CZM Rewind: Title 42, Pt 4: The Border Patrol

In the final episode James explains some of the history of the border and how CBP grew into an agency that operates without oversight across the USA and the world.

Original Air Date: 6.2.23

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
The history of the border and its enforcement begins in
fourteen ninety two with the colonization of what would become
known as the Americas. It goes through the eighteen forty
two Mexican American War and a curl of indigenous people's
lands without their knowledge or consent in the eighteen fifty
three Gasden Purchase, and of course, through the eighteen eighty
two Chinese Exclusion Act and numerous other explicit attempts to

(00:25):
prevent non white people from moving to the USA. From there,
it weaves its way through the Mexican Revolution and the
First World Wars GEMA proposal to ally with Mexico to
reclaim those territories it had lost in the decades before then.
The Border patrol story itself begins in May nineteen twenty four,
and in the ninety nine years since it has encompassed
everything from David Duke to nine to eleven in its

(00:46):
journey to becoming the biggest and least accountable law enforcement
agency in the federal government. People from the colonial periphery
have always migrated to the metropol. It's why a man
called Fat LEDs singing a song about vinderlou Is basically
in my country second national anthem, and why every four
years France accepts black Frenchmen onto its football team before
it returns to vilifying them in other forms of discourse.

(01:08):
Migration to the United States is no different. Climate change
in US imperiodism have destabilized and impoverished nations from the
Americas to Afghanistan and driven people to the US border
looking for a better life. What's distinct about the US
is how obsessed it has become with keeping these people
out and enforcing the longest land borders in the world.
But the US border is much bigger than the land

(01:29):
boundary between the USA and Mexico to the south and
Canada to the north. If you're listening to this in
the United States, the chances are that you live in
the Border Enforcement Zone. This swath of territory outside the
constitution has been established since the Immigration and Nationality Act
of nineteen fifty two. Established at a reasonable distance of
the border would extend one hundred air miles around the

(01:50):
outline of the country. Two thirds of the US's population
live within this zone. Washington, d C. San Francisco, Chicago,
New Orleans, and Boston are all within it, and that
means that CBP agents can search vehicles and vessels to
look for property that's in the country without the right documents.
They can board public transportation or set up interior checkpoints
and stop, interrogate, and search citizens and non citizens without

(02:13):
the need for a warrant. Within twenty five miles of
the border, they can enter your property provide it's not
a domicile. The Fourth Amendment, part of a foundational bill
of rights at US likes to tout as what makes
it different from the rest of the world, doesn't apply
when you're near the border, and all encompassing history of
the border and its enforcement is beyond the scope of
this podcast. Even a history of the Southwest border could

(02:34):
take up a whole bookshelf, but we will try and
skim the high points here. Let's start with a Gadsden purchase,
when a party of military surveyors first bumped into to
Horn art and elders as they attempted to draw a
line dividing to Horn autumn people from to Horn Autumn people.
The southern border is no more obvious today than it
was then, and of course to the Autumn it was

(02:55):
and remains, and aberrations that divides them from much of
their ancestral and current homelands. It has over the years
seen violent enforcement on members of the nation and a
growing encroachment of the border patrol into today's to Horn
Autumn Reservation, which is the second largest in the USA.
It only represents a fraction of the tribe's historical homeland.

(03:15):
These surveyors were in the process of finalizing most of
the California and Arizona border, a border I drove most
of in the days after Title forty two. The southern
border as it looks now, was largely shaped by the
Treaty of Guadalupihidalgo, which Mexico lost fifty five percent of
its territory, including all of what is today California, Arizona,
New Mexico, Utah, and Nevada, and parts of what is

(03:36):
today Colorado, Wyoming, Kansas, and Oklahoma. The Gaston Purchase of
eighteen fifty three added more of southern Arizona. In New Mexico,
the specific border in Santa Cidro withdrawn so that San
Diego Bay would fall to north of the line. The
border in Cucumber seems more arbitrary, a straight line in
the desert that runs into a pile of rocks. Of course,

(03:57):
long before the border divided San Asidra fifty one, this
was Kumia land, and despite the border, it still is.
The name Tijuana derives from Tijuan, which means by the
sea in Kumia. Despite this, the Kumii and many other
indigenous peoples were ignored when the border crossed them, and
it's becoming harder and harder for them to cross it.

(04:17):
In parts of desert, it can be pretty hard to
see the border at all. In twenty twenty, while out
with a group of Kumii people who were in ceremony
to honor their ancestors whose burial sites have been and
continue to be desecrated by border war construction, I had
to be worried of stepping over it to better frame
my shots. The emerging declaration Donald Trump made allowed war
construction to sidestep legislation in place to protect archaeological and

(04:39):
sacred sites, but it didn't allow me to sidestep into
Mexico to get a better shot. Luckily, Bortac, a team
of armed Border patrol agents who you might remember from
Portland in twenty twenty, provided a guy addressed like he
was in the Battle of Fallujah. To help me, I
would say the border is a line in the sand,
But at the time there wasn't a line that was
visible at all. The moon a few miles east to

(05:01):
where that Bortac patrol guard shouted at people stepping too
close in twenty twenty. The border wall is about waist high, rusty,
and essentially comprised of a single strand of barbed wire.
In Hoocumber, the thirty foot trump wall pushes right up
to a boulder pile and then stops the logic as
much as there can be any logic, and spending twenty
five million dollars a mile to desecrate sacred spaces and

(05:23):
defile the landscape, is that people will be deterred from
crossing by the harsh landscape brutally hot days and brutally
cold nights. This logic, of course, fails to consider not
just where people are going, why they're leaving the places
they've come from, risking one's life crossing the border makes
sense only when one considers the danger that many people

(05:43):
in places around the world face every day. It hasn't
always been this way. Fear reference here in Reagan and
Bush talking about migration in nineteen eighty.

Speaker 2 (05:52):
Hey, I'm going to.

Speaker 3 (05:53):
Ask you what you would do about Cuba.

Speaker 4 (05:55):
But now I can hold you.

Speaker 5 (05:57):
Now we're going to have some questions from the audience.

Speaker 3 (06:01):
Yes, my name's David Grosberg, and I'd like to know
do you think the children of illegal aliens should be
allowed to attend Texas public schools free? Or do you
think that their parents should pay for their education?

Speaker 6 (06:12):
Who are addressing that?

Speaker 7 (06:13):
To think?

Speaker 8 (06:15):
He was looking right at you, I said he was love.

Speaker 6 (06:19):
I'd like to see something done about the illegal alien
problem that would be so sensitive and so understanding about
labor needs and human needs that.

Speaker 9 (06:28):
That problem wouldn't come up.

Speaker 10 (06:30):
But today, if.

Speaker 6 (06:30):
Those people are here, I would reluctantly say I think
they would get whatever it is that they're you know,
what the society.

Speaker 10 (06:39):
Is giving to their neighbors.

Speaker 6 (06:41):
But it has the problem has to be solved. The
problem has to be solved because as we have kind
of made illegal some kinds of labor that I'd like
to see legal, we're doing two things. We're creating a
whole society of really honorable, decent, family loving people that
are in violation of the law. And secondly, we're exacerbating

(07:02):
relations with Mexico. The answer to your question is much
more fundamental than whether they attend Houston schools. It seems
to me, I don't want to see a whole if
they're living here, I don't want to see a whole.

Speaker 7 (07:14):
I think a.

Speaker 6 (07:14):
Six and eight year old kids being made, you know,
one totally uneducated and made to feel that they're living
with outside the law. Let's address ourselves to the fundamentals.

Speaker 10 (07:25):
These are good.

Speaker 6 (07:26):
People, strong people.

Speaker 10 (07:28):
Part of my family is in Mexican.

Speaker 5 (07:30):
Then I added that I think the time has come
that the United States and our neighbors, particularly our neighbor
to the south, should have a better understanding and a
better relationship than we've ever had. And I think but
we haven't been sensitive enough to our size and our power.
They have a problem of forty to fifty percent unemployment.

(07:51):
Now this cannot continue without the possibility arising with regard
to that other country that we talked about off Cuba
and what it is stirring up of the possibility of
trouble below the border, and we could have a very
hostile and strange neighbor on our border, rather than making
them or talking about putting up a fence why don't

(08:11):
we work out some recognition of our mutual problems make
it possible for them to come here legally with a
work permit, and then while they're working and earning here,
they pay taxes here, and when they go on to
go back, they can go back, and they can cross
and open the border both ways. By understanding their problem.

Speaker 1 (08:29):
The mutineer of border enforcement began. As far as we
can pinpoint a single date with Silvestre Reyes, that then
sector chief of the Border Patrol in McAllen, Texas, and
his operation Hold the line the community around McAllen, who
got tired of border patrol snooping around businesses and even
schools in a Rio Grand Valley. Instead, Rays deployed his

(08:50):
agents forward in a sort of human fence along the
Rio Grand. Rays would later become the chief of the
OPASA sector and a Democratic Congressman. He lost his seat
to be to a ROK in twenty thirteen, but this
strategy would long outlive his career with border patrol. The
following year, on September seventeenth, nineteen ninety four, US Attorney
General Janet Reno announced the start of Operation Gatekeeper. The

(09:15):
first phase of the Operation Focus on the first five
miles of the western border, including the place where I
recorded all those interviews you heard earlier this week. According
to a piece written a quarter of a century later
in the La Times, the strategy was to deter migrants
from illegally crossing in the first place, and for those
who remained undeterred, to encourage him to cross in more
isolated wilderness areas to the east, where they could be

(09:37):
more easily captured. There were already fences in nineteen ninety four,
first a chain link fence and then one made of
helicopter landing mats left over from Vietnam that had horizontal
struts that closely resembled and were used as a ladder.
Anti migrant rhetoric was already there too. California Governor Pete
Wilson became an outspoken advocate for Prop One eighty seven,

(10:00):
measure that cut off state services like healthcare and education
to undocumented people. Here's a clip of Wilson's re election ad.

Speaker 4 (10:07):
They keep coming two million illegal immigrants in California. The
federal government won't stop them at the border, yet requires
us to pay billions to take care of them. Governor
Pete Wilson sent the National Guard to help the border patrol.
But that's not all.

Speaker 11 (10:22):
For Californias who work hard, pay taxes and obey the laws.
I'm suing to force the federal government to control the border,
and I'm working to deny state services to illegal emigrants.

Speaker 4 (10:33):
Enough is enough, Governor Pete Wilson.

Speaker 1 (10:36):
Under the operation, a much higher number of agents were
deployed to the border. Apprehensions increase, and with them, so
did funding for border enforcement. It was around this time
that the narrative around the border began to change. It
was also around this time, a few months earlier in fact,
that the US, Mexico, and Canada entered into the North
American Free Trade Agreement, which made it easier than ever

(10:58):
for capital to move across border and take advantage of
low wages in Mexico. To learn a little bit more
about Operation Gatekeeper, I spoke to one of the agents
who was tasked with execution gear.

Speaker 7 (11:09):
My name is Jen Budd and I'm a former senior
Patrol agent with the United States Boarder Patrol. I was
a senior intelligence agent as well as San Diego Sector Headquarters.

Speaker 1 (11:20):
Jennison's left the Border Patrol, but she realizes the impact
of Operation Gatekeeper on migrants was anything but positive.

Speaker 11 (11:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (11:27):
Operation Gatekeeper started in nineteen ninety four, in October of
nineteen ninety four, and I got to Campo in November
of nineteen ninety five, and so right afterwards in the
fence was just getting to pick that day when I
got there. So most of my class, I think we
had I don't know, forty people graduated or something. Most

(11:48):
of them went down to Imperial Beach and they had
a wall there there, and so that was the idea,
is to fill the San Diego City area with as
many agents and weapons and all this, and then that
would push the traffic for their up to the mountains,
making it more difficult for them to cross, and some
of them get injured, and we knew some of them
would die. So it was intentional. The death and the injuries,

(12:10):
according to management, would deter future crosses. But of course
that that's not the case.

Speaker 1 (12:16):
Alan Berson, US attorney in San Diego, was named the
so called Borders Are by President Bill Clinton a few
years later to implement that same Gatekeeper strategy across the
rest of the Southwest.

Speaker 7 (12:27):
Border.

Speaker 1 (12:28):
Burst in saw things a little differently.

Speaker 12 (12:30):
Neither side claims it, but Gatekeeper was probably the most
important domestic achievement accomplished in a purely bipartisan manner through
three administrations, and the greatest accomplishment since President Eisenhower and
the Democrats put together the state highway system in the
mid nineteen fifties.

Speaker 1 (12:45):
But in fact, while apprehensions did drop in San Diego,
they spiked by five hundred and ninety one percent in
the Tucson sector between nineteen ninety two and two thousand
and four. The La Times quotes the non partisan Congressional
Research Service as saying, one unintended consequence of this enforcement
posture and the shift in migration patterns has been an

(13:06):
increase in the number of migrant deaths each year. On average,
two hundred migrants died each year in the early nineteen nineties,
compared with four hundred and seventy two migrant deaths in
two thousand and five. Many of those deaths are now
in a sector that encomasses the Autumn Reservation. The desert
there is particularly hard to cross, and the enforcement that
began with Operation Gatekeeper pushes more and more people onto

(13:29):
the reservation Dahna. Autumn people used to travel between the
United States and Mexico fairly easily a roads without checkpoints
to visit family, go to school, visit a doctor, or
perform their traditional ceremonial practices. But after nine to eleven,
the United States and its Border Patrol began a more
visible and violent occupation of the reservation. It started with

(13:50):
a vehicle barrier in two thousand and seven, and it
continued with CBP's quote unquote virtual wall of surveillance technology,
cameras and drones. The Israeli company Elbit Systems has built
fixed surveillance towers which they pioneered in the West Bank
on tribal land with the permission of tribal council. Meanwhile,
other members of the nation strongly oppose the militarization of

(14:13):
their homeland in the name of security of whatever homeland
the Department of Homeland Security is securing. I'll quote here
from Todd Miller, whose excellent work on the border has
required reading for anyone interested in the subject. Amy Juan
and Nellie Joe David, members of the Horn Autumn her
Magicum Writes Network. Tohrn joined a delegation to the West

(14:33):
Bank in October twenty seventeen, convened by the Palestinian organization
Stop the War. It was a relief, one says, to
talk with people who understand our fears, who are dealing
with militarization and technology. In twenty seventeen, to Horn Autumn
vice chairman Verlin Hoose said that a war will be
built quote over my dead body, and the tribe released

(14:56):
a video saying there is no Autumn word for war.
The sixty two miles of the border on their reservation
would remain without one, they said. By twenty twenty, the
Trump administration had fought through a wall or much of
the border using what is known as the Roosevelt Reservation.
This is a sixty foot wide strip of land that
the federal government owns along the border in California, Arizona,

(15:17):
and New Mexico. Although much of the Autumn Nation remains
war free and somehows what's called a vehicle barrier or
a normandy barrier, approximately one third of the Roosevelt Reservation
is on tribal land. Since two thousand and five, realized
the Act, environmental surveys and laws have been waived for
border security, and this gave the Trump administration a way
to justify the destruction of Autumn and Kumi burial grounds,

(15:39):
sawad or cacti that the Autumn seas relatives, and other
sacred sites along the border. Despite efforts by tribal members
and allies to stop the construction, members of the Tahanna
Autumn Nation have been pepper sprayed, beaten, tailed, and shot
by Border patrol. In two thousand and two, a Border
Patrol agent ran over and killed an Arthamn teenager. Last week,

(16:02):
the same night I was waiting down by the border
for the end of Title forty two, Border patrol agents
shot and killed Raymond Mattia, an odd man who had
called and asked him for help. He was shot thirty
eight times just two feet from his front door, recording
to his family Well, mister Mattia's death is still being investigated.
The Border Patrol has a long tradition of literally getting

(16:23):
away with murder. This is because they investigate themselves using
so called critical incident teams. I talked to Jen about
what those teams do, and so.

Speaker 7 (16:32):
What they would do is they would get there first
on the scene because we would call them first. We
wouldn't call anybody else. We'd call them first, and then
they come. They get rid of the witnesses. They set
the scene up the way we want to be done,
and they tell you the narrative that you're going to
stick with. You talk to your union reps, and it's
all this giant cover up.

Speaker 1 (16:51):
Here's John Carlos Free, a journalist who covered CIIT cover ups,
talking to Democracy Now about how these teams work.

Speaker 13 (16:58):
Within the victual agency of the US Border Patrol, there
is an investigated body called SIT, the Critical Incident Team.
They are tasked with investigating incidents that involve Border Patrol
and it can be anything from a car accident to
in this case, an individual who's killed at the hands
of the US Border Patrol. In this particular case of

(17:18):
Anastasio Hernandez Rojas, border Patrol agents deleted video, they collected
evidence at the scene. They were present in the hospital
when Anastasio was being treated, They were present at the autopsy.
They fudged reports, they deleted reports, They coached their own
agents on what kind of testimony they were to give.

(17:41):
They were present at every one of the depositions. They
made sure that they were the victims in this case.
And when I say that, what I mean is that
Border Patrol agents SIT team agents make sure that Border
Patrol agents are looked at as the victims in any
sort of an incident, meaning that they are allowed then
to use lethal force if a Border Patrol agent has

(18:03):
rocks thrown at them or in the case of Anastasio,
they alleged that Anastasio was violent and that he was
kicking and punching and he needed to be subdued. If
we take a look at the videotape, that's not actually
what happened. He's handcuffed, he's prone on the ground, his
faces down, agents are on top of him. But if
you read the reports in this case that were prepared

(18:23):
by sid Anastasio was a violent man and needed to
be subdued.

Speaker 1 (18:27):
In twenty twenty one, Border Patrol was ordered to disband
these teams, but Jen says they simply moved them somewhere
else and gave them a different name.

Speaker 7 (18:35):
So then they said that they disbanded them because we
brought the truth out and how they did all this
and we proved it. But what they actually did is
they did a retention. So they had the Border Patrol
agents resigned from the Border Patrol and move over to
cbp OPR and we hired them under there so the
team that likely went to go investigate the tahonum Otem killing.

(18:58):
I believe his name is Matia, Martia Raymond Matia is
likely the Border Patrol fit teams. So if the Border
Patrol agents, a lot of people don't understand, it's like
a coult you know. They always say you blee green,
you know, and you don't go back hung green, and
probably one of the few that ever left, you know,

(19:20):
and tells the truth about it.

Speaker 1 (19:21):
Of Course, the vast majority of people whose families will
never find justice because of these cit teams are not white,
and of course Border Patrol has long rooted links to
white nationalism. In nineteen seventy seven, about forty five minutes
from San Diego and another forty five minutes from Komba,
David Duke, grand Dragon of the Knights of the klu
Klux Klan at the time, announced the official beginning of

(19:43):
Clan Border Watch. Do you claim there were hundreds of
Klansmen on the border, but local newspapers The Desert Sun
reported that there were in reality at least ten are
quote directly from the Desert Suns reporting at a time here,
Duke said clans On would refrain from direct contact with
it eagle aliens if any had found, He said. Klansmen
would not talk to them or contact them, but if

(20:06):
any illegal crossings a scene, they're going to use CBE
radios to relate the information to border patrol, Duke said.
Duke of Metairie, Louisiana, claimed the clan has the support
of the American people in helping the border patrol stem
the influx of illegal aliens into this country. He claimed,
the illegal aliens take jobs away from US citizens. We

(20:26):
feel this rising tide washing over our border is going
to affect our culture, he told reporters at the time,
in a statement that wouldn't sound out of place on
Fox News today. In response, more than one thousand, five
hundred brown Berries threatened to rally against Duke and protest
far out numbering his patrols popped up along the border.
In the late nineteen seventies and early nineteen eighties, Texas

(20:46):
Knights of the KKK leader Louis Beam, a Vietnam War
veteran who had helped to organize and promote Duke's border stunt,
established paramilitary camps around Texas and train children as young
as eight in the deadly guerrilla warfare tactics he learned overseas.
He rallied white fishermen against Vietnamese migrants and burned their boats.

(21:15):
In twenty nineteen, a Border patrol agent from Logales named
Matthew Bowen was accused of knocking down a Guatemala maunt
with his vehicle, then lying to a quart about the incident.
The prosecutors in the case showed the jury text Bowen sent,
including one which called migrants quote disgusting, sub human shit,
unworthy of being kindling for a fire. In several text messages,

(21:38):
Bowen references quote tonks. This is a derogatory term for
border crossing migrants. The origin to determine a little bit unclear,
but it seems to be derived from the sound of
a flashlight hitting the back of someone's head. In argument
against submitting the texts, defense lawyer Sean Chapman wrote that
he would argue certain terms are quote commonplace throughout the

(21:59):
border patrols. To some sector, this is part of the
agency's culture, and therefore it says nothing about mister Bowen's mindset. Genses'
kind of language and attitude was not uncommon in her
time in border patrol. From the mid nineties to the
early two thousands, but things have got worse since.

Speaker 7 (22:15):
There have been some definite changes in the border patrol,
in the training from before nine to eleven to after
nine to eleven, and what you also see, so their
vocabulary has changed, so like they refer to migrants and
asylum secrecs invaders. We never use that term prior to
nine to eleven, and we did have racist words that

(22:39):
were used for them, and I use them as well
on not denying there.

Speaker 1 (22:43):
Of course, this kind of language isn't just restricted to
border patrol.

Speaker 3 (22:47):
The US has become a dumping ground for everybody else's problems.
I care, it's true, and these are the best and
the finest. When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending

(23:09):
their best. They're not sending you.

Speaker 9 (23:12):
They're not sending you.

Speaker 3 (23:14):
They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're
bringing those problems with those. They're bringing drugs, they're bringing crime,
they're rapists, and some are assumer good people.

Speaker 1 (23:29):
There has been white supremacist violence at the border ever
since Duke and long before. Often it's been at the
hands of groups outside of the state. Sometimes it's been
in the hands of the state in Arizona, groups like
Arizona Border Ricon and Minute Men American Defense have terrorized
border communities for decades, engage renewed momentum from Trump's consistent
demonization of migrants. I spent a bit of time looking

(23:51):
for them and the desert in Arizona last week, but
I didn't see much, not that I really wanted to.
Interaction with these militias, probably far more off and than
we have documented evidence for, can be fatal, just like
interaction with customs and border protection. Here's just one example,
called from David Newitt's excellent book, and hell followed with her.

(24:13):
On May thirtieth, two thousand and nine, Seana Ford, Jason
Eugene Bush, and Albert Gacxiola, all members of Ford's Vigilante group.
Men at Man American Defense, forced their way into Raoul
Flores Junior's home in Araavika, Arizona, by pretending to be
border patrol agents. The group planned to steal and sell
drugs they thought Flores had.

Speaker 10 (24:33):
In his house.

Speaker 1 (24:34):
The FBI knew about this, but did nothing to stop them.
Finding no drugs in the house, c Vigilante's murdered Flores
and his nine year old daughter. Briisnia Flora's wife and
Blissenia's mother, Gina Marie Gonzalez, was shot three times. She
played dead, but when attackers returned, she exchanged fire with them,
using her husband's handgun. In doing so, she hit Bush.

(24:57):
Bush had proviously been charged with a September nineteen twenty
seven execution of an Aryan Nation associate for the supposed
crime of being a race traitor. Both Ford and Bush
are currently on death row in Arizona. The KKK was
not the only group recruiting children for border patrolling. Since
the mid nineteen eighties, the Border Patrol's Explorer Program has

(25:19):
recruited young men and women of high school age. The
program is charted through Learning for Life, which is a
subsidiary of the Scouts of America. For kids, often the
children of immigrants living in border towns where industry has
long since gone in a decent wage is hard to
come by, the program offers the chance at a starting
salary of sixty two thousand dollars, twice a median income

(25:39):
in some of these towns. Young explorers will learn tracking, survival, shooting,
and how to detain and process on documented migrants, people
who in some cases are walking in the footsteps of
their own parents. According to an article by Moraling Music
in the Nation, young Explorers have to earn the right
to their uniform by participating in their sixty hour Basic
ex Explorer Academy, of which they learned CPR drills and

(26:03):
the methods of conducting vehicle stops. It also offers courses
in radio communications, public speaking, report writing, and ethics and integrity,
and introduces the youth to criminal juvenile immigration of Fourth
Amendment law. While I was writing so checked out the
San Diego sector page, which seems to show young people running, shooting,
and one who looks like he's just been mased in

(26:24):
the face. The next photo on the Facebook page dedicated
to this Border Patrol sector shows a man in handcuffs.
Above this is a video of someone dropping a chilt
from the top of the border fence. Without figures from
the CVP, it's hard to tell if participation in the
Explorers has dropped as public awareness of family separation assault
anw the behavior doesn't exactly fit with the Border Patrol's
motto on a first has spread. I asked Jen for

(26:47):
her take on the Explorer program.

Speaker 7 (26:48):
Well, I call it Border patrol youth because it reminds
me a lot of the hipper youth, where we go
into the high schools and we get the kids that
are in trouble, and typically they are Latino dominant high schools,
and we teach them how to be many Border patrol agents,
and we teach them to hate somebody else instead of themselves.
So we indoctrinate them into the same stuff that I

(27:11):
was indoctrinating in too. But it's even gone so far
and now as to they do the dog and pony
shows at the elementary school, so they're getting them when
they're like six seven years old, and they go there
with you a little Border Patrol bulletproofess and put them
on them and take pictures and put it on social media,
and they have them sit in their trucks and turn
the signs on and all this other stuff.

Speaker 1 (27:31):
That indoctrination is crucial to border patrol culture. And to
be honest, the reason I wanted to talk to Jen
was to understand it better. In Occomber, I see a
young Border patrol agent, a woman giving volunteers rights. I'm
not about to get into a Border Patrol truck. Myself,
and I wasn't going to get a responsive by asked
the agent how she squared up her role in holding
people in the desert with the fact that some volunteers

(27:53):
said she'd spend her own money buying supplies. Jen said
that this kind of behavior can be pretty common with
young agents.

Speaker 7 (28:00):
I intended to go to law school to be a
civil rights attorney when I joined the Border Patrol, and
for me, I ignored my core values and ignored that I
was enforcing laws that sent thousands of human beings to
their deaths because I felt like I was trying to survive.
I was raped in the academy by a fellow agent,

(28:21):
and they covered that up, and I was really trying
to get out of the South and start my life.
I oftould say, like, especially with female agents, they calls
it verse five percent, because there's never been more than
five percent of women in the Border Patrol rates. And
they say, oh, it's because it's very hard. It's not
because it's very hard. I mean, it is very hard
to get through, but it's also it's because there's actually

(28:43):
assaulting us all the time in the academy and lassing us.
So I go back and forth in my mind, and
I would imagine this young woman. You know, she has
days where she arrests some pretty decent criminals every now
and then once in a blue moon, but the majority
of them, if she's paying attention and not completely self absorbed,

(29:04):
she'll realize that they're not criminals and their families just
simply seeking asylum. So she at some point has to
decide in her mind, is this what I got into?
Is this what I want to do with my life?

Speaker 1 (29:18):
In the wake of nine to eleven and quite telling me,
the Border Patrol moved from oversight by the Department of
Justice to the new Department of Homeland Security. This move
from Justice as Security has been echoed in its recruiting,
which once drew heavily on those with humanitarian aid experience
and now tries to appeal to veterans of the two
decades of war that have accompanied the growth of DHS

(29:39):
Since two thousand and one, when the DHS was first established,
the name struck many as problematic. In the two thousand
and two article in The New York Times, Elizabeth Becker
wrote that the name had worrying similarities to the way
the Nazis talked about their fatherland, and it didn't really
fit with the way Americans spoke. Nobody in two thousand
and one was talking about the homeland. For two decades

(30:00):
and billions of dollars later, it's hard to find much
in the way of criticism of the agency in DC,
despite the fact that the twenty twenty two budgets of
CBP and ICE was sixteen and eight billion, respectively, and
every year since two thousand and one, DHS has obtained
more guns, more drones, and more surveillance technology that is
inevitably used to spy on citizens as well as non citizens.

(30:30):
In nineteen ninety five, there are about four thousand CBP agents.
By twenty twenty there were twenty thousand, with seventeen thousand
stations on the southern border. This is a slight drop
from a peak of just over twenty one thousand. Under Obama,
who is often called the deporter in chief, is fondness
for expelling people from the United States for crimes like
having a PieP or financial misconduct. There so called aggravated

(30:53):
felonies and crimes of moral turpitude that only exist for
non citizens. These agents today have the ability to operate
in what the ACLU calls a constitution free zone and
can conduct suspicion free searches of electronic devices, use cell
site simulators, and sweep up data about thousands of people
never accused of any crime. One of the more notable

(31:14):
examples of this happened only a few yards from where
I was recording last week in Santasidro. It's a story
worth recounting in detail because it brings together the themes
we've spoken about so far, demonization of migrants, government overreach,
and a frank disregard for international and national law. In
late twenty eighteen, I was enjoying a break from work
in a caravan near in Sonata. If you think back

(31:35):
to that time, right before the midterms, you might remember
some of the rhetoric thats circulated around large group of
migrants making their way to the southern border. I'll play
some of the clips from Fox that MPR cut together
in their coverage of the issue.

Speaker 8 (31:47):
The sympathetic, overwrought coverage of this invading horde is calling
it a caravan is a misnomer in a frankly sick name.

Speaker 10 (31:56):
Or sample the Chipper Morning show, Fox and Friends.

Speaker 14 (31:59):
I've gotten so many email from people who said, don't
call it a caravan, call it an invasion.

Speaker 10 (32:04):
Yes, Is that fair? Host Steve Doocy put the question
to conservative pundit Michelle Melkin. Of course it is.

Speaker 14 (32:10):
It is a full scale invasion by a hostile force,
and it requires our president and our commander in chief
to use any means necessary to protect our sovereignty.

Speaker 10 (32:19):
CNN's Brian Stelter found that Fox News featured segments using
the phrase invasion more than sixty times this month about
the migrants. On Fox Business Network, lou Dobbs's program invoked
it dozens of times. Trump ordered five thousand troops to
the border. He tweeted yesterday, quote, this is an invasion
of our country, and Trump has, without evidence, claimed gang
members and criminals and Middle Easterners are among them. Over

(32:42):
on Fox, guests have similarly, without supporting facts, suggested people
from Isis and the Taliban might be among those migrants.
Even so, the network's chief news anchor, Shepherd Smith, tried
to put on the brakes yesterday.

Speaker 15 (32:53):
Tomorrow is one week before the midterm election, which is
what all of this is about. There is no invasion,
No one's coming to get you. There's nothing at all
to worry about this month.

Speaker 10 (33:08):
Fox hosts and guests have repeatedly questions whether the migrants
might bring in infectious diseases again without evidence. Laura Ingram,
we don't know.

Speaker 8 (33:16):
What people have coming in here. We have diseases in
this country we haven't had for decades.

Speaker 1 (33:21):
I'll leave you to process the incredible arrogy of the
network that killed the decent percentage of its viewers by
denying that COVID was serious or a disease, or the
vaccines and masks are useful panicking about infectious diseases. Just
two years before the pandemic began, the Tree of Life
shooter who we won't name here, who is currently facing
a death penunty trial for murdering eleven people in a
Pittsburgh synagogue, were obsessed with the caravan. The victims of

(33:43):
the largest anti Semitic mass murder in US history included
a beloved community doctor, a great grandmother, and a couple
who'd gotten married at the same synagogue more than sixty
years earlier. The shooter's last post on hate speech social
media site gap, posted just minutes before the synagogue massacre,
spells it out with a reference to the Hebrew immigrant

(34:03):
aid Society, the Jewish nonprofit that resettles refugees in the
United States. Hias liked to bring invadives to kill our people.
I can't sit by on watch my people get slaughtered.
Screw your optics, I'm going in. The shooter was obsessed
with the idea that a caravan of migrants with not
a group of people trying to save their own lives,
but a coordinated and somehow Jewish led invasion an attempts

(34:25):
to demographically restructure the United States. If you're unding where
he got that idea from, he is America's favorite job
seek at Tucker Carlson on the caravan.

Speaker 14 (34:33):
Over the past month, a caravan of Central American migrants
has gradually made its way up from Honduras through Mexico
all the way to Tijuana opposite San Diego. At one point,
Mexican authorities claimed they broke up the group, and American media,
of course dutifully reported that they did, But they didn't.
That was just a pr gesture and a temporary one.
In fact, during parts of the trip, Mexican police escorted

(34:56):
the migrants northward.

Speaker 12 (34:57):
In other words, the.

Speaker 14 (34:58):
Mexican government a bet did illegal immigration into this country
as it has done for many years. Well tonight the
caravan is on our southern border. Rather than wait for
the crossing station as Hena Sidro to open, many of
them just jumped the fence. Some waved Honduran flags when
they got to the top, And that tells you everything.
When you arrive in a country to contribute to it

(35:19):
and to assimilate into its culture, you don't wave the
flag of a foreign nation. That's what you do in
triumph when you invade country.

Speaker 1 (35:28):
On my way home from Mansnado in twenty eighteen, I
saw that quote invading Horde in the Benito Quadi Sports
Complex and probably turned around and went back. My instinct
as a journalist is to cover things like this, but
my instinct is the person is to help first. On
the first day, I was there with two friends I
know from the weird world of pro cycling. Things were
pretty bad. We'd obtained a backpack foot of stroop waffles

(35:50):
that a friend who makes stroop waffles have given us.
Once we gave those out, I talked to a few
people about what they needed. We coordinated with mutual A
groups in Tijuana and offered support or hoever wee could
in the next few weeks, my friends and I spent
tens of thousands of dollars at a Tijuana costco, received
thousands of dollars in donations from people we hadn't seen
in years, and in one memorable instance, rigged up and

(36:10):
projected as someone had tactically obtained from an office to
a DVD player which we'd installed in the roof of
a dilapidated nightclub for little children and their mothers so
they could watch Beverly Hills, Chihuahua and forget about the
fact that the country they were traveling to was portraying
these little infants as invaders. I have a lot of
very complicated memories of those few weeks. Little girls braiding
my hair, little boys and girls trying to comprehend exactly

(36:32):
how I could be this bad at football, and people
from San Diego churches, tijuan anarchist kitchens, and mutual a
groups around the region coming together to look after a
group of people who'd been so heavily demonized by folks
who had never met them or even been here. His
Trump defending calling the caravan an invasion and simultaneously explaining
why migrants low wage labor is desirable for people like him.

Speaker 5 (36:53):
Thank you.

Speaker 2 (36:53):
As President, I challenge you on one of the statements
that you made in the tail end of the campaign
in the mid terms that here we go that, well,
if you don't mind, miss president coming that this caravan
was an invasion, as you know consider it to be.
As you know, miss President, the caravan was not an invasion.
It's a it's a a group of migrants moving up
from Central America towards the.

Speaker 10 (37:14):
Border with the US.

Speaker 9 (37:16):
Thank you for dan.

Speaker 2 (37:17):
Why why did you why did you characterize it as such?

Speaker 5 (37:21):
Uh?

Speaker 9 (37:21):
As I consider an invasion. You and I have a
difference of.

Speaker 2 (37:24):
A BUTI do you think that you demonized immigrants? Not
election to try.

Speaker 9 (37:29):
I want them. I want them to come into the country,
but they have to come in legally. You know, they
have to come in Jim through a process. I wanted
to be a process and I want people to come in.
And we need the people.

Speaker 10 (37:38):
Your campaign, your campaign.

Speaker 9 (37:40):
You know why we need the people, does you? Because
we have hundreds of companies moving in we need the people.

Speaker 1 (37:46):
Trump, as you heard in the clip, used a migrant
caravan and to a prop for its racism, bigoted midterm campaign.
It didn't work, and he lost control of the house,
but he did succeed in forcing these people to spend
months in the cold, first in a sports stadium and
then the old nightclub. Even as a migrant gradually reduced
in number, with many finding work and a new life
in Mexico, some finding their way north. The long legacy

(38:08):
of that caravan was only just starting. In the months
of followed Journalists who'd covered the caravan, as well as
those who offered assistant to caravan members, so they felt
they'd become targets of intense inspections of scrutiny by border officials.
I got pulled into secondarily once during this time, and
that was entering Mexico. The worst I got was a
chance to inspect my nineteen eighty pickup truck so oil pen.

(38:29):
But for others things weren't so easy. Homeland Security Investigation
special agent turned whistleblower Wesley Peteranac helped NBC to document
that under the umbrella of what was called Operation Secure Line,
the Department of Homeland Security created a database of activists, journalists,
and social media influences tied to the migrant caravan when
they crossed the border. Individuals in that database, were often

(38:51):
subjected to hours long screenings and in some cases had
flagspaced on their passports. A PowerPoint slideshow which Peternac leaked
to NBC seven list some of the people, some of
them have been guests on this show. They include ten
journalists so on no whom are US citizens, a US attorney,
forty eight people from the US and other countries who

(39:12):
are labeled as organizers, instigators, or having unknown rules. The
target lists also includes organizers from groups like Border Angels
and Pueblos and Froontella's I asked journalist brook Bink Cowsey
to describe her experience of increased border scrutiny in twenty eighteen.

Speaker 16 (39:28):
If you don't have a pre approved card, you have
to like go through wait and line, wait in this
long ass line, and then you know, you go and
get vetted by CDP. They ask you some questions or
they just wave you through, depending on what kind of
day they're having or whatever. So in my case, I
started getting pulled into secondary inspection more and more so
they would wave my car over and then take me

(39:48):
into this secondary place where it's sort of like this
back it's like a quonset pet sort of and in it,
like all these cars drive in and out, and they'll
they'll go through your things, they'll get in your face,
you know, they'll do all kinds of stuff. And I
don't there have to be cameras in there somewhere, but
I've never seen any. So I just kept getting pulled

(40:10):
into secondary more and more as though I was this
suspicious person, as though I was suspected of something, and
every time I asked, they'd be like, I don't know,
it's just random, ma'am, and ma'am, it's just random. So
actually this started about twenty fourteen for me, but it
started to escalate in twenty eighteen. Twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen
started to escalating. I was like a fucking Trump administration,
of course going to escalate.

Speaker 1 (40:28):
Right under Trump, she said, things got worse.

Speaker 16 (40:32):
From twenty seventeen through twenty eighteen. It kind of worked
where you push back and I'd be like, you need
to let me fucking go. You know, I'm century, I'm
already pre checked. If you think that there's something wrong
that I'm doing, and take my fucking century away, and
I want to talk to your manager type stuff, right,
So I was doing that That worked until twenty eighteen,
and then it started to get really normally.

Speaker 1 (40:50):
Eventually things came to a head. The day before the
migrants of the caravan were tear gassed. And I've seen
most people remember from twenty eighteen.

Speaker 16 (40:57):
So but on that night, as I was coming back,
I drove through and I did the sentry thing, you know,
the usual stuff, and got pulled into secondary. And this
time it was really like gnarly. The time before that
had also been really gnarlly, like nobody hurt me, nobody
did anything. But they got really close to my face,
like brighten my face, you know, and started screaming at me,

(41:20):
like screaming over me. And I kept going, I'd like
to speak to your manager, you know, sir, like please
please get out of my face, sir. And it was
it was gross and they were going through my shit
and that was gross. Like they didn't find anything, but
it was just an invasive, hostile, disgusting thing.

Speaker 10 (41:39):
And that was when so I.

Speaker 16 (41:40):
Said, can I speak to your manager? Which is a
magic phrase when you're a middle aged white woman. So
I say this, and they bring over some guy and
he goes, ma'am, can I help you? I'm like yeah,
what the fuck. You know, why are you treating me
this way? Why did any of this happen? And he goes, oh, yeah,
I'm sorry. Your name's on a list somewhere. You've been

(42:01):
flat And I'm like, so every time I've crossed, I've
been flagged. He's like, yeah, and yeah, you've been. There's
a flag on your passport or against your name and
that's why. And I said, well, why is there a
flag against my name? And he goes, I don't know,
You're going to have to do a Freedom of Information
Act request or something. I don't even know if he
knew I.

Speaker 1 (42:19):
Was a journalist Sadly Brook last crossing twenty eighteen, and
since I photographed those Cumi folks in ceremony near Campo,
the border wall has only got longer. Every mile it
stretches out means another milet of desert people have to walk,
and that means that more people won't walk out of
that desert. Those people who lost their lives and an
attempt to save them. A mark with little red dots
on the various maps that attempt to put the humanitarian

(42:42):
crisis into a visual form. Those dots begin in South
America's people die traveling north, but they're sparse and isolated.
Where that changes is the places I've been driving all week,
Eastern California, southern Arizona. Places I know from years of hiking, climbing,
and cycling. Places when one mistake can be fatal. I

(43:03):
know for my friends who spend time resupplying water caches
and searching for missing people. The You don't have to
make any mistakes to die in the desert, especially if
you're young or old, or sick or afraid to ask
for help. These are the places we force people to
travel through on foot to come here and create a
better future for themselves. Dehydration, exposure and drowning or rank

(43:25):
highly as caused a death along the border. Last year
saw a record for border death, and with Biden attempting
to take a hard line going into twenty twenty four,
and climate change and instability continuing to drive migrants north
to the place that causes so much of that climate
change and instability, there's no reason to believe things will
get better. I want to point to one tragic loss,

(43:46):
one of thousands, that happened not far from where I live.
In February of twenty twenty, Juana Margarita and Paula Santosarthe
were traveling by foot from Wahaka to their future in
the United States along a trail sometimes known as the
Shrine Trail. Their family told media back home that they
were searching for us. When you are a Medicano the
American dream. Along their route is a small religious shrine

(44:09):
which marks the last point from which you can see
in Mexico. It's well inside the US along a dry
creek bed in the Laguna Mountains. It can be hot
in the summer and cold in the winter. Last November
I camped out there, and even with thousands of dollars
in gear, I was dangerously close to cold injury. I've
also rescued hikers with dehydration symptoms near here. The desert

(44:32):
and the weather might be part of the story, but
the desert doesn't kill people on its own. It's the
border that forces people deep into the desert that kills them.
The desert is just a tool for a system that
uses death of the torrent. When the girls crossed the
border near Campo on the ninth of February, it was raining.
As it climbed in the Laguna Mountains, it started to snow,

(44:53):
They huddled under a bolder for warmth, and the two
men smuggling them across struck out to get SAR reception
and call nine to one one. By the time boor
Star Border Patrol Search Trauma and Rescue team arrived, two
of the girls had died as they tried to save Juana.
Their request for air support was declined, and she died
with one of the agent's jack kits wrapped around her
and another agent's beanie on her head. For some reason,

(45:18):
the girl's remains were not recovered right away, and they
were not rewarmed, and so they last their last chance
at the American dream and not life. Today, their final
resting place is marked by three crosses and a cash
of supplies placed there by volunteers. At the time I'm
recording this, we don't know where all the folks we
met at the border are now. Then we might never know.

(45:40):
Not being able to follow stories is the sad part
of this reporting. Sometimes knows people will have my phone number,
but they might not. Only more have their phones or
this scrap of paper are wroteed on. Often these things
can be taken for them in custody. What we do
know is that on May eighteenth, exactly one week after
Title forty two ended, Immigration and Customer to Enforcement also

(46:01):
known as ICE, tweeted a video of Customs Enforcement and
Removal Operations agents walking down the corridor of a flight
full of mass people. The caption read ICE conducted multiple
removal flights including Ecuador, Guatemala, and Honduras as part of
dozens flights conducted each week. On the wall of my
office as I write this, there are several propaganda posters

(46:22):
from the Spanish Second Republic. One is as simple as
it is heartbreaking. The poster depicts a squadron of fascist
bombers and the dead body of a child. The slogan
underneath reads, if you tolerate this, then your children will
be next. The poster was, of course correct. It was
the inspiration for songs for the Clash and the Manstree Preachers,

(46:43):
which are what, in turn made me want to learn
about the Spanish Civil War. The slogan, coined in nineteen
thirty seven, feels as relevant today as it does then.
It was one that folks on the border might as
well have been screaming by twenty eighteen, but one that
went ignored, just as it did in nineteen thirty seven.
In twenty twenty, folks began to realize what it meant

(47:03):
when border patrol drones circled the Skuise around Minneapolis and
cell phone signal interceptors tracked citizens all over the US
when they came together to demand that the police stop
murdering people. It became more real in twenty twenty three
when under DeSantis, Florida began the process of legalizing state
kidnapping of trans and gender nonperforming kids from their loving families.
But that all began when the state ripped Indigenous children

(47:26):
for their families in nineteenth and twentieth centuries who tried
to destroy their culture by punishing them for wearing their clothes,
speaking their languages, or using their names. Wasn't a big
leap from there to Trump's family separation policy, which detained
kids on their own away from their families as a
means of punishing a deterring migrants, and it's reached its
obvious endpoint in Florida, because despite all the people chanting

(47:47):
about kids in courages in twenty twenty, it's almost universal
bipartisan agreement on treating people of our southern border like
humans without rights and because for two decades we've allowed
the border surveillance industrial complex to grow to an unprecedented
and uncontrollable scale. But what you us all changing things
now will be very difficult. DHS aren't numbers many nations armies,

(48:09):
and it's considerably better equipped. But unless people show up
and take action, things are going to get considerably worse,
regardless of who you vote for or what they say
in order to get you to vote for them. As
Katie said, little things can make a difference, and if
you listen this far, I hope you'll take the time
to try and do those little things. Before we go,
I want to update you on what's happened in the

(48:30):
week we've been publishing this. Although there are no longer
people held out in the open in ho Gomber and
sant Asedra, there are still many people trying to present
themselves at the sant Asedra border to claim asylum. Today
I was told they about one hundred of them. They're
waiting there often for days. Most of them are getting
turned away. They're all frustrated with CVP one which continues

(48:51):
to be buggy, offer no appointments and struggle to photograph
black faces. I also wanted to mention some of the
organizations you can find and donate to if you'd like
to support the refor They are the Asian Solidarity Collective,
Alo Trollaro, the American Friends Service Committee, Border Kindness, Borderlands
Relief Collective, the Haitian Bridge Alliance, the Partnership for the

(49:15):
Advancement of New Americans, and PREVENKASA pr E V E
n C A s A. I'd also like to thank
Joe Oriana his Twitter is at Joe or Photo for
his reporting which very much contributed to this series.

Speaker 10 (49:37):
It Could Happen Here as a production of cool Zone Media.

Speaker 8 (49:40):
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
cool zonemedia dot com or check us out on the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Speaker 7 (49:49):
You can find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated
monthly at cool zonemedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.