How Jim Desmond Lies & San Diego Fails Migrants

James talks to Erika Pinheiro of Al Otro Lado about how San Diego county and Biden’s administration have consistently failed migrants, and how county supervisor Jim Desmond lied about taxpayers funding the mutual aid response.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
As media.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
Hello everyone, it's me James and I'm joined today by Erica,
who is an attorney the director at Alotto Lada, which
is a binational nonprofit that does legal humanitarian aid between
San Diego and Tijuana. And we're here to discuss the
open air detention sites and some things that Jim Desmond,
one of our county supervisors, has been saying about them.

(00:25):
So welcome to the show. Erica.

Speaker 3 (00:27):
Thank you for having me.

Speaker 2 (00:29):
Yeah, of course, it's nice to have you here. Thanks
for taking the time. So I want to start off
by talking about Jim Desmond today, which is something I
like to do if people aren't familiar with Jim Desmond.
Jim Desmond is a supervisor in San Diego County. He's
from District five, which is northern San Diego County. He's
a Republican. He's the former mayor of San Marcos, which

(00:50):
is a city in North County, and before that he
was a pilot in the Navy. He's pretty much like
a standard culture war boomer and a reminder to us
all that there are people of today. He grew up
when they put lead and children to toys. Notable gyp
Desmonds dances include his stance on climate change, which I'm
just going to read to you try and follow it

(01:11):
if you can. It's a challenge. I think the climate
has been changing since the beginning of time. The climate
comes and the climate goes. The Great Lakes, the Great Plains,
as a Yosemite Valley, all formed by glaciers. They've been
gone a long long time. So you find seashells on mountaintops.
You see where it used to be. You know, the

(01:33):
land masses were Pangaea, and then the land matters all
change and move around. So I say, we may be
part of climate change, but I think the only reason
we're here and we're still here today is because we
as a species learn to adapt to different climates and
climate changes. Now, maybe we're maybe exacerbating it a bit
towards the end of the warming trend, but I don't
know that. So it's just that's about.

Speaker 3 (01:58):
As convoluted as his governing strategy here in San Diego County.

Speaker 2 (02:02):
Yeah, it's it's said a lot of words, but it
really conveyed very little meaning. But yeah, this is kind
of he seems to like speaking, but but maybe like
he doesn't take quite as long as one would hope
to plan out where he's going with its sentences before
he delivers him. He also has a podcast, so I
guess our podcasting rival. Did you have you listened to

(02:23):
his podcast, Dereka.

Speaker 3 (02:25):
No, I am, but it might be entertaining, So yeah,
I'll take a look at it.

Speaker 2 (02:30):
Definitely. I know it'll you can learn some things about
coronavirus for instance. God, yeah, it's good stuff. In May
of twenty twenty, he claimed there had been six pure
solely coronavirus deaths the other two hundred or so that
happened to County by them, we're not quote unquote pure
coronavirus deaths. I guess by his estimation. So in this

(02:53):
little escapade got him cited by Joe Rogan on the
Joe Rogan Podcast, which must have been a great moment Desmond.
He hosted a ton of COVID skeptics on his podcast
as well. Throughout the lockdowns he did. After he like
caused some controversy on Twitter, which is a recurring theme,
he hosted an actual immunologist on his show, and this

(03:14):
was the only guest who he really kind of argued with,
and in doing so, he said, I quote the herd
needs to get it, and he's talking about COVID here
and we'll have a better handle on it. So to me,
the number of cases means the herd's getting it, so
that's a good thing. And then his guests corrected in,
pointing out that there needs to be like immunity for

(03:36):
there to be heard immunity, and what he's just looking
at it is contagion, not immunity, so he sort of
He continued to make these claims throughout the pandemic right
that the lockdown was holding our jobs hostage, bad for
the economy. He wasn't an anti maskt Interestingly, he said
we should wear masks. That's what it took to open

(03:58):
the businesses. Again, he at least, I mean he's always
been pretty terrible on border stuff, right, Erica. I'm sure
you've encountered some of his border stances before.

Speaker 3 (04:09):
I think all of the supervisors are terrible on border stuff.
But at least he says the quiet part out loud. Yeah,
we'll get more into that later.

Speaker 2 (04:18):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I want to talk about how that Yeah,
that the the Democrats been carible on the border is
something that I think we can't say enough. In recent months,
he held a press conference claiming the border should be
shut down to prevent an influx It's not a quote,
it's a paraphrase here, but to prevent an influx of
har mass fighters, which I don't know. It shows a

(04:38):
misunderstanding of a lot of things, like like how her
mass works, and also how the border works, like the
idea that a one could leave Gaza at this time
and be that one could just fly into Mexico like
where of course, like they wouldn't immediately notice that you
had come, like armed in a to attack the US border.

Speaker 3 (05:02):
But I think just with the COVID stuff and with
the border stuff, he is just throwing red meat to
his base. But it's not necessarily aligned with what he does,
and I would assume it's not aligned with what he
actually knows, Like we're the COVID stuff. He did set
up vaccination clinics in his district, and so he's clearly

(05:25):
not a complete skeptic, at least that's not what his
action showed. And I think for some of your listeners
who are not in the United States or maybe not
in California, yet we are on the border in San Diego.
You can get to Mexico within you know, if you're
in Jim Desmon's district, within half an hour, you're in Tijuana.
And I assume he's been here for many years, and

(05:47):
so he has to know more about the border than
he's letting on. It's just really like he's regurgitating the
right wing narrative to garner pull coal points. I think
in a county where he's the last standing Republican on
the board of supervisors, So I think that's important to

(06:08):
remember too.

Speaker 2 (06:09):
Definitely, it definitely seems like this is kind of and
you see he does a lot of appearance on writing
news channels, right, Like he's often on Fox. But then
our local kind of crazy writ wing news channel is KUSI,
who have really doubled down on the culture war stuff
since like twenty twenty, and you'll see him on there
a lot and talking about the border a lot. Right.

(06:30):
It seems to, as you say, like either be like
an attempt for reelection or perhaps for higher office. I
don't know, but he he'll make a lot of claims
about the border which are just patently untrue, which is
what I want to talk about now. So he spent
his New Year's Day in cucumber making little videos for
Twitter and Instagram. I was the only years Das too.

(06:52):
I didn't at really see him, which is a shame.
But that day they weren't many people at all who
are in the open air attention sites, so he sort
of made videos in front of empty tents. It was
a bit weird. In his first one, he wrote, today
I visited the border and migrant encampments in Cucumber. The
chaos continues with dozens of people camping out waiting for

(07:13):
Border patrol to take them to resource center paid for
by county taxpayers. He's not like you cold. I'm sure Erica,
you can explain this as well. He's not wrong that
they may eventually end up at the quote unquote welcome center,
which is paid for by county funds, which came from
the American Rescue Act, which is of course federal money.

(07:34):
But it's a little more complicated than that, isn't it.

Speaker 3 (07:37):
Yeah, So the migrants are being held in what are
essentially open air prisons by border patrol. We the collective
of nonprofits, mutual aid groups and volunteers are the only
ones who've been paying for water, food, medical assistance, shelter,

(07:58):
et cetera. For people who are being held in these
open air prisons, sometimes for days at a time, including
the medically infirm and children. And so I think that's
one piece of it to understand, because he did say
in when he was speaking in front of the empty tent,
that the county tax payers were paying for those things,

(08:19):
which is patently untrue. But then just again, understanding the
process is something that he has to understand. He's been
here for decades. He has to know that these people
are being taken into border patrol custody, processed, and then
either released to the county funded welcome center or they

(08:40):
are detained by immigration. And so it's the same legal
process we've had for decades at the border, where people
have a right to seek asylum, whether they enter at
a port of entry or not. And the real controversy
here is the fact that border patrol is holding people
outdoors for days at a time without the things that

(09:00):
they need to sarrive.

Speaker 2 (09:02):
Yeah, I want to get back to that claim that
he made right that the county paid for it. We
got some audio of him making that claim, so we'll
just play it here. As we look inside this abandoned tent,
there's there's a sandwich left in a baggy.

Speaker 1 (09:17):
There's water with bananas, ponchos, crackers, snacks, waters, and this
tent is empty.

Speaker 3 (09:26):
Maybe these's just the same way. There's no one here yet,
Probably in the next day or.

Speaker 2 (09:31):
So, there'll be more migrants coming inhabiting Nessa and then
being processed.

Speaker 3 (09:35):
For San Diego County, being paid for with San.

Speaker 2 (09:38):
Diego tax So in the caption that accompanied this video,
he wrote, quote, during my recent boarder visit, I encountered
an abandoned campsite filled with tents, food, drinks, and campfires,
paid for by San Diego County taxpayers. This site is
used as a temporary holding site before migrants and then
processed into our country. And this leg gets to the

(09:59):
thing I think that is where he like bullshitted too
close to the sun. Because none of that, as you said,
was paid for like taxpayers, Right, all of that was
paid for by yeah people like nonprofit to mutual aid people.
And can you give a sense of the amount of
spending that Alo Trolado has had to take on to

(10:20):
make these open air prisents like survivable for people, And
even still they're deeply unpleasant even with.

Speaker 3 (10:26):
All the work. Yeah, so we have acted as a
fiscal sponsor for a lot of the smaller groups because
we are able to receive foundation funding as a five
h one C three, and so we've used that legal
status to support a lot of the mutual aid groups
that have been spending tens of thousands of dollars. But

(10:49):
I've gone through the budgets and we've spent an average
of about one hundred and fifty thousand dollars per month,
which is a lot for us. But when you look
at the Department of Homeland Security, which should be spending
this money, they have one hundred and seventy billion dollar
budget for twenty twenty three. I think it's even higher

(11:11):
for a fiscal year twenty twenty four. So it's really
you know, probably what they spend on one of those
autonomous surveillance towers that are sitting in the camps in
like a day, right, So it's really nothing for them.
You know, it's very clear that they're making a choice
to leave these really vulnerable migrants to potentially die in

(11:32):
the desert. And then when we look at the county funding,
you know, they've allocated now six million dollars to this
welcome center, which you know, we'll talk about in more detail,
but it's really providing woefully inadequate services to the same
population that's going through these open air detention sites after
they've been released from Border Patrol custody. So again, it's

(11:53):
like it's a lot of money for us, it's not
a lot of money for the county. I would love
it if the county would. They've stated on multiple occasions
that they will not. It's been pure philanthropic funding and donations.
But yeah, I mean we've been able to do a
lot with very little, and it really was the bare
minimum to keep people alive. So yeah, if we had

(12:18):
an actual junion of county funding, I'm sure we could
have done a lot more.

Speaker 2 (12:21):
Yeah, And like even we don't have access to the
things that government has access to, right Like, normally in
a refugee situation, we'd have UNHC tents, we'd have humanitarian MRIs,
we had to buy those. On this we couldn't get
the tents and we end the MREs. We had to
find on the surplus market, right like, we can't. The

(12:44):
state could do more for less, but they're very much
choosing not to, as you said, So the result of
this was rather amusing a number of people from mutual
a groups, including friends of ours from Free Shick Collective,
took to Desmond to office with literal receipts, right, war's
your seats. Yes, yeah, it was a tremendous moment. And

(13:05):
we don't mean receipts like in the figurative sense. We
mean like pieces of paper from Costco. Yeah, oh yeah, no.

Speaker 3 (13:12):
And the fact is, you know, within a number of
hours the folks from Free Shit Collective and others were
able to just pull together over sixteen thousand dollars in receipts.
And that's, like I mentioned, a small fraction of what
we've actually been spending. That's probably just their receipts from
the week. And so again for us, it's like that's

(13:34):
an enormous lift. I know, we're all exhausted, those of
us who have been working in the open air detention sites.
It's exhausting to be there all the time. It's exhausting
to try to raise enough money to keep thousands and
thousands of people alive when they're forced into a deadly situation.
And so it's I think we were all pretty pissed
off when we heard him taking credit for that even

(13:55):
if he was trying to denigrate, you know, the idea
of spending money on refugees.

Speaker 2 (14:00):
Yeah, right, Like it's funny because he'll also say, like
it's inhumane, it's unacceptable. But like, if you're not going
to do anything to stop the humanity, the inhumanity, Like
I don't really find that a very believable claim. Like
he was literally standing Willows, so like less than a
mile from where we spend that day making sandwiches and
cooking beans and doing the things we do every day

(14:24):
sorting out coats, you know, and he could have come
helped or even just come and said, what you guys
are doing is great, but he chose not to. He
just stood in front of his whoever was filming him alive.

Speaker 3 (14:37):
His proposed solution is to close the border, which he
knows is not an option because the Refugee Convention is
still a thing, the US is still a signatory. You know,
we have legal obligations under both domestic and international law
to accept asylum seekers in our country, and so you know,
his solution to the inhumanity is to push people back

(14:58):
over the Mexican border, where you know they're subject to
all manner of state and criminal violence. So I don't
think that inhumanity is really his priority to address. It's
really again just like throwing red meat to the base
to you know, this open border's hysteria that they all
love to cite.

Speaker 2 (15:19):
Yeah, talking of hysteria, we should take a little break
for some adverts for things that might try to get
you to buy them by making you a freight and
you shouldn't. We are back, and yeah, I want to

(15:42):
talk a little more about that. Like, is this idea
of a closed board do you see a lot mostly
from Republicans right, Like, it's like you say, it's not
only legally impossible, it's also like physically impossible. And we
people enter the US through gaps in the border wall.
When people enter the US, gaps in the border water
she'd had, because we've made it virtually impossible for them

(16:03):
to get asylum appointments in a reasonable timeframe and to
be in a place that's safe while they make those appointments.
And so like the idea that we could how do
we close you know, like the physical border?

Speaker 3 (16:17):
Well just yeah, I mean I just want to take
a step back for one second, because this sort of
Biden's open borders hysteria that we've heard so much from
the right wing. I think it's worth unpacking what this
means because I've seen, you know, people in the Democratic
Party or even people on the left really shy away

(16:40):
from this idea of open borders. And when those of
us who have first World passports already have a world
of open borders, I mean, we can pretty much go
wherever we want, you know, we gentrify other countries to
their detriment. Like it's not there really are not many
restrictions on first world citizens moving around the world. So

(17:00):
I think that's one important thing to consider as we're
kind of launching into this discussion. It's like open borders
are okay for me, but not for brown people. Like yeah,
so little, you know, And that's kind of the underlying
impetus behind a lot of what we're going to talk
about in San Diego County. It's like, people this underlying

(17:22):
idea that people should not have the right to come here,
which is just ludicrous. So I think that's one thing.
But when we're talking about asylum in particular, you know,
like I mentioned earlier, we are signatories with Refugee Convention
and the subsequent nineteen sixty seven Protocol that this has
been enshrined in domestic law in the nineteen eighty Refugee Act,

(17:44):
and so refugees who are people outside of their country
of origin fleeing persecution have the right to ask for
protection at the US Mexico border, whether it's at a
port of entry or between ports of entry. So those
in Hakumba and these other opener tension sites are those
crossing between ports of entry because it's been made impossible

(18:05):
to approach the port of entry and seek asylum. And
this is something that our organization has been litigating for years.
You know, at first people were just being turned away.
Then there was a waiting list in Mexico. Now they
have this stupid app that's just like glitches and there's
no enough appointments and people have to wait for months
in Mexico just to get an appointment if they're one

(18:26):
of the lucky ones who can. The app's also been
hacked by organized crime. You know, certain nationalities are able
to pay for appointments. It's just it's a complete mess.
It has nothing to do with this ideal. You know
that the Refugee Conventionment is supposed to enshrine so regardless
of you know, all of the illegal things the US

(18:46):
government is doing, like you cannot close the porter to
assylum seekers without withdrawing from the Refugee Convention, and I
just really don't see that happening for our country, just
because we like to, you know, talk about how we're
abashed for human rights, et cetera, which you know, that's
a whole other podcast.

Speaker 2 (19:04):
I think, yeah, yeah, we can, yeah, break that down
a little bit. But I think one thing that you
said that I want to talk about is that you
said that open borders or like free travel for brown
people is something that a lot of more privileged folks,
especially in San Diego, even in San Diego, should say
are uncomfortable with. I think we really saw, like it's

(19:28):
not just skin color, but it's really hard for me
to see skin color not playing a large role when
I see people from Africa, people from South America waiting
for months, if not years, and then people from Ukraine
coming at when the largest scale conflict in Ukraine began
and effectively skipping the line.

Speaker 3 (19:49):
Right. Yeah, So when the Ukrainians all came through Tijuana,
I think there were maybe twenty thousand or so who
came through in a period of a month. That was
during Title forty two, which was a Trump era policy
that closed the border to asylum seekers based on public
health reasons, but really it was because they wanted to

(20:12):
close the border to asylum seekers, and so there were
very few humanitarian exemptions granted to Title forty two at
that time. But at the time the Ukrainians came, that
exemption process had actually been shut down for quite a while.
So I was watching people die in Tijuana because they
didn't have access to the US asylum system. I remember

(20:36):
when the Ukrainians came, there was a child who caught
pneumonia in one of the shelters. It was like a
month's old baby who died. And then when the Ukrainians came,
you know, the doors were flung open for them. CBP,
which up until that point said they did not have
capacity to process asylum seekers. They were processing Ukrainians at
a clip of one thousand a day and it was

(20:58):
heartbreaking to see. And you know, after they shut off
the sticket for the Ukrainians, after they stopped letting them
in at the border, CBP said they only had capacity
to process a few dozen non white asylum seekers and
so all of a sudden, their capacity was just gone.
It was, you know, it just it was so transparent

(21:19):
and so blatant and so hurtful for people who'd been
suffering at that point for years with the silent system
closed off to them.

Speaker 2 (21:26):
Yeah. Yeah, it was really hard to see that and
to know the people, the people who I guess effectively
they lost their place in line, right or people cut
in front of them. And to a large degree, it's
still much easier, right we're under Title eight and now
not Title forty two, But it's still much easier for

(21:47):
wealthy white people to get appointments using CBP one than
it is for poor and non white people.

Speaker 3 (21:53):
Right, Yeah, because especially when the app was first launched,
there's a point in the appointment process during which you
have to take a photo of yourself and it maps
your face for facial recognition purposes, and it wasn't working
on really dark skinned people. You know, a few of
the organizations working in Mexico had to buy the construction

(22:16):
style lights to shine on people's faces so that it
would a photo to pick them up. But just even
like you have to have a new phone, I think
they probably made the app to work on an iPhone,
which most people outside the United States don't have.

Speaker 2 (22:31):
Yeah, yeah, it's like I've got a tip on that
I've not been able to confirm it, but someone at
the Ice store told the I store of the Apple
Store told me that it wasn't working on certain Samsung
and Huawei phones and that they were having people come
in and buy like the cheapest iPhone they could in
bulk to try and access it.

Speaker 3 (22:50):
Well, we keep iPhones in our office in Tikwana exactly
for that reason, because you know, people need to be
able to access the app. But now the well, the
app has been hacked for a while. So there's some
groups that work mostly I would say with Russian asylum seekers.
They're charging I think around between five hundred and one

(23:12):
thousand for an appointment, maybe more. Sometimes I'm not sure
exactly how they're doing it. I know also there's been
some hacking of the geolocation features, so these criminal groups
are selling appointments to people who haven't even left their
home country. And meanwhile, you know, the shelters on the
border are full of people with crappy phones and a

(23:32):
week in their net connection who wait for months and
months and months while the richer people who are paying
for nice phones and appointments are able to get through
much more quickly.

Speaker 2 (23:42):
Yeah, it's made of a fucked up system. Even more
fucked up they designed it in house as well, which
you know they are paid to have overestimated their abilities there.
One day I'll get my foyers back about cepp one,
and it will probably be some point the middle of
the next presidential administration, which will make them irrelevant and

(24:04):
really freaking annoying.

Speaker 3 (24:05):
But well, we're suing about it too, so it'll probably
be a few years before we get to discovery.

Speaker 2 (24:10):
But yeah, we'll have a race.

Speaker 3 (24:14):
Yeah, but you are assuming that they want the system
to work, which they don't.

Speaker 2 (24:18):
Yes, yeah, yeah, that's fair.

Speaker 3 (24:20):
So in that sense, it's working perfectly.

Speaker 2 (24:23):
Right, Yeah, And it's doing in a sense what like
the unofficial dertone of immigration policy has always been, which
is that, like, it's fine for wealthy white people to
come here, but we want to limit the number of
non white and non wealthy people who come here. And
like they can say out loud, like and maybe we
should talk about this now. The difference between Trump and

(24:43):
Biden is Trump just said it and Biden didn't, and
when Trump said it, like wealth well meaning liberals in
the Midwest gave a shit and sent money. Like in
twenty eighteen, things were very bad in Tijuana, right with
the people staying in the Elberatal, Like, at least people
in America cared and sent money so we could help.

(25:05):
Whereas now, like you know, major outlets who have given
ten front page stories to accusations of one woman plagiarizing
and a dissertation that she wrote years ago, haven't written
a single piece about the open air concentration camps that
our government has in a cumber in other places.

Speaker 3 (25:21):
Well, not just that, I mean the media by and
large has allowed this right wing narrative of open borders
to take over, even though the policies are largely identical
to the Trump administration. Right, so they're even talking about
now bringing back a Title forty two type restriction that

(25:42):
would turn away asylum seekers and send them back to Mexico.
We have the asylum ban, which is very similar to
the one that was litigated under the Trump administration. I mean,
it's just you know, family separation. Maybe it's not the
minor children being taken away, but still thousands of families
being separated I think there's a couple things. Like one

(26:02):
is just people hate when Trump does it, but they
don't hate when Biden does it. That's one.

Speaker 2 (26:08):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (26:08):
But also, like you said, Trump says the quiet part
out loud, and so people respond to that, whereas Biden
has co opted the immigrant rights movement by putting us
in a stakeholder relationship. And I can see amongst some
of my colleagues that they value access to power more

(26:29):
than the rights of the people that we are supposed
to serve, and so they will go along with a
lot of this stuff and you know, basically enable it
in many ways just to maintain that access to power.
And I've seen some of my colleagues who you know,
we were all finding on the same side during the
Trump administration have actually gone into the Biden administration that

(26:50):
are implementing these policies, and so it's you know, it's
it's really like pretty horrifying to see. And so I
would say that people in the Biden administration are in
many a ways smarter because it was easier to litigate
under the Trump administration. We could knock down a lot
of these policies because they were just dumb, not well written,

(27:14):
you know, it was like clearly unconstitutional. You know, they
learned lessons during the Mining ministry or during the Trump administration.
So now the policies are written in a way that
are that make it much more difficult to litigate. And
the Supreme Court in twenty twenty two, in a decision
called Ali mang Gonzalez, made it impossible to get class

(27:34):
wide injunctive relief for violations of immigration law. So what
that means is that DHS can violate the law and
there's no way to stop them from doing so on
a large scale in the courts, and they are banking
on that when in current litigation, they literally are relying
on that to continue breaking the law, especially when it
comes to turning asylum seekers away.

Speaker 2 (27:55):
Yeah, and something else that Testament has asked for is
to turn asylum seekers away before they get to the
border and then quite understand what they like, like that
would be inside Mexico, which.

Speaker 3 (28:08):
Well that's what Mexico is doing right now.

Speaker 2 (28:10):
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, they're like I was in Coocomber, like
on Friday Thursday and they get National Guard or like
sitting at the little gaps in the wall.

Speaker 3 (28:22):
I mean you've seen it too, you see National Guard,
Mexican National Guard drive up. They kind of check out
the situation and leave, and then the travel agents come
and drop off the migrants. And so it's something very
much that can be controlled to a great extent within
Mexico and the US is very obviously, you know, working

(28:44):
with Mexico publicly, obviously working with Mexico to stop migrants
from reaching the US Mexico border, and working with countries
further south to stop people from reaching the US Mexico border.
So this is definitely a regional project.

Speaker 2 (29:00):
Yeah, one thing I want to talk about is as
people come through those countries further south, there's this It's
it's like in recent days, even like we're recording this
on on Monday, people here it on Wednesday. But I've
seen this narrative and I think it's coming from the
fact that friendly for Ukraine was tied to funding for

(29:21):
the border, and people have lost their minds over the
conflict in Ukraine and and and they have silly dog
pictures on Twitter, and and it's become a replacement for
a personality for a certain type of divorce guy. Like
so so like, yeah, the Army of divorced dads has

(29:44):
like turned on the border and like one of the
things you'll say is like, oh, like the border is
like a like like this is how like bad actors
are getting in the US, you know, like you know,
har mass again, like the Harmas are really otherwise engaged
in the minute, but.

Speaker 3 (30:00):
Like yeah they're busy.

Speaker 2 (30:02):
Yeah, yeah, Like there's a whole lot of people who
would love to leave Gaza and we abolutely should welcome
those people here, but they can't and that's fucked up.
But yeah, this idea that like isis Hamas the Russian
secret of the Russian FSB. I'm sure someone will have suggested,

(30:26):
like North Korea or the PSC are coming through Hacomber
as well, like they seem it seems to admit admit
what happens to people entering Mexico and indeed other countries
further south, right, Like can you explain how people think
the thing that the US is the only state with
a capacity for surveillance, which is manifestly untrue? Can you

(30:47):
explain how people are like surveiled and like make legible
on their way north?

Speaker 3 (30:54):
There are multiple multilateral and bilateral information sharing greens that
connect to criminal and quote unquote intelligence databases. So when
you are traveling internationally, you are subject to a web
of surveillance that is, you know, in many ways connected

(31:17):
to the United States, so the US government knows you're coming,
like you know when you are countries away, just by
virtually using a passport. But then for people who are
traveling it through a regular means, there's also a web
of biometric collection stations that have been set up by
the Department of Homeland Security, most notably north of the

(31:41):
Darien Gap, and so extra continental migrants, those from outside
of the Americas as well as some Venezuelans and a
few other nationalities, have their fingerprints taken Irish scans pictures
taking for facial recognition, and that is entered into a
database that is shared directly with the US government. There's

(32:02):
several other bilateral information sharing agreements that are focused particularly
on biometrics, with several Central American countries and with Mexico obviously,
and Mexico has just insane enforcement in southern Mexico. If
you've ever tried to travel over land from top of
Toula in Mexico City, you will go through numerous checkpoints

(32:26):
where you know your information is taken. You know, a
lot of times you're just paying a bribe to keep going.
But it's something where you know they know who's coming.
That's why you hear all the time in the media
like this, many people are coming through the dairy and gap.
How do they know that, Well, they have these biometric
you know, information collection stations. But I think just more broadly,

(32:47):
like coming through the southern border as a refugee or
just as a migrant is probably the stupidest way to
come into the United States if you are trying to,
you know, do a terrorist attack. Because like border patrol,
despite what they like to say, they are not overwhelmed.
You know, if you divide the number of people coming

(33:08):
over by the number of agents, it's far less than
one migrant per agent per day, So they have a
pretty good lock on the border. There's not a lot
of people getting through undetected. Those who turn themselves in,
which is the vast majority of people, they are subject
to all of the same surveillance and security checks I
just mentioned. They get their DNA sample taken at the border,

(33:31):
they give all of their information, and then they are
not let out of custody if they trigger any kind
of security flag and it can just be like they're
from Yemen, they're from Afhanistan. Sometimes they're just detained because
of that. But any of those if any of those
checks are triggered, they're detained for the duration of proceedings.
They never see that outside of a prison. So this
idea that terrorists are sneaking over the border is frankly stupid.

(33:55):
I think, you know, if we think back to nine
to eleven, I think they all came on visas.

Speaker 2 (33:59):
Yeah, and like the system makes it so much easier
for someone who is wealthy and white and otherwise privileged
to come to this country. That like it's ridiculous to
think that a state actor like Russia wouldn't take advantage
of that rather than yeah, yeah, attempting to walk someone
through the border where they're about to like encounter some

(34:22):
of the most intense state surveillance that can happen to
a person.

Speaker 3 (34:26):
And you start off in a prison. So, like, why
would you do that? Lave it any sense? Yeah, it
doesn't make any sense. I'm sure there's like, you know,
some people who have ties to foreign intelligence. Sure, I
mean it could happen, but it's like, so the number
is so vanancially small and I think another important thing
to know is when people are processed, they have an

(34:49):
obligation to attend an immigration court hearing. And when I
looked at the statistics for Russian asylum seekers in particular,
because I've seen a lot of this rhetoric of like
Russia spies over the border, so ninety eight point five
percent of them show up to their immigration court hearings.
Are you going to do that if you're a spy,
You're going to subject yourself to another round of security

(35:11):
checks and you know, spill your entire asylum story, subject
yourself to cross examination. No you're not. Yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 2 (35:19):
People have watched that film, the TV series The Americans
a little too much losing their minds. Okay, So I think, yeah,
it's really important to also point out, like when we're
talking about the potential for bad actors are yeah, like sure,
maybe there's someone who's come who's done something bad, or
maybe there's someone who comes who will do something bad.
It doesn't mean that everyone else who came is in

(35:42):
any way complicit in that, Like we haven't given them
another way to come here. It's not like they had
to take the bad guy route because they chose to
like you, No one would be picking up their children
and walking across the desert and then spending sometimes up
to a week in camps which are currently freezing at night,
sometimes with you know, like a blanket or like a

(36:05):
tent or it. Maybe it wouldn't shelter if they're lucky.
No one will be doing that if there was an
easier option. And it's ludicrostic like claim that these people's
asylum claims or the fact that they should be welcoming
here is in any way impacted by the actions of
somebody else who might have taken the same.

Speaker 3 (36:22):
Yeah. I mean the other thing too, is just because
the border is still closed off by policies that restrict
access to asylum, it has super charged the strength of
criminal groups that bring people to the border. And I
will say that they are spreading a lot of misinformation.
You know. They use this reporting from the right wing

(36:44):
calling the border open to advertise their services, and they
might very well tell people that it's a lot easier
than it actually is, and that they have an easier
chance to get asylum than they actually do. I mean,
I don't discount the power of misinformation, but those I
have seen over the past six seven years, especially since
the Trump administration really tried to close off access to asylum,

(37:08):
I've seen those groups grow in power. I've seen the
price that people pay to cross the border grow both
financially and just in the amount of suffering that they
have to endure. So when we talk about border security
and national security, I would argue that border restrictions actually
make us much less safe because you know, criminal groups

(37:29):
now completely control the border, Whereas you know, a decade ago,
even a person who just wanted to cross the border
on their own could do so. You know, if they
knew the way, they could just try to cross. And
now if you try to do that without paying the
criminal groups who really control it, you will get be killed.

Speaker 2 (37:45):
Yeah, and that's happened multiple times in the last few months.
We'll talk of misleading advertising planes we have sent to
take short break to hear home with them, and we'll
be back in a moment. Okay, we're back. One thing

(38:07):
that I want to talk about that we haven't got
too yet is that, like the the failed government response
isn't just federal or well, it's both federal and local.
But I wanted to talk a little bit about this
that the federal funding that San Diego County got that
it reallocated towards a quote unquote welcome center. Right, So yeah,

(38:32):
we're both very familiar with the welcome center. It got
three million dollars initially and then got it got three
million more because apparently none of us are doing anything
useful anywhere else and don't merit any help? And do
you want to talk first of all about just like
what the conditions are like You've just come out of
being detained in the desert from maybe up to a week.

(38:55):
It's cold, We feed you, but like we wish we
could feed you more and better. You don't have a
change of clothes. Right then you've been detained. You could
have been detained for one night, two nights, several more nights,
and then you hit this welcome center. So can you, like,
I can think how we would like to treat people
who have just been through all that, but can you
explain to us how people are treated when they when

(39:16):
they arrive at a welcome center.

Speaker 3 (39:18):
Well, it's they're not arriving there. They're picked up from
detention by the nonprofit that's administering the welcome center. In
what looked like prison buses, right, I mean it's I
can't I can't imagine that someone getting on one of
those buses understands that they're not just at another stage
of detention, right. So they get to this fenced in

(39:42):
abandoned school, they are lined up, and they're forced to
give all of their information to the nonprofit workers. They are,
you know, mostly not spent. I think maybe like forty
percent Spanish speakers shore the exact percentage, but there's people

(40:02):
from all over the world. There's no paid interpreters on site.
And so you know, they do have this little script
that they read in the beginning saying like you're not detained,
like this is a welcome center whatever. But they run
it through Google Translate and then play the Google Translate
like over the megaphone, which it's like have you ever

(40:22):
tried to like understand someone screaming something into a megaphone.
Never mind the fact that it's like Mandarin Google Translate,
like people, I guarantee you they still think they're in prison.
And so then they go they have to sometimes wait
for hours in this intake line. Only then they're given
the ticket to eat the like probably some of the

(40:43):
worst food I've ever seen, like, you know, people are
not eating a lot when they're at the opening attention sites,
and then they're really not eating a lot when they're
in attention and I've seen people refuse the food there
because it's that bad. And it's like they're standing in
a line for hours, not having and probably not having slept,
and god knows how long, ye you know, having this

(41:05):
garbled message played to them over a megaphone. So anyway,
they get through all that, and then they're told they
have to make their own way, you know, to their sponsor,
and those who don't have the money to do so
are provided with I think it's up to maybe two
or three days of shelter or a hotel room before

(41:27):
they are shipped off to another part of the country.
And so the goal of the welcome center is to
get rid of the migrants, to get them elsewhere. So,
you know, ninety five percent to ninety nine percent do
have a place to go. They don't all have the
means to get there, but most of them do, almost
all have the means to get there. The other few,

(41:49):
like the other you know, one to five percent, they
need help. They need you know, maybe a place to
stay for a couple of months, they need help getting
a work permit, they might need help, you know, applying
for asylum. Instead of investing in the resources that we
need locally to help them, they're shipped off to New York,
Chicago or other places that have invested in those resources.

(42:10):
And that's really the same thing Greg Abbott was doing
from Texas. But you know, we're just putting a nicer
We call it a welcome sentence. Yeah, yeah, somewhere better.
Yeah yeah.

Speaker 2 (42:21):
And the Welcome Center, like we could go deeper into
its funding, but I think it's fair to say that,
like it's for one thing, it's doing things that CBP
should do right, like a transport specifically.

Speaker 3 (42:34):
Transport specifically, but also like this idea of doing an
intake with every single person who comes through there is
such a waste of money because it's like it's infantilizing.
These people have traveled across the world. You think they
can't get to the airport on their own. Yeah, you know,
it doesn't focus resources on that, you know, one to
five percent of people who really do need help. It

(42:55):
wastes resources on people who really don't. They need Wi Fi,
they a phone charger, Yeah, and maybe like a hard email.
You know, they're getting the Wi Fi and the phone charger,
which is not provided by the organization that receives six
million dollars. It's provided by one of the few organizations,
including my own, who are there providing services without county

(43:16):
funding because we didn't want to be associated with this debacle.

Speaker 2 (43:21):
Yeah. And another thing you do is family reunification there, right,
you guys are helping take care of that.

Speaker 3 (43:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (43:27):
Again, I think people aren't aware that families need to
be reunified, but they're still very much separated when they're
in detention.

Speaker 3 (43:35):
Well, they're separated at open air detention sites, they're separated
in detention. We've documented since September. I think it's over
eleven hundred families now that have been separated. Almost half
of them are spousal separations, but a lot of times,
when you know, wife and husband are separated, the kids
are with one spouse or another, so you know, technically

(43:56):
it's a separation of a child. We see a lot
of separations of like eighteen year old children from the
rest of their families where they're sent to detention facilities
and the rest of the families released. So there's all
you know, grandma from grandkids or mes a nephew, siblings separations.
I mean it's all traumatic, right, it's just not the

(44:17):
particular brand of Trump separation that people seem to care.

Speaker 2 (44:20):
About, right yeah, yeah, they quote unquote kids in cages, right.

Speaker 3 (44:25):
Yeah, oh they're still in the cage.

Speaker 2 (44:26):
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, or the dad, but not
both sometimes God. Yeah, it's it's equally it's equally tragic,
but it's more tragic that somehow we've normalized it. And
like with this immigration stuff, only seems to be able
to ratchet one way and it's further towards like insane

(44:50):
degrees of cruelty, right, like, yeah, the fact that Biden
is doing what Trump did doesn't mean that Trump will
do what Biden did if Trump is elected again, right,
like edit, somehow they will find a way to make
this even worse.

Speaker 3 (45:05):
Oh absolutely, And I think the open air detention sites
are preview of what we'll see. You know, it's this
idea of it being normal to deny people food, water, shelter,
and medical care because they, you know, committed this awful
crime of crossing the border, which is like a misdemeanor.

(45:27):
By the way, and it's not even supposed to be
illegal if you're seeking the asylum. The Refugee Convention actually
prohibits criminal prosecution of folks who cross borders irregularly to
seek asylum, and by and large, the US attorneys, at
least during the Biden administration, have stuck to that. You know,
if you're arrested for crossing irregularly and you then apply

(45:50):
for asylum, generally the charges will be dropped. So but
like this invader rhetoric right, like, oh, they're invading our
country and whatever, the white replacement theory, all of that
is really driving this really normalization of the inhumane treatment
of border crossers.

Speaker 2 (46:07):
Yeah, the point you made about that, Yeah, you can
cross between ports of entry and then claim asylum. And
it's one that seems to be completely missing from the discussion.
Like I've seen countless times I've seen that like misrepresented
in other articles, and it's.

Speaker 3 (46:25):
In almost every single one.

Speaker 2 (46:26):
Yeah, it's really disappointed, Like I have very little respect
left to lose for other people who work, Like especially
folks who wish to report on the border without visiting
the border, are just like, what are you sparing yourself
to trauma of seeing little children staying outside because like
their trauma is much greater than yours, you know, and

(46:48):
the things that they're going away from are much greater
than any trauma you're going to take on. I understand
it's not very nice, but like we should phrase up
to the not very nice things so that country does well.

Speaker 3 (46:58):
You're also members of Congress to legislate on the border
or trade away the rights of asylum seekers without ever
having met any of them. And those who do come
to the border just go on the border patrol tour
and don't actually talk to the migrants, and so that's
even worse, you know. But yeah, I agree, like this
idea that they're illegal is completely wrong. They're in illegal process.

(47:21):
They're not prosecuted for illegal entry by and large, you know,
unmust they've tried multiple times, and even then if they
pass a credible fear interview, a lot of times those
criminal charges are dropped. And so they're not illegal. This
is a legal process. It's a legal way to access
that process, especially when the ports of entry have been
closed off to them.

Speaker 2 (47:39):
Yeah, and I think they've done to enter the US
or get any part of their journey disqualifies them from
asylum as you say, it makes it like a quote
unquote illegal which is just kind of loaded language anyway.
But yeah, they've taken every step to take to make
a legal asylum claim, and lots of them will be
like extremely aware of having done that, like not wanting to, Like,

(48:04):
if people wanted to walk out of the they open
their attention sites, they could that they're not quote unquote detained, right,
but like people are so cautious that they don't want
to do anything that might imperil their asylum.

Speaker 3 (48:19):
Yeah, and it's really sad because they already have by
crossing the border between ports of entry. That's what Biden's
asylum ban addresses. Yeah, and so they're sort of coming
from a defensive posture with respect to their eligibility for
asylum by virtue of having done that. But the criminal
groups that are organizing their transport tell them that that's

(48:41):
the legal way. And people who are coming into open
air detention sites believe they are following a legal process,
which you know they are to a certain extent, but
there's definitely legal consequences for having access the system that way.

Speaker 2 (48:54):
Yeah. Yeah, even though like, yeah, many of these people,
like I have sat with dozens of people, maybe hundreds
of people, as they've explained to me, the amount of
time CBP one crashed on their phone, their attempts to
go to the US embassy in a city that might
not be safe for them, or to like transit through it.

(49:16):
You know, look at a regime that wants them dead.
You know, hundreds of Kurdish people have shared with me
that they've tried to get visas for the US and failed,
and they've tried every other option before trying this one.

Speaker 3 (49:32):
Yeah, I think most people have, most people have.

Speaker 2 (49:35):
No one would do this. You know. It's not fun.
It's not fun at all.

Speaker 3 (49:38):
No.

Speaker 2 (49:40):
The last thing I wanted you to explain, Erica, is
people are placed when they come through this whole system
right in a defensive they make a defensive asylum claim.
Can you explain what that is and what the difference
between affirmative and defensive asylum for people, because again, it's
a lot of reporting I've seen it, this is missing.

Speaker 3 (50:01):
Yeah. So if I came to the US on a
visa and then decided I wanted to apply for asylum,
I would be applying affirmatively. So that means that I've
never been apprehended by immigration. I've never been placed in
any kind of removal or deportation proceeding. Removal is just

(50:23):
like the legal term for deportation. And so when you
apply affirmatively, your initial screening is before an asylum officer.
It's a sensibly a non adversarial hearing, but I've been
I've been in a lot of them, and that's not
always the case. But you know, you don't have like
a like a government attorney cross examining you. It's just

(50:45):
it's just the asylum officer who's supposed to be nice,
but they're not always. And then if you win, if
they approve your case, that's the end. You just get
asylum and then you know that's a path to citizenship.
If you are not approved, then you would be placed
in removal proceedings where you could present your asylum case
before an immigration judge. And so defensive is when you

(51:09):
are apprehended or you turn yourself in at the border,
you are placed in removal proceedings. So you don't get
that first asylum interview before the officer. You just go
straight to immigration court. And so when you're presenting your
case in immigration court, there's a government attorney who's actively
trying to deport you. I think most of the judges

(51:29):
used to be government attorneys, and so many times it
feels like they're also trying to deport you. And the
success of your claim is pretty much completely dependent on
where it is adjudicated. So and you know less also
to have to do with your nationality. So if you

(51:49):
are applying for asylum before the Atlanta Immigration Court, pretty
much ninety nine percent of those cases are denied, and
there's some judges who've denied one hundred perc of cases,
and that's true for a lot of jurisdictions within the Southeast.
And then you know you have your friendlier jurisdictions like
San Francisco. San Diego is not too bad actually, but

(52:11):
you know you have other courts where you have a
better chance depending on the judge. But it really depends
on the location the judge that you happen to get.
You could present the same exact claim in different cities
before different judges and have a completely different outcome.

Speaker 2 (52:26):
Yeah, there's no objective criteria and people know this too,
but unfortunately, like to get yourself to San Francisco and
then survive there, just as an example, right until your
quote day comes up, it's unfathomably expensive. Like for me,
I couldn't afford to get myself to San Francisco and
make rent there, and it's barely possble in San Diego.

Speaker 3 (52:46):
So yeah, and you don't You don't qualify for work
authorization until I think you can apply five months after
you've submitted your application for asylum, and in many cases
you don't get your initial court date for months or
years after you've entered, mostly months. But people don't understand
that you can lodge your asylum application before your first

(53:09):
court date to get that clock going on your work authorization.
And so people I see very commonly are waiting at
least a year to get work authorization. And so you know,
not only would you have to survive in a high
cost of living city, but without the legal ability to work.
So it's really hard for people when they first come
to the United States. And you know, unlike what is

(53:33):
sprouted many times in the right wing media space, there
are no benefits available to someone who's seeking asylum. They're
not getting any kind of government money.

Speaker 2 (53:41):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's a remember what you have to
be it's like a burden of the state or something.
Thing that you have to ward. I can't remember when
you public charge, so like on top of all this,
people aren't aware of that. It's very Uh, it's sad.
Like like I've had a bunch of people I've interviewed
or just befriended when I've been helping out in the combat,

(54:03):
who have been like, hey, like how do I find work? Like, well,
like do you know do you have? They they didn't
realize they wouldn't be permitted to work, like and even
like we spoke to him wilst the other day he
has offers of work right from his old employer, but
they he can't take them up on that because as

(54:23):
you say, he's he's got to sit doing nothing for
five months until he's legally allowed to work. Which is
it doesn't help anyone, right, it doesn't doesn't help migrant,
it doesn't help us. It just forces people to work
for cash or for for lower wage jobs, which leaves
him right for abuse sort of for non payment. And like,

(54:46):
it's a system that does doesn't really work for anyone.
They have no rights as workers rightly. They can also
be end up doing very dangerous work and we've seen
that a lot.

Speaker 3 (54:53):
Well, I think something too. That's important to note is
that there's obviously all these push factors towards micro but
a huge pull factor is the employment market in the
United States. So we have you know, hundreds of thousands
of open jobs, and you know, people have to leave
their country, but they also choose to go to a
certain place. So many of them, like I said, almost

(55:15):
all of them have some kind of tie to the
United States, like family or friends. You can host them,
but they're not going to come here if they can't
get a job. And so it's important to note that
as well. And I think what you're saying about the
exploitation of migrants in the labor industry is really important
because I think that, you know, that's part of why

(55:36):
there are so many restrictions, because when you do not
provide a path to citizenship, you create a permanent underclass
that is very vulnerable to exploitation. And I think that's
by design.

Speaker 2 (55:47):
Yeah, it it works very well, right, like an increases
for people who are unconcerned with the well being about
the humans, let get it, create creates a constant pool
of cheap and disposable labor.

Speaker 3 (56:00):
Yeah, because if they're invaders, you know, and they start
to act up and demand their rights. It's very easy
politically to just get rid of them.

Speaker 2 (56:09):
And that some of the same people who are deploying
this closed the border rhetoric, I'm sure also exactly good
advantage of that documented labor. And Okay, if people want
to help, they want to donate, they want to learn
more about this, is there a place where they can
find you or ALOLO on the internet.

Speaker 3 (56:28):
So they can go to our website, which is al
A l O t r O l A d O
dot org to donate. There's a donate button there on
the homepage, or you can put dot org slash donate.
We are a underscore org on all of the social

(56:49):
media platforms. And if folks have people in their lives
who are migrants who want more information about the asylum system,
I would recommend going to our TikTok page, which as
multiple videos in over a dozen languages, including many indigenous
languages on the asylum process. And then for you know,

(57:10):
those of us who are wanting to learn more, our
Instagram pages is more public facing.

Speaker 2 (57:17):
Perfect. Yeah, that's great. You guys have some excellent merch
as well. You're still selling your chin t shirts.

Speaker 3 (57:22):
Oh yeah, we have hope. We have tope bags and
mugs too.

Speaker 2 (57:26):
Okay, yeah, just like NPR but cooler.

Speaker 3 (57:31):
Well yeah, I think we can customize the messaging too.
You know, I can think of a few that probably
aren't appropriate to stay a polite company, But if folks
have suggestions for what they'd like to see in our merch,
we'd be more than happy to take those suggestions on
our infolat alet dot org email perfect. Great.

Speaker 2 (57:52):
Yeah, I'm sure you'll be flooded with ideas.

Speaker 3 (57:54):
Thanks so much, Thank you so much for having me.

Speaker 1 (58:02):
It could Happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.

Speaker 3 (58:05):
For more podcasts from.

Speaker 1 (58:06):
Cool Zone Media, visit our website coolzonemedia 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.