October 5, 2023 • 41 mins
James is joined by Shereen and Robert to discuss Elon Musk’s perpetuating of border myths, and to talk about how to refute them. James also shares some updates on the camps in Jacumba.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Also media. Okay, I am also going cool.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Let's go.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
Suck it up.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Mm hmm. Maybe that should be our intro. Yeah, you
leave it all in, Daniel.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
This is how fucking up my cool zone. Media.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
That's a great question, Robert, It's one we don't like
to answer. The answer is yeah, Reaganagan coins. Yeah, we've
got into it.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
Oh, that's what's funding, James. It's a common mistake mixing
those two words up.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Okay, I see, yeah, yeah, I thought it was because
we got into a dispute about who is going to
get the next gold coin that they send us. No,
every every month.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
Yeah, that's that's that's what funds are. Incredible work, your
incredible work mostly over at the border, that's right, ye.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
Before thank you magic man. Yeah, right before and after
I go, I don't I've like Scrooge McDuck into my
giant pile of gold coins. Yeah, and it helps me recover.
But yeah, talking of the border, I am not the
only one with a giant pile of gold coins who
has been going to the border because friend of the
show Elon Musk has also been taking.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
Well you got to bring him into this.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Yeah, well a certainly rubber he brought himself into this?
Speaker 1 (01:23):
Why he got to bring himself out?
Speaker 2 (01:25):
Yeah? Really this wasn't my believe me, buddy. I would
like nothing more than to never hear his name again,
but unfortunately addressed.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
I would like to hear it again, but specifically, I
would like to hear the sentence from a news anchor
Elon Musk eaten by a crocodile. Yes, I was just
thinking crocodile in a failed motorcycle stunt in the Florida Keys. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Yeah, I'd settle with like hippopotamus, crocodile.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Any carge semi aquatic animal eating him would be pretty amusing. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
Yeah, if a manachi ate him, I'd be fucking pumped.
It'd be amazing, healthy as we'd love to see it. Yeah,
if any.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
One carnivor amanity yeah yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
Yeah, it's been training its whole life for this. Yeah,
that'll be on our next merch drop. Okay. So yeah,
Elmo in some kind of I don't know, like punished
woody cosplay.
Speaker 3 (02:19):
It was a very costumish, it was, Yeah, it was.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
We have a saying in Texas for people who wear
cowboy hats and cowboy boots when they shouldn't and it's
all had no cattle, and that is he is the
definition of that a.
Speaker 3 (02:34):
Classes I think really punched it up, you know.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
Yeah, yeah, he just looked like a balland like I can't.
It's really remarkable that he can be that wealthy and
always looks so awkward and like you could just pay
someone to buy you clothes, bro, And like, at least
Jeff Bezos got yoked when he got really rich. Elon
must still looks like Humpty dumpty, not to likes does
(02:59):
look Besos looks weirdest freaking like a plastic They.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
All look weird. And I don't care about the fact
that Elon Musk is you know, he's not jacket or swollen,
but he's not a wildly abnormal body shape for a
man in what is fucking fifty's Like, yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
Yeah, he's older than I imagine.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
I'm shit on him for playing at something he clearly
is not, because no man has ever been further from
being a cowboy.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
Yes, that is true, he has very few cattle. Yeah,
there's no shame in anyone's body shape. It's just funny
to Mockylon Musk. I guess, so, yeah, Elon turned up
at the border, and he decided that he was going
to learn about the border, and the way that he
decided he was going to learn about the border was
by assembling a collection of cops and one representative to
(03:48):
lie to him about the border, which many of you
who follow things like journalism will be aware that cops
lie actually quite a lot, and that is what happened
here unsurprising. So I guess I just want to take
this chance to a update everyone on what's been happening
since we last upbated everyone what's been happening at the border,
(04:09):
and be just address some of these myths. I know
something we talked about over the break was like lots
of people between now and the end of the year
will be seeing family members who they might not see
very often, and they might not see them too now
in the next election. And there are a lot of
myths specifically about migration that we will maybe copy in
another episode. But I think there's some valuable stuff here
(04:30):
that people can address. If people in your circle have
been influenced by Elon Musk citizen journalism, then I think
it's really important to just point out that it's all bullshit.
Then so easily discoverably bullshit. Now, obviously, not everyone spends
as much time at the southern border of the United
States as I do, and not everyone lives on the border.
(04:53):
Elon must doesn't live on the border either, and he
clearly thinks that people who do exist in some kind
of wild West fantasia where people, you know, wear cowboy
hats and cowboy boots. But like for most of us,
for many of us, it's is our day to day reality,
and so it's easy to go, I guess and talk
to some cops and like wave at some people who
(05:13):
have been corralled up, like like they like cattle or
some kind of animals. Yeah, right, like not engaging with
them as people and throughout this right, Like, at no
point in his little border screed, which I don't think
you have to watch, by the way, if you haven't
watched it, like I'm very now.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
You're not you're not going to like benefit from it.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
No, you won't learn shit.
Speaker 3 (05:36):
But there is there is a clip I found that's
like a minute long on YouTube from the live stream
where the like maybe like most ninety percent of it
is him trying to flip the camera to.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
Yeah. That was that was very funny. Yeah that yes,
real iron man vibes from the guy who can't reverse
his camera and then he ends up just holding it
the way around in mode. Yeah it's intellectual, Yeah no,
titan elil Musk. So I think the first part is
(06:07):
that when he starts to well, first he says as
an immigrant myself, which is like, yeah, bro, I'm an
immigrant to the differences. I didn't have to walk across
the desert carrying my child and then be detained in
open air concentration camp while people around me got fucking
hypothermia and then questioned about the legitimacy of my travel
and right to be here, and then I'm able to
(06:28):
work for years. Migration experiences are different, different, and you
don't have a right to condescend to people who are
often among some of the least fortunate people in the
world just because your mum was a Canadian citizen and
you came here to go to school, Like, it's not
the fucking same. And I say this as someone who
came here to go to school, right, Like it's.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
The same as if like I were to take a
fucking flight from North Africa to Spain and be like, well,
having migrated to Spain from Africa, Like, it's really not
a dangerous journey. Yeah, it's a completely different situation.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
Yeah, yes, yeah, And you compare yourself to Amelia Heart
and the same it's no different. So yeah, like Elon
Musk came to this country in a very different circumstance
to many of these people. The first claim that's made
(07:25):
in this video, which is which is bullshit, is this
quote unquote open border policy. Now, at no point do
any of these like old men in hats define what
they mean by open border policy. And that's because it
doesn't exist. It's not a thing. There is no open
border policy. There has never been an open border policy Biden's.
So I was in Tijuana at the ped West people
(07:49):
know where that is, so at that point in time
that on the day Biden was inaugurated, I was there, right.
I was there because a large group of migrants were
waiting to see if Joe Biden would change any think
and they had been stuck in Tijuana for months years
in some cases. I spoke to people who had been
sexually assaulted. I spoke to people who had been robbed,
I spoke to people who lived in fear for their lives. Right,
(08:11):
and they were not safe in Mexico and wanted to
come to the United States. And they had seen the
way Biden campaigned, and they hoped that he would do
something better. Did he fuck know? He did not. For years,
he continued the same policies that Trump put in place
in COVID. Biden Title forty two more people than Trump did. Right,
(08:32):
The Title forty two policy was in place for much
longer under Biden than it was under Trump. It's completely
untrue to suggest that Biden not at any point in
his presidency opened up the border. What did happen in May,
as people will be aware, is that Title forty two ended.
It didn't end because Biden decided it had to end.
(08:52):
It ended because the emergency for COVID nineteen ended. And
Title forty two is not immigration or public health law.
And so with the end of this policy, that allowed
the government to do things that would not normally be
able to do because it was a quote unquote emergency,
they were not able to do this extraordinary and extraordinarily
(09:14):
cruel thing, which which was Title forty two. Right. That
wasn't a Biden choice, that that was an end that
was a decision forced upon him. Indeed, the Biden administration
defended Title forty two in court. What has happened since
then is that migrant numbers have dropped. They have decreased
since the end of Title forty two. That's because lots
of people saw the harsh anti migration rhetoric that was
(09:37):
coming from the Biden White House, right Mayorcus out there
spouting stuff about bans. You'll be banned from seeking asylum
for five years if your court crossing between ports of entry,
and that led to people thinking they had to cross
before the end of Title forty two. Right now, what
Title forty two did do is create a massive backlog
of asylum applications because we weren't processing those applications and
(09:58):
we were bouncing people back to Mexico, where as I've
hopefully already illustrated, they were not safe. They didn't feel
that that was a safe third country for them, and
so in the months after Title forty two, those people
have tried to cross and to make their asylum applications right,
they're supposed to use app called CBP one. As we've
(10:19):
documented in very great detail, that app is completely unfit
for purpose. And people can listen to my title forty
two episodes. They can listen to the interview when it
did with Jake and Austin about CBP one. The issues
with it are many. The facial liveness scan that it
does doesn't work for people who have darker skin, It
requires Wi Fi, it requires Internet connectivity. These are things
(10:40):
that no long migrants have and that the migrants who
do have tend to be richer and tend to be whiter,
So it facilitates a certain type of migrant. At one
point in I believe April of this year, forty percent
of the CBP one applications that were CBP one appointments
that were made for Sylum applications were made for people
(11:02):
who spoke Russian. People who spoke Russian are not forty
percent of the migrants that was in Tijuana. And I
guess what that means is that people who you know,
especially in my experience, people from African countries are unable
to apply for appointments using CBP one. Also, it's only
available in a couple of languages, or three languages I believe, English, Spanish,
and Haitian Creole. If you don't speak those languages is
(11:23):
going to be a lot harder there are many other
issues with CBP one and other apps at dhs uses.
But what has happened since the end of Title forty
two in May, right is people have tried. This backlog
has begun to sort of people have started to try
and present their applications. And what's happening now is that
people are crossing in very large numbers. That's not untrue
(11:43):
that happens at this time of year. So the last
kind of quote unquote normal years we had were I
suppose twenty eighteen and twenty nineteen. If people cast their
minds back to the November of twenty eighteen, you remember
that was the Trump midterm and you remember they quite
unquote migrant caravan that arrived in Tijuana at that time
(12:04):
with thousands of people. The reason that people are always
traveling at this time of year is because it is
easier to travel in the months and not as hot, right,
So we will see more people arriving the next few months.
That's part of seasonal migrations because of demand for work.
If you're working harvesting things right as a day laborer,
that happens at the end of the summer. This is
(12:25):
part of a normal and natural cycle people have always
traveled since human beings have existed, to take advantage of
different conditions, different access to resources. But the idea that
at some point Biden instituted an open border policy is nonsense.
Biden has closed that border right, He's built walls through
Friendship Park, He's built walls in Texas, he's built walls
(12:46):
in California, he's funded DHS more. That border is certainly
not open. The large groups of people that you are
seeing going through the asylum process the US immigration law,
as they have under every other president. Right, they come
into the United States, they do an initial interview, and
(13:08):
they're released with a notice to appear in court. That's
always been the case. Now are those notices to appear
for dates at further in the future. Now, Absolutely, And
that's because our system is backlogged. Right, because we spent
all our fucking money on giving border patrol black hawks,
giving our cops tanks, whatever it is that we spend
our money on, we haven't spent it on making it
(13:29):
easier and quicker for these people to get their asylum claims.
Adjudicated one of the claims that they make in the video,
I'm skipping out of the order that they make them in.
Is that the repute. He speaking to a representative who's
representative for the Southern Water region of Texas. He's in
Eagle Past, Texas, right, which is an area which I've
seen a lot of migration. The guy says, there's no
(13:51):
repatriation here. Of course, there isn't any repatriation there. That's
not what happens in Eagle Past.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
Right.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
People come, Some of them will be immediately patriated if
they are found to be For instance, I know that
in May, somebody who was found to be on the
United States terrorism watch list tried to enter the country.
That that person wasn't released with a notice to appear right.
That person was immediately bounced into either return to their
country or more likely in their case, incarcerated. Some people
(14:18):
will be detained there. Some people will be repatriated there,
but that's because like del Rio, Texas or Eagle Pass
doesn't repatriate people. That's not their role. The courts are
the ones who decide who is eligible for Assyglent right.
And it's worth noting that this fiscal year, so that's
through August of twenty twenty three, recording in October. But
(14:41):
I couldn't find September stats. Immigration judges have issued removal
and voluntary departure orders for thirty nine point four percent
of completed cases, totaling two hundred and twenty three thousand,
five hundred and seventy deportation orders. So it's absolutely ludicrous
to say that there's no repatriation. Nearly half of those
cases when they come to court, result in repatriation. It's
(15:03):
the representative claims that he called the president of Guatemalan
the Guatemalan presidents and will take people back.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
Great.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
Of course they will. That that's how international law works.
It's not the Guatemalan president's job to decide who is
decide who is allowed asylum in the United States. That's
the job of the immigration courts. They are deeply flawed.
But it's ludicrous to suggests that these people are not
being sent back, because a deeply problematic number of them
(15:30):
are being sent back, often to very dangerous situations. And
I think it's it's deeply misleading and it's troubling to
see like elected officials making these claims. I know that
elected officials just lie to you know, to to reinforce
a narrative, but it's still troubling another claim. They were
like he was really shocked that people were playing golf
(15:52):
next to the border. The US border is thousands of
miles long, like we live, like for those of us,
for whom it's not like an oddity to come and
caseplay at It's where we live, and of course we
do stuff near the border because it's our home. Like
I was camping near the border this week. I ride
my bike near the border all the time. There are
(16:13):
other golf courses near the border. There are parks near
the border, and there's a Tommy Hill figure discount store
near the border in Santa Sedro.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
Like, yeah, it's our home, Yeah, yeah, it's This is
something that when we were at the Butterfly Sanctuary, a
friend of ours who had kind of lived on the
border for forever, Marianna, brought up a lot, which is
that like prior to the you know, September eleventh, in particular,
these were just like communities, Like the fact that there
was a border was more theoretical than anything else. You
(16:43):
would cross pretty free. I have friends in southern California
that go into Mexico for the weekend. You didn't have
a pass border or anything like families, you know, would
cross to be with each other and stuff like it was, yeah,
the way it is.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
Even post nine eleven. Like for those of us who
are fortunate enough to have century, which is an expediti
you can skip the line basically because you've been pre cleared.
I go to Tijuana to have dinner pretty often, Like
I'll take the trolley down there and then walk through
with my bicycle and then ride my bike to the
gastro park or something, have dinner, have a couple of beers,
rid my back back, take the trolley back. It's a
(17:16):
nice evening.
Speaker 3 (17:17):
Yeah, I mean, I don't know how cold it is now,
but like a lot of like people that work like
nine to five retail jobs or whatever it is, they
would just like lead to Ona and come back, Like
my dad had hired a bunch of those workers, and
it was just like normal, was very normal to do that.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
More so now because San Diego is less affordable than
it as it has been.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
Like, yeah, I think the people that don't live near
a border or like believe the Rickulus claims me about it,
I think they imagine the border is like in this
barren wasteland and it's just like a chain link fence
or something. I don't think they understand what it actually is.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
They imagine like this desolate, yellow filtered scene from Breaking Bad. Yes, exactly,
like movies like fucking Sacario, right where it's this this
constant series of gunfights and like like violence occurs on
the border. It's the same thing. It's actually a version
of the same shit that's happened with like San Francisco
and Portland.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
Right.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
Yeah, you have like a riot on a block, or
you'll have like a store get robbed, and then people
develop this because it gets so hyped by the media.
There's you can't go into these cities. They're death zones,
you know. It was like no man, like a fucking
most most of its nature, right, Like that's the fucking border.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
Yeah, it's just a place like it's it's not in
any way remarkable like that.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
And the primary danger is the fact that people are
stopped from having access to like things like water that
they need, yeah, by the state.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
So maybe it's a good time to talk about some
of the dangers that migrants are facing right now. In
the last couple of weeks, it's maybe since we last recorded,
I believe five migrants have been shot on the southern
of the border people, so like this week in southern California,
it's much colder. I know it's hot in lots of
parts of the country, it wasn't here. We had rain
(19:10):
we're recording on like the first second of October. But
last weekend was very cold. I was in a camp
near Hakumba on Friday night through late Friday night maybe
into Saturday morning, and it was cold. It was wet.
Temperatures were getting like into the single digits celsius into
(19:31):
the forties and fifties fahrenheit. When it's wet and it's
that kind of temperature, that's when you start worrying about
people getting hypothermia, which is exactly what happened. Right. People
were sick, people had to be evacuated. On Friday night,
I was heating up milk for a baby, like a
tiny little baby in my camping stove so that the
(19:54):
baby could have milk like not freezing temperatures. Right, it
gave someone my got jacket. I was there with James
and Jacqueline from Boarder Kindness and some other friends. I
know some of them listen to the podcast, and it
makes me really happy that people who listen to this
like take the time out of their busy lives to
show up and help other people. Like that's one of
(20:15):
the coolest things that about what we do.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
We're very proud of those people and everyone else. You know, yeah,
pick up the slack, Come on guys.
Speaker 2 (20:24):
Yeah, Like I know on that topic, Like, there are
a relatively few of us. It's a very remote area
where we were. You know, you need a truck to
get to it. Maybe a decent clearance car would be fine,
but there were like six of us at one point.
It is not easy to do that day in and
day out. It really affects you to see someone's a
(20:46):
little baby sleeping in the dirt and they're asking you, like,
you know, can I have a jacket? And you've already
given someone your jacket? Can I have a sleeping bag?
And you've given away all the sleeping bags you have?
Like it's fucked. It's not good for you, And I
know it's taken a toll on those people, and it
would be great if more people could come. As James
and Jaqueline said, we're vetting everyone because there are people
(21:07):
who would like to do harm to migrants and people
who don't like migrants. And so if you go back
and listen to the episode or the relevant links and
email addresses to volunteer there, even if you just send money,
it's better to send money then to send us stuff.
We've had a ton of I spent a decent chunk
of Friday afternoon going through donated stuff. Some of it's great,
some of it I'm afraid. Like if a jacket is
(21:28):
has giant holes in it for you, it also has
giant holes in it for someone who's less rich than you,
and it doesn't keep them any warmer than it keeps you.
So like you know, it's better if people send money.
But that's taken its toll on people. It's taking its
toll on the people in the camps too, not to
say that they're not in very good spirits. Like it's so,
I was there at about ten o'clock at night when
(21:48):
people What happens, right is people walk around the gaps
in the wall, which again didn't come up in Elon
Musk's video. Right there are giant, yawning gaps in the
wall because they were trying to build as much of
it as possible before twenty twenty election. And so they
skip the hard parts. So people walk through where the
wall stops. They're met by border patrol. Boarder patrol then
drives them. I don't mean drive some boy like put
(22:10):
them in the back of the vehicle. I mean drive
them like you would drive cattle, by going behind them
in a vehicle and pushing them forward and walks them
into the camp, right, And then they arrive in the
camp and it's it's they arrive and like I was
going up to ascertained, you know what sort of group
it was. Were they people who were in severe distress, right,
(22:31):
like hypothermic or hurt or injured. I know someone came
later in a week who had a very bad injury
who had fallen maybe trying to climb the wall. And
so you're going to kind of tri oute that group, right,
And some people were really start they're in America, like
and then they wanted to give me like a hug
or a fist bump and be like yeah, I'm here.
Obviously some of them weren't prepared. None of them were
(22:51):
repared for sleeping outside. And then generally, like there have
been large kind of just shelters made out of cacti
or brush or scrub or whatever's there, which tend to
be based around like national groups, right, just people have
their community, so that it's one for Colombian people, Brazilian people,
punt Jabi, Sikh people. There were Kurdish people, Turkish, a
(23:15):
lot of Turkish people, Afghan people, and so they kind
of because they can talk to each other, they'll be like, hey,
come over here, Afghan friend, Like you know, we'll look
after you. We've got this shelter set out, We've got
a fire going, get yourself warm. And then those people
can spend anywhere from one to three days there before
they're taken out. Right, So like, it's an extremely bad
(23:38):
situation and it will only get worse, so weather gets worse.
Talking of things which which are bad, should should we
should we take this opportunity to pivot to things that
people don't need to buy.
Speaker 1 (23:50):
Yeah, they definitely need to buy them, James, because pass anyway,
here's all.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
Right, we're back. Hopefully you've repleted. You're a pile of golgoyins.
I wanted to return to addressing some words of disinformation
that Elon Musko got from men and cowboy hats. One
of the things they talked about a lot was that.
They talk about numbers, right, They're like, oh, there are
two million, there are four million. At no point do
(24:33):
they say what these numbers represent. Are these numbers net migration?
Are they border crossings between ports of entry? Are they
the number of asylum cases? Are they the number of
encounters the border patrol has had, because as we know, right,
an encounter doesn't necessarily mean individual. If one person crosses
two or three times, that's two or three encounters, right,
(24:54):
And they never talk about that because they're just pulling
this shit out their asses. If you want information, these
people are not people to get it from. None of
them are even working in border enforcement. Right. These were
sheriffs that he spoke to. They talk a lot about
how there are quote unquote two million of them, but
(25:16):
the real number is four or five million because of
the quote unquote gotaways a people who have not been
processed at all. Right, They have entered between ports of
entry and then are undocumented. This is nonsense. People don't
want to be undocumented. People are here because they believe
(25:36):
they have a legitimate asylum claim. They are fleeing violence, right,
they have one of the We've been over to five
categories that you can get asylum for before on the podcast.
I won't read them out again, but I have seen people.
For instance, I saw one person who they were transported
to the hospital, the hospital let them out on the
street in San Diego. They took a cab back to
(25:57):
the border because they don't want to just be floating
around in the US with no papers and able to work,
worried that like a parking ticket or a traffic stop
could send them back to wherever they'd fled from, right,
because they've fled because they're afraid of something and they
don't want to be sent back.
Speaker 3 (26:13):
I think something that really bothered me in the video
was how much they emphasize that, like, remember most of
these people that can be escaping prison, they're all in
they used to be incarcerated. I'm just like, what, Like,
that's not it's just like this fear bongering tactic that's
so silly and trying to make people all believe that
there's everyone at the border are just like prison inmates essentially.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
Yeah. The other side you often get is like, well,
they're all young men heading over, and a lot of
times this like some of this is like racial panic.
They're gonna you know, take our women or whatever. Some
of this is like, you know, men are soldiers, you know,
it's military. The reality is that, like, especially when you're
talking about like the migrants who are crossing the fucking
dairy and gap, this is an incredibly dangerous journey. Young
(27:00):
men are generally a little more capable physically of it.
And also it's you know, especially given some realities of
a lot of you know, these cultures, that's who you
expect to go and make money and send it back
to their families, right, Like that's that's just like it's
not They're not invading you. You know, this is like,
these are the people who are going to work jobs
(27:22):
and send money back to their families.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
Yeah, Like we live in a society which is both patriarchial,
patriarch and misogynist. Right that they they're able to command
a higher wage and they can use that to keep
their families alive. I've spoken to lots of families for
whom the young men left the country there in first
earned money somewhere else and then was able to raise
enough money to get the rest of their family smuggled
(27:45):
out or to facilitate their transport, and then bring them
to the US because they thought it wasn't safe for
them there. Also, like if you're a military aged male
in some countries Russia or lots of countries in the
SA hell, now you could be forcibly drafted right into
a one of any number of conflicts that you want
no part of. And I wouldn't want to do that either.
(28:06):
I'd want to leave right And I've spoken to people
who have fled that kind of situation this week. So Yeah,
of the gender balance, I don't know. It's very hard
to get a sense of the actual gender balance because
border patrol tends to process women and children first, and
especially unaccompany children of course first. But it's very hard
to get into the actual gender balance without like looking
(28:30):
at border patrol statistics, and they take a month or
two to come out. Generally they talk about people with
tear drop tattoos. I would estimate that I have seen tens,
if not one, hundreds of thousands of people at the
Southern border. I've never seen anyone with the tear drop
tattoo leg you.
Speaker 3 (28:44):
Have to be a to have it ascribed. These like
hordes of people trying to get into your home or whatever.
Speaker 2 (28:51):
Yes, I genuinely think that someone looked up I don't know,
like Latino gangster on Google images, like right before, or
like racist Google images or whatever, like before they before
they went down to the border. Like I've never seen
anyone with a tiar rop tattoo. You'd have to be
a bit of a lemon to like present yourself for
asylum with obvious like stuff like that. They're absolutely gonna
(29:14):
ask you about your tattoos, or they'll ask you about everything.
It's just laughable, it's ridiculous. It's all based in myth
and not in reality. And like what troubles me the most,
I think is I don't know how many people have
watched Elon Musk's live stream, right, and hopefully most of
them that did saw someone completely incapable of like asking
interrogated questions or reversing the camera on his phone, or
(29:36):
like dressing like a cowboy. But there has been, to
my knowledge, no national network coverage of what's happening in
a cumber right. There has been limited local coverage of
what's happening in cu Cumba. What there has has already
stopped because like it was a kind of one done
situation for a lot of outlets, but it's not one
and done for the people who are volunteering, And it's
(29:59):
not one and done for the people but who are
still arriving right there are We're going to see more
of this in between now and twenty twenty four. The
border is clearly an area that both parties, I guess,
have decided that they can grandstand on. Biden can show
himself as being quote unquote tough on migration. No, I
don't want to live in a world where our leaders
(30:20):
are tough on little babies who just walked across a desert,
like that's a fucked up thing to be tough on.
It could be tough on corporate corruption if you want to,
like front up to someone. And I think the Republicans
are going to push on Biden being weak on the border,
where there will be more migration this year than we
have seen a long time because we created a backlog,
right because climate change is worse every single year, and
(30:44):
like I think, as we've documented extensively on our show,
parts of the world are becoming less and less survivable.
I went to the Martial Landers this summer. They are disappearing.
So of course people are going to want to come
to somewhere where they feel safe. There are record numbers
of people crossing the Darien Gap right now. That is
something that will result in record numbers of people showing
(31:05):
up a border.
Speaker 1 (31:06):
Yeah, And for every like group of people who make
it across the Dairy And Gap, there's there's folks who
don't like. Taking that journey on foot without kind of
access to modern quality overlanding equipment is like putting a
bullet in a revolver and playing a game of Russian roulette.
Like it's extremely dangerous.
Speaker 2 (31:26):
Yes, not to mention that you'll be preyed upon, like
all the way. And they talked about the trains. I've
seen that video as well, how the migrants control the
trains a fuck off. Like I have seen people who
have lost limbs on trains right like these. That's an
incredible jumping on a moving train. It's not an advisable
form of transport and it's not a safe one. And
(31:47):
the fact that people feel they have to take it
suggests that what they are fleeing feels even less safe
to them. Right. I don't have children, but like if
I was to take my kids and grab on to
a moving train, I would only do that if I
thought that what I was fleeing was less safe than
that moving train.
Speaker 3 (32:05):
Yeah, and to talk about the last resort literally like
that's how desperate you are to better situation. It's not
like I don't know, it just makes me the rhetoric
is all backwards about.
Speaker 2 (32:16):
That, Yes, like when you look at what some of
these people are fleeing, right Like on Friday, I was
helping hand out water bottles and I was there was
a Punjabi man helping me right like, he was one
of the volunteers who was like helping us to distribute
food and helping us to communicate with people in the
language they could understand. Very nice guy. And I was
(32:38):
thinking about like the stuff that's happening in India right now,
right like, and the way that that country is becoming
increasingly like monolithic. I guess Hindu nationalists, I guess you
could call it. And that's fair, right Robert, Yeah, yeah,
like Modi, it's not getting any safer for them there,
And I've seen tons more seek people than I've ever
seen at the border before.
Speaker 1 (33:00):
No, there was a a I mean, fuck, it's it's
not necessarily safe in Canada right where one of those
guys got murdered recently. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:08):
Yeah, well that happening in America too, right, So we
shut up a good water thinking it was a mosque
because they can't fucking differentiate between different faiths and they
saw a turban.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
Yeah, I mean in Canada, I believe it was a
Sikh man who got assassinated at the behest of the
Modi government.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
Oh wow, Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1 (33:24):
Yeah, Western intelligence led to Canada accusing India of SEK
activists assassination. It's a fellow named I just want to
make sure because this is a story people should We
may do some more direct coverage on this. But yeah,
there was a guy named Hardeep Singh Nijar who was
(33:44):
a Sikh separatist activist and was gutten down by two
masked men in British Columbia. India denies that this was
at their behest, but yeah, like this is and this
is by the way, it's not just a thing that
India does. Political assassinations from authoritarian directed by authoritarian countries
in Western countries have become more and more common. Right.
(34:05):
A lot of this started with what Russia was doing,
the poisoning the SCIRPOL, poisonings and stuff. But like this
is growing more common as this sort of like rules
based international order that I think to some extent we
all kind of tricked ourselves into thinking existed increasingly breaks down.
But that's all to say, there's a good reason why
a lot of Sikhs might be trying to come into
(34:26):
the US right now.
Speaker 2 (34:27):
Yeah, Yeah, there's a good reason why I'm seeing so
many of them on the border. There's a good reason
why I'm seeing a ton more people from Russia, right yeah.
And they don't want to go on record, and that's
because they're very afraid, right They've come from a totalitarian
state which can hunt them down, as Rubbert just illustrated,
anywhere in the world, and so they don't want to talk.
Right I'm seeing people coming from Columbia, Hondura, Squafamala. One
(34:50):
of the things that Musk was shocked about was that
like none of these people in Mexican. I don't know
how big he thinks Mexico is and what what he
believes the population of Mexico to be, but at one
minute he's like, it's two million a year. Does he
think Mexico is just like dwindling and there are like
eight people left. Like Mexico is a large country, but
(35:11):
like like it does not provide us with with millions
of migrants a year and.
Speaker 3 (35:17):
More of that like comically impossible narrative, right, like whatever,
I mean people, and people are going to believe it.
It's just part of the show.
Speaker 2 (35:27):
Yeah, And it confirms a lot of biases that always exist.
And I guess hopefully we've dismissed some of that nonsense.
And I think I don't. I think people who listen
to this generally have empathy anyway, But hopefully this has
given you some tools to talk about this to other people.
What they will say is like, I'm not a big
representative caller. I called my representative to help with a
(35:48):
migration case for someone from Mianmar who asked for a help.
She was useless. But maybe this is an area where
like the federal government has water buffalos, right, big water containers,
has mr If these were American citizens and this was
a hurricane or an earthquake, that shit would be there.
It's not because they don't think that they matter as much.
(36:08):
San Diego County has declared emergency and said they can't
do anything that's complete fucking nonsense. They again, they could
if these were American citizens. They would if these people
were like white, wealthy people living in Lahoya. They're choosing
not to because they don't think it will hurt them
and like it. Maybe it won't, right, But I think
(36:31):
you can make a meaningful difference by donating your money,
because the only people who are helping are the dozen
or so folks right like who all convoyed out there
on Friday night down a dirt road in our trucks
and handed out the beans and rice and ritz crackers.
But you can make a difference of your money. The
border kindness links all put in the description again. You
(36:54):
can also make a difference, maybe by calling your representative
and shaming them, because this is a government create problem
and the government like sticking its hands up in the
air and being like, oh no, what a surprise, we'd't
know how to do. Yes, they knew this was coming, right,
these people, many of them have walked from Colombia. We
knew these people were arriving. We've been putting this off
(37:16):
since COVID for three years, since the start of the
COVID pandemic. I should say COVID is very much alive.
I've seen some people who like obviously weren't able to
rap a test everyone. But there are a lot of
sick people coughing right, There were people with scabies, there
were people who were very unwell. That again, if you
detained people in congregate settings and the only masks are
(37:38):
the ones that we bring as volunteers, and that's going
to happen, right, We'll probably get some infectious disease that
they'll get to share with. Even if you don't care
about other people, even sure it'll come bite you in
the arts eventually, right when freaking chicken gun yod. That's
not vectored in that fashion, but you know, cholera or
something rocks up in America. So I would urge people
(38:02):
to do something because so few people are and the
only people who are helping our mutual aid groups who
are overstretched and stressed and tired and broke. And so
if you can help, you should, and well, like whatever
that looks like to you, if you want to volunteer,
that's great. I would urge you to go through the
channels that are set so you don't just show up
(38:24):
and look at yourself or someone else in trouble or
just make things harder. But yeah, there are meaningful ways
that people can help. Very few people are and largely
I think that's because the border exists as some kind
of World West fantasy for most people consuming media in America.
And hopefully, yeah, if you, if you encounter someone who
(38:45):
believes that this will help you, give you a little
bit of information, a little bit of some tools to
dismiss some of that stuff.
Speaker 3 (38:54):
Yeah, dismiss and demystify really, because it's just lingless imaginary,
big bad wolf that no one really understands.
Speaker 2 (39:02):
Yeah, totally. Like it's nonsense that everyone in America's a migrant.
They are indigenous people here now and they always have been.
But a lot of people have some kind of migration story.
And like I don't give a fuck if your great
grandpa came here quote unquote legally the barriers were not
in place yet, there wasn't a wall when your me
mar came from wherever she came from. But like in
(39:24):
all of our communities, like this country doesn't work with
that the labor of recently arrived for migrants. And like
I think if you look at the news, I go
to places where wars are happening, right, that's part of
my job. So it's Robert, you know. And then I
see those people at the border. The reason they're here
is because they're fleeing something worse, and I think, like
(39:47):
maybe grounding it in that, I don't think anyone would
want a little baby to be sleeping in there. I
know some pretty conservative people who were pretty outraged by
what happened in May, and it's worse now. Yeah, no
one in their right mind wants a little baby to
be shivering out in the desert. And you know, no
one in their right mind wants a mother to be
(40:08):
breastfeeding and sleeping underneath a cardboard box because that's what
she has. You know, Like, that's not even if you
believe in it's very liberal construct of America as a
welcoming nation, and that shouldn't be who we are and
it shouldn't be how we treat people. And if you
believe that nation shouldn't exist in borders of bullshit, then
no one should be treated like that. And it's on
all of us to help. I guess, yes, yeah.
Speaker 1 (40:32):
Anything else, guys, No, I think that's about it.
Speaker 2 (40:37):
Magic, Okay, thank you for joining me for this heartwarming episode.
Speaker 1 (40:40):
Yeah, all right, everybody that's going to do it for
us here at it could happen here until next time,
you know stuff.
Speaker 2 (40:56):
It could happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 3 (40:59):
For more part cast from cool Zone Media, visit our
website coozonemedia dot com or check us out on the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
You can find sources for it could Happen here, updated
monthly at coolzonemedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening,
Also media. Okay, I am also going cool.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Let's go.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
Suck it up.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Mm hmm. Maybe that should be our intro. Yeah, you
leave it all in, Daniel.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
This is how fucking up my cool zone. Media.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
That's a great question, Robert, It's one we don't like
to answer. The answer is yeah, Reaganagan coins. Yeah, we've
got into it.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
Oh, that's what's funding, James. It's a common mistake mixing
those two words up.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Okay, I see, yeah, yeah, I thought it was because
we got into a dispute about who is going to
get the next gold coin that they send us. No,
every every month.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
Yeah, that's that's that's what funds are. Incredible work, your
incredible work mostly over at the border, that's right, ye.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
Before thank you magic man. Yeah, right before and after
I go, I don't I've like Scrooge McDuck into my
giant pile of gold coins. Yeah, and it helps me recover.
But yeah, talking of the border, I am not the
only one with a giant pile of gold coins who
has been going to the border because friend of the
show Elon Musk has also been taking.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
Well you got to bring him into this.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Yeah, well a certainly rubber he brought himself into this?
Speaker 1 (01:23):
Why he got to bring himself out?
Speaker 2 (01:25):
Yeah? Really this wasn't my believe me, buddy. I would
like nothing more than to never hear his name again,
but unfortunately addressed.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
I would like to hear it again, but specifically, I
would like to hear the sentence from a news anchor
Elon Musk eaten by a crocodile. Yes, I was just
thinking crocodile in a failed motorcycle stunt in the Florida Keys. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Yeah, I'd settle with like hippopotamus, crocodile.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Any carge semi aquatic animal eating him would be pretty amusing. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
Yeah, if a manachi ate him, I'd be fucking pumped.
It'd be amazing, healthy as we'd love to see it. Yeah,
if any.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
One carnivor amanity yeah yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
Yeah, it's been training its whole life for this. Yeah,
that'll be on our next merch drop. Okay. So yeah,
Elmo in some kind of I don't know, like punished
woody cosplay.
Speaker 3 (02:19):
It was a very costumish, it was, Yeah, it was.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
We have a saying in Texas for people who wear
cowboy hats and cowboy boots when they shouldn't and it's
all had no cattle, and that is he is the
definition of that a.
Speaker 3 (02:34):
Classes I think really punched it up, you know.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
Yeah, yeah, he just looked like a balland like I can't.
It's really remarkable that he can be that wealthy and
always looks so awkward and like you could just pay
someone to buy you clothes, bro, And like, at least
Jeff Bezos got yoked when he got really rich. Elon
must still looks like Humpty dumpty, not to likes does
(02:59):
look Besos looks weirdest freaking like a plastic They.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
All look weird. And I don't care about the fact
that Elon Musk is you know, he's not jacket or swollen,
but he's not a wildly abnormal body shape for a
man in what is fucking fifty's Like, yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
Yeah, he's older than I imagine.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
I'm shit on him for playing at something he clearly
is not, because no man has ever been further from
being a cowboy.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
Yes, that is true, he has very few cattle. Yeah,
there's no shame in anyone's body shape. It's just funny
to Mockylon Musk. I guess, so, yeah, Elon turned up
at the border, and he decided that he was going
to learn about the border, and the way that he
decided he was going to learn about the border was
by assembling a collection of cops and one representative to
(03:48):
lie to him about the border, which many of you
who follow things like journalism will be aware that cops
lie actually quite a lot, and that is what happened
here unsurprising. So I guess I just want to take
this chance to a update everyone on what's been happening
since we last upbated everyone what's been happening at the border,
(04:09):
and be just address some of these myths. I know
something we talked about over the break was like lots
of people between now and the end of the year
will be seeing family members who they might not see
very often, and they might not see them too now
in the next election. And there are a lot of
myths specifically about migration that we will maybe copy in
another episode. But I think there's some valuable stuff here
(04:30):
that people can address. If people in your circle have
been influenced by Elon Musk citizen journalism, then I think
it's really important to just point out that it's all bullshit.
Then so easily discoverably bullshit. Now, obviously, not everyone spends
as much time at the southern border of the United
States as I do, and not everyone lives on the border.
(04:53):
Elon must doesn't live on the border either, and he
clearly thinks that people who do exist in some kind
of wild West fantasia where people, you know, wear cowboy
hats and cowboy boots. But like for most of us,
for many of us, it's is our day to day reality,
and so it's easy to go, I guess and talk
to some cops and like wave at some people who
(05:13):
have been corralled up, like like they like cattle or
some kind of animals. Yeah, right, like not engaging with
them as people and throughout this right, Like, at no
point in his little border screed, which I don't think
you have to watch, by the way, if you haven't
watched it, like I'm very now.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
You're not you're not going to like benefit from it.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
No, you won't learn shit.
Speaker 3 (05:36):
But there is there is a clip I found that's
like a minute long on YouTube from the live stream
where the like maybe like most ninety percent of it
is him trying to flip the camera to.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
Yeah. That was that was very funny. Yeah that yes,
real iron man vibes from the guy who can't reverse
his camera and then he ends up just holding it
the way around in mode. Yeah it's intellectual, Yeah no,
titan elil Musk. So I think the first part is
(06:07):
that when he starts to well, first he says as
an immigrant myself, which is like, yeah, bro, I'm an
immigrant to the differences. I didn't have to walk across
the desert carrying my child and then be detained in
open air concentration camp while people around me got fucking
hypothermia and then questioned about the legitimacy of my travel
and right to be here, and then I'm able to
(06:28):
work for years. Migration experiences are different, different, and you
don't have a right to condescend to people who are
often among some of the least fortunate people in the
world just because your mum was a Canadian citizen and
you came here to go to school, Like, it's not
the fucking same. And I say this as someone who
came here to go to school, right, Like it's.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
The same as if like I were to take a
fucking flight from North Africa to Spain and be like, well,
having migrated to Spain from Africa, Like, it's really not
a dangerous journey. Yeah, it's a completely different situation.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
Yeah, yes, yeah, And you compare yourself to Amelia Heart
and the same it's no different. So yeah, like Elon
Musk came to this country in a very different circumstance
to many of these people. The first claim that's made
(07:25):
in this video, which is which is bullshit, is this
quote unquote open border policy. Now, at no point do
any of these like old men in hats define what
they mean by open border policy. And that's because it
doesn't exist. It's not a thing. There is no open
border policy. There has never been an open border policy Biden's.
So I was in Tijuana at the ped West people
(07:49):
know where that is, so at that point in time
that on the day Biden was inaugurated, I was there, right.
I was there because a large group of migrants were
waiting to see if Joe Biden would change any think
and they had been stuck in Tijuana for months years
in some cases. I spoke to people who had been
sexually assaulted. I spoke to people who had been robbed,
I spoke to people who lived in fear for their lives. Right,
(08:11):
and they were not safe in Mexico and wanted to
come to the United States. And they had seen the
way Biden campaigned, and they hoped that he would do
something better. Did he fuck know? He did not. For years,
he continued the same policies that Trump put in place
in COVID. Biden Title forty two more people than Trump did. Right,
(08:32):
The Title forty two policy was in place for much
longer under Biden than it was under Trump. It's completely
untrue to suggest that Biden not at any point in
his presidency opened up the border. What did happen in May,
as people will be aware, is that Title forty two ended.
It didn't end because Biden decided it had to end.
(08:52):
It ended because the emergency for COVID nineteen ended. And
Title forty two is not immigration or public health law.
And so with the end of this policy, that allowed
the government to do things that would not normally be
able to do because it was a quote unquote emergency,
they were not able to do this extraordinary and extraordinarily
(09:14):
cruel thing, which which was Title forty two. Right. That
wasn't a Biden choice, that that was an end that
was a decision forced upon him. Indeed, the Biden administration
defended Title forty two in court. What has happened since
then is that migrant numbers have dropped. They have decreased
since the end of Title forty two. That's because lots
of people saw the harsh anti migration rhetoric that was
(09:37):
coming from the Biden White House, right Mayorcus out there
spouting stuff about bans. You'll be banned from seeking asylum
for five years if your court crossing between ports of entry,
and that led to people thinking they had to cross
before the end of Title forty two. Right now, what
Title forty two did do is create a massive backlog
of asylum applications because we weren't processing those applications and
(09:58):
we were bouncing people back to Mexico, where as I've
hopefully already illustrated, they were not safe. They didn't feel
that that was a safe third country for them, and
so in the months after Title forty two, those people
have tried to cross and to make their asylum applications right,
they're supposed to use app called CBP one. As we've
(10:19):
documented in very great detail, that app is completely unfit
for purpose. And people can listen to my title forty
two episodes. They can listen to the interview when it
did with Jake and Austin about CBP one. The issues
with it are many. The facial liveness scan that it
does doesn't work for people who have darker skin, It
requires Wi Fi, it requires Internet connectivity. These are things
(10:40):
that no long migrants have and that the migrants who
do have tend to be richer and tend to be whiter,
So it facilitates a certain type of migrant. At one
point in I believe April of this year, forty percent
of the CBP one applications that were CBP one appointments
that were made for Sylum applications were made for people
(11:02):
who spoke Russian. People who spoke Russian are not forty
percent of the migrants that was in Tijuana. And I
guess what that means is that people who you know,
especially in my experience, people from African countries are unable
to apply for appointments using CBP one. Also, it's only
available in a couple of languages, or three languages I believe, English, Spanish,
and Haitian Creole. If you don't speak those languages is
(11:23):
going to be a lot harder there are many other
issues with CBP one and other apps at dhs uses.
But what has happened since the end of Title forty
two in May, right is people have tried. This backlog
has begun to sort of people have started to try
and present their applications. And what's happening now is that
people are crossing in very large numbers. That's not untrue
(11:43):
that happens at this time of year. So the last
kind of quote unquote normal years we had were I
suppose twenty eighteen and twenty nineteen. If people cast their
minds back to the November of twenty eighteen, you remember
that was the Trump midterm and you remember they quite
unquote migrant caravan that arrived in Tijuana at that time
(12:04):
with thousands of people. The reason that people are always
traveling at this time of year is because it is
easier to travel in the months and not as hot, right,
So we will see more people arriving the next few months.
That's part of seasonal migrations because of demand for work.
If you're working harvesting things right as a day laborer,
that happens at the end of the summer. This is
(12:25):
part of a normal and natural cycle people have always
traveled since human beings have existed, to take advantage of
different conditions, different access to resources. But the idea that
at some point Biden instituted an open border policy is nonsense.
Biden has closed that border right, He's built walls through
Friendship Park, He's built walls in Texas, he's built walls
(12:46):
in California, he's funded DHS more. That border is certainly
not open. The large groups of people that you are
seeing going through the asylum process the US immigration law,
as they have under every other president. Right, they come
into the United States, they do an initial interview, and
(13:08):
they're released with a notice to appear in court. That's
always been the case. Now are those notices to appear
for dates at further in the future. Now, Absolutely, And
that's because our system is backlogged. Right, because we spent
all our fucking money on giving border patrol black hawks,
giving our cops tanks, whatever it is that we spend
our money on, we haven't spent it on making it
(13:29):
easier and quicker for these people to get their asylum claims.
Adjudicated one of the claims that they make in the video,
I'm skipping out of the order that they make them in.
Is that the repute. He speaking to a representative who's
representative for the Southern Water region of Texas. He's in
Eagle Past, Texas, right, which is an area which I've
seen a lot of migration. The guy says, there's no
(13:51):
repatriation here. Of course, there isn't any repatriation there. That's
not what happens in Eagle Past.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
Right.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
People come, Some of them will be immediately patriated if
they are found to be For instance, I know that
in May, somebody who was found to be on the
United States terrorism watch list tried to enter the country.
That that person wasn't released with a notice to appear right.
That person was immediately bounced into either return to their
country or more likely in their case, incarcerated. Some people
(14:18):
will be detained there. Some people will be repatriated there,
but that's because like del Rio, Texas or Eagle Pass
doesn't repatriate people. That's not their role. The courts are
the ones who decide who is eligible for Assyglent right.
And it's worth noting that this fiscal year, so that's
through August of twenty twenty three, recording in October. But
(14:41):
I couldn't find September stats. Immigration judges have issued removal
and voluntary departure orders for thirty nine point four percent
of completed cases, totaling two hundred and twenty three thousand,
five hundred and seventy deportation orders. So it's absolutely ludicrous
to say that there's no repatriation. Nearly half of those
cases when they come to court, result in repatriation. It's
(15:03):
the representative claims that he called the president of Guatemalan
the Guatemalan presidents and will take people back.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
Great.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
Of course they will. That that's how international law works.
It's not the Guatemalan president's job to decide who is
decide who is allowed asylum in the United States. That's
the job of the immigration courts. They are deeply flawed.
But it's ludicrous to suggests that these people are not
being sent back, because a deeply problematic number of them
(15:30):
are being sent back, often to very dangerous situations. And
I think it's it's deeply misleading and it's troubling to
see like elected officials making these claims. I know that
elected officials just lie to you know, to to reinforce
a narrative, but it's still troubling another claim. They were
like he was really shocked that people were playing golf
(15:52):
next to the border. The US border is thousands of
miles long, like we live, like for those of us,
for whom it's not like an oddity to come and
caseplay at It's where we live, and of course we
do stuff near the border because it's our home. Like
I was camping near the border this week. I ride
my bike near the border all the time. There are
(16:13):
other golf courses near the border. There are parks near
the border, and there's a Tommy Hill figure discount store
near the border in Santa Sedro.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
Like, yeah, it's our home, Yeah, yeah, it's This is
something that when we were at the Butterfly Sanctuary, a
friend of ours who had kind of lived on the
border for forever, Marianna, brought up a lot, which is
that like prior to the you know, September eleventh, in particular,
these were just like communities, Like the fact that there
was a border was more theoretical than anything else. You
(16:43):
would cross pretty free. I have friends in southern California
that go into Mexico for the weekend. You didn't have
a pass border or anything like families, you know, would
cross to be with each other and stuff like it was, yeah,
the way it is.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
Even post nine eleven. Like for those of us who
are fortunate enough to have century, which is an expediti
you can skip the line basically because you've been pre cleared.
I go to Tijuana to have dinner pretty often, Like
I'll take the trolley down there and then walk through
with my bicycle and then ride my bike to the
gastro park or something, have dinner, have a couple of beers,
rid my back back, take the trolley back. It's a
(17:16):
nice evening.
Speaker 3 (17:17):
Yeah, I mean, I don't know how cold it is now,
but like a lot of like people that work like
nine to five retail jobs or whatever it is, they
would just like lead to Ona and come back, Like
my dad had hired a bunch of those workers, and
it was just like normal, was very normal to do that.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
More so now because San Diego is less affordable than
it as it has been.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
Like, yeah, I think the people that don't live near
a border or like believe the Rickulus claims me about it,
I think they imagine the border is like in this
barren wasteland and it's just like a chain link fence
or something. I don't think they understand what it actually is.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
They imagine like this desolate, yellow filtered scene from Breaking Bad. Yes, exactly,
like movies like fucking Sacario, right where it's this this
constant series of gunfights and like like violence occurs on
the border. It's the same thing. It's actually a version
of the same shit that's happened with like San Francisco
and Portland.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
Right.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
Yeah, you have like a riot on a block, or
you'll have like a store get robbed, and then people
develop this because it gets so hyped by the media.
There's you can't go into these cities. They're death zones,
you know. It was like no man, like a fucking
most most of its nature, right, Like that's the fucking border.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
Yeah, it's just a place like it's it's not in
any way remarkable like that.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
And the primary danger is the fact that people are
stopped from having access to like things like water that
they need, yeah, by the state.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
So maybe it's a good time to talk about some
of the dangers that migrants are facing right now. In
the last couple of weeks, it's maybe since we last recorded,
I believe five migrants have been shot on the southern
of the border people, so like this week in southern California,
it's much colder. I know it's hot in lots of
parts of the country, it wasn't here. We had rain
(19:10):
we're recording on like the first second of October. But
last weekend was very cold. I was in a camp
near Hakumba on Friday night through late Friday night maybe
into Saturday morning, and it was cold. It was wet.
Temperatures were getting like into the single digits celsius into
(19:31):
the forties and fifties fahrenheit. When it's wet and it's
that kind of temperature, that's when you start worrying about
people getting hypothermia, which is exactly what happened. Right. People
were sick, people had to be evacuated. On Friday night,
I was heating up milk for a baby, like a
tiny little baby in my camping stove so that the
(19:54):
baby could have milk like not freezing temperatures. Right, it
gave someone my got jacket. I was there with James
and Jacqueline from Boarder Kindness and some other friends. I
know some of them listen to the podcast, and it
makes me really happy that people who listen to this
like take the time out of their busy lives to
show up and help other people. Like that's one of
(20:15):
the coolest things that about what we do.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
We're very proud of those people and everyone else. You know, yeah,
pick up the slack, Come on guys.
Speaker 2 (20:24):
Yeah, Like I know on that topic, Like, there are
a relatively few of us. It's a very remote area
where we were. You know, you need a truck to
get to it. Maybe a decent clearance car would be fine,
but there were like six of us at one point.
It is not easy to do that day in and
day out. It really affects you to see someone's a
(20:46):
little baby sleeping in the dirt and they're asking you, like,
you know, can I have a jacket? And you've already
given someone your jacket? Can I have a sleeping bag?
And you've given away all the sleeping bags you have?
Like it's fucked. It's not good for you, And I
know it's taken a toll on those people, and it
would be great if more people could come. As James
and Jaqueline said, we're vetting everyone because there are people
(21:07):
who would like to do harm to migrants and people
who don't like migrants. And so if you go back
and listen to the episode or the relevant links and
email addresses to volunteer there, even if you just send money,
it's better to send money then to send us stuff.
We've had a ton of I spent a decent chunk
of Friday afternoon going through donated stuff. Some of it's great,
some of it I'm afraid. Like if a jacket is
(21:28):
has giant holes in it for you, it also has
giant holes in it for someone who's less rich than you,
and it doesn't keep them any warmer than it keeps you.
So like you know, it's better if people send money.
But that's taken its toll on people. It's taking its
toll on the people in the camps too, not to
say that they're not in very good spirits. Like it's so,
I was there at about ten o'clock at night when
(21:48):
people What happens, right is people walk around the gaps
in the wall, which again didn't come up in Elon
Musk's video. Right there are giant, yawning gaps in the
wall because they were trying to build as much of
it as possible before twenty twenty election. And so they
skip the hard parts. So people walk through where the
wall stops. They're met by border patrol. Boarder patrol then
drives them. I don't mean drive some boy like put
(22:10):
them in the back of the vehicle. I mean drive
them like you would drive cattle, by going behind them
in a vehicle and pushing them forward and walks them
into the camp, right, And then they arrive in the
camp and it's it's they arrive and like I was
going up to ascertained, you know what sort of group
it was. Were they people who were in severe distress, right,
(22:31):
like hypothermic or hurt or injured. I know someone came
later in a week who had a very bad injury
who had fallen maybe trying to climb the wall. And
so you're going to kind of tri oute that group, right,
And some people were really start they're in America, like
and then they wanted to give me like a hug
or a fist bump and be like yeah, I'm here.
Obviously some of them weren't prepared. None of them were
(22:51):
repared for sleeping outside. And then generally, like there have
been large kind of just shelters made out of cacti
or brush or scrub or whatever's there, which tend to
be based around like national groups, right, just people have
their community, so that it's one for Colombian people, Brazilian people,
punt Jabi, Sikh people. There were Kurdish people, Turkish, a
(23:15):
lot of Turkish people, Afghan people, and so they kind
of because they can talk to each other, they'll be like, hey,
come over here, Afghan friend, Like you know, we'll look
after you. We've got this shelter set out, We've got
a fire going, get yourself warm. And then those people
can spend anywhere from one to three days there before
they're taken out. Right, So like, it's an extremely bad
(23:38):
situation and it will only get worse, so weather gets worse.
Talking of things which which are bad, should should we
should we take this opportunity to pivot to things that
people don't need to buy.
Speaker 1 (23:50):
Yeah, they definitely need to buy them, James, because pass anyway,
here's all.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
Right, we're back. Hopefully you've repleted. You're a pile of golgoyins.
I wanted to return to addressing some words of disinformation
that Elon Musko got from men and cowboy hats. One
of the things they talked about a lot was that.
They talk about numbers, right, They're like, oh, there are
two million, there are four million. At no point do
(24:33):
they say what these numbers represent. Are these numbers net migration?
Are they border crossings between ports of entry? Are they
the number of asylum cases? Are they the number of
encounters the border patrol has had, because as we know, right,
an encounter doesn't necessarily mean individual. If one person crosses
two or three times, that's two or three encounters, right,
(24:54):
And they never talk about that because they're just pulling
this shit out their asses. If you want information, these
people are not people to get it from. None of
them are even working in border enforcement. Right. These were
sheriffs that he spoke to. They talk a lot about
how there are quote unquote two million of them, but
(25:16):
the real number is four or five million because of
the quote unquote gotaways a people who have not been
processed at all. Right, They have entered between ports of
entry and then are undocumented. This is nonsense. People don't
want to be undocumented. People are here because they believe
(25:36):
they have a legitimate asylum claim. They are fleeing violence, right,
they have one of the We've been over to five
categories that you can get asylum for before on the podcast.
I won't read them out again, but I have seen people.
For instance, I saw one person who they were transported
to the hospital, the hospital let them out on the
street in San Diego. They took a cab back to
(25:57):
the border because they don't want to just be floating
around in the US with no papers and able to work,
worried that like a parking ticket or a traffic stop
could send them back to wherever they'd fled from, right,
because they've fled because they're afraid of something and they
don't want to be sent back.
Speaker 3 (26:13):
I think something that really bothered me in the video
was how much they emphasize that, like, remember most of
these people that can be escaping prison, they're all in
they used to be incarcerated. I'm just like, what, Like,
that's not it's just like this fear bongering tactic that's
so silly and trying to make people all believe that
there's everyone at the border are just like prison inmates essentially.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
Yeah. The other side you often get is like, well,
they're all young men heading over, and a lot of
times this like some of this is like racial panic.
They're gonna you know, take our women or whatever. Some
of this is like, you know, men are soldiers, you know,
it's military. The reality is that, like, especially when you're
talking about like the migrants who are crossing the fucking
dairy and gap, this is an incredibly dangerous journey. Young
(27:00):
men are generally a little more capable physically of it.
And also it's you know, especially given some realities of
a lot of you know, these cultures, that's who you
expect to go and make money and send it back
to their families, right, Like that's that's just like it's
not They're not invading you. You know, this is like,
these are the people who are going to work jobs
(27:22):
and send money back to their families.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
Yeah, Like we live in a society which is both patriarchial,
patriarch and misogynist. Right that they they're able to command
a higher wage and they can use that to keep
their families alive. I've spoken to lots of families for
whom the young men left the country there in first
earned money somewhere else and then was able to raise
enough money to get the rest of their family smuggled
(27:45):
out or to facilitate their transport, and then bring them
to the US because they thought it wasn't safe for
them there. Also, like if you're a military aged male
in some countries Russia or lots of countries in the
SA hell, now you could be forcibly drafted right into
a one of any number of conflicts that you want
no part of. And I wouldn't want to do that either.
(28:06):
I'd want to leave right And I've spoken to people
who have fled that kind of situation this week. So Yeah,
of the gender balance, I don't know. It's very hard
to get a sense of the actual gender balance because
border patrol tends to process women and children first, and
especially unaccompany children of course first. But it's very hard
to get into the actual gender balance without like looking
(28:30):
at border patrol statistics, and they take a month or
two to come out. Generally they talk about people with
tear drop tattoos. I would estimate that I have seen tens,
if not one, hundreds of thousands of people at the
Southern border. I've never seen anyone with the tear drop
tattoo leg you.
Speaker 3 (28:44):
Have to be a to have it ascribed. These like
hordes of people trying to get into your home or whatever.
Speaker 2 (28:51):
Yes, I genuinely think that someone looked up I don't know,
like Latino gangster on Google images, like right before, or
like racist Google images or whatever, like before they before
they went down to the border. Like I've never seen
anyone with a tiar rop tattoo. You'd have to be
a bit of a lemon to like present yourself for
asylum with obvious like stuff like that. They're absolutely gonna
(29:14):
ask you about your tattoos, or they'll ask you about everything.
It's just laughable, it's ridiculous. It's all based in myth
and not in reality. And like what troubles me the most,
I think is I don't know how many people have
watched Elon Musk's live stream, right, and hopefully most of
them that did saw someone completely incapable of like asking
interrogated questions or reversing the camera on his phone, or
(29:36):
like dressing like a cowboy. But there has been, to
my knowledge, no national network coverage of what's happening in
a cumber right. There has been limited local coverage of
what's happening in cu Cumba. What there has has already
stopped because like it was a kind of one done
situation for a lot of outlets, but it's not one
and done for the people who are volunteering, And it's
(29:59):
not one and done for the people but who are
still arriving right there are We're going to see more
of this in between now and twenty twenty four. The
border is clearly an area that both parties, I guess,
have decided that they can grandstand on. Biden can show
himself as being quote unquote tough on migration. No, I
don't want to live in a world where our leaders
(30:20):
are tough on little babies who just walked across a desert,
like that's a fucked up thing to be tough on.
It could be tough on corporate corruption if you want to,
like front up to someone. And I think the Republicans
are going to push on Biden being weak on the border,
where there will be more migration this year than we
have seen a long time because we created a backlog,
right because climate change is worse every single year, and
(30:44):
like I think, as we've documented extensively on our show,
parts of the world are becoming less and less survivable.
I went to the Martial Landers this summer. They are disappearing.
So of course people are going to want to come
to somewhere where they feel safe. There are record numbers
of people crossing the Darien Gap right now. That is
something that will result in record numbers of people showing
(31:05):
up a border.
Speaker 1 (31:06):
Yeah, And for every like group of people who make
it across the Dairy And Gap, there's there's folks who
don't like. Taking that journey on foot without kind of
access to modern quality overlanding equipment is like putting a
bullet in a revolver and playing a game of Russian roulette.
Like it's extremely dangerous.
Speaker 2 (31:26):
Yes, not to mention that you'll be preyed upon, like
all the way. And they talked about the trains. I've
seen that video as well, how the migrants control the
trains a fuck off. Like I have seen people who
have lost limbs on trains right like these. That's an
incredible jumping on a moving train. It's not an advisable
form of transport and it's not a safe one. And
(31:47):
the fact that people feel they have to take it
suggests that what they are fleeing feels even less safe
to them. Right. I don't have children, but like if
I was to take my kids and grab on to
a moving train, I would only do that if I
thought that what I was fleeing was less safe than
that moving train.
Speaker 3 (32:05):
Yeah, and to talk about the last resort literally like
that's how desperate you are to better situation. It's not
like I don't know, it just makes me the rhetoric
is all backwards about.
Speaker 2 (32:16):
That, Yes, like when you look at what some of
these people are fleeing, right Like on Friday, I was
helping hand out water bottles and I was there was
a Punjabi man helping me right like, he was one
of the volunteers who was like helping us to distribute
food and helping us to communicate with people in the
language they could understand. Very nice guy. And I was
(32:38):
thinking about like the stuff that's happening in India right now,
right like, and the way that that country is becoming
increasingly like monolithic. I guess Hindu nationalists, I guess you
could call it. And that's fair, right Robert, Yeah, yeah,
like Modi, it's not getting any safer for them there,
And I've seen tons more seek people than I've ever
seen at the border before.
Speaker 1 (33:00):
No, there was a a I mean, fuck, it's it's
not necessarily safe in Canada right where one of those
guys got murdered recently. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:08):
Yeah, well that happening in America too, right, So we
shut up a good water thinking it was a mosque
because they can't fucking differentiate between different faiths and they
saw a turban.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
Yeah, I mean in Canada, I believe it was a
Sikh man who got assassinated at the behest of the
Modi government.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
Oh wow, Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1 (33:24):
Yeah, Western intelligence led to Canada accusing India of SEK
activists assassination. It's a fellow named I just want to
make sure because this is a story people should We
may do some more direct coverage on this. But yeah,
there was a guy named Hardeep Singh Nijar who was
(33:44):
a Sikh separatist activist and was gutten down by two
masked men in British Columbia. India denies that this was
at their behest, but yeah, like this is and this
is by the way, it's not just a thing that
India does. Political assassinations from authoritarian directed by authoritarian countries
in Western countries have become more and more common. Right.
(34:05):
A lot of this started with what Russia was doing,
the poisoning the SCIRPOL, poisonings and stuff. But like this
is growing more common as this sort of like rules
based international order that I think to some extent we
all kind of tricked ourselves into thinking existed increasingly breaks down.
But that's all to say, there's a good reason why
a lot of Sikhs might be trying to come into
(34:26):
the US right now.
Speaker 2 (34:27):
Yeah, Yeah, there's a good reason why I'm seeing so
many of them on the border. There's a good reason
why I'm seeing a ton more people from Russia, right yeah.
And they don't want to go on record, and that's
because they're very afraid, right They've come from a totalitarian
state which can hunt them down, as Rubbert just illustrated,
anywhere in the world, and so they don't want to talk.
Right I'm seeing people coming from Columbia, Hondura, Squafamala. One
(34:50):
of the things that Musk was shocked about was that
like none of these people in Mexican. I don't know
how big he thinks Mexico is and what what he
believes the population of Mexico to be, but at one
minute he's like, it's two million a year. Does he
think Mexico is just like dwindling and there are like
eight people left. Like Mexico is a large country, but
(35:11):
like like it does not provide us with with millions
of migrants a year and.
Speaker 3 (35:17):
More of that like comically impossible narrative, right, like whatever,
I mean people, and people are going to believe it.
It's just part of the show.
Speaker 2 (35:27):
Yeah, And it confirms a lot of biases that always exist.
And I guess hopefully we've dismissed some of that nonsense.
And I think I don't. I think people who listen
to this generally have empathy anyway, But hopefully this has
given you some tools to talk about this to other people.
What they will say is like, I'm not a big
representative caller. I called my representative to help with a
(35:48):
migration case for someone from Mianmar who asked for a help.
She was useless. But maybe this is an area where
like the federal government has water buffalos, right, big water containers,
has mr If these were American citizens and this was
a hurricane or an earthquake, that shit would be there.
It's not because they don't think that they matter as much.
(36:08):
San Diego County has declared emergency and said they can't
do anything that's complete fucking nonsense. They again, they could
if these were American citizens. They would if these people
were like white, wealthy people living in Lahoya. They're choosing
not to because they don't think it will hurt them
and like it. Maybe it won't, right, But I think
(36:31):
you can make a meaningful difference by donating your money,
because the only people who are helping are the dozen
or so folks right like who all convoyed out there
on Friday night down a dirt road in our trucks
and handed out the beans and rice and ritz crackers.
But you can make a difference of your money. The
border kindness links all put in the description again. You
(36:54):
can also make a difference, maybe by calling your representative
and shaming them, because this is a government create problem
and the government like sticking its hands up in the
air and being like, oh no, what a surprise, we'd't
know how to do. Yes, they knew this was coming, right,
these people, many of them have walked from Colombia. We
knew these people were arriving. We've been putting this off
(37:16):
since COVID for three years, since the start of the
COVID pandemic. I should say COVID is very much alive.
I've seen some people who like obviously weren't able to
rap a test everyone. But there are a lot of
sick people coughing right, There were people with scabies, there
were people who were very unwell. That again, if you
detained people in congregate settings and the only masks are
(37:38):
the ones that we bring as volunteers, and that's going
to happen, right, We'll probably get some infectious disease that
they'll get to share with. Even if you don't care
about other people, even sure it'll come bite you in
the arts eventually, right when freaking chicken gun yod. That's
not vectored in that fashion, but you know, cholera or
something rocks up in America. So I would urge people
(38:02):
to do something because so few people are and the
only people who are helping our mutual aid groups who
are overstretched and stressed and tired and broke. And so
if you can help, you should, and well, like whatever
that looks like to you, if you want to volunteer,
that's great. I would urge you to go through the
channels that are set so you don't just show up
(38:24):
and look at yourself or someone else in trouble or
just make things harder. But yeah, there are meaningful ways
that people can help. Very few people are and largely
I think that's because the border exists as some kind
of World West fantasy for most people consuming media in America.
And hopefully, yeah, if you, if you encounter someone who
(38:45):
believes that this will help you, give you a little
bit of information, a little bit of some tools to
dismiss some of that stuff.
Speaker 3 (38:54):
Yeah, dismiss and demystify really, because it's just lingless imaginary,
big bad wolf that no one really understands.
Speaker 2 (39:02):
Yeah, totally. Like it's nonsense that everyone in America's a migrant.
They are indigenous people here now and they always have been.
But a lot of people have some kind of migration story.
And like I don't give a fuck if your great
grandpa came here quote unquote legally the barriers were not
in place yet, there wasn't a wall when your me
mar came from wherever she came from. But like in
(39:24):
all of our communities, like this country doesn't work with
that the labor of recently arrived for migrants. And like
I think if you look at the news, I go
to places where wars are happening, right, that's part of
my job. So it's Robert, you know. And then I
see those people at the border. The reason they're here
is because they're fleeing something worse, and I think, like
(39:47):
maybe grounding it in that, I don't think anyone would
want a little baby to be sleeping in there. I
know some pretty conservative people who were pretty outraged by
what happened in May, and it's worse now. Yeah, no
one in their right mind wants a little baby to
be shivering out in the desert. And you know, no
one in their right mind wants a mother to be
(40:08):
breastfeeding and sleeping underneath a cardboard box because that's what
she has. You know, Like, that's not even if you
believe in it's very liberal construct of America as a
welcoming nation, and that shouldn't be who we are and
it shouldn't be how we treat people. And if you
believe that nation shouldn't exist in borders of bullshit, then
no one should be treated like that. And it's on
all of us to help. I guess, yes, yeah.
Speaker 1 (40:32):
Anything else, guys, No, I think that's about it.
Speaker 2 (40:37):
Magic, Okay, thank you for joining me for this heartwarming episode.
Speaker 1 (40:40):
Yeah, all right, everybody that's going to do it for
us here at it could happen here until next time,
you know stuff.
Speaker 2 (40:56):
It could happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 3 (40:59):
For more part cast from cool Zone Media, visit our
website coozonemedia dot com or check us out on the
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You can find sources for it could Happen here, updated
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Robert Evans
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