WEBVTT - Part Two: The U.S. Border Patrol Is A Nightmare That Never Ends 0:00:00.040 --> 0:00:07.440 Mmm, hello world, but specifically Australia. This is Robert Evans 0:00:07.520 --> 0:00:10.360 hosted Behind the Bastards, and I just wanted my Australian 0:00:10.400 --> 0:00:12.560 listeners in particular to know that I stood up for 0:00:12.600 --> 0:00:17.880 you against Caitlin's cruelty. Just a minute ago, she pronounced 0:00:17.920 --> 0:00:23.720 the name of your greatest city, Melbourne, Melbourne. I guess, savage, Yeah, 0:00:23.760 --> 0:00:28.159 he said Melbourne. And then okay, well, what about the 0:00:28.160 --> 0:00:34.159 people who live in Sydney or or other cities in Australia. 0:00:34.720 --> 0:00:37.519 One city in Australia its name is Melbourne. And that's 0:00:37.560 --> 0:00:41.800 the end of this digression. Hello, Caitlin Duranty, guest for 0:00:41.840 --> 0:00:44.800 today's episode. How are you doing? Uh well? I would 0:00:44.800 --> 0:00:48.040 be doing better if you would pronounce my last name correctly. 0:00:48.840 --> 0:00:55.440 Speaking of mispronunciation, Durante Durant, I think we've all learned 0:00:55.440 --> 0:00:58.000 a lesson about maybe not judging each other, because it's 0:00:58.000 --> 0:01:00.440 impossible to ever know how words are supposed to be say. 0:01:00.720 --> 0:01:04.880 He thinks Ariana Grande's name is Arianna grand So you know, Sophie, 0:01:04.920 --> 0:01:07.319 even give me guff about that one for a while, 0:01:07.720 --> 0:01:14.320 as it deserves m. Well, now I'm sad. Don't be sad. 0:01:14.440 --> 0:01:17.440 Robert if this is part two. If we didn't get 0:01:17.480 --> 0:01:19.440 to pick on a white man at the beginning of 0:01:19.480 --> 0:01:24.000 an episode, then like, what's the point? Yeah, this is 0:01:24.040 --> 0:01:29.360 this is a whole episode about I don't know, let's 0:01:29.680 --> 0:01:33.240 let's let's pass the Bechdel test right now, Sophie. Oh, Caitlin, 0:01:33.400 --> 0:01:37.040 I I really enjoying the bluish shirt you're wearing right now. 0:01:37.840 --> 0:01:40.200 Oh my gosh, well, I'm so glad you brought it up, because, 0:01:40.840 --> 0:01:45.360 um it's it's a Paddington shirt that says migration is 0:01:45.400 --> 0:01:51.160 not a crime, which is relevant to today's episode. Wow, 0:01:51.520 --> 0:01:55.360 it really is relevant today's episode. That. But then I 0:01:55.400 --> 0:01:58.880 said Paddington and that that I was like, are we 0:01:59.000 --> 0:02:02.640 gendering padding in right now because that Huntington is a 0:02:02.680 --> 0:02:07.200 non binary a sexual icon. Yes, yes, yes, yes, So 0:02:07.520 --> 0:02:09.359 I kind of passed it back to this. Okay, Robert, 0:02:09.400 --> 0:02:11.400 you want to post your show behind the bastards right 0:02:11.440 --> 0:02:13.920 now because I don't actually know if we passed the 0:02:13.919 --> 0:02:16.359 Bechdel test there. But you know what test we did 0:02:16.400 --> 0:02:20.680 pass is the writing for many hours about the border 0:02:20.680 --> 0:02:29.800 patrol test. Yes, which is a more important test, I think, so, uh, 0:02:29.960 --> 0:02:32.080 you know this one. We're splitting up a little bit 0:02:32.120 --> 0:02:36.160 weirdly over the course of two weeks, because my entire 0:02:36.200 --> 0:02:39.720 life and schedule has been continually thrown into casts. So 0:02:39.760 --> 0:02:42.160 I do apologize for this one being done a little 0:02:42.160 --> 0:02:45.799 bit differently than others are done. On December six, two 0:02:45.680 --> 0:02:49.320 th eighteen, seven year old Jacqueline Call crossed the US 0:02:49.400 --> 0:02:52.840 Mexico border near a place called Antelope Wells, New Mexico. 0:02:53.280 --> 0:02:55.799 She was with her father, twenty nine year old Niry Call. 0:02:56.240 --> 0:02:59.000 Both were Kecchi Maya and they lived most of their 0:02:59.040 --> 0:03:01.640 lives in the Alta are A pause region of Guatemala. 0:03:01.919 --> 0:03:04.399 Starving in desperate, she and her family turned themselves into 0:03:04.400 --> 0:03:07.480 the Border Patrol. When Jacqueline was taken into their custody, 0:03:07.480 --> 0:03:09.720 she was already beginning to show signs of illness what 0:03:09.720 --> 0:03:13.760 would turn out to have been a streptococcle infection. DHS 0:03:13.880 --> 0:03:16.600 maintains that they conducted an initial screening and that there 0:03:16.720 --> 0:03:19.520 was no evidence of health issues and the little girl, 0:03:19.960 --> 0:03:22.880 Jacqueline was placed on a border patrol bus feverish and 0:03:22.960 --> 0:03:26.960 vomiting from severe dehydration. Eight hours after being taken into custody, 0:03:27.000 --> 0:03:29.880 she began to suffer seizures. She died the next day. 0:03:31.120 --> 0:03:35.280 Gomez Alonzo, age eight, crossed the Aos Mexico border sometime 0:03:35.320 --> 0:03:38.760 around December eighteenth. He and his father, Augustine, were members 0:03:38.800 --> 0:03:41.880 of the Choose People, another Mayan group who came from 0:03:41.960 --> 0:03:45.880 the Huahoaitanango region of Guatemala. Spent six days in border 0:03:45.920 --> 0:03:48.800 patrol custody, shuttled around from New Mexico to El Paso, 0:03:49.000 --> 0:03:50.760 and then back to New Mexico to be interned in 0:03:50.840 --> 0:03:54.240 an attention facility named near Alama Gordo. He started to 0:03:54.240 --> 0:03:56.480 show symptoms of sickness on the twenty four He was 0:03:56.520 --> 0:03:58.680 taken to the hospital, where he was tested for the cold, 0:03:58.840 --> 0:04:01.400 but not for influence zone, which he had. He was 0:04:01.440 --> 0:04:03.560 given medicine that could not help him and sent back 0:04:03.600 --> 0:04:06.520 to jail, where he died on Christmas Eve, two thousand eighteen. 0:04:08.280 --> 0:04:12.760 Ye good, good times. That's awful. Yeah, it's real bad. 0:04:13.360 --> 0:04:16.240 The deaths of Gomez and Jacqueline were briefly very big 0:04:16.240 --> 0:04:18.360 news in the United States. It was believed that the 0:04:18.440 --> 0:04:20.800 two were the first child immigrant deaths in border patrol 0:04:20.839 --> 0:04:23.920 custody since two thousand ten. In two thousand nineteen, though, 0:04:23.960 --> 0:04:26.880 it was revealed that another child, Darylyn Cordova, val of 0:04:26.920 --> 0:04:30.160 El Salvador had actually died back in September two eighteen 0:04:30.440 --> 0:04:34.320 under similar circumstances. The Trump administration received a lot of blame, 0:04:34.400 --> 0:04:36.560 both for covering this death up to try to influence 0:04:36.560 --> 0:04:39.400 the midterm elections and for their failure to push DHS 0:04:39.480 --> 0:04:42.039 to take any meaningful action to stop kids from dying 0:04:42.080 --> 0:04:45.040 at the border. Three dead children is a tragedy, but 0:04:45.080 --> 0:04:47.200 their little corpses are actually just the top of an 0:04:47.200 --> 0:04:50.520 iceberg of dead people, many of them Guatemalan, that we 0:04:50.520 --> 0:04:52.800 can lay at the feet of border patrol agents. And 0:04:52.839 --> 0:04:55.800 you might be surprised to learn how that whole situation 0:04:55.960 --> 0:04:59.359 came about. You want to hear about this, Caitlin, I 0:04:59.440 --> 0:05:03.279 have to also what colorful language you used in terms 0:05:03.360 --> 0:05:07.480 of the corpses or at the top of an iceberg. 0:05:07.839 --> 0:05:11.880 I mean, yeah, you know, I I think if you're 0:05:11.880 --> 0:05:14.040 gonna talk about dead kids, you should do it with 0:05:14.080 --> 0:05:19.560 a little bit of panas pizzas, panas um. Alright, I'm 0:05:20.000 --> 0:05:24.480 keep going, all right, so let's talk about the border 0:05:24.520 --> 0:05:28.240 patrol and um in in Central America. We're gonna talk 0:05:28.279 --> 0:05:30.960 about UM something I don't think a lot of people 0:05:31.000 --> 0:05:34.160 know about because usually, as a rule, when we talk 0:05:34.200 --> 0:05:36.799 about how bad the Border Patrol is. We talk about 0:05:36.839 --> 0:05:38.600 like how mean they are to people who come up 0:05:38.600 --> 0:05:41.440 to the border. Um, but we don't talk about what 0:05:41.520 --> 0:05:44.120 a lot of Border patrol guys did uh in the 0:05:44.200 --> 0:05:47.640 countries that these people are fleeing from before people started 0:05:47.680 --> 0:05:50.520 fleeing from those countries. So this is gonna be fun. Okay, 0:05:50.680 --> 0:05:52.720 I'm gonna it's gonna be a good time for everybody. 0:05:53.360 --> 0:05:56.840 Uh So. John P. Longan was a U. S Border 0:05:56.839 --> 0:05:59.360 Patrol agent in the nineteen forties and fifties. He worked 0:05:59.360 --> 0:06:01.599 near the Mexican border, close to where both Jacqueline and 0:06:01.600 --> 0:06:04.600 Gomez crossed over. Most sources you find on the matter 0:06:04.640 --> 0:06:07.880 will note that he had a reputation for violence, but 0:06:07.960 --> 0:06:09.839 this was not at all uncommon among the men of 0:06:09.839 --> 0:06:13.200 the Border Patrol, nor is it uncommon now. During operation 0:06:13.279 --> 0:06:15.760 went back when the Border Patrol reformed itself into a 0:06:15.800 --> 0:06:19.200 paramilitary force to wage war on Mexican immigrants, long End 0:06:19.279 --> 0:06:22.120 run the Patrols ran the Patrol's equivalent of a military 0:06:22.160 --> 0:06:26.480 intelligence service. Long AND's base was an unmarked building near Alameda. 0:06:26.560 --> 0:06:29.960 He and his men interrogated, captured migrants, extracted information, and 0:06:30.080 --> 0:06:32.560 used it to find and capture other groups of migrants. 0:06:32.839 --> 0:06:35.279 Few of the men who endured these interrogations ever spoke 0:06:35.320 --> 0:06:36.880 about it, but a lot of what happened in those 0:06:36.880 --> 0:06:40.320 cells probably verged on what we considered torture. Long End 0:06:40.400 --> 0:06:42.719 was good at his job, and his performance in Operation 0:06:42.760 --> 0:06:45.200 Went Back earned him a transfer to the State Department's 0:06:45.200 --> 0:06:48.760 Public Safety program. Now, this was, in reality a CIA 0:06:48.839 --> 0:06:52.760 operation geared at providing counterinsurgency training and advice to Allied 0:06:52.839 --> 0:06:56.800 nations combating communist insurgencies. The CIA hand picked a number 0:06:56.800 --> 0:06:59.960 of Border Patrol agents to travel to places like Venezuela, Thailand, 0:07:00.120 --> 0:07:04.400 the Dominican Republic in Guatemala. They particularly liked recruiting guys 0:07:04.440 --> 0:07:07.640 like long End because they were likely to speak Spanish. Now, 0:07:07.839 --> 0:07:10.640 the way the State Department framed this program was training 0:07:10.720 --> 0:07:15.640 law enforcement. So uh yeah, the State Department frame this 0:07:15.680 --> 0:07:18.360 program as training law enforcement. The reality, though, is that 0:07:18.440 --> 0:07:20.800 long End and his fellow Border patrolmen were sent over 0:07:20.840 --> 0:07:24.080 to places like Guatemala to create and train death squads. 0:07:24.520 --> 0:07:27.520 During Operation Went Back, Border Patrol administrators had described their 0:07:27.560 --> 0:07:30.800 work as fighting back against an invasion. In Guatemala, where 0:07:30.800 --> 0:07:33.240 long End arrived in nineteen sixty five, he was finally 0:07:33.280 --> 0:07:36.760 able to wage a real war using real weapons. I'm 0:07:36.760 --> 0:07:39.840 going to quote now from an article in The Nation. Quote. 0:07:40.320 --> 0:07:43.520 Long End taught local intelligence and police agencies how to 0:07:43.560 --> 0:07:46.960 create death squads to target political activists, deploying tactics that 0:07:47.000 --> 0:07:49.400 he had earlier used to capture migrants on the border. 0:07:49.720 --> 0:07:52.480 He arrived in Guatemala in late nineteen sixty five, where 0:07:52.480 --> 0:07:54.960 he put into place a paramilitary unit that early the 0:07:55.000 --> 0:07:58.280 next year would execute what he called Operation the Pieza, 0:07:58.520 --> 0:08:01.400 or Operation clean Up. Within three months, this unit had 0:08:01.440 --> 0:08:05.480 conducted over eighty raids and multiple extra judicial assassinations, including 0:08:05.480 --> 0:08:08.560 an action that, over the course of four days, captured, tortured, 0:08:08.560 --> 0:08:11.800 and executed more than thirty prominent Left opposition leaders. The 0:08:11.840 --> 0:08:14.280 military dumped their bodies into the sea, while the government 0:08:14.280 --> 0:08:17.640 denied any knowledge of their whereabouts. According to Stuart Schrader 0:08:17.680 --> 0:08:21.200 in his up forthcoming Badges Without Borders, How Global counterinsurgency 0:08:21.240 --> 0:08:24.480 transformed American policing, it was common practice during the Cold 0:08:24.480 --> 0:08:27.120 Wards and former border patrol agents like long End to 0:08:27.160 --> 0:08:30.120 train foreign police through CIA linked to public safety programs, 0:08:30.280 --> 0:08:32.360 since they were more likely to speak Spanish than agents 0:08:32.360 --> 0:08:35.840 from other branches of law enforcement. In countries like El Salvador, Honduras, 0:08:35.880 --> 0:08:38.600 and Guatemala. They did the dirty work that Reagan's envoys 0:08:38.600 --> 0:08:42.120 said needed doing. Until the early nineteen seventies, the United States, 0:08:42.120 --> 0:08:44.960 according to a nineteen seventy four Los Angeles Times report, 0:08:45.200 --> 0:08:47.960 was flying its Latin American death squad apprintices up to 0:08:48.000 --> 0:08:51.240 the Border Patrol Academy in Los Fresnos, Texas to receive 0:08:51.559 --> 0:08:55.000 training from CIA instructors and the design, manufacture and potential 0:08:55.080 --> 0:08:58.439 use of bombs and incendiary devices. Long and himself in 0:08:58.559 --> 0:09:00.800 nineteen fifty seven clearly to scribe what he thought he 0:09:00.840 --> 0:09:03.280 was doing at the border. We're fighting a war on 0:09:03.320 --> 0:09:07.160 a wide battle front, so that's good. So they're just 0:09:07.200 --> 0:09:13.800 basically training kill squads. They're just telling people to murder people. Yeah, 0:09:13.880 --> 0:09:16.520 and they're they're pulling Border patrol guys off the line 0:09:16.760 --> 0:09:18.840 to do some of the training to be like, oh, 0:09:18.920 --> 0:09:21.760 you already are good at like tracking down these groups 0:09:21.760 --> 0:09:25.080 of people who are trying to facilitate movement of of 0:09:25.120 --> 0:09:27.920 migrants through the United States. You can use those skills 0:09:28.200 --> 0:09:31.520 to track down political activists, except that you know, since 0:09:31.520 --> 0:09:33.560 it's in a foreign country, you can just have them 0:09:33.559 --> 0:09:37.600 brutally murdered by death squads. And these guys are happy 0:09:37.600 --> 0:09:39.800 to do it because they want to be murdering people anyway. 0:09:39.840 --> 0:09:43.400 They just can't quite usually murder people, um, you know 0:09:43.559 --> 0:09:46.040 at the border. I mean they do it a lot anyway, 0:09:46.080 --> 0:09:47.680 but like they have to be a little bit careful, 0:09:47.720 --> 0:09:49.559 but you don't have to be careful at all in Guatemala. 0:09:49.600 --> 0:09:54.520 So that's great. Oh, ge wiz, have ever been to Guatemala, Caitlin, 0:09:55.040 --> 0:09:58.080 I have not, rules. Yeah, yeah, I spent a lot 0:09:58.120 --> 0:10:00.920 of time there. It's a great country, beautiful, I uh, 0:10:01.080 --> 0:10:04.760 completely dysfunctional government. Um. And you can see like signs 0:10:04.800 --> 0:10:07.160 of the horrible civil war. They're all over the place. 0:10:07.240 --> 0:10:09.199 Just like you cross the street and there'll just be 0:10:09.280 --> 0:10:12.520 a bunch of guys who are all missing arms and legs. Um. 0:10:12.559 --> 0:10:14.360 You'll be driving through the middle of nowhere and you'll 0:10:14.360 --> 0:10:16.920 see like businesses that have been like we're shot up 0:10:16.960 --> 0:10:19.560 decades ago with mortars and stuff, and it you know, 0:10:19.640 --> 0:10:22.720 it's it all kind of descends from this. The the 0:10:22.920 --> 0:10:26.560 series of political conflicts that launch in this period of time, 0:10:26.600 --> 0:10:30.080 particularly in the early nineteen eighties, um, that are backed 0:10:30.080 --> 0:10:33.840 by the United States and supported enthusiastically by the Reagan government, 0:10:34.160 --> 0:10:38.280 and these kind of networks of right wing um murder 0:10:38.400 --> 0:10:41.800 crews that were trained up and sent out by the 0:10:41.840 --> 0:10:45.440 CIA and and their buddies and groups like the Border Patrol. Um, 0:10:45.600 --> 0:10:48.360 this all starts now, and it's cool, it's great, and 0:10:48.400 --> 0:10:52.880 it's probably it's I mean, it's refugees from Yep, these 0:10:52.920 --> 0:10:57.720 conflicts that are seeking refuge in right up to today. 0:10:57.960 --> 0:11:02.160 And then then they get here and they're like, well, sorry, 0:11:02.559 --> 0:11:07.479 fuck you, We're either going to murder you or um 0:11:07.600 --> 0:11:11.000 be diligent and let you die in our custody, or 0:11:11.200 --> 0:11:15.000 send you back to this you know, war torn country 0:11:15.200 --> 0:11:17.800 you're in. Yeah. If you listen to right wingers, they'll 0:11:17.880 --> 0:11:20.520 usually say something like, oh, they should go back to 0:11:20.559 --> 0:11:23.120 their own country and fix its problems. And the reality 0:11:23.200 --> 0:11:25.360 is that, like, well, some of them tried to do that, 0:11:25.520 --> 0:11:27.760 and then we trained death squads to murder them and 0:11:27.800 --> 0:11:32.240 throw their bodies in rivers and stuff in the ocean, 0:11:32.559 --> 0:11:36.440 and um, that's why people are less willing to try 0:11:36.480 --> 0:11:38.679 to fix problems because they get killed and so did 0:11:38.720 --> 0:11:41.320 their children because of the guys that we hired and 0:11:41.360 --> 0:11:44.120 trained to kill them and their children when they attempt 0:11:44.200 --> 0:11:49.120 to fight for economic justice. Oops, it's good, It's really good. 0:11:49.320 --> 0:11:53.040 Is what I'm getting at so um. Operation Lympiasa, which 0:11:53.080 --> 0:11:56.640 you know long and the Border Patrol guy orchestrated himself, 0:11:56.679 --> 0:11:59.600 was a major moment in the history of Guatemala's collapse 0:12:00.040 --> 0:12:02.920 to a nightmare. The military intelligence system he helped to 0:12:02.920 --> 0:12:05.960 build would eventually eliminate tens of thousands of leftist, activist 0:12:05.960 --> 0:12:09.520 sympathizers and random people mistaken for either. More than two 0:12:09.640 --> 0:12:13.559 hundred thousand people were massacred openly. Tens of thousands more 0:12:13.600 --> 0:12:15.480 were tortured in this way. The brave men of the 0:12:15.520 --> 0:12:17.840 Border Patrol wound up at both sides of a tragedy. 0:12:17.920 --> 0:12:21.640 The genocide they trained right wing Guatemalan militants to execute 0:12:21.640 --> 0:12:24.720 fell heavily on various Maya peoples of the region, including 0:12:24.720 --> 0:12:27.679 the Catchi and the Choose. The right wing dictator who 0:12:27.720 --> 0:12:30.520 helped to organize much of this violence was General Afrain 0:12:30.760 --> 0:12:33.679 Rios mont He rose to power in nineteen eighty one 0:12:33.720 --> 0:12:36.200 and nineteen eighty two, cooing his way into command with 0:12:36.240 --> 0:12:39.199 the help of his good friends the US. Ronald Reagan 0:12:39.240 --> 0:12:41.880 described him as a man of great integrity who was 0:12:42.080 --> 0:12:47.880 totally dedicated to democracy. The nation's right up makes continues 0:12:48.000 --> 0:12:52.000 quote on June seventeenth, nineteen eighty two, Guatemalan soldiers under 0:12:52.000 --> 0:12:54.920 the command of Rio's mont entered the San Francisco Catalla 0:12:55.000 --> 0:12:58.960 estate immediately adjacent to yalm Bulock. The estate's owner, a 0:12:59.000 --> 0:13:02.040 military colonel, had fled because of guerilla activity in the area. 0:13:02.160 --> 0:13:04.439 Soldiers went house by house, rounding up workers in their 0:13:04.480 --> 0:13:07.640 families whom they accused of supporting the guerrillas. They separated 0:13:07.720 --> 0:13:10.000 children from their parents and killed them by slashing their 0:13:10.040 --> 0:13:13.120 stomachs or smashing their heads against poles. Women were raped 0:13:13.120 --> 0:13:15.400 and then burned alive. The soldiers killed them in with 0:13:15.440 --> 0:13:18.120 bullets or by beheading. After a day of slaughter, three 0:13:18.200 --> 0:13:21.040 hundred and fifty people were dead. Alone survivor made his 0:13:21.080 --> 0:13:24.720 way into Mexico, where Guatemalan anthropologist and Jesuit priest Ricardo 0:13:24.760 --> 0:13:28.080 Fala interviewed him. The San Francisco massacre was highlighted in 0:13:28.080 --> 0:13:32.000 Guatemala's nineteen ninety nine Truth Commission report. After the massacre, 0:13:32.160 --> 0:13:35.160 Yelling Block residents fled along with thousands of others, leaving 0:13:35.160 --> 0:13:39.240 the border corridor between Guatemala and Mexico completely depopulated. As 0:13:39.280 --> 0:13:42.400 government troops raised their villages, some were captured and killed 0:13:42.440 --> 0:13:44.319 by the army as they fled. Others ended up in 0:13:44.360 --> 0:13:48.040 refugee camps or dispersed throughout Mexico's southern states. Still, others 0:13:48.080 --> 0:13:50.560 continued on to the United States, beginning the Great Movement 0:13:50.559 --> 0:13:54.720 of Guatemalans to El Norte. And all told, one point 0:13:54.720 --> 0:13:58.000 five million people were displaced by the Guatemalan army scorched 0:13:58.000 --> 0:14:01.319 Earth campaign in nineteen one and nineteen eight too. Guatemala's 0:14:01.320 --> 0:14:04.680 Commissioned for Historical Clarification called the violent displacement in the 0:14:04.720 --> 0:14:09.920 Maya Choose Region and active genocide. Young Felipe Gomez Alazano's father. 0:14:10.000 --> 0:14:11.680 He was the little kid, one of the little kids 0:14:11.679 --> 0:14:14.880 who died. Augustin Gomez Perez was a child of eleven 0:14:15.000 --> 0:14:18.360 during that execute. Yalla Ballocks villagers stayed away for fourteen years, 0:14:18.400 --> 0:14:20.560 returning only after the signing of the Piece Accords in 0:14:22.320 --> 0:14:29.280 So that's cool, mm hmm. What can you say? That's horrible? 0:14:29.720 --> 0:14:32.640 You can say that, like we're focusing on Guatemala right here, 0:14:32.760 --> 0:14:36.480 because it's uh one where there's a bit more documentation. 0:14:36.520 --> 0:14:38.280 But like this ship happened in Al Salad or, it 0:14:38.320 --> 0:14:40.240 happened in a bunch of different parts of Latin and 0:14:40.400 --> 0:14:46.360 Central America UM, where you know, refugees come from all 0:14:46.400 --> 0:14:49.880 the time. Now, UM, it was, it was, it's still 0:14:49.920 --> 0:14:51.400 in a lot of ways going on today if you 0:14:51.400 --> 0:14:53.640 want to read about like Plan Colombia and stuff like, 0:14:53.680 --> 0:14:57.360 there's aspects of this that are very much still occurring, UM. 0:14:57.440 --> 0:14:59.840 And that the border patrol still winds up getting tied 0:14:59.920 --> 0:15:07.280 up been from time to time. And that's great, good grief. Yeah, 0:15:07.440 --> 0:15:09.640 this is like the stuff that part of me that 0:15:09.720 --> 0:15:12.280 like is optimistic wants to believe that, oh, if people 0:15:12.320 --> 0:15:16.000 just knew this, like knew how this all, how how 0:15:16.120 --> 0:15:22.440 US policy and and in US UM plotting UH played 0:15:22.520 --> 0:15:25.800 into the tragedy being suffered by these people. Unlike the 0:15:25.840 --> 0:15:30.680 insecurity of these regions, they would have better attitudes towards 0:15:30.880 --> 0:15:34.400 you know, Guatemal immigration and whatnot into the United States. 0:15:34.960 --> 0:15:37.200 And then the part of me that that has been 0:15:37.240 --> 0:15:41.040 paying attention for the last several decades knows that like, no, 0:15:41.240 --> 0:15:44.720 actually UM people would share the murders of the folks 0:15:44.720 --> 0:15:48.840 and the destruction of these areas because UM Americans have 0:15:48.880 --> 0:15:51.920 been so thoroughly broken by propaganda that the people who 0:15:51.960 --> 0:15:54.800 are still on the right and still broadly pro American 0:15:55.160 --> 0:15:59.760 UM can't be convinced by any reason that any amount 0:16:00.040 --> 0:16:04.160 of murder or violence is not justified by the fact 0:16:04.160 --> 0:16:09.320 that America is cool as hell. It is this what 0:16:09.480 --> 0:16:15.880 a toxic mentality that we as Americans, or at least 0:16:15.880 --> 0:16:18.760 some of us have, because like, and this is I'm 0:16:18.800 --> 0:16:22.720 not about to say anything new or profound here, but 0:16:22.800 --> 0:16:27.160 the fact that, uh, you know, the white European settlers 0:16:27.200 --> 0:16:32.840 were escaping the same you know, kind of civil unrest 0:16:33.000 --> 0:16:36.760 or religious persecution or whatever it was the custom to 0:16:36.800 --> 0:16:42.000 fled their countries and uh then and then we settled here, 0:16:42.440 --> 0:16:47.920 uh by killing millions of indigenous people. And now we're like, well, 0:16:48.000 --> 0:16:51.600 our borders are closed now sorry everyone. And it's like, 0:16:51.680 --> 0:16:54.280 how how can you live? How can these people live 0:16:54.320 --> 0:17:01.640 with the hypocrisy of that simple fact? Um? Because they 0:17:01.920 --> 0:17:08.000 there their ship anyway. Uh So most of these death squads, um, 0:17:08.160 --> 0:17:10.919 we're trained in the United States because like, hey, if 0:17:10.920 --> 0:17:13.560 you're gonna build a death squad for a foreign country, 0:17:13.760 --> 0:17:16.200 you don't want to like train it there. Um that's 0:17:16.240 --> 0:17:18.239 kind of gosh. Uh So you bring them into your 0:17:18.280 --> 0:17:20.800 country to train them there because you're you're you're you know, 0:17:20.920 --> 0:17:24.320 you're good at training death squads. So the facility where 0:17:24.320 --> 0:17:26.280 they actually trained a lot of these death squads. And 0:17:26.320 --> 0:17:29.399 again not just in Guatemala, but for places like Columbia 0:17:29.440 --> 0:17:32.600 and El Salvador, are all throughout the fucking world. The 0:17:32.600 --> 0:17:34.680 place where they would like take these men to teach 0:17:34.720 --> 0:17:37.280 them how to be terrorists, how to make bombs and 0:17:37.320 --> 0:17:42.480 all this ship was the Los Fresnos, Texas Border Patrol facility. UM. 0:17:42.560 --> 0:17:46.159 It was an existing base, it was in a good location, UM, 0:17:46.320 --> 0:17:49.480 and the Border Patrol was perfectly happy to have Minstila 0:17:49.600 --> 0:17:52.359 over there to learn how to become murderous guerillas and 0:17:52.400 --> 0:17:55.119 then set off terrorist bombs in the middle of their 0:17:55.160 --> 0:17:58.000 own countries. UM, because they were like that sounds like 0:17:58.000 --> 0:18:00.400 a thing the Border Patrol should be involved with. Now. 0:18:00.520 --> 0:18:03.919 The technical Investigations course that was given to foreign police 0:18:04.040 --> 0:18:08.159 there was taught by CIA instructors. It lasted for weeks 0:18:08.200 --> 0:18:12.719 and it included curriculum like terrorist concepts, terrorist devices, fabrication 0:18:12.760 --> 0:18:16.520 and functioning of devices and provides, triggering devices, incendiaries and 0:18:16.840 --> 0:18:20.119 assassination weapons. A discussion of various weapons which may be 0:18:20.240 --> 0:18:22.760 used by the assassin. And when you read it like that, 0:18:22.800 --> 0:18:24.760 you can kind of trick yourself into thinking it might 0:18:24.800 --> 0:18:27.480 not be like it might be a reasonable thing for 0:18:27.520 --> 0:18:29.359 cops to learn. Right, of course, cops might need to 0:18:29.440 --> 0:18:32.840 learn about terrorist concepts and the kind of weapons assassins use. 0:18:33.160 --> 0:18:36.240 But these were not just informational courses. They were instructed. 0:18:36.440 --> 0:18:38.800 So the police who attended, we're just learning, Oh, here's 0:18:38.800 --> 0:18:41.520 weapons that assassins sometimes used. They were learning, like, if 0:18:41.560 --> 0:18:44.720 you're going to assassinate somebody, here's a variety of different 0:18:44.720 --> 0:18:47.320 weapons that you can use to assassinate people. And we're 0:18:47.359 --> 0:18:50.720 just learning, like, here's different ways terrorists build triggers for bombs. 0:18:50.720 --> 0:18:53.000 They were learning, here's how to build triggers for the 0:18:53.040 --> 0:18:57.080 bombs you're going to make to kill people. Um. The 0:18:57.080 --> 0:19:00.280 the reality of the whole the whole program came out 0:19:00.359 --> 0:19:03.400 during congressional investigations in the nineteen seventies. And I'm gonna 0:19:03.480 --> 0:19:06.479 quote now from a book titled Instruments Instruments of state Craft, 0:19:06.800 --> 0:19:10.400 US Guerrilla Warfare, Counterinsurgency, and counter Terrorism, which is available 0:19:10.400 --> 0:19:13.760 for in full for free online right now. Quote. During 0:19:13.800 --> 0:19:19.040 congressional investigations led by Senator James Albaresque in nineteen seventy three, 0:19:19.040 --> 0:19:21.760 eight officials admitted that the Los Fresno sessions what the 0:19:21.760 --> 0:19:24.359 press would call the bomb school offered lessons not in 0:19:24.400 --> 0:19:27.040 bomb disposal, but in bomb making. The course is not 0:19:27.080 --> 0:19:29.159 designed to nor does it prepare the student to be 0:19:29.200 --> 0:19:32.639 a bomb or explosive technical disposal technician. There's thrust of 0:19:32.640 --> 0:19:36.120 the instruction introduces trainees to commercially available materials and home 0:19:36.200 --> 0:19:40.119 laboratory techniques and the manufacture of explosives and incendiaries. Different 0:19:40.119 --> 0:19:42.880 types of explosive techniques and booby traps and their construction 0:19:42.920 --> 0:19:45.920 and used by terrorists are demonstrated. And again, all these 0:19:45.920 --> 0:19:48.360 classes were taught at a Border Patrol facility, And while 0:19:48.400 --> 0:19:50.879 the main instructors were CIA agents, it was not just 0:19:50.960 --> 0:19:54.480 the convenient location that made the agency use Los Fresnos. 0:19:54.680 --> 0:19:56.959 The Border Patrol had always had within it the seeds 0:19:56.960 --> 0:20:01.000 of a national secret police force. Decades before CBP agents 0:20:01.000 --> 0:20:03.520 were operating an unmarked snatch fans on the streets of 0:20:03.560 --> 0:20:05.920 Portland and it was Customs and Border Patrol who was 0:20:06.000 --> 0:20:09.119 doing that. Um, they helped to train foreign police to 0:20:09.119 --> 0:20:12.480 do the exact same thing and much worse. Besides, that's fun, 0:20:12.960 --> 0:20:16.639 Like wanting to say, like what a fun thing? What? 0:20:16.720 --> 0:20:18.800 I don't know what else to say. It's just like 0:20:18.840 --> 0:20:21.639 this kind of litany of horrors that we've all just 0:20:21.720 --> 0:20:24.800 kind of blithely funded our entire lives, even though a 0:20:24.880 --> 0:20:28.400 great deal of information exists on how bad this agency 0:20:28.440 --> 0:20:32.679 has always been. Um because the only real if you 0:20:32.720 --> 0:20:34.960 actually like get into it as we are today, the 0:20:34.960 --> 0:20:37.600 only real conclusion is that, like, oh, maybe when you 0:20:37.680 --> 0:20:40.639 have people whose job it is to police the border, 0:20:41.080 --> 0:20:43.440 they're they're they're just going to be the worst people. 0:20:43.960 --> 0:20:46.440 And and maybe you shouldn't police the border at all 0:20:47.160 --> 0:20:51.880 because this happened. But maybe border borders are completely arbitrary 0:20:52.119 --> 0:20:56.960 and mean nothing. And why or why have we decided 0:20:57.040 --> 0:21:03.600 that they that crossing them is a crime. Yeah, yeah, 0:21:03.680 --> 0:21:07.159 it's bad. And the kind of people who decide that, 0:21:07.200 --> 0:21:09.640 like they want to make their whole lives about punishing 0:21:09.680 --> 0:21:12.600 desperate people for the quote unquote crime of crossing the border. 0:21:13.119 --> 0:21:16.240 H our our our monsters, and when you start giving 0:21:16.240 --> 0:21:19.679 them guns and power, h they use it to enable 0:21:19.960 --> 0:21:23.240 genocides and political oppression abroad, and then inevitably do you 0:21:23.280 --> 0:21:26.360 so back at home, which is what's happening now. So 0:21:26.720 --> 0:21:30.200 when it comes to government agencies that Americans, particularly liberals, 0:21:30.280 --> 0:21:33.119 rage against, customs and border patrol has spent most of 0:21:33.119 --> 0:21:35.960 its history, kind of sliding under the mainstream radar. But 0:21:36.040 --> 0:21:38.640 liberals who only started paying attention to the agency after 0:21:38.680 --> 0:21:41.240 Trump took office might be surprised to know that NYT 0:21:41.520 --> 0:21:44.359 Report or New York Times reporter John Crudeson won a 0:21:44.440 --> 0:21:47.359 Pulitzer Prize in nineteen eighty for a series of articles 0:21:47.359 --> 0:21:49.919 about the Border Patrol whose titles would not look at 0:21:49.960 --> 0:21:53.760 all out of place. In titles like Border Patrol sweeps 0:21:53.760 --> 0:21:58.640 of illegal aliens leave scores of children in jails. Um, 0:21:58.680 --> 0:22:02.080 it sounds a little familiar. Uh The intercept summarizing his 0:22:02.119 --> 0:22:06.919 work notes patrollers he reported regularly engaged in beatings, murder, torture, 0:22:06.960 --> 0:22:09.359 and rape, including the rape of girls as youngest twelve. 0:22:09.520 --> 0:22:12.760 Some patrollers ran their own in house outlaw vigilante groups. 0:22:12.760 --> 0:22:15.800 Others maintained ties with groups like the Clan. Border Patrol 0:22:15.840 --> 0:22:18.359 agents also used the children of migrants, either as bait 0:22:18.440 --> 0:22:21.640 or as pressure pressure tactic to force confessions. When coming 0:22:21.720 --> 0:22:24.960 upon a family, agents tried to apprehend the youngest member first, 0:22:24.960 --> 0:22:27.159 with the idea that relatives would give themselves up so 0:22:27.240 --> 0:22:29.680 as not to be separated. It may sound cruel when 0:22:29.680 --> 0:22:33.320 Patroller said, but it often worked. Separating migrant families was 0:22:33.359 --> 0:22:36.560