Speaker 1: All the media.
Speaker 2: It's me James, and before we listen to this episode today,
Speaker 2: I just did want to make you aware that I
Speaker 2: conducted these interviews in French and Spanish, mostly Spanish, and
Speaker 2: then transcribed and translated them. So what you're hearing is
Speaker 2: a translated interview that's being edited for brevity and content.
Speaker 3: I hope you enjoyed the episode, just you.
Speaker 4: Finding yourself there and seeing how the environment looks like
Speaker 4: you feel like you should give up. I cried it
Speaker 4: grace of work for you to actually stand by and
Speaker 4: say no, I'll keep on struggling. A lot of people
Speaker 4: who give up, a lot of someone dies. Let it die.
Speaker 4: People who were crying. Yeah, yes, we let people swear crying.
Speaker 4: They didn't know how they could continue. It's not an
Speaker 4: easy situation. It's not really an easy situation. Actually, it's
Speaker 4: just the grace of God for us surviving, because I
Speaker 4: can't say it's by my strength. It's actually the grace
Speaker 4: of God. Because what we actually went through, we met
Speaker 4: people living collapsed. We had to help them. You meet
Speaker 4: your body, you give a lifting hand. It's not really
Speaker 4: an easy thing. It's not something that if we are
Speaker 4: fine tomorrow can advise any of our family members to
Speaker 4: go through, because it's so that it's risky if your
Speaker 4: family member is in there and it's not out. It
Speaker 4: takes the grace of God for you to even lie
Speaker 4: on your bed and close all your eyes either. Once
Speaker 4: I survived, by the grace of God, I almost drowned.
Speaker 4: In fact, I was drowning.
Speaker 5: By the grace of God.
Speaker 6: I was rescued.
Speaker 5: Yes, some guys that rescued me. I was already drowned.
Speaker 5: I was gone. I was gone.
Speaker 7: I was drinking water.
Speaker 2: Very readily all throughout the journey. North Margarets have little
Speaker 2: choice but to rely on one another and the solidarity
Speaker 2: of strangers. I heard dozens of stories that you've just
Speaker 2: heard in my time in the Daddy End. Total strangers
Speaker 2: who save each other's lives risk their own in the process.
Speaker 2: For vers, it could only be crossed to people from
Speaker 2: three different continents joined arms to form a human chain
Speaker 2: the children and smaller people could hold on to to
Speaker 2: avoid being swept downstream. Not everyone can help. Just surviving
Speaker 2: the Dalian takes all of what many people have, But
Speaker 2: for the people who are in a position to even
Speaker 2: in desperate times, there's mutual support among the migrants.
Speaker 4: Very few people who are ever will help you. They're
Speaker 4: very few people. Only people who are time can actually help.
Speaker 4: That people will pass you by, and that people if
Speaker 4: you have lost your strength, it's not easy for another
Speaker 4: person to actually break though. We can really appreciate those
Speaker 4: who help, because having your strength is another You must
Speaker 4: help yourself before you can help another person, right, so
Speaker 4: if you can really have their strength, it will be
Speaker 4: difficult for you need to help another. So we don't
Speaker 4: really condemn them, but at least we are praying where
Speaker 4: we are bleeding on our brothers worst still behind, that
Speaker 4: if they meet people, if they have the ability to help,
Speaker 4: this should do so. Of course, it's not really uneasy
Speaker 4: something give.
Speaker 2: Sometimes reporting on these places compete them as bleak, unwelcoming
Speaker 2: or just miserable and certainly very sad. Things happen in
Speaker 2: the jungle and in the camps, in human things, But
Speaker 2: just like war or a natural disaster, sometimes the horrible
Speaker 2: circumstances of the migration trail bring out the best in people.
Speaker 2: As I've said before in this series, I'm comfortable in
Speaker 2: the refugee camps at least in part because people there
Speaker 2: are looking out for one another. Kids don't stop playing
Speaker 2: the moment they become refugees, not an adults stop laughing.
Speaker 2: In fact, these things become even more important that how
Speaker 2: we keep our humanity in a system that's inherently dehumanizing.
Speaker 2: And people don't stop organizing or caring about one another either.
Speaker 2: It's not just the migrants, of course. One of the
Speaker 2: families who've been stuck in Baho Jigito for almost a
Speaker 2: month was given some money by a local Sender Front
Speaker 2: member to take a bus. In Mexico, those who don't
Speaker 2: have enough money to take buses will hop on freight
Speaker 2: trains and as they speed through towns and rail yards
Speaker 2: at night, local people will throw plastic bags of food, water,
Speaker 2: and clothing to them. In Panama City, I visited a
Speaker 2: Jesuit run shelter for migrants called Fate.
Speaker 6: Well Numbers. Cordniho is Coordina or the Promotion Social Accompanimento.
Speaker 3: Panama.
Speaker 8: Alberto went down a Darien recently, and we know from
Speaker 8: firsthand experience that the difficulty they have is moving. So
Speaker 8: some don't go through the stations, but they stay, so
Speaker 8: they appear here in the city, and so they arrive here,
Speaker 8: and some decide to stay and forego all the difficulty
Speaker 8: of moving forward.
Speaker 2: Despite having been set up as a refuge recent changes
Speaker 2: to Panamanian law had made that work difficult.
Speaker 8: We had to start that service because the state literally
Speaker 8: prohibited us as agencies from providing a shelter, and under
Speaker 8: the premise that if we gave them shelter without them
Speaker 8: asking for it, they could consider us as human traffickers.
Speaker 8: So what we do now is we give them food
Speaker 8: and if they decide to stay well, we help them
Speaker 8: with certain processes that we can call humanitarian aid for sustainability.
Speaker 2: I've seen a wide variety of faith based aid in
Speaker 2: my time at the border. Much of it has been fantastic,
Speaker 2: but with more than a decade of refugee camps from
Speaker 2: resource pot settings, I've also learned to be a bit
Speaker 2: wary of faith based charity. But something Elias said early
Speaker 2: in our talk gave me a great deal of respect
Speaker 2: for him. It's not justin he said it, but he
Speaker 2: took the time to address his comments to me as
Speaker 2: a journalist because he saw this as a problem in
Speaker 2: part created by the media. Ford it worth. I think
Speaker 2: he's right. It's something that as we try and help
Speaker 2: my on a difficult journey. We must always keep in
Speaker 2: mind he might come from a very different background than
Speaker 2: my mutual aid group, but we do seem to share
Speaker 2: the same belief in solidarity with the migrants.
Speaker 3: There's a fortunate.
Speaker 5: Unfortunately much of the media narrative.
Speaker 8: What they do is they victimize and ridicule people in
Speaker 8: family groups and turn them into pariahs and beggars. Then
Speaker 8: that is insulting to the dignity of the person. So
Speaker 8: the way they portray migration is shameful in some cases,
Speaker 8: and this is very difficult. Well for this, yes, I
Speaker 8: think that's very important.
Speaker 2: After this, I figured I address the issue head on.
Speaker 2: I'm asking about the many churches in Christians I see
Speaker 2: preaching hate against people coming to the southern border of
Speaker 2: the US.
Speaker 8: There is a sector in the Catholic Church and the
Speaker 8: Evangelical Church that opposes it and is more closely linked,
Speaker 8: and they are in fact they are they're benefactors of
Speaker 8: Trump's campaign. So this one and this one are there, well, well,
Speaker 8: those are like groups that are rejecting, let's say, the
Speaker 8: basic principle of the church, which is that we must
Speaker 8: welcome migrants and refugees. So they fundamentally reject it. So
Speaker 8: they invent all these narratives that Haitians practice voodoo and
Speaker 8: they eat pets and this and that or that and
Speaker 8: it's shameful mean, or like the Venezuelans, that the majority
Speaker 8: of them are from Triande Aragua gang or that they
Speaker 8: come from areas that are what you call problematic or chauvannista,
Speaker 8: and that.
Speaker 5: They are infuriating or that or that.
Speaker 8: All the same narrative that was created when when the
Speaker 8: Maritos left Cuba. And it's not that the Cuban government
Speaker 8: is sending all the prisoners on the Mariel boats to.
Speaker 5: Invade the un United States. It's the same narrative.
Speaker 2: Then they asked what he thought of the government's plans
Speaker 2: to close the day Enda if they could even do that.
Speaker 8: People ask me, do you think the Darian gap is
Speaker 8: going to close and that migration is going to disappear?
Speaker 8: And I say, ask the Mexicans and the North Americans
Speaker 8: if the Sonara Desert has stopped being a corridor for
Speaker 8: people after Trump, Because there was a time when all
Speaker 8: the media was focused on the migration that passed through
Speaker 8: the Sonara and everything continues to happen, But then it
Speaker 8: became invisible and ceased to exist for them. But people
Speaker 8: continue to pass through and people continue to die. So
Speaker 8: as you say this, this is going to continue. Maybe
Speaker 8: not a half a million people, but the flow is
Speaker 8: going to continue.
Speaker 5: It's going to continue.
Speaker 8: And then the question we should ask ourselves is what
Speaker 8: are we going to do or how are we going
Speaker 8: to accompany this flow? How are we going to accompanies
Speaker 8: these lives? And in what way can let these people's
Speaker 8: lives impact us?
Speaker 2: But like so many of us who work along the board,
Speaker 2: he says, he's constantly fighting. It's negative messaging that encourages
Speaker 2: people not to follow the natural impulse to help and
Speaker 2: take care of one another.
Speaker 8: So it's not a question of how I always say,
Speaker 8: and sometimes they tell me, oh that you always speak
Speaker 8: so badly of Panama, But it's not speaking badly of Panama.
Speaker 8: I love my country and I feel that we in general,
Speaker 8: the Panamanian communities are very welcoming and very affectionate with
Speaker 8: the migrants. The problem is the narrative that is created
Speaker 8: and then it generates to stimuli that end up with
Speaker 8: a situation where are not seen so positively. And consequently,
Speaker 8: last week we had a meeting perhaps on national reality,
Speaker 8: and we touched on the subject of immigrants, and the
Speaker 8: first reaction was, no, it's not the state that pays
Speaker 8: the fare of the migrants.
Speaker 5: It's not that. I mean, they pay their own fare.
Speaker 2: After a week of my interview requests being declined by
Speaker 2: NGOs and government offices, I found my talk with Father
Speaker 2: Alias refreshing. It's nice to know that you're not the
Speaker 2: only one who sees the system as it is, which
Speaker 2: is fundamentally flawed and entirely propped up by misinformation, hatred
Speaker 2: and ignorance. But I don't want to get bogged down
Speaker 2: on that. Father Alias told me that when he sees migrants,
Speaker 2: he sees God in them, and that he experiences his
Speaker 2: faith by helping others. My early experienced religion came in
Speaker 2: high school from a priest who was a teacher who'd
Speaker 2: been part of the anti apartheid movement in South Africa.
Speaker 2: I'm not a religious person in myself, but I can
Speaker 2: understand how seeing God and other people is not that
Speaker 2: far from my own politics. Lifit seeing God and know
Speaker 2: the people that in pels people stand up against apartheid
Speaker 2: or to dedicate their lives to helping migrants. Then I
Speaker 2: respect that. So after we come back, I want to
Speaker 2: try and answer the question that pythea Alias ask, what
Speaker 2: can you do?
Speaker 3: Ran into them.
Speaker 2: After getting back from the Dad End and hearing the
Speaker 2: migrants share their struggles as they waited in Mexico for
Speaker 2: an outlest designed to lay and discourage them, I really
Speaker 2: struggled to come to terms with everything I'd seen and
Speaker 2: was hearing. A bid to plenty of dangerous places, and
Speaker 2: seen war, state violence, and terrorism. I know the tragedy
Speaker 2: of death and violence, but the slow and deliberate suffering
Speaker 2: inflicted on migrants, for people who lied to us every
Speaker 2: day on television, is particularly hard to bear for me.
Speaker 2: As I mentioned at the start of this series, I
Speaker 2: think the grim reality of our migration system. On my
Speaker 2: first day in Barjiguito, little girl's head hanging limply from
Speaker 2: a makeshift stretcher a strangers carried her into town. It's
Speaker 2: also cruel, so deliberate, and so unnecessary, and it felt
Speaker 2: so disempowering. But that doesn't mean there's nothing you can do.
Speaker 2: It doesn't mean there's nothing I can do.
Speaker 6: All right, Basically, what we're gonna be doing is we're
Speaker 6: gonna go this way. I mean, we're gonna start. We're
Speaker 6: gona go down into this well, We're gonna go that
Speaker 6: way and see where the light break is on the
Speaker 6: mid of the hill in between those hills running cut up.
Speaker 6: I'm up in that area.
Speaker 2: That's James card Era of Border Kindness, sitting at the
Speaker 2: roof of a group of five of us set out
Speaker 2: on a water drop in the mountains east of the Cumber.
Speaker 2: It's an area called Valley of the Moon, where boulders
Speaker 2: the size of trucks stack up against each other, where
Speaker 2: people have been crossing the border for decades. This is
Speaker 2: a remote area and not unlike the daddy En. Much
Speaker 2: of it is nearly impossible to access in a car.
Speaker 2: To get water out here, we have to walk. And
Speaker 2: if you run out of water or injure yourself, you
Speaker 2: can't walk out of here. It's possible you'll die, just
Speaker 2: like the migotes do in the jungle. People get robbed here,
Speaker 2: just like in the dad Enn And if it wasn't
Speaker 2: for the five of us with our backpacks full of water,
Speaker 2: people could die of first here just like they do
Speaker 2: in the jungle. I thought I was packing water bottles
Speaker 2: into my frame pack. I thought about little kids I've
Speaker 2: met in Baho Chiquito. This isn't the place for children either,
Speaker 2: but over the last eighteen months, I've met hundreds of
Speaker 2: them out here. I've given them my jackets and hats,
Speaker 2: warmed up milk for babies in my camping stove, and
Speaker 2: even wrapped a little girl up in a milar blanket
Speaker 2: with me to warm her up last year. Just like
Speaker 2: the Dadienne, the suffering here is out of sight and
Speaker 2: out of mind for most Americans, and in a year
Speaker 2: where we're constantly being told democracies under threat, I think
Speaker 2: a bear is mentioning that migrants are treated as humans
Speaker 2: without rights even when they're inside this country, and that
Speaker 2: their lives are seen as dispensable so long as whoever
Speaker 2: is in office can look quote tough on migration and
Speaker 2: make TV pundits and big money donuts happy. There weren't
Speaker 2: any TV pundits or big money dons on our water
Speaker 2: drop a few of us everyday people. Some people come
Speaker 2: out here because their family members across the desert. Some
Speaker 2: come out because everyone who crosses a desert is part
Speaker 2: of our family. Like Bonnio said, in all humans are brothers,
Speaker 2: and none of us want our brothers or sisters to
Speaker 2: die in their mountains, whatever their passport might say. And
Speaker 2: so nearly every weekend, people all along the border load
Speaker 2: up heavy bags for supplies. On this drop, each of
Speaker 2: us filled our packs with water, cans of tuna, pineapple soup,
Speaker 2: some warm clothing, and in this case an audio.
Speaker 6: Recorder recording recording in progress.
Speaker 2: Of course, just gave me an opportunity to discuss my
Speaker 2: life's calling. Ensuring the correct fit of backpack harness systems.
Speaker 6: Yeah, you can release those, Yeah, it.
Speaker 2: Just doesn't wrap the cantrap.
Speaker 9: You either haven't drum the weight out or like, please
Speaker 9: have adjustable frames so you can make them fit with
Speaker 9: those days.
Speaker 2: Bad for that. With everyone suitably adjusted and ergonomically optimized,
Speaker 2: we twisted on the audio record as I'd attached the
Speaker 2: straps of our packs and set off.
Speaker 1: I just feel bad for you.
Speaker 5: What are.
Speaker 2: From the edge of the dirt road we took our
Speaker 2: first steps into the desert.
Speaker 6: The first part is gonna be a little slippery. You
Speaker 6: eat shit, It's okay, and don't be embarrassed. It happens.
Speaker 2: This part of the border isn't that far from a
Speaker 2: Cumba where this time last year James and I spent
Speaker 2: a freezing night trying to keep people alive, running our
Speaker 2: camping stoves on full blast, giving away our own jackets
Speaker 2: who needed them more than us. At that time, I
Speaker 2: just returned from a trip to North and East Syria,
Speaker 2: which was stressful in its own way, and seeing both
Speaker 2: what people are leaving and how we treat them when
Speaker 2: they arrive here really piss me off. A year later,
Speaker 2: with bags full of water, JMS and I spoke about
Speaker 2: things and how they got so much worse in the
Speaker 2: last two years, but press coverage and more importantly, donations
Speaker 2: have been way lower. It's same story up and down
Speaker 2: the border, record deaths, newer and harder migration routes, different
Speaker 2: migration patterns, and the people who cried outside ice detention
Speaker 2: centers in Trump's first term cheering for more walls and
Speaker 2: bigger DHS budgets. Meanwhile, unlike the Trump era, we don't
Speaker 2: have the support of thousands of liberal people in California's
Speaker 2: big cities. After the Democrats cynically use migrant suffering in
Speaker 2: their twenty twenty campaign, they abandoned them upon acquiring power,
Speaker 2: and their supporters have mostly followed them, so that left
Speaker 2: five of us this particular morning to load up bags
Speaker 2: and do the life saving work of dropping water. On
Speaker 2: top of all the state violence, there's been more and
Speaker 2: more interference with the water drops, and as we got
Speaker 2: further into our route, we made the increasingly calmon discovery
Speaker 2: that someone had taken it upon themselves to destroy our supplies.
Speaker 2: O smn of ice.
Speaker 3: See that's probably.
Speaker 6: Slash ye sorry by the person's making a smirnoff ice.
Speaker 3: Yeah he's wrong. Yeah, they all lunched motherfuckers.
Speaker 6: I mean, I'm assuming it's a person who brought the
Speaker 6: smirnoff ice because it seems like a smirnofvi's activity feed fella. Yeah,
Speaker 6: I don't see a VP agent rolling threw with the
Speaker 6: smirnoff Iyes.
Speaker 2: This isn't unique to border kindness. Someone has been shooting
Speaker 2: supplies left by Borderlands Relief Collective half an hour west
Speaker 2: of here recently, up and down the border. The combination
Speaker 2: of total liberal inattention and xenophobic right wing hate whipped
Speaker 2: up by streamers who I won't name and pseudo journalistic
Speaker 2: grifters who I will name, like Bill Maluganlugan, of course,
Speaker 2: was previously famous for claiming that the cop had a
Speaker 2: tampon dropped in his coffee. In twenty twenty. Spoiler alert
Speaker 2: if you're not familiar, this wasn't true. Belugan now works
Speaker 2: as a quote unquite border reporter for Fox.
Speaker 7: Danny, Good morning to you. We are in Santa Siegro,
Speaker 7: a part of San Diego, right now, where hundreds of
Speaker 7: illegal immigrants have just been massed street released from border
Speaker 7: patrol custody. This bus you see right here is apparently
Speaker 7: an NGO or volunteer organization bus. They've all just gotten
Speaker 7: off a border patrol bus. Two of them actually, they're
Speaker 7: now waiting to board this bus. I've talked to several
Speaker 7: of them from Peru, from India, from Colombia. The group
Speaker 7: from Peru told me they are here to work. They
Speaker 7: are going to Atlanta and Minneapolis to see if we
Speaker 7: can talk to some of them real quick. Old espanon
Speaker 7: the so Ecuadora. Don't us in New York going to
Speaker 7: New York. They're don the so On, They're on the
Speaker 7: so Costa Rica. Don't they have us in Los Atlanta.
Speaker 5: New Jersey?
Speaker 7: Don't the New Jersey, New Jersey. Don't they've us in Chicago? Chicago, Colombia, Columbia, Kerebaja, no,
Speaker 7: no I see they yet they say they want asylum,
Speaker 7: they don't want to work, they've done their son. Well,
Speaker 7: where are you from?
Speaker 1: Sag Sanag?
Speaker 7: I think Senegal? From Senegal? We saw a lot of
Speaker 7: Senegalese in Lukeville, Arizona. Where in the US do you
Speaker 7: want to go to? What city?
Speaker 3: Francis France? Frosse France, France speak France.
Speaker 7: Oh he speaks French. I obviously do not speak French.
Speaker 2: The Loogan's lack of language competency isn't the only issue here.
Speaker 2: It's a holy ecosystem of media built up of hyuristically
Speaker 2: filming migrants without giving them a chance to humanize themselves.
Speaker 2: And it's not just a right wing issue.
Speaker 10: This week, each day has been marked by new daily
Speaker 10: records of migrants, both crossing the southern border and landing
Speaker 10: in custody. The federal government is struggling to keep up.
Speaker 10: Three Homeland security official say Customs and Border Protection is
Speaker 10: holding about twenty seven thousand migrants and processing facilities as
Speaker 10: of yesterday. President Biden spoke with Mexico's president about the
Speaker 10: issue earlier today, and NBC News Homeland Security corresponding, Julie
Speaker 10: joins me now to dig into this trend. So Julia, first,
Speaker 10: just give us some perspective here. How is Customs and
Speaker 10: Border Protection operating right now and what are your sources
Speaker 10: saying about this historic rise in migrants at the border.
Speaker 1: Well, in some ways, there's actually a small victory here,
Speaker 1: is in clay when you look at the fact that
Speaker 1: CBP is seeing a record number of migrants, that they've
Speaker 1: been at a record high now for three days in
Speaker 1: a row. They broke the record of twelve thousand, maintained
Speaker 1: that and there are now almost twenty seven thousand migrants
Speaker 1: in CBP custody. When we got to just about twenty
Speaker 1: thousand and twenty nineteen under the Trump administration, there were
Speaker 1: migrants who were there for weeks and couldn't lie down
Speaker 1: to sleep because they were so overcrowded. Now, because of
Speaker 1: the technology, they're actually able to not even hold people
Speaker 1: past seventy two hours and very quickly release them. But
Speaker 1: the tragedy comes after that. There are a lot of
Speaker 1: migrants who are being released on the streets without being
Speaker 1: taken to nonprofits, and some of them don't exactly know
Speaker 1: where they're supposed to go, even though CBP does try
Speaker 1: to coordinate with the cities where they are released. That's
Speaker 1: definitely happening in the Tucson, Arizona area and Eagle Pass, Texas.
Speaker 1: Even though they are scrambling as fast as they can
Speaker 1: to release migrants, that are still thousands who remain in
Speaker 1: the field, a lot of them crowded under a bridge
Speaker 1: an Eagle Pass, just waiting for CBP to take them in.
Speaker 1: The reason a lot of people can give you different reasons. One,
Speaker 1: perhaps Mexico is interdicting as many migrants as they were
Speaker 1: earlier in the year. They're now lower on funds because
Speaker 1: of these record highs. Another reason, sometimes migrants will say
Speaker 1: that they're worried about a future Republican administration or a
Speaker 1: future Trump administration that might be harder ANDed, so they
Speaker 1: think now is the time to come.
Speaker 2: Two minutes into this report and we haven't actually heard
Speaker 2: from a single migrant. All we hear is numbers. We
Speaker 2: also haven't heard about door detention, which is the time
Speaker 2: this was released with at its peak. Again, it's just
Speaker 2: numbers and CBP statements.
Speaker 3: I should also.
Speaker 2: Point out that lots of people are held for more
Speaker 2: than seventy two hours or three days. The Department of
Speaker 2: Homeland Security office who inspected general report published in November
Speaker 2: twenty twenty three, month before the new segment that you
Speaker 2: just heard, said that fifty six percent of people were
Speaker 2: held for longer than that, for some people being held
Speaker 2: for more than a month. This information is publicly available
Speaker 2: and even had a press release. I found it very quickly,
Speaker 2: and they're reported on at the time. But NBC chowse
Speaker 2: not to seeing migrants as a quote homeland security issue,
Speaker 2: not as people. It's fundamentally the problem, and the way
Speaker 2: we fix that is showing up as people to help.
Speaker 2: Despite the massive media focus on the border in the
Speaker 2: last year, I very rarely see other journalists actually at
Speaker 2: the border.
Speaker 3: To give him credit.
Speaker 2: Malgan does sometimes show up, but he doesn't stay long
Speaker 2: and he doesn't really have the capacity to interview migrants,
Speaker 2: even if you wanted to. The border is vast and
Speaker 2: mostly empty. It's a place I've come to know and
Speaker 2: come to love, and my time dropping water and recreating
Speaker 2: and doing other mutilaid projects out here. Now they have
Speaker 2: a better understanding of the journeys people go through to
Speaker 2: get here, even more determined to make this small part
Speaker 2: of their trip less dangerous, and besides, I get to
Speaker 2: see cool rocks.
Speaker 6: Oh say, mister potato here like he's dying off. Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay,
Speaker 6: okay okay.
Speaker 3: No, I see that. Well, now you say it like that.
Speaker 6: It looked very yet the eyes are real close to
Speaker 6: each other. Yeah, it's a very melting potato.
Speaker 3: Among the cool rocks.
Speaker 2: Last weekend I found a mini mouse doll. It reminded
Speaker 2: me of Miami, the little girl i'd met him Baio.
Speaker 2: I give my number to hundreds of people before leaving
Speaker 2: Panama and heard from dozens, but up until that I
Speaker 2: hadn't heard from Miami and her mum. I heard of
Speaker 2: people being kidnapped, robbed, raped, and ransomed in Mexico. Some
Speaker 2: of them have been caught by authorities and pushed back
Speaker 2: to Chiapas, and others have been unable to leave Tapatula
Speaker 2: after having all their money stolen. I wanted which if
Speaker 2: any of these fates had before been Miami, and if
Speaker 2: she was still having a pepper pig adventure. Sadly between
Speaker 2: where I met her where I found a mini male,
Speaker 2: There's nothing else I can do. They're here in the
Speaker 2: mountains outside San Diego, where the wind blows so strong
Speaker 2: sometimes you can barely stand up. I can do something
Speaker 2: without the ability to do something, something which I know
Speaker 2: is meaningful. I don't know how I'd managed to stay
Speaker 2: on this beat. It's just too heartbreaking to meet good people,
Speaker 2: share meals and laughter, in deep conversations with them, and
Speaker 2: then see them fed into a teeth of a machine
Speaker 2: that robs, brutalizes, and kills them. So that Joe Biden
Speaker 2: can stand on a podium and say that border crossing to.
Speaker 3: Down this month.
Speaker 2: They are down, and that's allowed you due to enforcement
Speaker 2: in Mexico. But I want to make sure that everyone
Speaker 2: who does cross the border can do so safely and
Speaker 2: they don't have to die on US soil after fighting
Speaker 2: so hard to make it here. This hasn't been the
Speaker 2: case for everyone this year. My friends up and down
Speaker 2: the border have carried far too many little memorial crosses
Speaker 2: into the mountains. And depending on the election results next week,
Speaker 2: what we're doing might be illegal soon, but that'll never
Speaker 2: make it wrong. Since early September, nine people have died
Speaker 2: in a little part of southern California alone by friends
Speaker 2: who searched for them, sometimes found their remains and undertaken
Speaker 2: the thankless task of sharing the bad news with their families,
Speaker 2: then constructive memorials in their memory. This is just one
Speaker 2: of the many dangerous parts of the migration route north,
Speaker 2: but it's the one that I can help with. If
Speaker 2: you're nearby are visiting for a while. There are several
Speaker 2: organizations dropping water on the border. Border Angels, Border Kindness
Speaker 2: and Borderlands Relief Collective here in San Diego, Arho Samaritans, Noms,
Speaker 2: Motes in Arizona, groups you search and rescue as well. Obviously,
Speaker 2: not everyone lives here at the USA is Southern border,
Speaker 2: but more than half of the population does live within
Speaker 2: one hundred miles of a border. Even if you don't
Speaker 2: live in the USA, or maybe you do but you
Speaker 2: don't live anywhere near the border, I guarantee there are
Speaker 2: migrants in your community. In the last year, I've worked
Speaker 2: with migrant welcome committees in Maryland, church groups in the
Speaker 2: rural south, Sikhs on the West Coast, occurred on the
Speaker 2: East Coast, to name just a few. Without a type
Speaker 2: of fanfare, people all over this country are making space
Speaker 2: in their homes and their hearts for strangers, feeding them,
Speaker 2: housing them, and helping them get set up in a
Speaker 2: new place. For the most part, it doesn't get coverage.
Speaker 2: Not a democratic administration, it doesn't get much of public
Speaker 2: support either, but that doesn't mean it isn't necessary. Aside
Speaker 2: from all the reasons it's important, dropping water on the
Speaker 2: border is also fun for me. It's helped me learn
Speaker 2: more about where I live. I appreciate the desert and
Speaker 2: make new friends who generally share my outlook on the world.
Speaker 2: I love being outdoors, and I'd be outdoors anyway, but
Speaker 2: it's way my hiker is about much more than myself.
Speaker 9: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Does that mean when you get somewhere
Speaker 9: with signal? Yeah yeah, Please to all of you, please
Speaker 9: share it. I'd like to follow your journey if that's okay,
Speaker 9: and maybe we can talk again when you're in America. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I gave my number to hundreds of people in the
Speaker 2: dady In as well as some websites they might find useful.
Speaker 2: One to NGOs explained the CBP one app are the
Speaker 2: ones that might direct them to resources along their route.
Speaker 2: Last Sunday night, as I was absent by and least
Speaker 2: thrumming through a shotgun reloading manual in my living room,
Speaker 2: as I love to do. My phone started buzzing. It's
Speaker 2: done this so many times in the last months. Mostly
Speaker 2: it's a photo of someone I met updating me on
Speaker 2: their journey, or one of the little wooden animals that
Speaker 2: they give to children, which has made its way to
Speaker 2: Mexico and hopefully giving them some comfort along the way.
Speaker 2: Often it's less positive news. Someone's been robbed or simply
Speaker 2: run out of money and they need help. But I
Speaker 2: got two messages this Sunday which lifted my spirits. Miami
Speaker 2: little girl who had an adventure like Pepper Pig in
Speaker 2: the jungle, I did you know how I was doing?
Speaker 2: And she sent me a photo of the tiny stone
Speaker 2: bear that I'd given her. She also wanted to know
Speaker 2: if we could still go to see Minnie Mouse, who
Speaker 2: she came to America, which I assured her we could.
Speaker 2: I think it would be quite apt to visit a
Speaker 2: place which bills itself as the happiest place on Earth,
Speaker 2: where someone I met in one of the most desperate
Speaker 2: parts of the planet. The second message was from one
Speaker 2: of the migrants I'd met in the jungle, telling me
Speaker 2: she'd made it to America, not just to America, but
Speaker 2: to a part of the border where I've been dropping
Speaker 2: water with my friends. Just a few weeks before I
Speaker 2: left for Panama, she sent me a photo of a
Speaker 2: rock with a message on it one way, which I'm
Speaker 2: very familiar. She told me about her walk, one which
Speaker 2: I've made myself, and she taught me how hard it was.
Speaker 2: I said, I knew, but really I don't know, because
Speaker 2: I wasn't carrying months of trauma with me on the mountain.
Speaker 2: She's the only person out of one hundred son I
Speaker 2: met who's made it here. Most of them are in
Speaker 2: Mexico now, and most of them will remain there or
Speaker 2: maybe get sent back home, or maybe they'll make a
Speaker 2: desperate attempt across this week. As you hear this before
Speaker 2: the election, it made me so happy to see someone
Speaker 2: safely here, one person out of a hundred. For so
Speaker 2: many of the migrants I met, America was a dream
Speaker 2: and the journey with a nightmare. Since the series began airing,
Speaker 2: I've seen videos of people I care about clinging to
Speaker 2: freight trains that bruce bodies after being beaten. I've helped
Speaker 2: them find healthcare after they were sexually assaulted, and tried
Speaker 2: to find room at overcrowded shelters. I've helped trans ladies
Speaker 2: navigate all of this and transphobia and misogyny, and tried
Speaker 2: to find resources in French and English and Portuguese for
Speaker 2: non Spanish speakers. I'd hope that I'd finished this series
Speaker 2: with a single good story, a story of someone who
Speaker 2: made it, who's living the American dream that people died
Speaker 2: for in the jungle. But I can't because even the
Speaker 2: people who made it here are here temporarily and broadcasting
Speaker 2: anything about their journey would put them at risk whoever
Speaker 2: wins the election next week. So instead, I want to
Speaker 2: end with how you can make a difference, and I'll
Speaker 2: start with a story and how little things can make
Speaker 2: big differences. One day in bar Juquito, of sitting around
Speaker 2: with a few Venezuelan kids, probably four to eight years old,
Speaker 2: ripping pages out of my right in the rain note
Speaker 2: book to make paper aeroplanes. Before I interviewed their parents,
Speaker 2: I asked him about the jungle. They said it was
Speaker 2: scary and they had nightmares. Now, I often find kids
Speaker 2: in these places get scared of the dark, and I
Speaker 2: used to bring these crappy little electric lights for them,
Speaker 2: but they're bulky, and they're not very good. Recently, I've
Speaker 2: been carrying the little packets of fishing glow sticks instead.
Speaker 2: They gasped about ten bucks for maybe one hundred of
Speaker 2: the little green lights. So I poured out my glove sticks,
Speaker 2: cut my hands and snapped one. The children remaze of
Speaker 2: the little glowing road, so I gave them the rest
Speaker 2: of the packet. I told them they could keep them
Speaker 2: for any time they were scared of the dark. Nearly
Speaker 2: a month later, I sometimes get a message on my
Speaker 2: phone with a photo of a little tiny glow stick
Speaker 2: on a note of thanks.
Speaker 3: One thing that.
Speaker 2: Father Elia said that really impacted me is that when
Speaker 2: he meets migrants, he asked what he sees of God
Speaker 2: in them, and his work for them is where he
Speaker 2: finds what there is of God and himself. Think I've
Speaker 2: struggled so much with this serious impart because I've seen
Speaker 2: so much of the best of other people, and indeed
Speaker 2: the best of myself into such hard play. I always
Speaker 2: struggle a little to readjust after trips like this, but
Speaker 2: this one's been particularly hard. In the jungle, I saw
Speaker 2: people helping, and in a sense, we were all in
Speaker 2: it together. When it rained, we all got wet, and
Speaker 2: when it got hot, we all huddled together in the shade.
Speaker 2: We shared bottles of water, We sat at the same
Speaker 2: tables and ate together. I can't really begin to experience
Speaker 2: a full, varily inexperience because I've been lucky enough never
Speaker 2: to have anything that bad to run away from. Better
Speaker 2: have experienced incredible solidarity and kindness of the people who
Speaker 2: went through it. I've also experienced the incredible indifference of
Speaker 2: people at home, and indeed of the states and governments
Speaker 2: of the world. The Colombian friends I met Las Blancas
Speaker 2: and Barbjigito, who are handcuffed and deported and ripped from
Speaker 2: their families, have already invited me to come and stay
Speaker 2: in their homes in Colombia. But if their families make
Speaker 2: it here, they won't encounter that kind of hospitality. Just
Speaker 2: last week, I helped to translate for a Venezuelan family
Speaker 2: living on the street in San Diego. Some of my
Speaker 2: friends do sponsor migrants, and that's something any one can
Speaker 2: do if you're able to. It's an incredible thing you
Speaker 2: can do to change someone's life, and I can't encourage
Speaker 2: you enough to do so. I really do see the
Speaker 2: best of myself, of my friends, and of humanity, and
Speaker 2: I work to help migrants. I would say that on reflection.
Speaker 2: And I wasn't really an anarchist until twenty eighteen, when
Speaker 2: I watched a state to the world abandoned thousands of
Speaker 2: migros in Tijuana and climbed a fence with my friends
Speaker 2: to take care of them, and specifically to distribute three
Speaker 2: huge backpacks full of waffles and another friend had sent
Speaker 2: from his waffle factory. I'd stopped believing in the benevolence
Speaker 2: of the state a long time before, but it wasn't
Speaker 2: really until then that I really understood the power of
Speaker 2: people organizing horizontally to provide each other with dignity. Ever
Speaker 2: since then, I've drawn a lot of hope for humanity
Speaker 2: in the same place as I despair for people. Maybe
Speaker 2: that's why I keep going back. Since then at the border,
Speaker 2: I've seen people die. I've held crying babies and crying parents.
Speaker 2: I've also shared meals with people from around the world,
Speaker 2: made friends for life, and learned curdish disco songs about
Speaker 2: killing people. I've danced around campfires with people I couldn't
Speaker 2: imagined meeting. I i' Sparde my own journey here. Last Christmas,
Speaker 2: when i'd normally be at the bar with my friends,
Speaker 2: I stand the rock in the desert, eating a cold
Speaker 2: vegan m Marie with an Ecuadorian family and some of
Speaker 2: my friends. And all the Christmases I can remember, I
Speaker 2: never felt so much like I was in the right place,
Speaker 2: doing the right thing, with the right people.
Speaker 7: What.
Speaker 2: I've seen a lot of terrible things at the border,
Speaker 2: in the jungle, and I'll never forget those. More importantly,
Speaker 2: I've seen that together we can do incredible things, and
Speaker 2: we can make the state irrelevant, especially in the places
Speaker 2: it's chosen to be absent. I don't think we should
Speaker 2: make demands of a state anymore. It's simply not in
Speaker 2: its nature to care. But I do think we should
Speaker 2: make demands of ourselves. I don't believe in God, and
Speaker 2: I've written a whole dissertation about people who burn churches.
Speaker 2: But I think I see something that's just as special
Speaker 2: to me in the experience of mutual aid, and in
Speaker 2: a way it fulfills not only people's material needs, but
Speaker 2: also our human desire for dignity and mutual respect. When
Speaker 2: I drop water at the border, or carry someone's bags
Speaker 2: in the jungle. I see myself in them, and I
Speaker 2: hope they see themselves a little bit of me. But
Speaker 2: right now asylum system is so broken the very few
Speaker 2: people even make it far enough to drink the water
Speaker 2: I leave at the border, And despite the border featuring
Speaker 2: heavily in this year's election, there seems to be no
Speaker 2: national concern about the way our tax dollars brutalize people
Speaker 2: across the continent. So I want to end by asking
Speaker 2: you what you can do. It might be coming to
Speaker 2: unhere to drop water. It might be sending some money
Speaker 2: to one of the links un included the description. It
Speaker 2: might be offering to translate for asylum seekers. It might
Speaker 2: just be talking to people and helping to change the narrative.
Speaker 2: You can vote or not next week, but there isn't
Speaker 2: a box you can take that will change the things
Speaker 2: I saw in the jungle. Trump wanted to deport millions
Speaker 2: more people. Harris wanted to pass a bill that will
Speaker 2: kill more people. You can't pass your commitments off to
Speaker 2: someone whose box you take every four years. You have
Speaker 2: to take them on for yourself. The way we change things,
Speaker 2: it's in the way we do things every day every week,
Speaker 2: no one's every four years. I want to end with
Speaker 2: NOI's mum and her message to the American people. I
Speaker 2: also want to ask if anyone of those how to
Speaker 2: get cheap tickets to Disneyland, because I have just looked
Speaker 2: that up and I cannot stress enough ho but I
Speaker 2: am to afford it.
Speaker 11: Please excuse us because we know that we are knocking
Speaker 11: on that door. There are a lot of us, but
Speaker 11: we are desperate because complaining about the president we have
Speaker 11: is not helping us. No, he's doing almost nothing. So
Speaker 11: our children have no future and our country won't support us.
Speaker 11: It's not easy to leave our parents, our friends, our relatives,
Speaker 11: our grandparents, and we do not know if we will
Speaker 11: ever return or if we will ever see them again.
Speaker 11: It is not easy. But we also think about a
Speaker 11: future for our children. And I do not know what
Speaker 11: has happened, but we feel like living in a dictatorship.
Speaker 11: We are living something very unpleasant and we do not
Speaker 11: get any help. But those who help us, we want
Speaker 11: to say thank you. They opened that door for us.
Speaker 11: They have opened many doors for many ven as wing
Speaker 11: so well we hope in faith that they will open
Speaker 11: them for us.
Speaker 2: I want to take this opportunity to thank a few
Speaker 2: people who made this possible. Firstly, Daddy and use my Fixer.
Speaker 2: She was incredible. Secondly, I want to thank iHeart for
Speaker 2: paying for this. Like I said, it's been nearly a
Speaker 2: decade that I've been asking to do this story and
Speaker 2: I'm just really happy that they trusted me to do it. Thirdly,
Speaker 2: I want to thank everyone who trusted me with their stories,
Speaker 2: everybody who stayed in touch as they've come north. I
Speaker 2: want to thank border Kindness and Borderland Relief Collective who
Speaker 2: have both welcomed me on their drops. And it's not
Speaker 2: always easy to be around a journalist. It's not easy
Speaker 2: to let someone record everything you're doing out there and
Speaker 2: their inherent risks to that, and I really appreciate them
Speaker 2: trusting me. I want to thank Dutch where Hammocks who
Speaker 2: rush shipped to me a Hammock when my old one
Speaker 2: tour right before I left. And I think most of all,
Speaker 2: I want to thank all of you for listening, taking
Speaker 2: the time, and all the listeners who have reached out
Speaker 2: to say they're listening to the series, people who have
Speaker 2: reached out to ask how they can help. I would
Speaker 2: love to organize a way to help the people I've
Speaker 2: spoken to. I spoke to someone just this morning who's
Speaker 2: still stuck in Tapachula because she was robbed and her
Speaker 2: and her daughter are five hundred bucks short for the
Speaker 2: bus to ride north to Tijuana. I don't have the
Speaker 2: capacity to organize that right now, but if someone else does,
Speaker 2: they should reach out to me, because I would really
Speaker 2: like to help these people who have become my friends
Speaker 2: and who I care about, and who are right now
Speaker 2: stuck in a very dangerous place because someone in Washington,
Speaker 2: DC has made a choice to treat them with cruelty
Speaker 2: and not kindness. So if that's you, if you're the
Speaker 2: person who's going to minister that, please let me know. Thanks,
Speaker 2: and I hope you enjoyed the series.
Speaker 3: It Could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
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Speaker 2: Thanks for listening.