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Speaker 1: Unfortunately, some of these recordings haven't got the best sound quality.

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Speaker 1: We were walking around the Butterfly Center. We tried our

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Speaker 1: best to block the wind, but some of it's pretty

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Speaker 1: blown out, and we still wanted you to hear them,

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Speaker 1: so we've included them, but apologies that the sound quality

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Speaker 1: isn't what it could be.

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Speaker 2: There was a time when you could have been forgiven

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Speaker 2: for believing that American fascism had been thoroughly beaten back, marginalized,

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Speaker 2: and damaged beyond the capacity for reconstitution. Only the very

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Speaker 2: foolish and dishonest believe that today. Every time the far

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Speaker 2: right has taken a serious beating in this country, they've

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Speaker 2: had a place to retreat, to a sanctuary, to reorganize, recoup,

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Speaker 2: and surge out again towards the halls of power. That

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Speaker 2: sanctuary is the US Mexico border. There's a song I

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Speaker 2: quite admire by the drive by Truckers named after our

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Speaker 2: young Mexican man, Ramon Casiano. In nineteen thirty one, after

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Speaker 2: the kind of stupid altercation young men have been having

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Speaker 2: since time in memorial, Ramon was murdered by another kid

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Speaker 2: named Harlan Carter. Harlan was convicted of murder and then

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Speaker 2: led off by another judge due to a procedural issue

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Speaker 2: with his case. It hardly needs to be said that

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Speaker 2: Harlan was white. He went on to join the Border

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Speaker 2: Patrol during a period when it was seen as a

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Speaker 2: model of good racial policy by the Nazi government in Germany.

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Speaker 2: Carter rose to lead the Border Patrol, helped to militarize it,

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Speaker 2: and then went on to run the NRA and turn

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Speaker 2: it from a simple gun advocacy organization to the far

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Speaker 2: right culture war institution. It became everything we're dealing with

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Speaker 2: today from the far right started at the border, and

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Speaker 2: to quote from that song, that's still where it is today.

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Speaker 2: But the border is more than just a battle ground

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Speaker 2: in America's endless culture war, and it is more than

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Speaker 2: just the system of violence men like Carter helped make

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Speaker 2: it into the United States's border with Mexico stretches from

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Speaker 2: the Atlantic to the Pacific, through the homelands of many

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Speaker 2: indigenous peoples, and across the migratory trails of numerous species,

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Speaker 2: and to many many people today, it's still just home.

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Speaker 2: Marianna Jones right, runs a butterfly sanctuary that has somewhat

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Speaker 2: improbably provoked the direct ire of a US president and

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Speaker 2: become the center of a series of conspiracy theories. She

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Speaker 2: also grew up along the border in the Rio Grande Valley.

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Speaker 2: In high school, she'd take trips to Discotheca's and bars

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Speaker 2: in Reinosa, just across the border from McAllen, Texas. Today,

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Speaker 2: she runs the National Butterfly Sanctuary just outside of the

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Speaker 2: nondescript town which seems to have less strip malls, big

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Speaker 2: box stores, and family run Mexican food joints. You can

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Speaker 2: go there and see wildflowers, walk in the woods, and

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Speaker 2: if you're lucky like we were, you might even find

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Speaker 2: a snake in some monarch butterflies making their way across

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Speaker 2: the continent without regard for borders or immigration checks.

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Speaker 3: So you know, growing up here, we all let very

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Speaker 3: fluid lines. And I use that word to I mean

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Speaker 3: in the nineteen seventies during the mass crisis, you know,

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Speaker 3: when the order and we would literally drive to Mexico,

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Speaker 3: yes up for cars and then come back.

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Speaker 4: We would be res for lunch and.

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Speaker 3: Cocktails and come back for class of class and come

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Speaker 3: back with football.

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Speaker 5: Names on the.

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Speaker 6: Fronts sat points.

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Speaker 3: We were all in Mexico, partying our hats, they had

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Speaker 3: the presiscos and clothes, and our parents were over there too,

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Speaker 3: having dinner.

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Speaker 4: And I know people for citizens who live in Mexico

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Speaker 4: because it's more affordable, because they have reliable electricity.

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Speaker 7: I mean, I'm not.

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Speaker 1: Y'all are laughing, But the border for most people living there,

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Speaker 1: sometimes called is an inconvenience. You have to drive to

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Speaker 1: a certain crossing. Sometimes your truck gets checked, sometimes the

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Speaker 1: port of entries closed and you're late for work. But

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Speaker 1: in the public eye, actually during the after the twenty

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Speaker 1: sixteen presidential campaign, it looms like a scene from Lord

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Speaker 1: of the Rings, and since then it's also started to

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Speaker 1: look like one.

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Speaker 4: So growing up here, I knew there was illegal immigration.

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Speaker 3: It's impossible not to know. I mean nearly everyone knows

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Speaker 3: someone who came across. They here, visit family on a

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Speaker 3: short term, visited home, or they crossed the river somewhere.

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Speaker 4: But you'll see here, our river is quiet and deep

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Speaker 4: and dangerous.

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Speaker 3: It's deadly. When I was growing up here and I'm

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Speaker 3: fifty two, I.

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Speaker 6: Have friends who lived in Mexico.

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Speaker 4: Their parents had homes and businesses here and there. Some

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Speaker 4: of them read rode the bus across the bridge every

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Speaker 4: day for school in the morning.

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Speaker 3: I mean it was nothing. We never thought of anyone's spies.

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Speaker 4: You know, in terms of citizenship or.

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Speaker 6: Mething else. And also.

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Speaker 3: Sort of liminals.

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Speaker 4: Where are up to lat Zoo?

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Speaker 6: I have to those two passports.

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Speaker 4: To navigate in both countries if we have citizens or

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Speaker 4: they have nothing, and there seems to be hardly any

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Speaker 4: in between.

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Speaker 1: In mainstream media, the borders presented as dangerous, as are

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Speaker 1: the people crossing it. But it's hard to feel that

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Speaker 1: you're in danger when you're watching the sunset over the

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Speaker 1: Rio Grande and listening to the owls who begin their

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Speaker 1: work after dusk in the ever diminishing wild places along

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Speaker 1: the river's north bank.

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Speaker 4: Up until a couple of months.

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Speaker 3: Ago, we were coming out here four or five times

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Speaker 3: a week, sometimes twice a day on our boat and

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Speaker 3: bringing a lot of journalists out.

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Speaker 4: It almost never wound up in the reportage because they

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Speaker 4: never saw.

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Speaker 7: You know.

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Speaker 3: They were like, yes, take us out on the river.

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Speaker 4: We want to see the illegals crossing were life.

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Speaker 3: We're like, dude, the only way to do that is

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Speaker 3: to hook up with the.

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Speaker 4: Campaign officials working with the world.

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Speaker 1: Some of the most beautiful and fragile landscapes in the

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Speaker 1: country along the southern border. Part of Marianna's work is

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Speaker 1: introducing kids to them. I've been lucky enough to spend

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Speaker 1: time in many of them. Camping in East County San Diego,

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Speaker 1: where the PCT begins, is one of my favorite things

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Speaker 1: to do. Riding my bike in southern Arizona is an adventure.

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Speaker 1: I take it every opportunity, and I'm not the only one.

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Speaker 1: From jaguars to butterflies, many species of wildlife live along

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Speaker 1: the border and pass over it on a daily basis.

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Speaker 1: The border might look serious on a map, but for

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Speaker 1: much of the last century, you'd have struggle to point

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Speaker 1: to it on the ground, nless you had a GPS

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Speaker 1: device and far too much free time on your hands.

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Speaker 3: These kids that will be here this week as part

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Speaker 3: of their academic study, they thought the Rio Rand Valley

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Speaker 3: was a desert. They didn't know that you know that

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Speaker 3: we had eleven biologically distinct ecosystems in a four county

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Speaker 3: region that would fit inside San Diego County, California. That

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Speaker 3: you know that we have the river that's not a

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Speaker 3: trickle when everybody flushes their toilets, you know, like it

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Speaker 3: can be an ol Passo. I mean, they had no

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Speaker 3: idea that we're the edge of subtropical you know, America,

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Speaker 3: the Neotropics and America.

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Speaker 1: Since nine eleven, though, the border has become a physical thing,

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Speaker 1: a landscape thriving with life that's somehow found a way

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Speaker 1: to exist in places that can kill you with heat

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Speaker 1: in the day and cold the night, and sometimes both

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Speaker 1: in twenty four hours, has been torn apart to provide

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Speaker 1: people who have never been there with a chance to

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Speaker 1: grandstand about security, and various government contractors a chance to

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Speaker 1: line their pockets. Ted Cruz recently posed in a boat,

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Speaker 1: wearing body armor and standing next to a machine gun,

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Speaker 1: just feet away from where we watched recreational boaters sail

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Speaker 1: lazily along the river. As we walked from the center

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Speaker 1: down to the river, we spotted some trash on the

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Speaker 1: grill and went to pick it up. Turned out to

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Speaker 1: be a battery, the kind used in a tactical flashlight

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Speaker 1: or weapon light. Marianna doesn't use those, and it wasn't

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Speaker 1: there last time she walked down a trail. It's not

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Speaker 1: just the wall that's ruining this landscape, she says, it's

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Speaker 1: a constant presence of militarized border patrol. We see the

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Speaker 1: area as a conflict zone, not a conservation one.

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Speaker 3: As I was saying, they're the ones who leave the trash,

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Speaker 3: never use for other stuff as well.

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Speaker 2: But they're very commonly used on the kind of lights.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, a little lily, there's so expensive.

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Speaker 2: Marianna knows this only too well. Her butterfly center backs

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Speaker 2: up to the Rio Grande. It's a beautiful, peaceful place,

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Speaker 2: but since twenty seventeen it has been under threat from

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Speaker 2: the relentless militarization of the Southern Border. The butterflies, she says,

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Speaker 2: are important for a number of reasons.

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Speaker 3: So butterflies are critical pollinators to all of the green stuff,

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Speaker 3: most of which we don't eat. People know bees pollinate

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Speaker 3: about one third of our food, and so they care

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Speaker 3: about bees now because everyone would hate to lose one

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Speaker 3: third of our food. But butterflies pollinate all of the grasses,

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Speaker 3: wild flowers, shrubs, and trees on the planet. The ones

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Speaker 3: that reduce erosion by holding the ground in place against

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Speaker 3: wind and against rain and floods. The plants that reduce

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Speaker 3: the radiant heat that would come off of the earth

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Speaker 3: if we didn't have the green stuff. They filter the

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Speaker 3: water going into the water table, and they produce oxygen

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Speaker 3: for us. They filter our air. That's why butterflies matter,

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Speaker 3: and that's why everybody should care about them and do

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Speaker 3: what they can in their communities with their native plants

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Speaker 3: to provide habitat for butterflies.

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Speaker 2: It's not just the butterflies who are in danger either.

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Speaker 4: It's disgusting, but it is I hate to say entirely predictable, but.

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Speaker 3: It's fairly predictable in an in stage capitalist society. We're

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Speaker 3: removing from military doesn't cooks to a border security one

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Speaker 3: where border walls and security are the United States how one.

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Speaker 4: Exploit and had Most people don't even know about fourtech.

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Speaker 3: Way. I have been shot at my wopeck many times

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Speaker 3: and people don't realize here, what's the CBP drugs that

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Speaker 3: were flying overhead in Minneapolis matter.

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Speaker 2: To understand exactly what is at stake, both for the

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Speaker 2: border and the butterflies, it's important to understand exactly what

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Speaker 2: the border wall looks like on the ground. The border

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Speaker 2: wall ecosystem is not just a wall. It's a towering

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Speaker 2: thirty foot steel structure topped with anti climb plates along

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Speaker 2: the barrier, which is often hundreds of yards from the

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Speaker 2: actual border. There's a road wide enough for two of

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Speaker 2: the expensive pickup trucks the CBP drives to pass each

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Speaker 2: other in remote areas. A road to allow construction vehicles

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Speaker 2: to get to the wall also had to be built

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Speaker 2: for landscapes that had been untouched for centuries. It's been catastrophic.

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Speaker 2: That's why the National Butterfly Sanctuary fought the border wall.

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Speaker 2: In the summer of twenty seventeen, they found contractors on

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Speaker 2: their land using heavy equipment to destroy the plants they

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Speaker 2: had worked so hard to protect.

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Speaker 3: After we found the contractors here illegally clearing our land

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Speaker 3: with no right of entry, no eminent domain exercise, no

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Speaker 3: waiver of NIPA, and other laws we know, we filed

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Speaker 3: suit against the federal government. That brought some publicity and

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Speaker 3: with it a lot of people who said, you know

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Speaker 3: that we if we opposed border wall, we must be

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Speaker 3: for illegal immigration, as though the issue is that simple.

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Speaker 2: The wall, in addition to being a colossal expense, much

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Speaker 2: of which is funneled to Zeckelmann Industries, a Canadian owned

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Speaker 2: steel company, which was fined nine hundred and seventy five

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Speaker 2: thousand dollars by the FEC for legal donations to the

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Speaker 2: Trump campaign in twenty twenty. Is pretty useless.

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Speaker 3: That the border wall is built miles inside the United States,

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Speaker 3: that Border Patrol picks up ladders every day to share

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Speaker 3: photos of ramps built so vehicles could literally drive over

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Speaker 3: border wall like you know the old range rover commercials,

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Speaker 3: and also other breaches. We also got a chance to

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Speaker 3: explain to them that up until President Trump, the Border

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Speaker 3: Patrol Union itself had opposed border wall. They had called

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Speaker 3: it a waste of moneies, ineffective, and really irrelevant to

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Speaker 3: their mission of preventing illegal entry to the United States.

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Speaker 2: Walking along the border, we found half a dozen ladders

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Speaker 2: constructed from old wooden pallets. Alongside them were IDs, clothing,

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Speaker 2: and detritus that migrants had either abandoned on their journey

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Speaker 2: north or had thrown out for them by Border Patrol

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Speaker 2: agents who'd apprehended them. Either way, these discarded things told

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Speaker 2: a sad story of young people, sometimes parents and sometimes

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Speaker 2: children with siblings, crossing a river and then a wall

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Speaker 2: to try to get a chance at a better life.

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Speaker 2: What the border wall does do very effectively is funnel

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Speaker 2: people through the giant gaps in it, from Texas to California.

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Speaker 2: The Trump administration has rushed to build as much wall

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Speaker 2: as it could in order to live up to the

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Speaker 2: wildly exaggerated claims that Trump made in his twenty twenty

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Speaker 2: election debates.

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Speaker 3: We now have as strong a border as we've ever had.

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Speaker 3: Were over four hundred miles of brand new wall.

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Speaker 2: Of that over four hundred miles, three hundred and fifty

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Speaker 2: odd were repairs to existing barriers or secure fences as

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Speaker 2: they are technically termed, But the rest was built in

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Speaker 2: places that were easiest to access. In southern California, mountains

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Speaker 2: and valleys are simply skipped. The wall stretches across the

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Speaker 2: flat lands in between. People are forced to cross in

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Speaker 2: these gaps and the hardest places, and as a result,

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Speaker 2: many more of them die. The Butterfly Center isn't one

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Speaker 2: of the hard places, but Marianna has found dozens of

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Speaker 2: identity documents, some of them in evidence bags labeled Department

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Speaker 2: of Homeland Security. She says that people aren't dumping them,

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Speaker 2: they are being stripped of their documents when they are detained.

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Speaker 4: I know that the other side, as with videos of

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Speaker 4: Pear and plane at the end of.

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Speaker 6: January, lad Lane and the clart health.

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Speaker 4: The rance of their sears An Act.

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Speaker 6: The migrants keep phons, pith hate the family to say

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Speaker 6: you have to send more money. You know, operated scar

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Speaker 6: the phone is the.

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Speaker 8: Bank lifeline, but not only uh you know needs the

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Speaker 8: immigrant the cartel and that's the only way that you paid.

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Speaker 9: And the fact that border patrol is making people undocumented

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Speaker 9: is something folks in the.

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Speaker 4: United States don't understand.

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Speaker 7: They don't see that we find herbage bags full of

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Speaker 7: medical records, birth certificates, marriage licenses, ideas and other things

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Speaker 7: from monuments that they have brought your your identities and

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Speaker 7: their illness or the violence that they they've suffered in

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Speaker 7: everything to make their asylum cases.

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Speaker 3: But water patrol trashes all of that.

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Speaker 2: Throughout the four years of the Trump presidency, the Butterfly

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Speaker 2: Center fought to protect the ecosystem they had created and

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Speaker 2: to keep the pristine riverbank for barn owls, not border

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Speaker 2: patrol trucks. Marianna isn't alone. The South Texas Birding Preserve

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Speaker 2: was forced to back out of a deal with the

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Speaker 2: FEDS after a Coennity outcry at the thought of the

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Speaker 2: loss of one of the very few wild places in

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Speaker 2: the area. While they have so far been able to

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Speaker 2: stop the construction of portions of the border wall, they

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Speaker 2: have not been able to stop the multiple armed agencies

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Speaker 2: that police the border and often each other, from encroaching

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Speaker 2: on the center's land.

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Speaker 1: County. In Texas, there are several overlapping missions to protect

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Speaker 1: the border. Under Operation loan Stock, Texas National Guard soldiers

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Speaker 1: are deployed to protect the border and prevent drug smuggling

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Speaker 1: and chasing, at least according to the Office of Governor

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Speaker 1: Greg Abbott. Sadly, they're not able to protect themselves from

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Speaker 1: each other. So far, four soldiers have died by suicide,

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Speaker 1: two in accidental shootings. Texaslow allows National Guard soldiers to

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Speaker 1: bring their own personal weapons, which were responsible for both deaths,

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Speaker 1: and one drowned trying to save migrants from the river.

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Speaker 1: Because the troops are deployed under state orders, not federal ones,

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Speaker 1: they receive fewer benefits and their families are not compensated

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Speaker 1: as well in the event that they die. In addition

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Speaker 1: to the ten thousand Texas troops, there are also four

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Speaker 1: thousand National Guard soldiers on federal orders along the Border.

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Speaker 1: Task Force Phoenix, as it's called, is a combination of

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Speaker 1: thirty four different Guard units stitch together with very little

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Speaker 1: cohesion or prior experience working together, and has been blighted

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Speaker 1: by low morale. Troops in disdeployment are three times more

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Speaker 1: likely to have a car accident than seize illegal drugs,

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Speaker 1: and a battalion deployed to McAllen had three soldiers die

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Speaker 1: the same number as the rest of the National Guard

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Speaker 1: combined that year. Duiues are so common the breathalyzers are

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Speaker 1: being issued to units. The crisis isn't at the border.

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Speaker 1: The crisis is the border. It's not only United States

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Speaker 1: soldiers dying along the southern border, it's also migrants. According

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Speaker 1: to the Missing Migrants Project, and state is admittedly better

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Speaker 1: viewed than it is heard, migrants coming from Central or

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Speaker 1: South America are far more likely to die at the

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Speaker 1: USA's southern border than they are at any other point

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Speaker 1: on the way there. One two hundred and forty eight

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Speaker 1: people died or went missing last year, making the trek

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Speaker 1: north five hundred and ninety five of them at the border.

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Speaker 1: Given that the border, both under Republicans and Democrats, is

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Speaker 1: a weapon that's increasingly effective at killing people and increasingly

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Speaker 1: present and political debate. It's surprising how many people have

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Speaker 1: never been there. The border, at least the bits of

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Speaker 1: it without the wall, doesn't feel violent. One night, while

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Speaker 1: we were in Texas, we sat the bank of the

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Speaker 1: Rio Grande and looked across the river as the sunset.

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Speaker 1: Behind us was a wall funded by private donations to

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Speaker 1: a group called We Build the Wall. It's built so

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Speaker 1: close to the river that the weight from the border

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Speaker 1: patrol boats will see it undermined and washed away in

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Speaker 1: less than five years. Across from us, little cabanas and

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Speaker 1: bars studied the shoreline. It looked to dilic or were

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Speaker 1: it not for the thousands of armed people who make

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Speaker 1: it their job to stop it, it would have been

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Speaker 1: quite nice to swim across for a drink. Swimming over

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Speaker 1: was out of the question, But the peaceful border we

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Speaker 1: encountered was not the one you'd recognize if you've seen

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Speaker 1: Fox News over the past four years. For much of

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Speaker 1: Middle America, the border is constructed as a lawless land

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Speaker 1: somehow also as a desert, despite the fact that twelve

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Speaker 1: hundred miles of it are marked that river and a

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Speaker 1: place where cartel violence goes unchecked. Human trafficking runs rampant.

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Speaker 1: The young children are snatched away from their families and

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Speaker 1: sold into sex slavery. Of course, young children are snatched

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Speaker 1: away from their family at the border, but that's your

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Speaker 1: taxpayer money at work, not the Zetas or Cartella Lisk

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00:21:05,000 --> 00:21:09,160
Speaker 1: gone away with dinner Athion. Sadly, the Butterfly Center's opposition

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Speaker 1: to the wall combined with this political theater at the

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Speaker 1: border to place a group of people who just wanted

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Speaker 1: to be left alone, to be nice to butterflies, at

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Speaker 1: the center of a culture war it wanted nothing to

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Speaker 1: do with. At some point, the Trump White House became

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Speaker 1: aware that one hundred acres of Texas grathlands were holding

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Speaker 1: out against all the legal and questionably legal efforts a

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Speaker 1: Department of Homeland Security and the Trump administration to destroy

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Speaker 1: the little haven along the real ground.

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Speaker 3: We know that Jared Kushner said in May of twenty

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Speaker 3: nineteen in the Oval Office, we solved the butterfly thing.

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Speaker 3: And Steve Bannon had been the former former special adviser

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Speaker 3: to President Trump, and then he is the one who

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Speaker 3: started this syop. And they took aim at us, and

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Speaker 3: instead of us being against the wall and possibly for

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Speaker 3: open borders, they declared that we were a cartel front

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Speaker 3: and actively engaged in trafficking humans and drugs, that we

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Speaker 3: were not about conservation at all, but we were selling

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Speaker 3: women and children into sex slavery.

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Speaker 1: Marianna's Twitter bio at a time of writing reads do

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Speaker 1: no harm, take no shit in that approach she took

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Speaker 1: as the MAGA community began to sling an increasing amount

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Speaker 1: of shit at her. The North American Butterfly Association filed

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Speaker 1: suit against Brian Colfage slash we Build the Wall, Tommy

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Speaker 1: Fletcher slash Fisher Sand Gravel slash TRG Construction, A Lance

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Speaker 1: New House slash new House, and Sons. On December third,

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Speaker 1: twenty nineteen, calf Age, a US Air Force veteran, attempted

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Speaker 1: to crowdfund the war after Congress wouldn't fund it to

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Speaker 1: the ridiculous extent that Trump desired. He raised over twenty

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Speaker 1: five million. In August of twenty twenty, Colfage was indicted,

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Speaker 1: along with Steve Bannon two other co defendants, on federal

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Speaker 1: charges of defrauding one hundreds of thousandth of Rebuild the

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Speaker 1: War donors. Federal prosecutors said that despite repeatedly assuring donors

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Speaker 1: that Colfage would not be paid. The defendants engaged in

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Speaker 1: a scheme to divert three hundred and fifty thousand dollars

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Speaker 1: to Colfage, which he used to fund his lavish lifestyle.

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Speaker 1: Colfage was separately indicted in May of twenty twenty one

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Speaker 1: on federal charges related to his falsification of tax returns.

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Speaker 1: In April of twenty twenty two, Calthage entered a guilty plea,

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Speaker 1: having accounted for about ten million in spending a little

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Speaker 1: under five miles of actual war. Colfage's attempts to build

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Speaker 1: the war in Texas were hampered by the National Butterfly

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Speaker 1: Center lawyers, who are argued that it was a flood

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Speaker 1: risk because it is, and by various tax issues at

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00:24:05,119 --> 00:24:08,920
Speaker 1: colf Edge's team seemed entirely unaware of. While they hoped

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Speaker 1: to transfer the war they built, which they called the

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Speaker 1: Lamborghini of Walls, to federal ownership, CBP wanted nothing to

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Speaker 1: do with it, as they were building their own wall

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Speaker 1: outside of the floodplane. After ignoring a twenty nineteen ruling,

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Speaker 1: Colfage eventually built about three miles of wall in Texas

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Speaker 1: and then declared the project complete November of twenty nineteen,

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Speaker 1: with litigation on going, colf Age took to Twitter to

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Speaker 1: accuse the National Butterflies Center of having a rampant sex

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Speaker 1: trade taking place on your property and the death sick bodies.

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Speaker 3: When we first saw Brian Colfage's tweets and the rebuild

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Speaker 3: the Wall videos using my image and talking about the

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Speaker 3: Butterfly Lady and everything and the Butterfly Center, at first,

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00:25:02,680 --> 00:25:07,120
Speaker 3: you know, we we kind of reacted with humor, like

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00:25:07,880 --> 00:25:10,720
Speaker 3: this is too funny, Like who in their right mind

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00:25:10,760 --> 00:25:13,440
Speaker 3: would believe any of this? And you know, we even

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00:25:13,840 --> 00:25:17,440
Speaker 3: tried addressing I mean, I didn't know who Brian colfag

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00:25:17,640 --> 00:25:21,199
Speaker 3: was at the time, but you know, we replied like

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00:25:22,520 --> 00:25:26,239
Speaker 3: you have a very very active imagination or you're a

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Speaker 3: really uh, you know, twisted person. And we use the

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00:25:31,000 --> 00:25:36,960
Speaker 3: hashtag liar liar pants on fire because we really did

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00:25:37,040 --> 00:25:44,439
Speaker 3: think it was ridiculous. But any notion that this was

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Speaker 3: not deadly serious was soon dismissed. And now I've become

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00:25:51,080 --> 00:25:54,080
Speaker 3: this liked.

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Speaker 4: Extremism.

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00:25:58,040 --> 00:26:02,120
Speaker 3: You know, we're in the politics as unfold others. Yeah,

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Speaker 3: I've had a lot of the journalists ask me what

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Speaker 3: does it feel like to be at the crossroads of

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00:26:08,880 --> 00:26:12,240
Speaker 3: the culture wars in America, and I'm like, I'm not

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Speaker 3: at the crossroads of the culture war. I live in

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Speaker 3: the borderlands, which are the proving grounds for fascism in America.

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Speaker 3: That's where I live.

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Speaker 4: And we're going to see it more and more. Everybody's

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Speaker 4: going to see it more and more. They test things

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Speaker 4: like the aerostat balloons here, and the fact that we

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Speaker 4: didn't cut them loose and shoot them down and set

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Speaker 4: them on fire.

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Speaker 3: The fact that we were like, oh, that's kind of

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Speaker 3: a pretty innocuous, you know, white balloon in the sky.

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Speaker 3: We can live with it means that now it's gone

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00:26:52,000 --> 00:26:55,399
Speaker 3: out from under DHS to DoD and it's being deployed

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Speaker 3: across the United States, coming soon to a community.

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Speaker 5: It could Happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.

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Speaker 5: For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website

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Speaker 5: coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,

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Speaker 5: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can

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Speaker 5: find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated monthly at

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Speaker 5: coolzonemedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening,