Speaker 1: Al Zone media.
Speaker 2: Like most of you, I wasn't having a great day
Speaker 2: on the twentieth of January of twenty twenty five. I
Speaker 2: wasn't about to watch the inauguration, so I went for
Speaker 2: a run in the mountains instead. I spent the next
Speaker 2: few weeks trying to focus on the things we could do,
Speaker 2: the things we had to do to get through four
Speaker 2: years of fascism. Just a few miles away from my house,
Speaker 2: I set out for my run, and unbeknown to me,
Speaker 2: my friend Primrose was staring down from the top of
Speaker 2: a thirty foot steel monument to hate Donald Trump had
Speaker 2: built the last time he was president. To be ir accurate,
Speaker 2: it was one that had modified. There have been versions
Speaker 2: of the border wall in San Diego for decades.
Speaker 3: They said, no, we have an option. We need to
Speaker 3: take you.
Speaker 4: But you know, for me, I had to take a
Speaker 4: risk because I was scared to stay in Mexico. So
Speaker 4: they took us with under the bridge, I think the sewage.
Speaker 4: We were walking with our stomach like under the bridge
Speaker 4: to get to USA and Mexican borders. So they put
Speaker 4: ladder for us to help us. Those people when they
Speaker 4: saw American immigration came, they just removed the ladder and
Speaker 4: me I was on top. So I had yeah, I
Speaker 4: was staged. Then I had no choice and the King
Speaker 4: Balish was crying like calm, let's go, let's go.
Speaker 2: At that time I knew nothing about it, but her
Speaker 2: daughter Kim had already jumped as a Biden press. He
Speaker 2: drew to a close but before Trump began signing executive
Speaker 2: orders with pens, he tossed into the crowd. She'd made
Speaker 2: it into the US. Her mum was in the US
Speaker 2: as well. The wall is inside the border, but the
Speaker 2: people who had helped it get up to the top
Speaker 2: of the war had fled when border patrol arrived, taking
Speaker 2: their ladder with them, and so Primrose was left atop
Speaker 2: the wall, the literal and metaphorical final hurdle in her
Speaker 2: long and dangerous journey that had begun in Zimbabwe, who
Speaker 2: went through South Africa, Brazil, Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica, Negaragua, Honduras,
Speaker 2: Guatemala and Mexico. But before we come down from the
Speaker 2: border wall, I want to take you back to the
Speaker 2: miss Soak River bank of Maragante. Last September, Yah Daddy,
Speaker 2: my fixer, and I had woken up at no godly hour,
Speaker 2: and so had the jungle birds. Along with half the
Speaker 2: population of the village, walked down to the riverbank, carrying
Speaker 2: the engines and fuel tanks to the Piraguas. A few
Speaker 2: minutes later, a chorus of two stroke engines and smoke
Speaker 2: fired up as the boats set off towards Bajo Jaquito.
Speaker 2: I stood in the bow, still trying to master the
Speaker 2: use of the pole as we passed through the faster moving,
Speaker 2: shallower water. Daddy sat in the middle and laughed at me.
Speaker 2: Despite my best efforts, we arrived in one piece in
Speaker 2: Bajo Chiquito, and I launched myself from the bow into
Speaker 2: knee deep water on the rocky beach. In front of
Speaker 2: us stood hundreds of people, patiently waiting for the Piragueros
Speaker 2: to take them north and out of the jungle. Stretched
Speaker 2: like a snake all the way through town. The line
Speaker 2: of migrants must have totaled one thousand people. I walked
Speaker 2: backwards away from the boats, the only foreigner not leaving
Speaker 2: look for people i'd met the day before. About halfway
Speaker 2: down the line stood Primrose and Kim, and I stopped
Speaker 2: while we chatted for a bit about what the boat
Speaker 2: was like, what they could expect next.
Speaker 3: Yeah I'm going there. Yeah, yeah, I'm going.
Speaker 2: To Do you have family?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 2: No, you just make your American life. No, it's okay.
Speaker 3: I think I'm just trying. No, it's only me and
Speaker 3: I do it.
Speaker 2: Despite this, they had found community on the journey. I
Speaker 2: can't describe how scary it must be for two women
Speaker 2: to set out on this journey alone. It takes an
Speaker 2: awful lot to embark on that journey and to be
Speaker 2: able to trust people when everyone is a potential threat.
Speaker 2: But if there's one thing I learned in a jungle,
Speaker 2: it sit in the hardest times and the hardest places.
Speaker 2: The only way forward is together. Primrose reminded me of this,
Speaker 2: telling me how complete strangers had helped her.
Speaker 3: Very nice.
Speaker 4: This, especially these Spanish people, they are very nice. I
Speaker 4: don't know into life was. If you need yop, you
Speaker 4: forgot them for your look. The other ones they might
Speaker 4: run away by the other ones, they just for They
Speaker 4: even give us tablets on the road, give us energy drinks,
Speaker 4: give my daughter a sweets for enage. They push us like,
Speaker 4: let's go, guys, let's go, let's go. You make it,
Speaker 4: and we really make it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's really nice to hear. I asked Primrose a
Speaker 2: question I asked everyone there. What did she hope for
Speaker 2: when she got to America? What was her American dream?
Speaker 2: What do you hope for her in America? What do
Speaker 2: you want to do in America?
Speaker 4: I want to go to school, then she can I
Speaker 4: see something in life. I don't wish my daughter to
Speaker 4: go big, to same or no, not at all. Yeah,
Speaker 4: it's really really.
Speaker 2: I saw them a few days later last Blancas I've
Speaker 2: read chat with a group of little Venezuelan children playing
Speaker 2: a game where we'd throw bottletops into a broken half
Speaker 2: cinder block. We talked about the struggle they faced to
Speaker 2: pay for the bus north, and we didn't record anything
Speaker 2: that day, But as I was leaving for the evening,
Speaker 2: Kim asked me if I could buy her a drink.
Speaker 2: I generally try not to splash my money around because
Speaker 2: I don't have enough money to help everyone, and I
Speaker 2: still have some scars from ridiculous concept of objectivity that
Speaker 2: would lead some editors not to commission a story from
Speaker 2: me if I gave the subject a gift. But this
Speaker 2: time I felt like buying her a drink, and I
Speaker 2: let her select the biggest bottle of cold soda she
Speaker 2: could find in the little store in the camp there.
Speaker 2: I told her and her mum to stay in touch
Speaker 2: and wrote my number on a piece of my notebook,
Speaker 2: tore it out and gave it to them. Months later,
Speaker 2: Kim was holding the same scrap of paper, looking up
Speaker 2: her mum stuck on the border wall. A whole lot
Speaker 2: had changed since I last saw them. A few days
Speaker 2: after my scriptured podcast and the Daddy and Gap was released,
Speaker 2: the United States elected Donald Trump as his forty seventh president.
Speaker 2: It was a ship month all round that My phone,
Speaker 2: as it often does, lit up with messages from my
Speaker 2: daddy and friends asking me what this meant and if
Speaker 2: Trump was going to close the border. I didn't really
Speaker 2: know how to answer those questions, because if as one
Speaker 2: thing we know about Trumps, he changed his mind every
Speaker 2: few weeks. As we got closer and closer to the
Speaker 2: day he was inaugurated, they got more and more concerned.
Speaker 2: Most of them hadn't made it out of southern Mexico.
Speaker 2: Many of them had told me that things there were
Speaker 2: even worse than the jungle. They'd all been robbed, some
Speaker 2: of them had been sexually assaulted, some of them kidnapped
Speaker 2: and some of them killed. I'd heard about all of
Speaker 2: these things every day from September last year to January
Speaker 2: this year. In the middle of a run, or when
Speaker 2: I was having dinner meeting a friend for a coffee,
Speaker 2: my phone would ring, and I'd be confronted with terrible injustice,
Speaker 2: and I'd be totally powerless to set it right. As
Speaker 2: time went on, I heard from fewer and fewer of them.
Speaker 2: I assume their phones were stolen, but there are, of
Speaker 2: course more upsetting explanations as to why they might have
Speaker 2: stopped contacting me. Noemi, the little girl who wanted to
Speaker 2: visit Minnie Mouse Video, called me once from Tapatula with
Speaker 2: a little tiny toy bear that I'd given her and
Speaker 2: that she kept with her on the whole journey. It
Speaker 2: may be happy to see them, and a silly little
Speaker 2: bear carved from soapstone that had traveled the lengths of
Speaker 2: South America with them. Every few weeks after I'd left,
Speaker 2: I'd get photos of the bear in a different country.
Speaker 2: As a little Losito worked its way closer to Disneyland,
Speaker 2: some people who worked at Disneyland had reached out to
Speaker 2: off was suggestions about tickets other people had reached out,
Speaker 2: offering to pay. I was, despite the odds, hoping that
Speaker 2: one day I could help one little girl see her
Speaker 2: American dream come true. When we spoke, she was with
Speaker 2: her mum and they were trying to log onto CBP
Speaker 2: one hoping for an appointment, but it wouldn't work on
Speaker 2: their old Android phones. I tried to find shelters with
Speaker 2: her liable internet that would take them in, and called
Speaker 2: friends and endio's almost every week, passing along questions or
Speaker 2: looking for resources. I spent hours calling, finding it hard
Speaker 2: to accept that the capacity for mutual aid was so
Speaker 2: overwhelmed that nobody had a safe space for little girl
Speaker 2: and her mom, and wondering if it still felt like
Speaker 2: a pepper Pig adventure or if even little indomitable Miami
Speaker 2: was scared now. Even from where I was was a
Speaker 2: fast Internet and a weather friends across the Western hemisphere,
Speaker 2: I couldn't find the help people needed, and it made
Speaker 2: me increasingly angry and anxious the more I tried. It sucked,
Speaker 2: but there was still a chance, however slim, that one
Speaker 2: day I might get to see Miami meet Minnie Mouse.
Speaker 2: So I kept trying, and so did her mom. Then
Speaker 2: one day I got no response from her mum's WhatsApp
Speaker 2: when I messaged her, nobody picked up the phone when
Speaker 2: I tried to ring. I still haven't had a response,
Speaker 2: but artically I'll keep trying. Even the last messages and
Speaker 2: photos are gone now after my words up updated. Like
Speaker 2: so many of the people who I shared my food with,
Speaker 2: whose little children held my hand in the darkness of
Speaker 2: the jungle, who I desperately wished and wish I could
Speaker 2: do more for, they're gone.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 2: That's what strong borders means. It means brave little girls
Speaker 2: disappearing so a politician who knows nothing of their struggles
Speaker 2: can point to a statistic. I've listened to the interview
Speaker 2: I conducted with them so many times since last September.
Speaker 2: I still can't really work out her. Anyone with a
Speaker 2: heart could hear that and think they wanted to live
Speaker 2: in a world where that little girl wasn't safe. But
Speaker 2: that's what people voted for. I guess I don't think
Speaker 2: they did. Actually I can't think they did. I think
Speaker 2: people liked them, and that's what they voted for. But nonetheless,
Speaker 2: here we are now, sitting in a country that didn't
Speaker 2: want to help the little girl who flexed he around
Speaker 2: muscles to show me how strong she was after climbing
Speaker 2: the mountain into the most dangerous land migration route in
Speaker 2: the Americas, and told me it was for her all
Speaker 2: a adventure. Her mother gave a different account.
Speaker 5: I didn't want to cry because I didn't want her
Speaker 5: to see me crying. But sometimes I would explode because
Speaker 5: it's hard for your child to ask you for water,
Speaker 5: to ask you for food, and you don't have any
Speaker 5: to be in a place where you walk. You walk
Speaker 5: from five in the morning, it's five in the afternoon.
Speaker 5: You're walking, you don't know what to do, going through
Speaker 5: more than one hundred rivers and asking God not to
Speaker 5: rain and not wanting it to get worse. It rained,
Speaker 5: and the girl got a fever. She got a fever.
Speaker 5: But well, God is good that we pray a lot.
Speaker 5: I say that we don't know God so much in
Speaker 5: the church from the process and the process that we
Speaker 5: are in, and we don't know we can be so
Speaker 5: strong until we go through that storm and we see
Speaker 5: that He protext us. He knows that He was always
Speaker 5: there watching over us, taking care of us at all times.
Speaker 2: I don't want to dwell on this too long, because
Speaker 2: talking in public about grief is something I'm bad at.
Speaker 2: One of my friends died fighting in Ukraine this year.
Speaker 2: A colleague died just weeks before we'd planned a trip together.
Speaker 2: Some of my Burmese friends died fighting. But even as
Speaker 2: someone who talks to soldiers for a living, nothing really
Speaker 2: compares to the death toll inflicted by the US border regime.
Speaker 2: The little village in England where I grew up, there
Speaker 2: are memorials in every town a village for the young
Speaker 2: people who died fighting in the World Wars. If we
Speaker 2: built those at the border, they'd soon be towering far
Speaker 2: above the wall that does so much of the killing.
Speaker 2: Things are as bad now as they've ever been. The
Speaker 2: wall construction in the San Diego sector that Trump administration
Speaker 2: has proposed will wave environmental and cultural protections and push
Speaker 2: micro further into the desert. In the desert, further from help,
Speaker 2: further from water. More of them will die. Speak to
Speaker 2: migrants all the time, the ones who stayed in Mexico,
Speaker 2: even the ones who took the Venezuelan governments offers of
Speaker 2: flights home. As much as they ask about America, they
Speaker 2: also ask about each other. Do I know what happens
Speaker 2: to the Angolans who shared their food too generously? They say, No,
Speaker 2: I haven't heard from them.
Speaker 3: What about the.
Speaker 2: Venezuelan trans girl who braided their children's hair, Well, she's
Speaker 2: still braiding hair, but she hasn't made it to the US. Gradually,
Speaker 2: she did make it, and then she was immediately deported
Speaker 2: back to southern Mexico. How about Rose, they say, the
Speaker 2: Bolivian girl who came all on her own and founder
Speaker 2: found me along the trail, only to be separated from them. Again.
Speaker 2: I haven't heard from her in a year. Universally, they're
Speaker 2: happy to hear about Kim and Primrose. They're glad to
Speaker 2: hear that someone made it, that somebody can make it.
Speaker 2: Because of the more than one hundred pages I tore
Speaker 2: out of my note book with my phone number, they
Speaker 2: are two of the three people who let me know
Speaker 2: they made it here. So let's hear from Primerose about
Speaker 2: what it looks like to make it here, how it
Speaker 2: feels to have the best outcome of anyone I met.
Speaker 2: Let's pick up at Las Blancas there now shattered migrant
Speaker 2: reception center. We're a hundred language for weeks and months
Speaker 2: trying to get together the money to pay for a
Speaker 2: bus to the Panama Costa Lika border.
Speaker 4: I think I spent seven days in Banama. Oh what's
Speaker 4: short with money? So I went into immigrash trying to
Speaker 4: ask them if you can they can help me to
Speaker 4: take a bus to Costa Rica, of which they say no,
Speaker 4: you have to pay your sixty dollars.
Speaker 3: You're in your daughter which one India? So I pay that?
Speaker 4: So I ask you people, man, the people I know
Speaker 4: they helped me with money saw Fromanama. We took it
Speaker 4: a bus from Banama to Costa Rica.
Speaker 2: This is a very common story. People borrow money from
Speaker 2: a huge range of friends and relatives along the way
Speaker 2: they hope to get to the US, work hard, and
Speaker 2: be able to pay it back. The whole process takes
Speaker 2: every penny they've earned in their life and generates significant
Speaker 2: amounts of debt. In most cases, this has made worse
Speaker 2: by the fact that on arrival they will wait months,
Speaker 2: if not years, for work permit, and their immigration judge
Speaker 2: could stop the clock on this at any time for
Speaker 2: any reason. Primros and Kim's case, Costaly can move them
Speaker 2: through its territory quickly, as they do with nearly all migrants.
Speaker 2: Next they arrived in Nicaragua.
Speaker 4: Yeah, to Nicaragua. Then in Nicaragua, I think we walk
Speaker 4: from Costatica border to Nicaragua border. Then we walk again.
Speaker 4: I think it was it was walk from Yah to
Speaker 4: Nicaragua bus team. In US we just walk. Then we
Speaker 4: when we reached there, we paid again to wander Us.
Speaker 4: Then there's also place we walked from Honduras from nicarag
Speaker 4: got to wander Us by stemin Us. I think it
Speaker 4: just was the all day. Then from wander Us Guatemalam. Yeah,
Speaker 4: in Guatemala we spent it three days again because it
Speaker 4: was tough Guatemala. People they really need asking for a
Speaker 4: lot of money. So my life was like asking people,
Speaker 4: asking people and do it get and do we reach Mexico.
Speaker 2: Then exhausted and broke, she came made it to Mexico.
Speaker 2: Then you only began in Zimbabwe and took them from
Speaker 2: there to South Africa, then to Brazil and across the continent.
Speaker 2: Now they had just warn more country to go before
Speaker 2: they made it. But I say, where to find out
Speaker 2: this one country is the one that so many migrants
Speaker 2: don't make it out of.
Speaker 4: Then in Mexico. My life was like in this because
Speaker 4: they were charging a lot of money. In In fact,
Speaker 4: when we reached Mexico, we reached Tapatola and not before
Speaker 4: ta Patula. I just forget the name. So they took
Speaker 4: us in the bush where we paid money. Again, when
Speaker 4: we paid money, they started teaching us. If we don't
Speaker 4: live gus, then they walk with us. It was two
Speaker 4: of midnight. They walk with us till they get a
Speaker 4: transport to take us to Tappatola. So when I reached Tapachola,
Speaker 4: you know people, we were giving information to each other.
Speaker 4: So I was also following other people like from Cameroons
Speaker 4: and Venezuela. So when we reached Tabachela, we reached Tarpatola
Speaker 4: the tend of October twenty twenty four.
Speaker 2: Tapatula in the south of Mexico. It's where thousands of
Speaker 2: migrants send up. The Mexican government at the time had
Speaker 2: a policy of trying to keep people there and began
Speaker 2: offering them free bus rides north. They had a CBP
Speaker 2: one appointment. But unlike places like Tijuana, where there have
Speaker 2: been migrants gathered for many decades, there are not as
Speaker 2: many services in Tapatula and the shelters and services that
Speaker 2: exist there are overwhelmed by the demand. The volume of
Speaker 2: migrants and the relative absence of services leaves a space
Speaker 2: open for abuse. That's what happened to Primrose and Kimberly.
Speaker 2: They ended up paying someone who they thought could help
Speaker 2: them navigate the complicated and convoluted system of registration in Mexico,
Speaker 2: the CBP one app and then traveling north to the
Speaker 2: USA and ultimately being able to make their asylum claim. Finally,
Speaker 2: in the end, what they got was the opposite of help.
Speaker 4: Then the agents judge US four thousand each, which is
Speaker 4: me four thousand, my daughter four thousand, of which I
Speaker 4: was I wasn't lift that man other people that we're paying.
Speaker 4: So I just talked to the agent. Then I said, okay,
Speaker 4: you please go down a little bit because I'm a
Speaker 4: single party. And then I don't have anyone to help
Speaker 4: me with that kind of money. Then he said, okay,
Speaker 4: three point five. So I started asking people become the
Speaker 4: people I know, maybe they can help me. So I
Speaker 4: have a lady who helped me with the money, which
Speaker 4: is she gave me four thousand years. Then my mom
Speaker 4: sell my land. I was saving a land with which
Speaker 4: she saw which lays money. Then she saw even also
Speaker 4: stuff to get another man to complete seven thousand. So
Speaker 4: we asked someone to send it to America because in
Speaker 4: Mexico they don't do this money from Africa. So I
Speaker 4: found someone here in America to receive the man. So
Speaker 4: he sent it to me in Mexico. But when I
Speaker 4: paid the man, the agent took me. He said that
Speaker 4: way I'm going to take you. So he sent the guys,
Speaker 4: which there were four Mexican guys. So they came to
Speaker 4: feature us. We were six seven. Yeah, I don't even
Speaker 4: know where they took us. So they took us to
Speaker 4: the to the bush which is Guajaradella. I can't even
Speaker 4: remember it. Gajadella, Yeah, I think so. I spent the
Speaker 4: day from October up to.
Speaker 2: January in the background. Here you're here splashing. That's came
Speaker 2: playing in the pool. A little apartment complex where they
Speaker 2: were living in East La I just comment for migrants
Speaker 2: to share a flat with someone else. Didn't have much
Speaker 2: in the way of furniture. The last time I saw
Speaker 2: Primrose and Kim, it was by the Tuquesso River in
Speaker 2: Las Blancas. There the brown water was something to be
Speaker 2: afraid of. Migrants died crossing the river every day, swept
Speaker 2: away by the fast moving water and relying only on
Speaker 2: strangers to hold them as the current tried to pull
Speaker 2: them in. A few times I walked out into that river.
Speaker 2: I felt the tug of the current on my boots.
Speaker 2: I wondered what it must be like higher up in
Speaker 2: the mountains. At six foot three. The river I crossed
Speaker 2: never came above waist high. It's deeper higher up. But
Speaker 2: even then, reaching out my hand to carry someone's bag
Speaker 2: or grab a child's hand as they came from other
Speaker 2: direction and struggled to keep their toddlers and their few
Speaker 2: positions out the current, I get little jolts of fear
Speaker 2: when I stepped on a wet rock. His primrose talking
Speaker 2: about that part of her journey.
Speaker 4: I was good, my daughter, she was strong, she was strong,
Speaker 4: but she was crying also, but she had what wounds
Speaker 4: all over their body? Even me, I was crying myself.
Speaker 4: I was like, I want to just put myself in
Speaker 4: the water, then I can just go both. The gain
Speaker 4: was tough, really really tough. The mountain, the stones, the river.
Speaker 4: It's not easy at all. It's not very I don't
Speaker 4: even recommended someone to say you use that and give no.
Speaker 4: And even myself I did know about it. I was
Speaker 4: regretting myself. I was crying. I was like, God, I
Speaker 4: don't know my family, and my family they don't know
Speaker 4: where I am right now.
Speaker 2: Back in Los Angeles, primers told me that she'd fallen
Speaker 2: in the river and two Venezuelan men had jumped in
Speaker 2: to pull her and came out total strangers on their
Speaker 2: own journey, had risked their lives to help a woman
Speaker 2: child who didn't know, with whom they couldn't even speak.
Speaker 2: The river kills people who drink it too. The concentration
Speaker 2: of human waste and human remains in the water makes
Speaker 2: it incredibly dangerous to drink, even for people dying of thirst.
Speaker 2: I couldn't stop thinking of that river and how much
Speaker 2: it scared people, Feeling so grateful the Kimberley could to
Speaker 2: enjoy the water after all of that. Next time, I said,
Speaker 2: they could take the train down to San Diego and
Speaker 2: we could all go to the beach. Let's go back
Speaker 2: to Mexico. Now to Guadalajara, where many migrants told me
Speaker 2: that of all the things they had endured, including the jungle.
Speaker 2: Things were the worst of all. Promoter's arrival in Mexico
Speaker 2: had not been great, and having paid one person, she
Speaker 2: was now being held by another group and asked for
Speaker 2: yet more money.
Speaker 4: They were kidnipping me. They were asking for fifteen thousand
Speaker 4: dollars each. They said, you're not going to take you
Speaker 4: and I was crying. Kim, she was also crying. They
Speaker 4: are that people. They will get money paid. Leave I
Speaker 4: think from my group for the people they were kids napping.
Speaker 4: It was only me left and they came and I
Speaker 4: was crying depression.
Speaker 3: I didn't know, but I tried.
Speaker 4: I tried, you want to escape, run away? I failed
Speaker 4: down and my leg was something else. I didn't even
Speaker 4: go to hospital. My leg was swollen. And the way
Speaker 4: they would treat us it was paid. Especially when I came.
Speaker 4: The other one wanted touching me the whole board like
Speaker 4: I was like, please, if you want to do something,
Speaker 4: you can do it to me, and plus don't do
Speaker 4: it in front of my daughter because she was also
Speaker 4: crying disturbing. I didn't even go to hospital. I asked
Speaker 4: them to go to hospital. The refuse, Yeah, James, I'm
Speaker 4: doing no. I'm sorry because.
Speaker 2: Primrose understandably had trouble even recounting this story. It's not
Speaker 2: the sort of memory that's easy to share. But just
Speaker 2: when things seemed to be beyond repair and when it
Speaker 2: seemed like there was nothing to hope for, it was
Speaker 2: Kimberly who came through to help her mom.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they no, so Kim Madish was like, uh, lending Spanish,
Speaker 4: so she was understanding some of the winds.
Speaker 3: So she just tell this guy.
Speaker 4: Also was like, why can't you leave this woman because
Speaker 4: she doesn't live money. Because those people they took my phone,
Speaker 4: they even break it in front of my eyes.
Speaker 3: The fue I was leaving from Africa.
Speaker 2: Kim Spanish was pretty good by the time I met
Speaker 2: them in Los Angeles this summer. We went out for
Speaker 2: dinner and I asked him what she'd like to eat.
Speaker 2: She said she wanted to try seafood and practice of Spanish.
Speaker 2: So we went to a Mexican seafood place, complete with
Speaker 2: cabin decord, taxidermy fish on the wall, and the waitress
Speaker 2: kindly helped Kim order in Spanish, patiently showing her different
Speaker 2: menu items and smiling as Kim read them off. It
Speaker 2: was a happy moment for me and what I didn't
Speaker 2: think i'd ever be having when I moved here in
Speaker 2: the bush Era, But that part of southern California has
Speaker 2: always been a welcoming place for me. When I was
Speaker 2: in my twenties and racing bugs for are Living, I'd
Speaker 2: fly into Lax and often ended up spending the night
Speaker 2: at Union Station or Alvera Street before taking a train
Speaker 2: to San Diego. I speak Spanish. I always felt like
Speaker 2: the people I met there were such a better reflection
Speaker 2: of la than the portrayal we see of it in
Speaker 2: the media. Now a decade and a half later, sitting
Speaker 2: in a Mexican restaurant where a lady from Nadiqe helped
Speaker 2: a little girl from Zimbabwe speak Spanish, it felt like
Speaker 2: a little glimpse of the way we're told things are
Speaker 2: here and the way they can be in working class communities.
Speaker 2: A nation built by migrants, yes, on stolen land, but
Speaker 2: one that nonetheless welcome people who needed help and took
Speaker 2: the time to help them. Sadly, not everyone was helpful
Speaker 2: on Camen Primaries this journey, and when her captains realized
Speaker 2: she had no money to pay them, they eventually just
Speaker 2: decided to let her go.
Speaker 4: Then I think on Januarist seven or fifth, I don't remember.
Speaker 4: Then they just really took us. Then they just done us.
Speaker 4: I don't even know. Then a star I saw an
Speaker 4: immigration immigration officer with the guy with the car. Then
Speaker 4: I stopped him. Then I translate to ask him to
Speaker 4: Then they said, okay, get inside the car. They took
Speaker 4: us to immigration, so we get a pass from there
Speaker 4: to another town. Because I was like shifting, shifting, shifting,
Speaker 4: asking to I get to Joanna. But those guys before
Speaker 4: they told me like, wherever you go, even if you
Speaker 4: are here in Mexico, we put uh a tricker for you.
Speaker 4: So if you tell anyone, if we find you're going
Speaker 4: to kill you. So me, I was scared. Yeah, I
Speaker 4: was scared. So I didn't tell you. Even the immigration officer. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: Do I get to tea Joanna? So I we get
Speaker 4: to join on the trendred of January. So I just
Speaker 4: asked the Mexicans people. Then there's a guy as I said, okay,
Speaker 4: I will try to help you, but you need to pay.
Speaker 4: Then I said, I don't leave money. He said if
Speaker 4: you don't have maney, we can't help you. So I
Speaker 4: was like, oh, I only asking people asking every people
Speaker 4: to help me and the other people that were just
Speaker 4: opening me was I said, people, we look where I
Speaker 4: am with my daughter, I'm far. But my family, the
Speaker 4: other family, especially my my other family mem By, they
Speaker 4: don't even know where I am. So those guys from Tijuana,
Speaker 4: the guys, if you're not crossing today, you're not going
Speaker 4: to cross cours. Look the president and you said he's
Speaker 4: going to shut down all the borders.
Speaker 2: In between November and January, non stop roomors circulated in
Speaker 2: giant WhatsApp groups. Trump was closing the border, Biden was
Speaker 2: opening it. Most migrants didn't have the means to get
Speaker 2: to the southern border even if they tried. CVP one
Speaker 2: remained mostly useless, and people spent days, weeks, months refreshing
Speaker 2: it to no avail. Those who did get appointments would
Speaker 2: find them canceled once a new administration came into office.
Speaker 2: Their reward for doing things in the so called right
Speaker 2: way to be left with no options in a country
Speaker 2: where they were anything but safe and far from home.
Speaker 2: Mostly my friends in the jungle have retained their incredibly
Speaker 2: good humor. Delithuel and friends video caught me once an
Speaker 2: hour on a hike. They started laughing at me sweating
Speaker 2: going uphill, and paused a conversation to shout encouragement for
Speaker 2: a while. A year after I left the jungle, I
Speaker 2: would still be more than happy to welcome these people
Speaker 2: as my neighbors. But it seems unlikely I ever will
Speaker 2: border crossings that drop dramatically. They're not as the administration
Speaker 2: sometimes claims zero, but they are lower. People die crossing
Speaker 2: the borders still. Sometimes the volunteers you've heard in my
Speaker 2: last series have to hike miles into the desert and
Speaker 2: sift through sand and rocks to search their remains. Once
Speaker 2: nature scatism like leaves blowing around the canyons. Sometimes I'm
Speaker 2: there with them. Sometimes we all wouldn't cross it up mountains.
Speaker 2: So don't have names on the map to mark the
Speaker 2: places where people's dreams died. Those people don't get a
Speaker 2: viral video or a story in the New York Times,
Speaker 2: because even at a time where people are more engaged
Speaker 2: than they ever have been in my lifetime in advocacy
Speaker 2: for migrants, there's still not much attention paid to the
Speaker 2: actual border that every single migrant has to cross Tomorrow.
Speaker 2: That's what we're going to talk about. Let's hear from
Speaker 2: Primrose about her. That same day, January twentieth, went for her.
Speaker 4: Then they took us to the boat to the border,
Speaker 4: but we couldn't get in the gates while they were closed.
Speaker 4: Then they said no, we have an option, we need
Speaker 4: to take you. But you know, for me, I had
Speaker 4: to take it. It's because I was scared did to
Speaker 4: stay in Mexico. So they took us with under the bridge,
Speaker 4: I think the sewage. We were walking with our stomach
Speaker 4: like under the bridge to we get to USA and
Speaker 4: Mexican borders. So they put ladder for us to help
Speaker 4: us to but we paid them three fifty three fifty.
Speaker 4: They judge I found the other people. They also we
Speaker 4: were fifteen years Yeah, then the up does to jump.
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