would not think of themselves as border as
Speaker 1: well as the border affects you. If you go to
Speaker 1: other communities in your city, you might realize border patroller
Speaker 1: around there. Ice are around there. So yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: pretty bleak. We're working on some scripted stuff, but I
Speaker 1: want to get into a bit of the history of
Speaker 1: border patrol and rereading Border Patrol Nation, which is a
Speaker 1: great book if people haven't read it, And I want
Speaker 1: the other thing I should say about border reporting is
Speaker 1: if people don't center migrants and they're reporting about migration,
Speaker 1: then you shouldn't be reading that reporting. Like sometimes it
Speaker 1: can be hard. One other thing I guess I do
Speaker 1: want to say is you're seeing my photos, and you'll
Speaker 1: see in Joe's photos, you're not going to see many faces.
Speaker 1: And that's because people have legitimate fears for their wellbeing.
Speaker 1: That's why they are fucking here. Yeah, and not obtaining
Speaker 1: consent before taking photographs is making a terrible situation worse.
Speaker 1: And like that's something that we can work on as
Speaker 1: the media, right, Like something I will continue to call
Speaker 1: out when I see it. But if you don't speak
Speaker 1: the language, find someone who does that, don't take the
Speaker 1: goddamn photo. You'll see some faces the mind. Like I
Speaker 1: like to pass my camera through the fence and give
Speaker 1: it to like teenage kids so they can run around
Speaker 1: and take photos and have fun. And so when they
Speaker 1: take like goofy selfies, I'll post those. They get concerned
Speaker 1: from them or their parents, and their parents are around,
Speaker 1: and that's fine. But yeah, when you're looking at border coverage,
Speaker 1: always understand that the people and if we don't tend
Speaker 1: to those people and their stories, then we're doing it wrong.
Speaker 2: If you can physically get to these places, like you should,
Speaker 2: like the the the this is this is one of
Speaker 2: the like the situations where like the amount of good
Speaker 2: that like a very small number of people could do
Speaker 2: is enormous and the cost is not that high.
Speaker 1: No, but for instance, I saw some of my friends
Speaker 1: had just gone to Costco, right and just loaded up
Speaker 1: one of those big Costco trolleys, and like that. That
Speaker 1: makes a meaningful difference to hundreds of people, And so
Speaker 1: you should. There will probably be mutual aid networks on
Speaker 1: the ground at almost every border area by now. Reach
Speaker 1: out to them, see if they need your money. If
Speaker 1: you can get there and help organize, that's better. If
Speaker 1: you have right, if you have language skills yours. There
Speaker 1: are people I met a guy who spoke Commanji, like
Speaker 1: the Kurdish dialect of North and East Syria, right, people
Speaker 1: who speak a Vietnamese almost every language you can conceive of. Right,
Speaker 1: Those people really struggle to get information and they just
Speaker 1: can't talk to anyone because there's no one else to
Speaker 1: talk to and their phone, you know, the phone charges
Speaker 1: is a precious commodity and it's cost a lot of
Speaker 1: money to dial into Nashley, so those people could just
Speaker 1: be lonely. So if you have those language skills, go.
Speaker 1: Someone broke their finger in San die you are getting
Speaker 1: cushed up against the fence. You know there was a
Speaker 1: medic there to help them. If there hadn't been, that
Speaker 1: could have been worse for them. And sometimes the ambulance
Speaker 1: can come in and take people out. But there are valuable,
Speaker 1: meaningful things that you could do if you have the time,
Speaker 1: if not, if you have the money, there are really
Speaker 1: important places to donate. And those are just a couple
Speaker 1: of them. Will highlight a couple more as we go forward. Oh,
Speaker 1: one more thing I did want to plug is miles
Speaker 1: for migrants, where if you have if you don't have money,
Speaker 1: but you do have airline miles. Like I was speaking
Speaker 1: to this guy today who got across. He has two
Speaker 1: days and he has to get himself in New York
Speaker 1: where he has family. I don't have the means to
Speaker 1: buy four airline tickets or I would, but if you
Speaker 1: have air miles and you want to donate them, you can.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And then this is the thing, like you know,
Speaker 2: like I have family who for example, like work at
Speaker 2: Hong Kong, right, and they have like you know, and
Speaker 2: then they're they're like there are people like that who
Speaker 2: could are like, you know, not radicals, but are sort
Speaker 2: of you know, like.
Speaker 1: You like like there are people.
Speaker 2: In this world who have a shit ton of miles
Speaker 2: like built up because you know, for like work or
Speaker 2: some shit, right that's just sitting there, and that that's
Speaker 2: something that you know, like you can you can like
Speaker 2: like you.
Speaker 1: You may not have it. You might know people who do. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you might know someone who does a weird credit card
Speaker 1: flipping thing, you know, where they like get air miles
Speaker 1: in and make it that whole lick personality to to
Speaker 1: get miles. But like whatever, if those people can help,
Speaker 1: you don't need to turn them into like Macnavists overnight.
Speaker 1: Like nobody wants to see a little baby sleep in
Speaker 1: the dirt, and anybody who could be there physically would
Speaker 1: be appalled by it. And I think if you can
Speaker 1: convey to those folks that now at the time when
Speaker 1: something that costs them nothing materially, right, Like I know
Speaker 1: tons of people have more miles that they can use
Speaker 1: because they fly at the time for work. You don't
Speaker 1: want to fly when you're done flying, you want to
Speaker 1: stay at home. So that's another way that people can help.
Speaker 1: And yeah, just I guess it's it's a crisis that
Speaker 1: will continue unabated because the cruelty is the point, and
Speaker 1: it's for once. Like you know, we can't stop all
Speaker 1: the climate change and all this bad shit, but this
Speaker 1: is something that it is within our power to a bet.
Speaker 1: We can't. We can't make it go away yet. But
Speaker 1: like we spoke to the people who are doing water
Speaker 1: drops on the border, there are meaningful things every single
Speaker 1: one of us can do to help.
Speaker 2: Yeah, go into the world. Do not let the violence
Speaker 2: done in our name be who we are.
Speaker 1: Yeah, sure, people get better than this. I guess it
Speaker 1: could happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
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Speaker 1: You listen to podcasts.
Speaker 2: You can find sources for It Could Happen here, updated
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Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.