Speaker 1: Also 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 2: I hope you enjoyed the episode. At some of you
Speaker 2: recognize the audio that we opened this show with, and
Speaker 2: then if you won't, it's a sample from the fourth
Speaker 2: Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle that Manuchow used to open
Speaker 2: his shows with. It's a piece of music that's very
Speaker 2: emotive for me. Obviously, I'm a white leftist guy in
Speaker 2: my thirties who learned Spanish and decided to live in Barcelona.
Speaker 2: So I have a story about running into Manuchow once
Speaker 2: where he was busking, but that's not what I want
Speaker 2: to share today. Because I'm technology challenged, I can't seem
Speaker 2: to get my phone to download songs, but I've managed
Speaker 2: to download the same Manuchow playlist, and I ripped off
Speaker 2: a rewriteable CD when I was in high school and
Speaker 2: put it on the various headphones and garment and watch
Speaker 2: it that I've had of the last two decades or so.
Speaker 2: When I'm away for work, I like to run whenever
Speaker 2: I can. Obviously, I wasn't just going to go for
Speaker 2: a jog straight into the Darien Gap. But once we
Speaker 2: were out of Bajajiqito, it gave me some time to
Speaker 2: run and think and process the things that I've seen.
Speaker 2: And while I do that, I listen to the same
Speaker 2: does not al so MP three files. I was listening
Speaker 2: to this song one day after I got back from
Speaker 2: LaaS Blancas as I sweated my way up ahead in
Speaker 2: the rainforest, hoping to see a sloth. I didn't see
Speaker 2: a sloth, but it seemed like an appropriate soundtrack. Manuchow
Speaker 2: himself is a child of refugees from Francoist Spain. He
Speaker 2: sings in French and Spanish, while off and Galician and Portuguese,
Speaker 2: among other languages, often several of them in the same song,
Speaker 2: the product of growing up among other migrants of diverse backgrounds.
Speaker 2: I like the way he plays with language because it
Speaker 2: reminds me of the way I so often speak to
Speaker 2: my friends Spanglish, for example, or Frannglais. It's the way
Speaker 2: people talk in border regions and refugee camps, languages that
Speaker 2: don't have the support of a state or the academy,
Speaker 2: but nonetheless convey so much meaning for so many people.
Speaker 2: That song in particular reminds me of my first time
Speaker 2: reading about Zapatismo in a tiny anarchist cafe in the
Speaker 2: West Midlands. I remember struck as a kid from Europe
Speaker 2: who would frequently drive to France or Belgium to race
Speaker 2: bikes and buy cheap beer. That the USA still maintained
Speaker 2: a fortified border with Mexico. People couldn't travel freely, but
Speaker 2: money could. It was its realization and the writings in
Speaker 2: particular Soucomante Marcos, along with my talks in Spain to
Speaker 2: old anarchists, that encouraged me to learn Spanish, which I
Speaker 2: pursued by spending months in Spain and Venezuela and learning
Speaker 2: thanks to the patient to the people around me. It
Speaker 2: was a new anarchism which came from the periphery, not
Speaker 2: only a liberal corps, which gave me my first serious politics.
Speaker 2: I traveled to Venezuela to understand the revolution there. I
Speaker 2: did a PhD to try and understand the revolution in Spain.
Speaker 2: It's all very well understanding things, but I think it's
Speaker 2: much more important to do things, and I tried to
Speaker 2: practice mutual aid as much as I can. Since I
Speaker 2: got back from the daddy En, I've loaded up a
Speaker 2: heavy backpack and carried water into the desert and spent
Speaker 2: hours trying to connect the friends I made in the
Speaker 2: jungle with services along the way. In the face of
Speaker 2: so much cruelty, it's good to be doing something to
Speaker 2: help and carrying the waters away. I can make a
Speaker 2: material difference in a terrible situation. But in all my
Speaker 2: time reporting, I've really never felt as disempowered and helpless
Speaker 2: as I did in Last Blancas. Here at the first
Speaker 2: official migrant reception center after Daddi Enne. The Panamanian government
Speaker 2: registers migrants NGOs, offer a few services, and the US
Speaker 2: funded process of deportation for migrants from Colombia, Cuba, Venezuela
Speaker 2: and India begins. Some of those sent to India might
Speaker 2: well be Nepalese who often travel on fake Indian passports.
Speaker 2: The Siddle cluster of cheap tents, shipping container offices, un shelters,
Speaker 2: and barbed wire fences is where the rubber meets a
Speaker 2: road for the USA's border and migration policy, and it's
Speaker 2: heartbreaking to witness as migrants were called up to the
Speaker 2: security office to begin the deportation process. I tried to
Speaker 2: narrate the scene into my voice recorder, but I struggled,
Speaker 2: in part because their family members asked me questions, hoping
Speaker 2: I can help. Yeah, plankings on a say, But in
Speaker 2: a larger part this was also difficult because I couldn't help,
Speaker 2: and I deeply wanted to. The best I could offer
Speaker 2: was an arm around someone's shoulder and the promise to
Speaker 2: email anyone who I could think of and ask what
Speaker 2: was going on. This guy's just sobbing. Ah. Yeah, that's
Speaker 2: really tough. Some people's parents, some people's partners, And I'll
Speaker 2: explain exactly what was happening in a moment, but first
Speaker 2: I want to explain how I got here. On the
Speaker 2: day we left Maragante, we set off at the same
Speaker 2: time some migrants who are making their own journey to
Speaker 2: last Blankets is carrying only myself and my fixed daddy
Speaker 2: and Aguero. So we're moving a lot faster than the
Speaker 2: boats full of migrants on the way north. We passed them,
Speaker 2: they smiled waves. We rode by many of them had
Speaker 2: met me the day before. All of them were ecstatic
Speaker 2: to have survived to daddy En and be heading north.
Speaker 2: You know, it's a pretty busy stretch of river that's
Speaker 2: probably three or four piaguas full of migrants. Hello, there,
Speaker 2: kids shanging and men taught them some English words yesterday
Speaker 2: and they're shouting them back to me today, which is nice.
Speaker 2: I got it family from Panama. They might be Indio
Speaker 2: people or something. They little Bill shocked to the whole scene.
Speaker 2: Here we are patting another bit agua. Now they're all
Speaker 2: waving in me. It's got to be uncomfortable. Pack that
Speaker 2: dancy into a bi agua one, two, three, four or five, six, seven,
Speaker 2: eighty nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirty forty sixteen people. Yeah,
Speaker 2: once they boath arrived, they did embark in Las Blancas.
Speaker 2: The next day. I was there to meet them. They're
Speaker 2: just walking into LaaS Blancas. It's hectic here. So it's
Speaker 2: a new shop here, and outside the shop they've made
Speaker 2: like a line of outlets to charge people. It's a
Speaker 2: dollar an hour to charge your telephone. As we go in,
Speaker 2: there are a row of like kind of sheds which
Speaker 2: represent shops and then further in every ngo has its
Speaker 2: own little kind of shed. They're all covered in tarps.
Speaker 2: They're like canvas and tarp tents. Actually here so see
Speaker 2: UNISEF see oh I am. Yeah, they have that sort
Speaker 2: of little tent office here. I guess see here as
Speaker 2: for example has route information, psychological supports. They space for women,
Speaker 2: WUNISEF has. There's some workshops for children. And then in
Speaker 2: the hours, I guess, nice little chairs in there, yeah,
Speaker 2: seas then you can't take photographs in there, which is good. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And then it's just a crowd of people coming out.
Speaker 2: And there's also Mormon, little little Mormon situation.
Speaker 3: Yea.
Speaker 2: I guess thee O I am are supported by Church
Speaker 2: of Jesus Christ on that today saints. Then the Red
Speaker 2: Cross has got a shipping container. I've been hoping last
Speaker 2: Black Guests would be a better scene than Bajugito, with
Speaker 2: more organized sleeping arrangements and hopefully basic necessities like clean water,
Speaker 2: food and Wi Fi provided by their numerous NGOs who
Speaker 2: work there. But if anything, it was worse in Bahjigito.
Speaker 2: In Bajuquito, migrants were exhausted but also ecstatic to be
Speaker 2: at the jungle. Then you they'll be moving forward the
Speaker 2: next day, and for a few bucks they can get
Speaker 2: anythink they needed in the village. The locals told me
Speaker 2: that if kids didn't have the money to eat, they
Speaker 2: fed them for free. I didn't see this, but nobody
Speaker 2: seem like they're having a very hard time in any
Speaker 2: of the days have visited the village, at least not
Speaker 2: for financial reasons. Magots can get as far as Baho
Speaker 2: Jiguito on a few hundred dollars in their tenasty. They
Speaker 2: pay Columbian guides a few hundred bucks to bring them
Speaker 2: across the ocean from Necopie and to walk them from
Speaker 2: the border, and they parried Embarra Perraguero's twenty five bucks
Speaker 2: for a ride up the river. But once they get
Speaker 2: to last Blankerts. For a good number of migrants, their
Speaker 2: journey grinds to a halt. Many of them told me
Speaker 2: they've been stuck in the camp for weeks or even
Speaker 2: months because they couldn't get that sixty dollars that they
Speaker 2: needed to pay for their travel north. There's no Western
Speaker 2: Union in the camp, and the only way to transfer
Speaker 2: money is very local interomediay who charges between twenty and
Speaker 2: twenty five percent of the sum being transferred as a fee.
Speaker 2: In the morning, migrants arrive on their peraguas, just as
Speaker 2: we did. I drop down the boat ramp when I
Speaker 2: them to help with their bags, and I'll go about their
Speaker 2: journey from there. They formed two lines, one for men
Speaker 2: and one for women and children. They have their bag
Speaker 2: search and their passport checked. They're given a welcome kit
Speaker 2: for the Red Cross with some basic necessities toilet paper,
Speaker 2: a toothbrush, some soap, stuff like that, or some of
Speaker 2: them get a kid. When the kids ran out, it
Speaker 2: was long before the line of people did. By the
Speaker 2: time the men were finished, they were given little more
Speaker 2: than a shrug and good wishes better Red Cross volunteers
Speaker 2: and allowed to head off into the camp. Within the camp,
Speaker 2: there are a few rows of small casitas that are
Speaker 2: allocated to u accompany children and families. They're little more
Speaker 2: than four walls in a roof, but they offer a
Speaker 2: bit of privacy for most migrants, though there isn't space
Speaker 2: and they have to search for a spot of empty
Speaker 2: ground in the crowded camp where they can pitch the
Speaker 2: same tents they bought a neckockley the Wi FI which
Speaker 2: a Red Cross usually provides, wasn't working when I arrived,
Speaker 2: so I had to let people hot spot off my
Speaker 2: phone all day. At least the promised food really was free,
Speaker 2: but the migrant told me it was far from good. Still,
Speaker 2: this is supposed to be a temporary camp. People register here,
Speaker 2: get any medical attention they need, and then move forward
Speaker 2: to Costa Rica. That's the theory anyway. In practice, if
Speaker 2: you can't get the sixty bucks, you need to move forward,
Speaker 2: or someone stole it for me in the jungle, or
Speaker 2: you are forced to walk to the camp because you
Speaker 2: didn't have twenty five bucks for the boat and then
Speaker 2: someone rubbed you. Then you're stuck.
Speaker 1: We have been here a month. You have people who've
Speaker 1: been here a month and a half. I've been twenty
Speaker 1: seven days here. Well, I thank god because we have
Speaker 1: three meals a day. We have water, but it still
Speaker 1: hurts the girls. The food and water always make me
Speaker 1: sick with diarrhea. It bothers me. I vomit and the
Speaker 1: heat is so desperate. But we have to hold on
Speaker 1: because even though we don't have the resources, like we
Speaker 1: don't have enough to pay for a ticket, we have
Speaker 1: to hold on here a little longer. We don't have
Speaker 1: any family members can give us support.
Speaker 2: Either what's keeping the migrants here is money, or rather
Speaker 2: a lack of bit. They need sixty bucks to leave.
Speaker 2: Buses used to take five free passengers per bus, but
Speaker 2: under Panama's new regime, it seems like they don't. Instead,
Speaker 2: migrants just gradually a mass in growing number of tents
Speaker 2: that populate the grassy areas of Las Blankets. They might
Speaker 2: try and do some informal work. I saw one guy
Speaker 2: who was cutting hair for a dollar a time, but
Speaker 2: I couldn't really get a satisfactory response to what they're
Speaker 2: expected to do. If they don't have the money and
Speaker 2: can't get someone to send us seventy five dollars, they'd
Speaker 2: need to cover their travel costs and the twenty five
Speaker 2: percent transfer.
Speaker 1: Feel if you're short ten dollars, they don't put you
Speaker 1: on the bus or anything. So things are terrible here.
Speaker 1: There should at least be support for migrants who at
Speaker 1: least come with few resources. They don't have money or anything.
Speaker 1: They can search your bags so they can see that
Speaker 1: you're not lying that you don't have money. Because nobody
Speaker 1: wants to be stuck here, you have to move forward
Speaker 1: because nobody wants to be stuck here in Panama. The
Speaker 1: idea is to move forward to get further ahead. We
Speaker 1: brought our children to look for a future, not to
Speaker 1: be locked up here in Panama, as if we've been
Speaker 1: in prisoned.
Speaker 2: The group even tried to leave on foot, hoping to
Speaker 2: begin walking north, and so it's for better future and
Speaker 2: a way to make money on their way. But they
Speaker 2: were caught, they say, and returned to the camera.
Speaker 1: And they beat me hard. I gave myself up because
Speaker 1: they had caught her, a grandmother with my other daughter.
Speaker 1: I returned myself voluntarily and they beat me up anyway,
Speaker 1: and from there we've lost the desire to walk back there.
Speaker 1: What can we do rights? They don't care about them.
Speaker 1: We are human beings, but we don't have rights here
Speaker 1: in Panama.
Speaker 2: They do have the money. Margarets could take a bus
Speaker 2: to the Costa Rican border when the busts first arrived.
Speaker 2: I tried to describe the scene as migrants rushed to
Speaker 2: buy food, not only for this journey, but also so
Speaker 2: for their journey through Costa Rica, where food and other
Speaker 2: basics are much more expensive. I'm here in Lahablancas when
Speaker 2: the first buses have arrived. It's about noon. The first
Speaker 2: bus is going to be followed people who had been
Speaker 2: waiting in line for hours already, so they're kind of
Speaker 2: lining up by the bus.
Speaker 1: And then.
Speaker 2: The next bus is people seem to be kind of
Speaker 2: rushing to get to them. They're rushing to my food.
Speaker 2: I can just see this guy has like an entire
Speaker 2: carrier bag full of pink Way for biscuits and coke bottles,
Speaker 2: that that's going to be his food for the next
Speaker 2: eleven hours. I guess other guys will see with bags
Speaker 2: of bread rolls and stuff, and they're the first people
Speaker 2: are getting on the bus. Now, these buses aren't entirely safe.
Speaker 2: In twenty twenty three, forty two people died in a
Speaker 2: bus crash. This year, seventeen were intured in a crash
Speaker 2: in August. Now, migration offices ride in each bus with
Speaker 2: the migrants to check on safety protocols and make sure
Speaker 2: they don't get off anywhere else in the country just
Speaker 2: like everywhere else on their journey. People make money off
Speaker 2: the migrants in last blankets. A bus costs sixty dollars
Speaker 2: ahead and has fifty five passages three thousand, three hundred
Speaker 2: dollars a bus. More than a dozen buses leave every day.
Speaker 2: They even half of a thousand or so people who
Speaker 2: arrived us a transfer service to get their bus fare.
Speaker 2: That's seven five hundred dollars in transfer fees alone. Of course,
Speaker 2: not everyone in the community is making thousands of dollars
Speaker 2: off the migrants. I interviewed local shopkeeper who still sits
Speaker 2: just outside the camp gates, and I asked him to
Speaker 2: explain his stock, which included the oddly popular I backed
Speaker 2: the blue, thin blue Lion T shirt. So I'd seen
Speaker 2: several people across the daddy and gap.
Speaker 4: In Okayamo only fucking money.
Speaker 2: I asked him what was the most common shopping list
Speaker 2: for migrants see Cassie.
Speaker 5: Yes, almost all of them coming by sets for ten, fifteen,
Speaker 5: twenty dollars. It depends there are many who don't have them.
Speaker 5: I have children's sets for five dollars. I have sets
Speaker 5: for five dollars that are pants and sweaters, which is
Speaker 5: what they're looking for the most. Those that are socks
Speaker 5: without underwear, backpacks for fifteen dollars because the backpack is
Speaker 5: so worn out and they need it so much that
Speaker 5: it carries their belongings. Look it's not really everyone who
Speaker 5: can buy. There are certain people who buy, of course,
Speaker 5: if everyone bought, but there are very few who can
Speaker 5: buy something to leave here. Almost seventy percent leave dirty
Speaker 5: because they don't have anywhere to get money, and the
Speaker 5: little they can get often comes from selling their phones,
Speaker 5: their watch, a cap, or their sneakers to be able
Speaker 5: to get money to pay for their fare to keep going.
Speaker 2: I asked him how the migration had impacted the community.
Speaker 2: With people making a lot of money, I asked, were
Speaker 2: they mad about the trash and the pollution of the river.
Speaker 2: These are legitimate concerns, even if they're used in bad
Speaker 2: faith against the migrants.
Speaker 5: Now, you're so much effect though nobody is perfect, but
Speaker 5: I can tell you one thing. Honestly, the migrants suffer
Speaker 5: a lot to be able to carry out this journey.
Speaker 5: And there are many times when I've even had to
Speaker 5: give them clothes, some because they don't have any. And well,
Speaker 5: when a father and family with children comes, what can
Speaker 5: I say, Look, I have a family, I.
Speaker 4: Have to do this. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I asked him what he felt the solution was to
Speaker 2: the suffering here, the damage done both to people and planet.
Speaker 5: Okay, I say that oppressing people so that they don't
Speaker 5: go through the dairy. And it's not the solution because
Speaker 5: if you put it to the point, even if they
Speaker 5: don't know an exact percentage, the immigrant gives the economy
Speaker 5: of the United States a balance because the people born there.
Speaker 5: Not to criticize them, people born there want a stable
Speaker 5: job and he doesn't want to feel like he's very,
Speaker 5: very low. However, the immigrant is there and he's picking fruit,
Speaker 5: going to the fruit trees, going to the vegetable fields,
Speaker 5: going to the garbage dumps, going picking up things that
Speaker 5: many Americans who live there don't do, of course, and
Speaker 5: so they need them to say that they don't go.
Speaker 5: They need the support of the immigrant to be able
Speaker 5: to have the balance that they have today.
Speaker 2: Like a lot of Panamanians I met, he was broadly
Speaker 2: in solidarity with the migrants. I didn't really encounter anti
Speaker 2: migrants sentiment at all in my time at Panama. In
Speaker 2: the capital city, which locals just called Panama but we
Speaker 2: can call Panama City, migrants are not really physically present,
Speaker 2: nor are they present in conversation. I found the transition
Speaker 2: for the jungle and the refugee camps back to the
Speaker 2: bustling city pretty challenging a lot of ways. I find
Speaker 2: I'm oddly comfortable amidst the chalos and trauma of a
Speaker 2: refugee camp. It's a familiar environment for me, and I
Speaker 2: know how to conduct myself. I feel safe with the migrants,
Speaker 2: and I tend to find them very open and welcoming
Speaker 2: to me. I can talk to anyone and they can
Speaker 2: talk to me. I bring toys for children and try
Speaker 2: to bring resources for adults, and sometimes I bring my
Speaker 2: harmonica if I being really cliche in a weird way.
Speaker 2: Refgue camps are a little safe space for me, and
Speaker 2: even though I know it's bad, I can console myself
Speaker 2: that I'm helping a little or at least giving people
Speaker 2: some hope and some information. That made me feel a
Speaker 2: bit better. But in the city I found it hard
Speaker 2: knowing that people were in a terrible situation and that
Speaker 2: nobody hears seem to care. I went for a running
Speaker 2: the jungle near the city, trying to get some perspective
Speaker 2: and clear my head, but I just ended up screaming
Speaker 2: and didn't consider it driver. I was angry at them
Speaker 2: for they're hitting me, but I was just angry at
Speaker 2: everyone all over the US and even here in Panama City,
Speaker 2: for their indifference as so much human suffering. The lack
Speaker 2: of concern about migrants in Panama City made what I
Speaker 2: saw next at Last Blankets even more surprising. An announcement
Speaker 2: of the loudspeakers called several Colombian passport holders to the
Speaker 2: migration office. At first, it seemed like they were just
Speaker 2: going to a little wooden shed with a couple of
Speaker 2: CENTA Front officers in it to return their documents. I
Speaker 2: had already noticed that some migrants, and seemingly most of
Speaker 2: the African migrants, were being called to a different shed
Speaker 2: to do biometric scans. I wondered if this was part
Speaker 2: of the same process. But shortly thereafter a truck rolled
Speaker 2: up and several of the Colombians were loaded in. Apparently
Speaker 2: neither they nor their partners knew what was going on.
Speaker 2: They're taking some of the Columbian guys away to report them.
Speaker 2: You can hear a little kid crying for his dad, okay, listen,
Speaker 2: and taking his brother and his brother's wife, taking some
Speaker 2: other lady's husband, some of little kid's dad and making
Speaker 2: them sit on the floor. I don't know why, Yeah,
Speaker 2: I don't know what they're going to do now. She's
Speaker 2: trying to give her husband the money and a SIM
Speaker 2: card so you can call her. You're gonna go get
Speaker 2: some more food. Other morguts approached me to us if
Speaker 2: I knew, which I didn't. The one lady who'd been
Speaker 2: there for weeks told me that people who leave this
Speaker 2: way never come back and they end up being deported,
Speaker 2: So we assume that's what's happening here. Yeah, this really sucks.
Speaker 2: Now they're taking the deportation by. There's men crying, I said,
Speaker 2: wives are on their women crying, their husbands are on
Speaker 2: their kids are crying, their parents are on there, and
Speaker 2: they've just done this crossing and now they're going to
Speaker 2: send them back. By the time I got back to
Speaker 2: the city, I was getting texts from migrants with photos
Speaker 2: of them and handcuffs. More and more of them were
Speaker 2: being deported, particularly the Colombians. One of them, texting me
Speaker 2: after being returned to Columbia on a flight, gave the
Speaker 2: following account of detention.
Speaker 6: They treated us.
Speaker 7: Very badly verbally and psychologically. We all had to do
Speaker 7: our business in the same cell, and they threw food
Speaker 7: on the floor for us to eat as we were
Speaker 7: all in handcuffs. They told us that of Venezuelan had
Speaker 7: burned down the migrant detention center in San Vincente and
Speaker 7: that we would all pay for it, and that the
Speaker 7: Colombians didn't need to leave the country because the president
Speaker 7: there said it was doing well and there's plenty of work.
Speaker 7: None of that is true.
Speaker 2: The American facility in Samba cent they was burned out,
Speaker 2: and the people working there it was a Venezuelan migrant
Speaker 2: who did that. But all of that excuses any of this.
Speaker 2: We weren't able to access that facility as the people
Speaker 2: who had detained there can't really consent meaningfully to an interview.
Speaker 2: That's a fair enough for paction. But the migrant who
Speaker 2: was deported also alleged that they received no hearings or
Speaker 2: a chance to appeal their deportation. Instead, they were detained
Speaker 2: for eight days, spent their last US dollars, and were
Speaker 2: then kicked out of the country. They were not detained
Speaker 2: or arrested upon reaching Columbia, which makes it a little
Speaker 2: more difficult for me to believe the claim that only
Speaker 2: people without standing warrants in Columbia were being deported. These
Speaker 2: weren't the only allegations of mistreatment. I heard Margarets came
Speaker 2: to me and whispered about the abuse of black migrants
Speaker 2: who were forced to walk to Lahas Blancos because they
Speaker 2: couldn't afford the boat ride. I should note that it
Speaker 2: wasn't the migrants who had been robbed or abuse that
Speaker 2: came to me. It was other migrants. It was a
Speaker 2: group of guys had given a water filter too. While
Speaker 2: they were leaving to walk from Lahas Blancas. I hadn't
Speaker 2: been able to join them, but when they got there,
Speaker 2: we ran into each other again, and they came up
Speaker 2: to meet to share their concerns for the black men
Speaker 2: who had walked with them. In one instance, one migrant
Speaker 2: told me he was robbed by what he called quote
Speaker 2: police dressed as thieves. The deportations, which seemed to be
Speaker 2: increasingly commonplace, are being funded by US taxpayer dollars. The
Speaker 2: same day that Molino took office in July, Homeland Security
Speaker 2: Secretary Alejandro Majorcas, himself the child of migrants, visited Panama.
Speaker 2: Panama's a relatively young country and one which the US
Speaker 2: occupied part of for much of the last century, but
Speaker 2: despite a real struggle for independence, the Panamanian government didn't
Speaker 2: seem concerned that the U S Secretary of Homeland Security
Speaker 2: was present at the inauguration of a president in a
Speaker 2: country that decidedly not the U S homeland. The official
Speaker 2: DHS readout of his trip notes that the US has
Speaker 2: enjoyed a flourishing strategic relationship with Panama for over one
Speaker 2: hundred years, which is certainly one way to sum up
Speaker 2: decades of occupation, violence, and profit from the Panama Canal
Speaker 2: and one of the more brutal dictatorships in the long
Speaker 2: list of authoritarian regimes that the US preferred to minister,
Speaker 2: even socialist governments in the Western Hemisphere. They also announced
Speaker 2: that the US government would quote help the Panamanian government
Speaker 2: to remove foreign nationals who do not have a legal
Speaker 2: basis to remain in Panama. Obvious yet to take this
Speaker 2: moment to note that under the United Nations Refugee Convention,
Speaker 2: refugees do have a legal right to travel through a
Speaker 2: country on route to another. His Erica describing that right.
Speaker 6: The Refugee Convention is complex.
Speaker 8: The UES afford a lot of rights to people who
Speaker 8: have fled their countries based on persecution. You know you're
Speaker 8: supposed to be able to pass through whichever country you want,
Speaker 8: go to whichever country you want, not be criminally prosecuted
Speaker 8: for crossing the border between ports of entry, and not
Speaker 8: be turned back to a country where you face harm.
Speaker 2: The US allocated six million dollars for a six month
Speaker 2: pilot program of repatriations. If the program meets the USA's goals,
Speaker 2: they might consider expanding it to other countries along the
Speaker 2: migrant route. According to reporting in Rutters, as of early October,
Speaker 2: they've deported five hundred and thirty people to Colombia. That's
Speaker 2: half the people I saw arriving in a single day
Speaker 2: in Bajojigito. Because Panama's government and Venezuela's government have ceased
Speaker 2: relations after the election, Panama is now struggling to deport
Speaker 2: Venezuelan's back to Venezuela, and it's actively searching for a
Speaker 2: third country into which to deport them. But even if
Speaker 2: the program resulted in one plane loaded day, which it
Speaker 2: hasn't yet, that would be roughly ten percent of the
Speaker 2: total daily in traffic, and far fewer planes are traveling.
Speaker 2: What it will do, like so many other DHS policies,
Speaker 2: is play into the hands of smugglers. Already new ocean
Speaker 2: routes are being used, which see migrants, many of whom
Speaker 2: cannot swim, taking long journeys around Panama on ill equiped boats.
Speaker 2: This doesn't help anyone apart from the DHS contractors and
Speaker 2: staff equipping and training Panamanian personnel, and the human traffickers
Speaker 2: making more and more money from migration. I also a shopkeeper.
Speaker 2: His opinion on this.
Speaker 5: Look, I'll tell you I think that instead of giving
Speaker 5: them a reward for deportation, they should give them support,
Speaker 5: a lot of support, because it is a huge sacrifice
Speaker 5: to leave your country where you were born, your children,
Speaker 5: your family, leave it to be able to have a future,
Speaker 5: and you go with your mentality that your future is
Speaker 5: the United States that will give you an opportunity to
Speaker 5: get ahead and give well being to your children. Now,
Speaker 5: ten percent of those who go are going to destroy
Speaker 5: the good name of the migrants, But what people really
Speaker 5: want to do is help their family, and this balance
Speaker 5: unbalances everything that is being done by good people, because
Speaker 5: there are many good people who want to get ahead,
Speaker 5: and I think that the United States should support give
Speaker 5: support to people who really want to fight and move forward.
Speaker 5: As I just told you, they give a lot of
Speaker 5: benefit they contribute to the country.
Speaker 2: After leaving Las Blancas, I felt pretty down about the
Speaker 2: fact that people were just hitting a wall that they
Speaker 2: couldn't overcome. Since then, I've stayed in touch with many
Speaker 2: of them. For some a friend or family member was
Speaker 2: able to send the money and they made it to
Speaker 2: costantly on the bus. From there, they crossed quickly into
Speaker 2: Nicaragua and Guatemala before arriving in the Mexican border city
Speaker 2: of Tapachula in the state of Chiapas and ironically not
Speaker 2: so very far from whether Zapatista's made their revolution thirty
Speaker 2: years ago. Once they crossed the southern border of Mexico,
Speaker 2: migrants can begin their application for asylum using the CBP
Speaker 2: one app that we've talked about so much on the
Speaker 2: show before. They can use it in Tabasco and Chiapas,
Speaker 2: the southern border states, and then once again when they're
Speaker 2: north of Mexico City. To recap very briefly, the app
Speaker 2: is terrible and almost every way, including its inability to
Speaker 2: recognize blackfaces. It's limited functionality on Android phones, which is
Speaker 2: a vast majority of devices used by migrants. It's constant
Speaker 2: crashing an eight to nine month wait time for stylum appointments. His'
Speaker 2: erico explaining some of those problems.
Speaker 3: You have to have a relatively new smartphone, you have
Speaker 3: to have an address, all the people you're traveling with
Speaker 3: have to be with you right, and you have to
Speaker 3: first get through the initial kind of registration phase.
Speaker 6: Which doesn't always work. The program is very glitchy.
Speaker 3: You have to take a live photo, and you have
Speaker 3: to wait essentially, so you know, it's kind of random too.
Speaker 6: Some people will get.
Speaker 3: An appointment within three months, but I would say most
Speaker 3: people are waiting nine to twelve At this point. You
Speaker 3: don't have any legal status in Mexico while you're waiting,
Speaker 3: unless you can apply for some other status in Mexico independently.
Speaker 2: That it is yet very poorly designed. It's also a
Speaker 2: de facto a metering system on asignum' erico explaining.
Speaker 3: That we've been litigating against the use of CBP one
Speaker 3: for a few years now now. My organization out at
Speaker 3: the level and Patient Bridge Alliance, and the reason why
Speaker 3: we are fighting against the required use of CBP one
Speaker 3: is first because it is an illegal metering system. So
Speaker 3: we've already litigated the fact that there is no number
Speaker 3: limit on the amount of individuals who can seek asylum
Speaker 3: at the US Mexico border, and Customs and Border Protection
Speaker 3: legally does not have the right to turn people.
Speaker 6: Away, and CBP one essentially allows them to do that.
Speaker 3: You know, there were physical metering lists at ports of
Speaker 3: entry before CBP one was implemented as essentially the only
Speaker 3: way to access the US asylum system at ports of entry,
Speaker 3: and now it's.
Speaker 6: A digital metering list and it's very limited.
Speaker 2: Recently, the Department of Homeland Security lost a court case
Speaker 2: which forced them to release records in there with some
Speaker 2: of the app plugs and data regarding CBP one. I'm
Speaker 2: still in the phase of coming through that asking my friends,
Speaker 2: you know more about technologies than I do, explain exactly
Speaker 2: what the limitations with the app are, But it doesn't
Speaker 2: really matter. DHS is well aware of the app's flaws,
Speaker 2: and it doesn't really seem to see the most flaws
Speaker 2: at all. The goal of the app is to make
Speaker 2: it harder for people, even those with very legitimate asylum claims,
Speaker 2: to obtain asylum in the USA. As we heard yesterday,
Speaker 2: the CHNV program is no better. A recently Reddit thread
Speaker 2: of applicants who've been waiting nearly two years. What it
Speaker 2: didn't mention yesterday is a parallel program for another group
Speaker 2: of migrants, which I'll let Erica explain.
Speaker 3: I want to mention the fact that there is a
Speaker 3: cap I think it's thirty thousand a month or something
Speaker 3: like that for those four countries, But it's almost identical
Speaker 3: to the Ukrainian United for a Ukraine program, which doesn't
Speaker 3: have a cap right, so there's no limit to how
Speaker 3: many Ukrainians can get the same benefit.
Speaker 6: And they are renewing the humanitarian prole.
Speaker 3: For Ukrainians, which I believe was just announced almost within
Speaker 3: weeks of them announcing that they're not renewing for the
Speaker 3: other four countries.
Speaker 6: So it's really a very stark demonstration of how the
Speaker 6: US immigration system, even when it's a relatively mean or
Speaker 6: benefit is based on race, is based on which country
Speaker 6: you're from.
Speaker 2: What this means is it in practice? The migrants I
Speaker 2: spoke to face a long and dangerous way in Mexico
Speaker 2: while others skip ahead. I've got nothing against the Ukrainians,
Speaker 2: and I don't think many of them do either. I
Speaker 2: tried to go to Ukraine and report, but the avisas
Speaker 2: ended up taking so long that I missed the flights
Speaker 2: that I'd booked. I have, however, a serious problem with
Speaker 2: a Biden administration which left people who fought alongside its
Speaker 2: own US troops to die in Afghanistan and turned away
Speaker 2: migrants small over the world, but then opened its arms
Speaker 2: to a country that just happened to have the majority
Speaker 2: of its citizens be the same race as the president.
Speaker 2: It's cruel and it's wrong, and it's barely ever even
Speaker 2: mentioned in national media coverage. But that's not fortunate enough
Speaker 2: to be Ukrainian. Here's what waiting in Mexico looks like.
Speaker 3: The incidence of crime director at migrants is horrifyingly high.
Speaker 3: We had done an electronic survey a few years ago,
Speaker 3: and this was during title forty two, when people were
Speaker 3: just being expelled to Mexico, and if I remember correctly,
Speaker 3: it was like around twenty five to thirty percent of
Speaker 3: people had been either raped.
Speaker 6: Such traffic assaulted, kidnapped. I mean, the list goes on
Speaker 6: and on.
Speaker 3: We've seen a lot of people lose their lives just
Speaker 3: due to violence, and the kidnapping rates are through the roof.
Speaker 2: Almost everyone you've heard from in this series is now
Speaker 2: stuck in Mexico. Some of them have been kidnapped, paid,
Speaker 2: ransomed and released. Some of them have been sexually assaulted.
Speaker 2: Many of them have been robbed. Some of them have,
Speaker 2: after surviving one of the most deadly land migration routes
Speaker 2: on Earth, been killed while waiting in Mexico for an
Speaker 2: app to stop crashing on their phones. Over a week
Speaker 2: since I got home, I've seen them go gradually more
Speaker 2: desperate and afraid just to get to Mexico. Many of
Speaker 2: them have spent several thousand dollars. Once they're in Capatula,
Speaker 2: they faced with the astronomical costs for the trip north
Speaker 2: off just several thousand dollars more, and many of them,
Speaker 2: their fund exhausted, have slept on the streets. Those didn't
Speaker 2: speak Spanish struggle to find refuge. Those who did wanted
Speaker 2: to move quickly north, but struggle to find the money here.
Speaker 2: The Iranian migrants you heard earlier in the series explaining
Speaker 2: what they'd already heard about CBP one.
Speaker 4: It's so tough because the some polices in their way,
Speaker 4: they are two to our money that became from Iran.
Speaker 4: It was so difficult for us and the resumed a
Speaker 4: way so Mexico. Mexico is so difficult for us and
Speaker 4: something is CBP one is not working for our for us,
Speaker 4: for Iranian people, Yeah, I hope the people who are
Speaker 4: in Mexico City for about three months.
Speaker 6: For three months, Yeah, CPP wanted.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Because of that, Iranian people go to the wall and yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: it's not our choice.
Speaker 2: We have to do this.
Speaker 4: We don't want them, but it's we have to do this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's good to explain that. According to a study
Speaker 2: conducted at the University of Texas, wait times are as
Speaker 2: high as eight or nine months on average. Now mexicoing
Speaker 2: out it's on the thirty first of August that it
Speaker 2: will provide security and food for migrants who have an
Speaker 2: appointment to travel north from the south of the country
Speaker 2: to the place where they have a CBP wall appointment.
Speaker 2: Margarets absolutely have been robbed or kidnapped on their way
Speaker 2: to their appointment and missed it as a result, but
Speaker 2: they're just as honorable in the eight or nine months
Speaker 2: that they have to wait for one. Margarets and Tapajula
Speaker 2: are at a very high risk for kidnapping and are
Speaker 2: often held until their families pay ransoms, but without money
Speaker 2: or an appointment, they have little means of leaving the city.
Speaker 2: Some choose to travel a little further north and then
Speaker 2: hop on a freight train known as Labstia the Beast,
Speaker 2: an extraordinarily risky endeavor that several of the people I
Speaker 2: spoke to for this series have undertaken. The only place
Speaker 2: to ride on these trains is on top of carriages,
Speaker 2: exposing migrants to freezing temperatures in the desert night. Even
Speaker 2: on the train, they're not safe from kidnapping. Like many migrants,
Speaker 2: the Iranian group were well informed about domestic politics in
Speaker 2: the US, and they said that when they made their
Speaker 2: journey north, they wanted to be sure to avoid the
Speaker 2: states where local law enforcement was likely to turn them
Speaker 2: over for deportation. In reality, that could be any of
Speaker 2: the states. But they're probably right that their life would
Speaker 2: be a little easier on the West Coast.
Speaker 4: I heard it's so difficult and about three months, four months,
Speaker 4: more than seven months, they will arrest us in the US.
Speaker 4: I heard in Mississippi.
Speaker 2: It takes us in the middle of Africa.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think that the California is a
Speaker 4: little little, little yeah, certainly our.
Speaker 9: Money is very excuse me, shits money in the world,
Speaker 9: and we have to pay a lot of money for
Speaker 9: this way.
Speaker 4: Our one yeah dollar, one dollar is sixty thousand.
Speaker 2: Some of course, which used to cross the border between
Speaker 2: ports of entry as they become desperate to see their
Speaker 2: families or afraid of remaining in Mexico. Since President Biden's
Speaker 2: executive audio earlier this summer, doing this can result expedited
Speaker 2: removal proceedings, and effectively, Biden's new ruling denies asylum by
Speaker 2: default to anyone crossing the border when daily crossings have
Speaker 2: passed twenty five hundred. In fact, this is the continuation
Speaker 2: of extremely punitive and cruel politics that have been in
Speaker 2: place since he was finally forced to stop using Title
Speaker 2: forty two, which, if you're not aware, is a public
Speaker 2: health law used by the Trump administration and embraced by
Speaker 2: the Biden administration as an asylum law. It has already
Speaker 2: resulted in the deportations of people back to places where
Speaker 2: they have extremely credible fears of harm and created a
Speaker 2: system whereby migrants have no idea how they will be
Speaker 2: treated on any given day. Again, it's play into the
Speaker 2: hands of anyone seeking to smoke or migrants into the
Speaker 2: country undertake well also harming innocent people coming to this
Speaker 2: country to US for protection. He's Erica's short history of
Speaker 2: Biden's asylent policy since last year.
Speaker 3: So when the Biden administration lifted Title forty two, they
Speaker 3: essentially imposed what I call a transitvent.
Speaker 6: So there's a couple of components to it.
Speaker 3: One is, if you do not enter the United States
Speaker 3: out of port of entry with a CBP one appointment,
Speaker 3: you are presumed ineligible for asylum unless you fall under
Speaker 3: a few narrow exceptions which are not consistently applied. So
Speaker 3: the exceptions are things like you were having a medical emergency,
Speaker 3: you were running for your life, you know you couldn't
Speaker 3: access the app for some reason. But in practice those
Speaker 3: exceptions are almost never applied at ports. There's been a
Speaker 3: few kind of alternative programs run by shelters or local
Speaker 3: governments where people with extreme medical vulnerabilities, for example, can
Speaker 3: be let in without an appointment, but we don't know
Speaker 3: whether the ban applies to them once they enter without
Speaker 3: that appointment, right, So it's like I said, inconsistently applied exceptions.
Speaker 3: If you enter between a port of entry, you're presumed
Speaker 3: and eligible for asylum. Again, unless you meet some narrow exceptions,
Speaker 3: and what that means is you can still apply for
Speaker 3: other types of protection in the United States. So there's
Speaker 3: two principal types of protection. One it's called withholding a removal,
Speaker 3: which is like asylum but with a higher standard. And
Speaker 3: then the other is Convention against Torture, which you just
Speaker 3: have to prove it's more likely than not that your
Speaker 3: own government will torture you, which is more extreme than persecution.
Speaker 3: But is it necessarily based on a protected ground. So
Speaker 3: the torture could be for any reason, but it's a
Speaker 3: high hurdle. But the most important thing is those two
Speaker 3: types of protection are not path to citizenship and they
Speaker 3: do not allow you to petition for your family. So,
Speaker 3: for example, if you get asylum in the US and
Speaker 3: then you want to ask for your life and children
Speaker 3: to join you, there is an avenue for that, and
Speaker 3: all of you can eventually become citizens. Withholding a removal
Speaker 3: and Convention against Torture, you basically get a work from it.
Speaker 3: If conditions in your country change, they can deport you
Speaker 3: and you can never leave the United States and you
Speaker 3: can never reunify with your family, and you could never
Speaker 3: become a citizen.
Speaker 2: This won't deter people. I speak to people every day
Speaker 2: who cross to Daddy in We're kidnapped, robbed, and sometimes
Speaker 2: raped on their way here. They're going through all of
Speaker 2: that because we refuse to give people a dignified or
Speaker 2: safe way to come here. They know it's a risk,
Speaker 2: and they continue to come because they think it's the
Speaker 2: only option. His powers from coming and explaining that it's.
Speaker 4: Deadly, how will lie to you.
Speaker 9: It's fifty fifty alive on date.
Speaker 1: Honestly, weecause, but we had to take the riks because
Speaker 1: I think.
Speaker 2: That was only awesome that we had. If you can't
Speaker 2: imagine taking those risks, it's likely because you can't imagine
Speaker 2: the things these people are leaving behind either. As a
Speaker 2: conflict reporter, I've been able to see a small amount
Speaker 2: of what they're fleeing, war, death, poverty, state violence. I
Speaker 2: don't know if i'd be brave or strong enough to
Speaker 2: do the same, but I have a lot of respect
Speaker 2: for people who can. Tomorrow we're going to talk about
Speaker 2: the people who help them along the way and what
Speaker 2: you can do to support them. When the state works,
Speaker 2: it could happen.
Speaker 9: Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts,
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Speaker 9: Thanks for listening.