May 18, 2023 • 39 mins
James is joined by Mia to discuss the end of Title 42 and the human cost of the USA’s fascination with border security.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hello podcast fans, and welcome to it could Happen Here,
a podcast that today is hosted by me, James Down
and Mia Wong him here. Hello, Hi, So what we're
going to talk about today is situation on the border.
We're working on a scripted episode which will take awayle
because they always do, and you know, if we want
(00:25):
that to be nice and sort of polished for use.
But I did want to update everyone because I think
that what's happening it has a sense of urgency to it,
and certainly like some of the mutual aid requests have
a real sense of urgency to them, and folks who
follow me on Twitter dot com and sort of noticed that,
like in between the ship posts, and I've been down
(00:47):
at the US Mexico border for most of the tail
end of last week and the start of this week,
sort of depicting what's going on there, along with my
friend Joe Joe Ariyama's who's a freelancer who we're going
to be working with on the scripted series. And people
can find Joe at Joe or Ori photo on Twitter.
(01:07):
Joe's got some really good photos if you want to
see kind of what's going on. But the longer than
the short of it is that Title forty two ended
on well, to begin with, exactly the moment that it
ended was a subject of some contention. Right, we knew
it was going to end on the eleventh of May.
Title forty two, if folks don't remember, is a emergency
(01:31):
public health measure. It's part of the United States Public
Health Law, the United States Code Public Health something something.
Then allows border patrol to expel people from the United
States without giving them their due process, their asylum here.
So basically they bounce the straight back to Mexico. Right.
(01:54):
This has been in place since March of twenty twenty.
We now know that the Trump mistation pressured the CDC,
So in theory it was it came through the CDC, right,
the Center for Disease Control under pressure from Drug Administration,
direct pressure from from Pence and Stephen Miller.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
Was yeah, probably this was a Stephen Miller like, yeah,
it's a primacy special.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
Yeah, bubblehead looking racist motherfucker has once again done something terrible.
Not that some of his policies, As we'll get onto
this in descripted episode, the Biden administration has like copy
pasted some steep, some straight up Stephen Miller stuff in
it in its transit bounds and is absolutely liable for
(02:40):
I don't want to use the word chaos at our
border because that plays into this fox to use narrative.
There is a a very concerted plan to make people
suffer more than it's necessary at our border, and it
would have been very easy to avoid this. So title
forty two. Basically there are no consequences for cross but
(03:01):
it's also very hard to get asylum. The the CBP
officer can like spontaneously decide to give you your rights. Basically,
if you're like, come on, bro, I'm gonna get killed
if I go home, then that person can kind of
decide to liow you to be processed for asylum, which
is what a lot of the Ukrainian folks got. Surprise, surprise,
(03:22):
and I feel like we should.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
We should also mention that under like multiple legal frameworks,
you have the right to request asylum. This is this
is something that supposedly is inviolable, like you have the
right as a human being to request asylum in a country.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
Yes, and it doesn't matter where you've been before, and
it doesn't matter how you got there, and you don't
have to do it at a port of entry. It doesn't
matter how you enter the country or where you entered
the country. Yes, yeah, and yeah, under multiple different international frameworks,
you have the right to do this. But the USA
has been denying that to people for three and a
bit years, right, three years, Yeah, and something like that.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
And you know, I mean I also could just want
to briefly mention this because I feel like there's this
way in which people people people will talk about like
one border regime and then never connect the dots between
this one and the other ones. But like, for example,
like this is something that happens all over the world. Yes,
I mean like part part of like part of this
(04:22):
sort of like crisis is going on into Dan right
now is about like a ship ton of money. But
at the end this is actually happened in Libya too.
Is the Italian government paying the Libyan and sort of
Sudanese parabilitaries a ship ton of money to like keep
refugees like basically like trap to something sit enslave them
in camps to keep them from like getting to Italy
to try to request asylum. So yeah, this is a yeah,
(04:44):
like Fredecks does this, like this this is sort of
like a global.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
Yeah, terrible regime. The border like industrial complex is every
bit as bad, if not worse, than the defense industrial complex,
so we're more familiar with Like, border policing is something
that really came post nine to eleven, right with the
creation of DHS in the United States, But we have
exported that shit everywhere. And like our border patrol agents, right,
(05:13):
CBP has an office in lots of embassies, or like
they train Dominican border agents on the border with Haiti,
for instance, and are trained by our CBP people. CBP
agents would deployed in Iraq, Afghanistan. Yeah, this is a
global thing. And like where I guess where I am now,
where I've been for a while is the place where
(05:33):
that all began, right, and where we continue to see
CBB innovating new and exciting ways to fucking take some
of the most desperate people in the world and make
them suffer and spend a shit ton of money and
preventing them from accessing their legal right to asylum or
detaining them while they do it. And so what has
(05:55):
happened as so Title forty two was supposed to end
on the eleventh of May, right that was when the
federal COVID emergency ended, so there was no reason for
it to exist anymore. There wasn't reason for it to
exist to begin with.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
But yeah, or any know, I like, don't don't, don't
think too hard about the fact that like that was
the last that was basically the last COVID policy that
was still in place.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
Yeah, Like there were not vaccine mandates for the people
meeting the migrants at the fucking border.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
Yeah, right, like this this was this was this was
never about public health, like no, you know, I mean,
and in so far as you can extricate sort of
like the sort of imperialist states public health measures from
social cleansing stuff, which has been happening for generations and generations.
But yeah, like this was this was not about that,
(06:38):
like this, Yeah, this was just an immigration ban.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
Yeah, and it became a sort of albatross by an
administration who didn't want to be hit on border stuff. Right.
They didn't want to They didn't want to drop it
before the midterms. They initially pan to drop it in
December twenty twenty two, which is obviously right after the midterms.
They didn't we here we are in May, there was
a complicated legal challenge, which there always is, and it
doesn't matter because here we are right and it's supposed
(07:04):
to drop on the eleventh for me, so we're all thinking,
right midnight on the tenth of May, we'll be out there.
We'll see what goes down. They announced the day before
that it is dropping on midnight on the eleventh, so
they're going to ring every minute out of it. And
so in the days before, a number of migrants have
(07:24):
told me that they understood that they basically had to
get across before the end of Title forty two because
it was their understanding that if they crossed under Title eight,
they would be ejected and they wouldn't be allowed to
return for five years and they would face felony charges.
So they did this. I don't quite know often these
this information spreads about like WhatsApp in camps, right, or
(07:47):
sort of like a game of telephone in camps. So
I don't quite know where this information came from, but
it closely parallels something that mayorcus is as Secretary of
Home lanun Security said in the press conference where he
mischaracterized internationally Greac law. And he's done this multiple times, right,
he himself someone who is a migrant to this country
who apparently family left Cuba when he was one year old,
(08:09):
has just some of the most dog shit statements on
the record, and I've depicted some of those in the
scripted episode. Folks can look up my piece I wrote
for NBC a couple of years ago about the Biden
administration's policy towards Haiti if they they want to see
more of the dog shit stuff that he and Biden
have said. So in the days before the end of
(08:33):
Title forty two, a lot of folks started to try
to cross right because of this information that they had.
They ended up at least where I am, which is
in southern California, right the sort of extreme southwestern border
in the United States, literally the end of the wall.
Folks were crossing like around the end of the wall
right at low tide and turning themselves into border patrol
(08:55):
asking to make their case for their right Twist Island.
And I think sometimes when we think about migrants, you know,
we made me think about people from South America or
Central America, every single continent. I don't maybe not any
like Australasians, but like just in it. In a day
(09:18):
at one camp, I spoke to someone from Angola. I
spoke to someone from Congo. I spoke to someone from Sudan.
I spoke to a Kurdish guy. I spoke to people
certainly from all over South America, Russians, Tagik people, Jamaican people,
and like. For instance, just to give you a sense
of like how global it is, I spoke to a
(09:40):
Jamaican lady who is caring for a sixteen or seventeen
year old pair of Tagik siblings who didn't speak any
of the relevant languages for communication with border patroller with
other people in the camp, so she would use her
phone to call their mother, who spoke some English, give
information to the mother who would translated back to these
two young children. And all of these people had presented
(10:02):
like there were a lot of afgun people too. I
probably could have mentioned that up top, But like, these
are the people who we fucking abandoned once and now
we're trapping, trapping them in between little fences. And it's
hot in the day, right Like I slept out in
the desert last night and it was above one hundred.
It's not that hot in San Diego, but in he
cumber where they're also holding people, it's absolutely getting into
(10:22):
triple digits every day, and it's cold at night, and
it's a really inhospitable environment for people. So folks were
held there, you know, up to a week in some
cases and are now I think being processed by a
border patrol. There was a ruling by a Florida judge.
(10:44):
I'm not exactly clear on when because I was down
at the border and my phone didn't work very well,
but at some point right before Title forty two drop
that they could have been released on humanitarian parole, which
means in theory, they have to be released with a
court date, right with a court date to a their
asylum hearing, which will slow down the process of releasing them,
(11:05):
right And so I've heard of court dates. I've heard
of folks being released already kind of with court dates
in twenty twenty seven, which this whole thing has just
been like a disaster in terms of the federal response,
right like, and in just the cruelest possible way. It was.
(11:29):
Everyone could see this coming, right that there will be
more people trying to cross. There are sixteen thousand people
give or take in Tijuana alone, right, So it's just
across from where I live. Waiting to come to the
United States because they've been denied that right for three years,
because they need somewhere safe to go, and because they're
not safe there. And the best estimate we got for
(11:51):
how many they could process from border patrol was two
hundred a day at the Tijuana porta ventry or Sannysedra
port of entry. Really, but we don't know. There's no
clear I don't know how many people they're processing every day, right,
but these people who do come in now have to
have a hearing date before they can be released when
if they get through. So I spoke to a young
(12:11):
man and his son who I spoken to at the border,
and he had been released into the United States where
a charity in San Diego will provide him with two
nights what like two nights of accommodation, right, and then
it can't quite work out what then, like he's out
(12:33):
on his own, you know, Like I guess we'll find
out tonight. But he has to find a sponsor. I
don't quite understand how he was released without a sponsor,
but it seems like the system is kind of bungling
things up, and these folks have to fund their own
flights to wherever it is a sponsor is right, So
they have family or community, they're having to work out
(12:56):
how to get to that family and community, so be
they're the greyhound or a plane or a train. So
it's all in all a giant classifuck with very human consequences.
Like I can't stress enough how like every possible demographic
(13:16):
has represented old people, little tiny children, right, Like I
was talking to a little Afghan girl, not really talking
to we don't share any languages, but I was more
just like making funny faces for a while and sort
of pointing at things, and like it just breaks my
heart that there are little children who like especially you know,
(13:38):
she's a little girl. She's in Afghanistan. We told her
shit ton of lies about Afghan women to justify twenty
years of killing people and of certain people making money
from killing people, and like this was supposedly they're like
canard was that this was for Afghan girls and women, right,
And here's an Afghan girl sleeping in the fucking dirt,
(14:00):
like twenty twenty minutes from where I live. And I
can't even give this kid like hot meal because I
can't fit it through the bars of the fence. Like
Everything that goes across to these people has to go
through the bars of the fence. Right, So someone worked
out that pizza pizza could fit through because flat right,
(14:22):
people have been getting pizza. But other than that, they're
getting you know, bottles of water, granola bars, you know
things that fit through a fence, beef jerky. And they've
been there for days in some cases. And that's a
camp that's relatively accessible, right, I can pull off the interstate,
drive down a dirt road and be there in like
I say, twenty minutes. The camps are less accessible. We've
(14:46):
heard the conditions are much worse. A couple of Jamaican
guys told me that there was another camp that we
weren't we tried to get access to, weren't able to
get access to, that was further west from where we were,
where people were hungry they're getting. This is all just
from that source. I have reached out a border patrol,
but as of today, they haven't got back to me,
(15:08):
saying that they were getting a bottle of water and
a granola bar every day, and that like some of
these other folks had taken it upon themselves to like
walk over there to try and get them food, right,
people who are already not in the great situation themselves,
and they kept asking why couldn't we go there, why
couldn't we help them? Like it was very admirable right
to see folks who are in a pretty bad way
be like, hey, these people need help more than we do. So, yeah,
(15:31):
that's a situation. I think we should take a break
for advertising then sorry, I h hopefully not for a
drone or some shit. All right, we're back and this
(15:52):
is another happy and exciting episode in which I tell
you things that will brighten your day. So something I
wanted to talk about because I think it's important is
the mutual aid response to this, and it's been really
really impressive. You know, I live in a place where
(16:12):
the Democrats are absolute dog shit. Well we'll do. It's America, right,
but like just the particularly cringe like cast real liberalism
of San Diego Democrats is like as always on display. Right.
I saw one of them tweeting today about how CBA,
DHS and CBP are doing a great job and keeping
us safe, and like, my like makes me want to
(16:37):
say things I shouldn't say on the podcast, I guess.
But what that means is that like our government isn't
going to do shit, right, Like it is entirely on
us to look after each other. And people have done that.
The groups like American Friends Service Committee, which is a
(16:58):
great organization which has really good stuff on the border,
have been down there every single day, right, Like there
have been days when I've left at one am there's
still someone there. They've been giving people water, giving people food.
A huge need that people have is to charge their phones.
And the way that migrants interact with CBP, at least
in theory, the way you get an asylum appointment is
(17:18):
booking it through an app called CBP one. We've talked
about this on the podcast before, but CBP one is terrible.
It is a terrible app that doesn't work. And that's
for people who have phones and Wi Fi. Right, if
you are stuck in between two fences and a dusty
(17:39):
piece of ground, how the hell are you supposed to
charge your phone? You don't have Wi Fi, right, you
may not have a data plan that works in that area.
So a huge unmet need was charging charging phone. So
we were able to get some donations from the team
and buy a big charger. Other folks turned up with
charges even all the news see to include like like
(18:01):
Fox National weren't there, which is a good thing, but
like and we could talk about that actually as well.
My goods will specifically ask which news network you're with,
which I think is that? I think that's good. I
think it's good. They tell Fox News to fuck off,
because yeah, someone who participates in your dehumanization doesn't also
deserve to make money from your trauma. And so every
(18:24):
news network that was there, right, all the local folks
from San Diego were just constantly shuttling back and forth
to their vans, charging phones constantly, constantly, constantly, and it
became a bit of a cluster because obviously there's literally
just hundreds of people in this small area, dozens of
hands reaching to a defense. Charge my phone, Can I
have my phone back? Charge my phone? And in the
(18:45):
English and Spanish and French and command Gy and Vietnamese
and all these other languages, right, So it was very
hard to organize that. So folks came down, Folks from
San Diego from different sort of mutual aid groups came
down and they organized a system. Right, They got Painter's tape,
(19:06):
wh the names of the people on the back of
the phone. We had this huge ash battery that we
were able to get and that they were able to
charge people's phones, get them their phones back to them.
And that is a crucial thing, right that in that scenario,
not only is it your only way to communicate with
border patrol, it's your only way to communicate with your family. Right.
Like one guy had lost his phone, and so I
(19:28):
just bought him a burner phone or you know, one
of those Walmart phones so that he could call his
family because the family didn't know where he was. Right
last they'd heard he was in Mexico or maybe even
further south. So the phones are super important. Other mutual
aid groups have been getting blankets, right. I saw an
(19:48):
Afghan family turn up and had they had crayons for
the Afghan kids who were there, right, and like coloring
books and things for children to do, because it's probably
boring being a kid, and it's probably being a kid
where like every day men with guns and camouflage gear
turn up and they speak a language you don't understand,
and then you don't know what they say, and then
you stay there.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
Yeah, and I want to kind of just there are
lots of things that could get called camps that are
like not camps, right, Like this is like this this
is not a camp in the sense of like there
are buildings that you go into or even like there
are tents. It's just like oh yeah, no, yeah, I
(20:30):
think that's.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
A very good I think that I haven't mentioned. Thank you. Yes,
this is people lying on the dirt. Occasionally they have
a mylass space blanket. Occasionally they have a top. If
they want to make any form of shelter, they have
to use the only thing they have to use is
the wall itself, right, so up against the wall, people
have made like a lean to kind of situation with
the top, right, But no, this is by no means
(20:55):
suitable shelter. Literally, people are lying on the dirt like.
Speaker 2 (20:59):
It's just a cage, like in a desert. Like it's yeah,
it's it's, it's, it's, it's it's it's the kind of
thing that like, like you, it's the kind of thing
you would put it in a park list movement. People
would be like, oh, no, one would ever do that.
She's like no, no, Like this is just sort of yeah,
this is what US border policy is.
Speaker 1 (21:17):
It's these like just these open air cages. Yeah, it's
you wouldn't. Like, you know, I go to the zoo
in San Diego and the animals have much better conditions
than that. There's no running water. There was one porterloo
toilet for five hundred people. Yeah, it's terrible. It is awful.
(21:38):
It's little. It's people wrapping their babies in my love
blankets and trying to get them to sleep at night,
you know. And that's the same. It's several places up
and down the border, right, they're starting to clear them
out now, and so sort of Tuesday, Monday. So some
people got there a week ago, I think, and they've
(21:59):
been stay there for a long time. And yeah, like
it's at no point does there seem to have been
any consideration for even giving people shade or shelter or like, yeah,
the very basics, and like I should reinforce it. In
twenty eighteen, when Trump blocked a large group of migrants
from entering in the United States, the government of Mexico
(22:22):
did considerably better than this. It was by no means
a good situation for those children at all, but they
did better than this, which it's a bitterly extremely low
bart clear, but we have failed to clear it completely
as a country and that's kind of to our eternal shame,
I think.
Speaker 2 (22:40):
Yeah, And I think and everything worth emphasizing about this
is that it hasn't always been like this. There's there's
this sort of image that's been instructed that this is
always what the US border has been. It's no, I mean,
it's not like it's not like American border policy has
always been like good. But I mean, like in my lifetime,
it wasn't like this.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
In the mid nineties there were four thousand border patrol agents. Yeah,
it's increased by a factor of ten, and its budget
probably by more than that.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
Yeah. And you know, the consequences of this is just
basically in order to appease a bunch of just sort
of like fucking like turbo racist baked dipshits like who
live in the suburbs and you know, have never have
like never experienced a single hardship in their entire lives,
(23:30):
Like fucking untold numbers of people are put through just
inhuman suffering and for fucking nothing, just just like for
for nothing, for like just dog shit electoral pandering.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
Yeah, by people who have never seen what goes on
at the border. They've never experienced where these people come from.
And yeah, it's they're just numbers to people in DC, right,
And I would really urge people to not read immigration coverage,
or watch immigration coverage, or listen to immigration coverage. It
isn't written by people at the border, because this isn't
(24:06):
a fucking issue about numbers. Every single one of those
numbers is a person who has people they love and
things that they've done and choices that they've made that
got them there, And every single one of them is
someone who deserves compassion and empathy. And it's not just
another you know, like a number in an Excel chart,
which is how it's treated. And yeah, it hasn't always
(24:27):
been this way. This is a very recent innovation and
it's I mean we've talked about this before as well,
but right, this is the proving ground for state surveillance,
state violence, fascism, all these things.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
Right.
Speaker 1 (24:39):
The reason that you got surveiled by a drone if
you went to a George Floyd protest in Minneapolis is
because the Border Patrol already had one. The reason that
cops listened into your phone if you went to some
protest in twenty twenty is because of Border patrol technology. Right,
they have these sting rate hours all up and down
the border, Robert and I have seen them in Mexico, sorry,
(25:00):
in Texas even yeah, and.
Speaker 2 (25:02):
I mean you know, even even stuff like this, this
is the sort of recent laws in places like Florida
and Texas that are you know, let the states steel
trans kids, right like that. That's also stuff that was
sort of like, yeah, like the prototype of that came
from the I mean like it came from the border.
Speaker 1 (25:15):
There's it's also.
Speaker 2 (25:16):
Something that came from sort of like like anti black
bullshit that like is sort of deeply rooted in like
American family planning bullshit. But like, yeah, like that that's
also another one of the places where like that stuff.
Speaker 1 (25:29):
Was tested and with indigenous folks, Like we've ripped indigenous
certain for their families for decades, but yeah, we it's
a deeply baked white supremacist system that that always does
its experimenting on marginized people are very often at the border.
But yeah, if you if you're worried about the government
(25:51):
intercepting your communications with an abortion care provider, that has
happened because at some point they've been allowed to do
stuff to migrant that was equally bad, if not worse
and and like this will hurt you even if you
are like Kathy the liberal in Minnesota, Like when we
let the state have these powers, they don't just use
(26:13):
them benevolently, and that they weren't using them benevolently in
the first place, like they say, innocent people who've done
nothing wrong.
Speaker 2 (26:20):
Yeah, I mean, like that's that's the thing about state
power is and any any power the state has, inevitably
they will one day use it on you. And so
you can't let them take shit like this because you
know they will. They will turn your entire society into
a sort of hell garrison state.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
Yeah, and it's just I don't know that the inhumanity
that your taxes pay for, if you listening to this
in America, is abhorrent. It's disgusting, and yeah, you should
do everything you can to stop it. And like this
probably is one of the instances where like you may
be able to do something of some value by writing
to a politician. It's certainly one of the instances where
(27:00):
if you live near the border, you can show up
and make a very meaningful difference to someone's whole experience. Right,
Like myself and Joe were down there when this this
guy had lost his phone and like, you know, it
wasn't that expensive to buy this guy a phone. Other like,
people will remember Mandy and people will remember Alex, who
(27:22):
are two guests I've had on different San Diego episode
that they've both been down there. I know Alex gave
his EpiPen to someone who needed an epipenn, like we
acutely needed an EpiPen. Like things like that, you can
maybe save someone's life, maybe just make someone's day a
little bit less shit. You know, maybe you can let
a kid kick a football and you'd have to deflate
the football to get through the defense early. But like
(27:44):
you know, you can give a doll to a little
kid so they can play with it, or something just
something that will for a moment take them out of
the utterly miserable place that we forced them into. And
if folks want to support that, I know I'd posted
Mandy's cash app and Venmo and I think some people
very generously did contribute, which is great. If you're not
(28:04):
at the border. Look at Border Kindness, which is a
group out of San Diego who I know are doing
aid runs to Hocumber. I think the Hocumber Hotel Hucumber
For those not familiar, Jacu Mba, the Hookcumber Hotel was
housing folks and providing it there a huge amount of
water and shelter to people. This morning. People can look
(28:30):
at the American French Service Committee that I wrote about,
and I know that Joe and myself have shared some
Amazon wish lists that people have and that kind of thing.
But it's it's a massive task, but it's not one
that's like insurmountable. The amount of people I've seen show
up to include like and you know, I'm not a
religious person, and I'm not a person who particularly cares
(28:51):
for organized religion either, but it does make me happy
when I see like old church ladies in high heels
with perms coming out like and like giving ordered to children,
charging phones and seeing I think it's like, certainly, I've
lived on the border for fifteen years. It's been a
fundamentally radicalizing experience for me. Like I think you're supposed
(29:12):
to grow old and grow out of your anarchist politics
or whatever, But I don't know how anyone could live
here and think that like police state good. It's and
I think anybody who can get down here should it's
good for you too, like, and I always think about
how Oscar Wild has this thing about like how seeing
people living on the streets like not only under mind
stare humanity, but also his humanity because like seeing someone
(29:34):
else suffering should make us feel bad, and so like
he benefits when he helps someone, and like, you know,
we're all lifted up, right, Like I I guess one
of the things I struggle with most of the journalist
is that, like that like feeling of living in comfort
while other people can't, especially when it's such like it's
one thing if I if I go somewhere, right, if
(29:57):
I'm in Myanmar, and I'm aware that things are difficult, scary,
and then I get on a plane and it takes
two days when I come back. But just from like
a personal like mental health perspective, seeing a little child
sleep in the dirt, right, or someone asked me for
fucking bin bag so they can keep their baby out
(30:17):
of the rain, like a trash back or a kid
without shoes, you know, and then going home to my
relatively comfortable existence is really hard. And I think we
should all have to face up to that because it's
what it's what our government is responsible for and supposedly
we've got the best fucking option in twenty twenty, right,
this is the this is this is the good choice
(30:38):
of the two. But it doesn't make any meaningful difference
whether you choose Trample Biden to these people, really, because
they both treat them like shit.
Speaker 2 (30:47):
Yeah, it's like the kids are still in cages. And yes,
you know, until until until the entire system that enables
the ship is destroyed and it can be right like,
and this isn't even this isn't even on the level
of sort of like you know of sort of anarchist politics,
right like this none of this ship existed twenty years ago,
right like this is this is like wow, okay, I
(31:09):
guess it's twenty four three, twenty five years ago. None
of this ship existed even within like the framework of
the nation state, right like, this is not a thing
that you that we have to do, which we simply do.
Speaker 1 (31:20):
Not have to You could share politics with Bill Clinton
and still.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
Ronald Reagan was better on the fucking border than any
than any president who has been alive in my fucking lifetime.
Speaker 1 (31:32):
Right yeah, fucking Reagan. Dwight Eisenhower would have had serious
concerns about the industrial complex we're building at the border.
Speaker 2 (31:41):
Yeah, Like, this is not like this, this, this isn't
this isn't like a particularly radical political thing, right, It's
just that we've we've become sort of a nerd to
this death state that's been built up around us, and
you know, doesn't it doesn't keep anyone safe. It just
fucking inflicts untold human misery. So fucking Greg Abbott can
(32:02):
win an election.
Speaker 1 (32:03):
Yeah, yeah, and it costs us a lot of money, right, Like,
your universal healthcare is an unman drone flying over some
children run across a desert in Arizona right now, Your
free university education is a border patrol smart camera in
the desert that goes off every time a fucking deer
walks past or it rains, like it. This stuff is expensive,
(32:27):
and like, if you're in the US, you are paying
for it. Yeah. I think the most sort of soft
of liberals can see that this is right. And they
did see that this shit was wrong in the Trump administration,
and they do see this is wrong when they come right,
Like I've some of the best mutual aid groups I've
(32:47):
worked with are like middle aged folks from churches who
have time and the means to help and just didn't
realize that. It was like no one was coming and
we had to do it ourselves. And when they did that,
they were very effective. And so I would encourage folks
who are in the border communities near the border, and
near the border meets a different thing if your border
(33:08):
patrol because their jurisdiction applies one hundred miles from the border.
That's the other thing, right, the border will come to you. Yeah, Statistically,
odds are.
Speaker 2 (33:18):
That you are the border already has come to you.
Speaker 1 (33:20):
Yes, that's yeah. Yeah. Two thirds of people in the
United States are in the border patrol enforcement zone.
Speaker 2 (33:27):
Yeah, I'm in it, and I'm in like fucking Chicago,
right well yeah, yeah, I think yes.
Speaker 1 (33:34):
People who would not think of themselves as border as
well as the border affects you. If you go to
other communities in your city, you might realize border patroller
around there. Ice are around there. So yeah, it's it's
pretty bleak. We're working on some scripted stuff, but I
want to get into a bit of the history of
border patrol and rereading Border Patrol Nation, which is a
great book if people haven't read it, And I want
(33:57):
the other thing I should say about border reporting is
if people don't center migrants and they're reporting about migration,
then you shouldn't be reading that reporting. Like sometimes it
can be hard. One other thing I guess I do
want to say is you're seeing my photos, and you'll
see in Joe's photos, you're not going to see many faces.
And that's because people have legitimate fears for their wellbeing.
That's why they are fucking here. Yeah, and not obtaining
(34:22):
consent before taking photographs is making a terrible situation worse.
And like that's something that we can work on as
the media, right, Like something I will continue to call
out when I see it. But if you don't speak
the language, find someone who does that, don't take the
goddamn photo. You'll see some faces the mind. Like I
like to pass my camera through the fence and give
(34:42):
it to like teenage kids so they can run around
and take photos and have fun. And so when they
take like goofy selfies, I'll post those. They get concerned
from them or their parents, and their parents are around,
and that's fine. But yeah, when you're looking at border coverage,
always understand that the people and if we don't tend
to those people and their stories, then we're doing it wrong.
Speaker 2 (35:15):
If you can physically get to these places, like you should,
like the the the this is this is one of
the like the situations where like the amount of good
that like a very small number of people could do
is enormous and the cost is not that high.
Speaker 1 (35:32):
No, but for instance, I saw some of my friends
had just gone to Costco, right and just loaded up
one of those big Costco trolleys, and like that. That
makes a meaningful difference to hundreds of people, And so
you should. There will probably be mutual aid networks on
the ground at almost every border area by now. Reach
(35:54):
out to them, see if they need your money. If
you can get there and help organize, that's better. If
you have right, if you have language skills yours. There
are people I met a guy who spoke Commanji, like
the Kurdish dialect of North and East Syria, right, people
who speak a Vietnamese almost every language you can conceive of. Right,
(36:19):
Those people really struggle to get information and they just
can't talk to anyone because there's no one else to
talk to and their phone, you know, the phone charges
is a precious commodity and it's cost a lot of
money to dial into Nashley, so those people could just
be lonely. So if you have those language skills, go.
Someone broke their finger in San die you are getting
cushed up against the fence. You know there was a
(36:40):
medic there to help them. If there hadn't been, that
could have been worse for them. And sometimes the ambulance
can come in and take people out. But there are valuable,
meaningful things that you could do if you have the time,
if not, if you have the money, there are really
important places to donate. And those are just a couple
of them. Will highlight a couple more as we go forward. Oh,
one more thing I did want to plug is miles
(37:02):
for migrants, where if you have if you don't have money,
but you do have airline miles. Like I was speaking
to this guy today who got across. He has two
days and he has to get himself in New York
where he has family. I don't have the means to
buy four airline tickets or I would, but if you
have air miles and you want to donate them, you can.
Speaker 2 (37:22):
Yeah, And then this is the thing, like you know,
like I have family who for example, like work at
Hong Kong, right, and they have like you know, and
then they're they're like there are people like that who
could are like, you know, not radicals, but are sort
of you know, like.
Speaker 1 (37:32):
You like like there are people.
Speaker 2 (37:34):
In this world who have a shit ton of miles
like built up because you know, for like work or
some shit, right that's just sitting there, and that that's
something that you know, like you can you can like
like you.
Speaker 1 (37:47):
You may not have it. You might know people who do. Yeah, yeah,
you might know someone who does a weird credit card
flipping thing, you know, where they like get air miles
in and make it that whole lick personality to to
get miles. But like whatever, if those people can help,
you don't need to turn them into like Macnavists overnight.
Like nobody wants to see a little baby sleep in
(38:10):
the dirt, and anybody who could be there physically would
be appalled by it. And I think if you can
convey to those folks that now at the time when
something that costs them nothing materially, right, Like I know
tons of people have more miles that they can use
because they fly at the time for work. You don't
want to fly when you're done flying, you want to
stay at home. So that's another way that people can help.
(38:33):
And yeah, just I guess it's it's a crisis that
will continue unabated because the cruelty is the point, and
it's for once. Like you know, we can't stop all
the climate change and all this bad shit, but this
is something that it is within our power to a bet.
We can't. We can't make it go away yet. But
(38:57):
like we spoke to the people who are doing water
drops on the border, there are meaningful things every single
one of us can do to help.
Speaker 2 (39:03):
Yeah, go into the world. Do not let the violence
done in our name be who we are.
Speaker 1 (39:12):
Yeah, sure, people get better than this. I guess it
could happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2 (39:22):
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
coolzonemedia dot com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever.
Speaker 1 (39:29):
You listen to podcasts.
Speaker 2 (39:31):
You can find sources for It Could Happen here, updated
monthly at coolzonemedia dot com slash sources.
Speaker 1 (39:36):
Thanks for listening.
Hello podcast fans, and welcome to it could Happen Here,
a podcast that today is hosted by me, James Down
and Mia Wong him here. Hello, Hi, So what we're
going to talk about today is situation on the border.
We're working on a scripted episode which will take awayle
because they always do, and you know, if we want
(00:25):
that to be nice and sort of polished for use.
But I did want to update everyone because I think
that what's happening it has a sense of urgency to it,
and certainly like some of the mutual aid requests have
a real sense of urgency to them, and folks who
follow me on Twitter dot com and sort of noticed that,
like in between the ship posts, and I've been down
(00:47):
at the US Mexico border for most of the tail
end of last week and the start of this week,
sort of depicting what's going on there, along with my
friend Joe Joe Ariyama's who's a freelancer who we're going
to be working with on the scripted series. And people
can find Joe at Joe or Ori photo on Twitter.
(01:07):
Joe's got some really good photos if you want to
see kind of what's going on. But the longer than
the short of it is that Title forty two ended
on well, to begin with, exactly the moment that it
ended was a subject of some contention. Right, we knew
it was going to end on the eleventh of May.
Title forty two, if folks don't remember, is a emergency
(01:31):
public health measure. It's part of the United States Public
Health Law, the United States Code Public Health something something.
Then allows border patrol to expel people from the United
States without giving them their due process, their asylum here.
So basically they bounce the straight back to Mexico. Right.
(01:54):
This has been in place since March of twenty twenty.
We now know that the Trump mistation pressured the CDC,
So in theory it was it came through the CDC, right,
the Center for Disease Control under pressure from Drug Administration,
direct pressure from from Pence and Stephen Miller.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
Was yeah, probably this was a Stephen Miller like, yeah,
it's a primacy special.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
Yeah, bubblehead looking racist motherfucker has once again done something terrible.
Not that some of his policies, As we'll get onto
this in descripted episode, the Biden administration has like copy
pasted some steep, some straight up Stephen Miller stuff in
it in its transit bounds and is absolutely liable for
(02:40):
I don't want to use the word chaos at our
border because that plays into this fox to use narrative.
There is a a very concerted plan to make people
suffer more than it's necessary at our border, and it
would have been very easy to avoid this. So title
forty two. Basically there are no consequences for cross but
(03:01):
it's also very hard to get asylum. The the CBP
officer can like spontaneously decide to give you your rights. Basically,
if you're like, come on, bro, I'm gonna get killed
if I go home, then that person can kind of
decide to liow you to be processed for asylum, which
is what a lot of the Ukrainian folks got. Surprise, surprise,
(03:22):
and I feel like we should.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
We should also mention that under like multiple legal frameworks,
you have the right to request asylum. This is this
is something that supposedly is inviolable, like you have the
right as a human being to request asylum in a country.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
Yes, and it doesn't matter where you've been before, and
it doesn't matter how you got there, and you don't
have to do it at a port of entry. It doesn't
matter how you enter the country or where you entered
the country. Yes, yeah, and yeah, under multiple different international frameworks,
you have the right to do this. But the USA
has been denying that to people for three and a
bit years, right, three years, Yeah, and something like that.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
And you know, I mean I also could just want
to briefly mention this because I feel like there's this
way in which people people people will talk about like
one border regime and then never connect the dots between
this one and the other ones. But like, for example,
like this is something that happens all over the world. Yes,
I mean like part part of like part of this
(04:22):
sort of like crisis is going on into Dan right
now is about like a ship ton of money. But
at the end this is actually happened in Libya too.
Is the Italian government paying the Libyan and sort of
Sudanese parabilitaries a ship ton of money to like keep
refugees like basically like trap to something sit enslave them
in camps to keep them from like getting to Italy
to try to request asylum. So yeah, this is a yeah,
(04:44):
like Fredecks does this, like this this is sort of
like a global.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
Yeah, terrible regime. The border like industrial complex is every
bit as bad, if not worse, than the defense industrial complex,
so we're more familiar with Like, border policing is something
that really came post nine to eleven, right with the
creation of DHS in the United States, But we have
exported that shit everywhere. And like our border patrol agents, right,
(05:13):
CBP has an office in lots of embassies, or like
they train Dominican border agents on the border with Haiti,
for instance, and are trained by our CBP people. CBP
agents would deployed in Iraq, Afghanistan. Yeah, this is a
global thing. And like where I guess where I am now,
where I've been for a while is the place where
(05:33):
that all began, right, and where we continue to see
CBB innovating new and exciting ways to fucking take some
of the most desperate people in the world and make
them suffer and spend a shit ton of money and
preventing them from accessing their legal right to asylum or
detaining them while they do it. And so what has
(05:55):
happened as so Title forty two was supposed to end
on the eleventh of May, right that was when the
federal COVID emergency ended, so there was no reason for
it to exist anymore. There wasn't reason for it to
exist to begin with.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
But yeah, or any know, I like, don't don't, don't
think too hard about the fact that like that was
the last that was basically the last COVID policy that
was still in place.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
Yeah, Like there were not vaccine mandates for the people
meeting the migrants at the fucking border.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
Yeah, right, like this this was this was this was
never about public health, like no, you know, I mean,
and in so far as you can extricate sort of
like the sort of imperialist states public health measures from
social cleansing stuff, which has been happening for generations and generations.
But yeah, like this was this was not about that,
(06:38):
like this, Yeah, this was just an immigration ban.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
Yeah, and it became a sort of albatross by an
administration who didn't want to be hit on border stuff. Right.
They didn't want to They didn't want to drop it
before the midterms. They initially pan to drop it in
December twenty twenty two, which is obviously right after the midterms.
They didn't we here we are in May, there was
a complicated legal challenge, which there always is, and it
doesn't matter because here we are right and it's supposed
(07:04):
to drop on the eleventh for me, so we're all thinking,
right midnight on the tenth of May, we'll be out there.
We'll see what goes down. They announced the day before
that it is dropping on midnight on the eleventh, so
they're going to ring every minute out of it. And
so in the days before, a number of migrants have
(07:24):
told me that they understood that they basically had to
get across before the end of Title forty two because
it was their understanding that if they crossed under Title eight,
they would be ejected and they wouldn't be allowed to
return for five years and they would face felony charges.
So they did this. I don't quite know often these
this information spreads about like WhatsApp in camps, right, or
(07:47):
sort of like a game of telephone in camps. So
I don't quite know where this information came from, but
it closely parallels something that mayorcus is as Secretary of
Home lanun Security said in the press conference where he
mischaracterized internationally Greac law. And he's done this multiple times, right,
he himself someone who is a migrant to this country
who apparently family left Cuba when he was one year old,
(08:09):
has just some of the most dog shit statements on
the record, and I've depicted some of those in the
scripted episode. Folks can look up my piece I wrote
for NBC a couple of years ago about the Biden
administration's policy towards Haiti if they they want to see
more of the dog shit stuff that he and Biden
have said. So in the days before the end of
(08:33):
Title forty two, a lot of folks started to try
to cross right because of this information that they had.
They ended up at least where I am, which is
in southern California, right the sort of extreme southwestern border
in the United States, literally the end of the wall.
Folks were crossing like around the end of the wall
right at low tide and turning themselves into border patrol
(08:55):
asking to make their case for their right Twist Island.
And I think sometimes when we think about migrants, you know,
we made me think about people from South America or
Central America, every single continent. I don't maybe not any
like Australasians, but like just in it. In a day
(09:18):
at one camp, I spoke to someone from Angola. I
spoke to someone from Congo. I spoke to someone from Sudan.
I spoke to a Kurdish guy. I spoke to people
certainly from all over South America, Russians, Tagik people, Jamaican people,
and like. For instance, just to give you a sense
of like how global it is, I spoke to a
(09:40):
Jamaican lady who is caring for a sixteen or seventeen
year old pair of Tagik siblings who didn't speak any
of the relevant languages for communication with border patroller with
other people in the camp, so she would use her
phone to call their mother, who spoke some English, give
information to the mother who would translated back to these
two young children. And all of these people had presented
(10:02):
like there were a lot of afgun people too. I
probably could have mentioned that up top, But like, these
are the people who we fucking abandoned once and now
we're trapping, trapping them in between little fences. And it's
hot in the day, right Like I slept out in
the desert last night and it was above one hundred.
It's not that hot in San Diego, but in he
cumber where they're also holding people, it's absolutely getting into
(10:22):
triple digits every day, and it's cold at night, and
it's a really inhospitable environment for people. So folks were
held there, you know, up to a week in some
cases and are now I think being processed by a
border patrol. There was a ruling by a Florida judge.
(10:44):
I'm not exactly clear on when because I was down
at the border and my phone didn't work very well,
but at some point right before Title forty two drop
that they could have been released on humanitarian parole, which
means in theory, they have to be released with a
court date, right with a court date to a their
asylum hearing, which will slow down the process of releasing them,
(11:05):
right And so I've heard of court dates. I've heard
of folks being released already kind of with court dates
in twenty twenty seven, which this whole thing has just
been like a disaster in terms of the federal response,
right like, and in just the cruelest possible way. It was.
(11:29):
Everyone could see this coming, right that there will be
more people trying to cross. There are sixteen thousand people
give or take in Tijuana alone, right, So it's just
across from where I live. Waiting to come to the
United States because they've been denied that right for three years,
because they need somewhere safe to go, and because they're
not safe there. And the best estimate we got for
(11:51):
how many they could process from border patrol was two
hundred a day at the Tijuana porta ventry or Sannysedra
port of entry. Really, but we don't know. There's no
clear I don't know how many people they're processing every day, right,
but these people who do come in now have to
have a hearing date before they can be released when
if they get through. So I spoke to a young
(12:11):
man and his son who I spoken to at the border,
and he had been released into the United States where
a charity in San Diego will provide him with two
nights what like two nights of accommodation, right, and then
it can't quite work out what then, like he's out
(12:33):
on his own, you know, Like I guess we'll find
out tonight. But he has to find a sponsor. I
don't quite understand how he was released without a sponsor,
but it seems like the system is kind of bungling
things up, and these folks have to fund their own
flights to wherever it is a sponsor is right, So
they have family or community, they're having to work out
(12:56):
how to get to that family and community, so be
they're the greyhound or a plane or a train. So
it's all in all a giant classifuck with very human consequences.
Like I can't stress enough how like every possible demographic
(13:16):
has represented old people, little tiny children, right, Like I
was talking to a little Afghan girl, not really talking
to we don't share any languages, but I was more
just like making funny faces for a while and sort
of pointing at things, and like it just breaks my
heart that there are little children who like especially you know,
(13:38):
she's a little girl. She's in Afghanistan. We told her
shit ton of lies about Afghan women to justify twenty
years of killing people and of certain people making money
from killing people, and like this was supposedly they're like
canard was that this was for Afghan girls and women, right,
And here's an Afghan girl sleeping in the fucking dirt,
(14:00):
like twenty twenty minutes from where I live. And I
can't even give this kid like hot meal because I
can't fit it through the bars of the fence. Like
Everything that goes across to these people has to go
through the bars of the fence. Right, So someone worked
out that pizza pizza could fit through because flat right,
(14:22):
people have been getting pizza. But other than that, they're
getting you know, bottles of water, granola bars, you know
things that fit through a fence, beef jerky. And they've
been there for days in some cases. And that's a
camp that's relatively accessible, right, I can pull off the interstate,
drive down a dirt road and be there in like
I say, twenty minutes. The camps are less accessible. We've
(14:46):
heard the conditions are much worse. A couple of Jamaican
guys told me that there was another camp that we
weren't we tried to get access to, weren't able to
get access to, that was further west from where we were,
where people were hungry they're getting. This is all just
from that source. I have reached out a border patrol,
but as of today, they haven't got back to me,
(15:08):
saying that they were getting a bottle of water and
a granola bar every day, and that like some of
these other folks had taken it upon themselves to like
walk over there to try and get them food, right,
people who are already not in the great situation themselves,
and they kept asking why couldn't we go there, why
couldn't we help them? Like it was very admirable right
to see folks who are in a pretty bad way
be like, hey, these people need help more than we do. So, yeah,
(15:31):
that's a situation. I think we should take a break
for advertising then sorry, I h hopefully not for a
drone or some shit. All right, we're back and this
(15:52):
is another happy and exciting episode in which I tell
you things that will brighten your day. So something I
wanted to talk about because I think it's important is
the mutual aid response to this, and it's been really
really impressive. You know, I live in a place where
(16:12):
the Democrats are absolute dog shit. Well we'll do. It's America, right,
but like just the particularly cringe like cast real liberalism
of San Diego Democrats is like as always on display. Right.
I saw one of them tweeting today about how CBA,
DHS and CBP are doing a great job and keeping
us safe, and like, my like makes me want to
(16:37):
say things I shouldn't say on the podcast, I guess.
But what that means is that like our government isn't
going to do shit, right, Like it is entirely on
us to look after each other. And people have done that.
The groups like American Friends Service Committee, which is a
(16:58):
great organization which has really good stuff on the border,
have been down there every single day, right, Like there
have been days when I've left at one am there's
still someone there. They've been giving people water, giving people food.
A huge need that people have is to charge their phones.
And the way that migrants interact with CBP, at least
in theory, the way you get an asylum appointment is
(17:18):
booking it through an app called CBP one. We've talked
about this on the podcast before, but CBP one is terrible.
It is a terrible app that doesn't work. And that's
for people who have phones and Wi Fi. Right, if
you are stuck in between two fences and a dusty
(17:39):
piece of ground, how the hell are you supposed to
charge your phone? You don't have Wi Fi, right, you
may not have a data plan that works in that area.
So a huge unmet need was charging charging phone. So
we were able to get some donations from the team
and buy a big charger. Other folks turned up with
charges even all the news see to include like like
(18:01):
Fox National weren't there, which is a good thing, but
like and we could talk about that actually as well.
My goods will specifically ask which news network you're with,
which I think is that? I think that's good. I
think it's good. They tell Fox News to fuck off,
because yeah, someone who participates in your dehumanization doesn't also
deserve to make money from your trauma. And so every
(18:24):
news network that was there, right, all the local folks
from San Diego were just constantly shuttling back and forth
to their vans, charging phones constantly, constantly, constantly, and it
became a bit of a cluster because obviously there's literally
just hundreds of people in this small area, dozens of
hands reaching to a defense. Charge my phone, Can I
have my phone back? Charge my phone? And in the
(18:45):
English and Spanish and French and command Gy and Vietnamese
and all these other languages, right, So it was very
hard to organize that. So folks came down, Folks from
San Diego from different sort of mutual aid groups came
down and they organized a system. Right, They got Painter's tape,
(19:06):
wh the names of the people on the back of
the phone. We had this huge ash battery that we
were able to get and that they were able to
charge people's phones, get them their phones back to them.
And that is a crucial thing, right that in that scenario,
not only is it your only way to communicate with
border patrol, it's your only way to communicate with your family. Right.
Like one guy had lost his phone, and so I
(19:28):
just bought him a burner phone or you know, one
of those Walmart phones so that he could call his
family because the family didn't know where he was. Right
last they'd heard he was in Mexico or maybe even
further south. So the phones are super important. Other mutual
aid groups have been getting blankets, right. I saw an
(19:48):
Afghan family turn up and had they had crayons for
the Afghan kids who were there, right, and like coloring
books and things for children to do, because it's probably
boring being a kid, and it's probably being a kid
where like every day men with guns and camouflage gear
turn up and they speak a language you don't understand,
and then you don't know what they say, and then
you stay there.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
Yeah, and I want to kind of just there are
lots of things that could get called camps that are
like not camps, right, Like this is like this this
is not a camp in the sense of like there
are buildings that you go into or even like there
are tents. It's just like oh yeah, no, yeah, I
(20:30):
think that's.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
A very good I think that I haven't mentioned. Thank you. Yes,
this is people lying on the dirt. Occasionally they have
a mylass space blanket. Occasionally they have a top. If
they want to make any form of shelter, they have
to use the only thing they have to use is
the wall itself, right, so up against the wall, people
have made like a lean to kind of situation with
the top, right, But no, this is by no means
(20:55):
suitable shelter. Literally, people are lying on the dirt like.
Speaker 2 (20:59):
It's just a cage, like in a desert. Like it's yeah,
it's it's, it's, it's, it's it's it's the kind of
thing that like, like you, it's the kind of thing
you would put it in a park list movement. People
would be like, oh, no, one would ever do that.
She's like no, no, Like this is just sort of yeah,
this is what US border policy is.
Speaker 1 (21:17):
It's these like just these open air cages. Yeah, it's
you wouldn't. Like, you know, I go to the zoo
in San Diego and the animals have much better conditions
than that. There's no running water. There was one porterloo
toilet for five hundred people. Yeah, it's terrible. It is awful.
(21:38):
It's little. It's people wrapping their babies in my love
blankets and trying to get them to sleep at night,
you know. And that's the same. It's several places up
and down the border, right, they're starting to clear them
out now, and so sort of Tuesday, Monday. So some
people got there a week ago, I think, and they've
(21:59):
been stay there for a long time. And yeah, like
it's at no point does there seem to have been
any consideration for even giving people shade or shelter or like, yeah,
the very basics, and like I should reinforce it. In
twenty eighteen, when Trump blocked a large group of migrants
from entering in the United States, the government of Mexico
(22:22):
did considerably better than this. It was by no means
a good situation for those children at all, but they
did better than this, which it's a bitterly extremely low
bart clear, but we have failed to clear it completely
as a country and that's kind of to our eternal shame,
I think.
Speaker 2 (22:40):
Yeah, And I think and everything worth emphasizing about this
is that it hasn't always been like this. There's there's
this sort of image that's been instructed that this is
always what the US border has been. It's no, I mean,
it's not like it's not like American border policy has
always been like good. But I mean, like in my lifetime,
it wasn't like this.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
In the mid nineties there were four thousand border patrol agents. Yeah,
it's increased by a factor of ten, and its budget
probably by more than that.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
Yeah. And you know, the consequences of this is just
basically in order to appease a bunch of just sort
of like fucking like turbo racist baked dipshits like who
live in the suburbs and you know, have never have
like never experienced a single hardship in their entire lives,
(23:30):
Like fucking untold numbers of people are put through just
inhuman suffering and for fucking nothing, just just like for
for nothing, for like just dog shit electoral pandering.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
Yeah, by people who have never seen what goes on
at the border. They've never experienced where these people come from.
And yeah, it's they're just numbers to people in DC, right,
And I would really urge people to not read immigration coverage,
or watch immigration coverage, or listen to immigration coverage. It
isn't written by people at the border, because this isn't
(24:06):
a fucking issue about numbers. Every single one of those
numbers is a person who has people they love and
things that they've done and choices that they've made that
got them there, And every single one of them is
someone who deserves compassion and empathy. And it's not just
another you know, like a number in an Excel chart,
which is how it's treated. And yeah, it hasn't always
(24:27):
been this way. This is a very recent innovation and
it's I mean we've talked about this before as well,
but right, this is the proving ground for state surveillance,
state violence, fascism, all these things.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
Right.
Speaker 1 (24:39):
The reason that you got surveiled by a drone if
you went to a George Floyd protest in Minneapolis is
because the Border Patrol already had one. The reason that
cops listened into your phone if you went to some
protest in twenty twenty is because of Border patrol technology. Right,
they have these sting rate hours all up and down
the border, Robert and I have seen them in Mexico, sorry,
(25:00):
in Texas even yeah, and.
Speaker 2 (25:02):
I mean you know, even even stuff like this, this
is the sort of recent laws in places like Florida
and Texas that are you know, let the states steel
trans kids, right like that. That's also stuff that was
sort of like, yeah, like the prototype of that came
from the I mean like it came from the border.
Speaker 1 (25:15):
There's it's also.
Speaker 2 (25:16):
Something that came from sort of like like anti black
bullshit that like is sort of deeply rooted in like
American family planning bullshit. But like, yeah, like that that's
also another one of the places where like that stuff.
Speaker 1 (25:29):
Was tested and with indigenous folks, Like we've ripped indigenous
certain for their families for decades, but yeah, we it's
a deeply baked white supremacist system that that always does
its experimenting on marginized people are very often at the border.
But yeah, if you if you're worried about the government
(25:51):
intercepting your communications with an abortion care provider, that has
happened because at some point they've been allowed to do
stuff to migrant that was equally bad, if not worse
and and like this will hurt you even if you
are like Kathy the liberal in Minnesota, Like when we
let the state have these powers, they don't just use
(26:13):
them benevolently, and that they weren't using them benevolently in
the first place, like they say, innocent people who've done
nothing wrong.
Speaker 2 (26:20):
Yeah, I mean, like that's that's the thing about state
power is and any any power the state has, inevitably
they will one day use it on you. And so
you can't let them take shit like this because you
know they will. They will turn your entire society into
a sort of hell garrison state.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
Yeah, and it's just I don't know that the inhumanity
that your taxes pay for, if you listening to this
in America, is abhorrent. It's disgusting, and yeah, you should
do everything you can to stop it. And like this
probably is one of the instances where like you may
be able to do something of some value by writing
to a politician. It's certainly one of the instances where
(27:00):
if you live near the border, you can show up
and make a very meaningful difference to someone's whole experience. Right,
Like myself and Joe were down there when this this
guy had lost his phone and like, you know, it
wasn't that expensive to buy this guy a phone. Other like,
people will remember Mandy and people will remember Alex, who
(27:22):
are two guests I've had on different San Diego episode
that they've both been down there. I know Alex gave
his EpiPen to someone who needed an epipenn, like we
acutely needed an EpiPen. Like things like that, you can
maybe save someone's life, maybe just make someone's day a
little bit less shit. You know, maybe you can let
a kid kick a football and you'd have to deflate
the football to get through the defense early. But like
(27:44):
you know, you can give a doll to a little
kid so they can play with it, or something just
something that will for a moment take them out of
the utterly miserable place that we forced them into. And
if folks want to support that, I know I'd posted
Mandy's cash app and Venmo and I think some people
very generously did contribute, which is great. If you're not
(28:04):
at the border. Look at Border Kindness, which is a
group out of San Diego who I know are doing
aid runs to Hocumber. I think the Hocumber Hotel Hucumber
For those not familiar, Jacu Mba, the Hookcumber Hotel was
housing folks and providing it there a huge amount of
water and shelter to people. This morning. People can look
(28:30):
at the American French Service Committee that I wrote about,
and I know that Joe and myself have shared some
Amazon wish lists that people have and that kind of thing.
But it's it's a massive task, but it's not one
that's like insurmountable. The amount of people I've seen show
up to include like and you know, I'm not a
religious person, and I'm not a person who particularly cares
(28:51):
for organized religion either, but it does make me happy
when I see like old church ladies in high heels
with perms coming out like and like giving ordered to children,
charging phones and seeing I think it's like, certainly, I've
lived on the border for fifteen years. It's been a
fundamentally radicalizing experience for me. Like I think you're supposed
(29:12):
to grow old and grow out of your anarchist politics
or whatever, But I don't know how anyone could live
here and think that like police state good. It's and
I think anybody who can get down here should it's
good for you too, like, and I always think about
how Oscar Wild has this thing about like how seeing
people living on the streets like not only under mind
stare humanity, but also his humanity because like seeing someone
(29:34):
else suffering should make us feel bad, and so like
he benefits when he helps someone, and like, you know,
we're all lifted up, right, Like I I guess one
of the things I struggle with most of the journalist
is that, like that like feeling of living in comfort
while other people can't, especially when it's such like it's
one thing if I if I go somewhere, right, if
(29:57):
I'm in Myanmar, and I'm aware that things are difficult, scary,
and then I get on a plane and it takes
two days when I come back. But just from like
a personal like mental health perspective, seeing a little child
sleep in the dirt, right, or someone asked me for
fucking bin bag so they can keep their baby out
(30:17):
of the rain, like a trash back or a kid
without shoes, you know, and then going home to my
relatively comfortable existence is really hard. And I think we
should all have to face up to that because it's
what it's what our government is responsible for and supposedly
we've got the best fucking option in twenty twenty, right,
this is the this is this is the good choice
(30:38):
of the two. But it doesn't make any meaningful difference
whether you choose Trample Biden to these people, really, because
they both treat them like shit.
Speaker 2 (30:47):
Yeah, it's like the kids are still in cages. And yes,
you know, until until until the entire system that enables
the ship is destroyed and it can be right like,
and this isn't even this isn't even on the level
of sort of like you know of sort of anarchist politics,
right like this none of this ship existed twenty years ago,
right like this is this is like wow, okay, I
(31:09):
guess it's twenty four three, twenty five years ago. None
of this ship existed even within like the framework of
the nation state, right like, this is not a thing
that you that we have to do, which we simply do.
Speaker 1 (31:20):
Not have to You could share politics with Bill Clinton
and still.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
Ronald Reagan was better on the fucking border than any
than any president who has been alive in my fucking lifetime.
Speaker 1 (31:32):
Right yeah, fucking Reagan. Dwight Eisenhower would have had serious
concerns about the industrial complex we're building at the border.
Speaker 2 (31:41):
Yeah, Like, this is not like this, this, this isn't
this isn't like a particularly radical political thing, right, It's
just that we've we've become sort of a nerd to
this death state that's been built up around us, and
you know, doesn't it doesn't keep anyone safe. It just
fucking inflicts untold human misery. So fucking Greg Abbott can
(32:02):
win an election.
Speaker 1 (32:03):
Yeah, yeah, and it costs us a lot of money, right, Like,
your universal healthcare is an unman drone flying over some
children run across a desert in Arizona right now, Your
free university education is a border patrol smart camera in
the desert that goes off every time a fucking deer
walks past or it rains, like it. This stuff is expensive,
(32:27):
and like, if you're in the US, you are paying
for it. Yeah. I think the most sort of soft
of liberals can see that this is right. And they
did see that this shit was wrong in the Trump administration,
and they do see this is wrong when they come right,
Like I've some of the best mutual aid groups I've
(32:47):
worked with are like middle aged folks from churches who
have time and the means to help and just didn't
realize that. It was like no one was coming and
we had to do it ourselves. And when they did that,
they were very effective. And so I would encourage folks
who are in the border communities near the border, and
near the border meets a different thing if your border
(33:08):
patrol because their jurisdiction applies one hundred miles from the border.
That's the other thing, right, the border will come to you. Yeah, Statistically,
odds are.
Speaker 2 (33:18):
That you are the border already has come to you.
Speaker 1 (33:20):
Yes, that's yeah. Yeah. Two thirds of people in the
United States are in the border patrol enforcement zone.
Speaker 2 (33:27):
Yeah, I'm in it, and I'm in like fucking Chicago,
right well yeah, yeah, I think yes.
Speaker 1 (33:34):
People who would not think of themselves as border as
well as the border affects you. If you go to
other communities in your city, you might realize border patroller
around there. Ice are around there. So yeah, it's it's
pretty bleak. We're working on some scripted stuff, but I
want to get into a bit of the history of
border patrol and rereading Border Patrol Nation, which is a
great book if people haven't read it, And I want
(33:57):
the other thing I should say about border reporting is
if people don't center migrants and they're reporting about migration,
then you shouldn't be reading that reporting. Like sometimes it
can be hard. One other thing I guess I do
want to say is you're seeing my photos, and you'll
see in Joe's photos, you're not going to see many faces.
And that's because people have legitimate fears for their wellbeing.
That's why they are fucking here. Yeah, and not obtaining
(34:22):
consent before taking photographs is making a terrible situation worse.
And like that's something that we can work on as
the media, right, Like something I will continue to call
out when I see it. But if you don't speak
the language, find someone who does that, don't take the
goddamn photo. You'll see some faces the mind. Like I
like to pass my camera through the fence and give
(34:42):
it to like teenage kids so they can run around
and take photos and have fun. And so when they
take like goofy selfies, I'll post those. They get concerned
from them or their parents, and their parents are around,
and that's fine. But yeah, when you're looking at border coverage,
always understand that the people and if we don't tend
to those people and their stories, then we're doing it wrong.
Speaker 2 (35:15):
If you can physically get to these places, like you should,
like the the the this is this is one of
the like the situations where like the amount of good
that like a very small number of people could do
is enormous and the cost is not that high.
Speaker 1 (35:32):
No, but for instance, I saw some of my friends
had just gone to Costco, right and just loaded up
one of those big Costco trolleys, and like that. That
makes a meaningful difference to hundreds of people, And so
you should. There will probably be mutual aid networks on
the ground at almost every border area by now. Reach
(35:54):
out to them, see if they need your money. If
you can get there and help organize, that's better. If
you have right, if you have language skills yours. There
are people I met a guy who spoke Commanji, like
the Kurdish dialect of North and East Syria, right, people
who speak a Vietnamese almost every language you can conceive of. Right,
(36:19):
Those people really struggle to get information and they just
can't talk to anyone because there's no one else to
talk to and their phone, you know, the phone charges
is a precious commodity and it's cost a lot of
money to dial into Nashley, so those people could just
be lonely. So if you have those language skills, go.
Someone broke their finger in San die you are getting
cushed up against the fence. You know there was a
(36:40):
medic there to help them. If there hadn't been, that
could have been worse for them. And sometimes the ambulance
can come in and take people out. But there are valuable,
meaningful things that you could do if you have the time,
if not, if you have the money, there are really
important places to donate. And those are just a couple
of them. Will highlight a couple more as we go forward. Oh,
one more thing I did want to plug is miles
(37:02):
for migrants, where if you have if you don't have money,
but you do have airline miles. Like I was speaking
to this guy today who got across. He has two
days and he has to get himself in New York
where he has family. I don't have the means to
buy four airline tickets or I would, but if you
have air miles and you want to donate them, you can.
Speaker 2 (37:22):
Yeah, And then this is the thing, like you know,
like I have family who for example, like work at
Hong Kong, right, and they have like you know, and
then they're they're like there are people like that who
could are like, you know, not radicals, but are sort
of you know, like.
Speaker 1 (37:32):
You like like there are people.
Speaker 2 (37:34):
In this world who have a shit ton of miles
like built up because you know, for like work or
some shit, right that's just sitting there, and that that's
something that you know, like you can you can like
like you.
Speaker 1 (37:47):
You may not have it. You might know people who do. Yeah, yeah,
you might know someone who does a weird credit card
flipping thing, you know, where they like get air miles
in and make it that whole lick personality to to
get miles. But like whatever, if those people can help,
you don't need to turn them into like Macnavists overnight.
Like nobody wants to see a little baby sleep in
(38:10):
the dirt, and anybody who could be there physically would
be appalled by it. And I think if you can
convey to those folks that now at the time when
something that costs them nothing materially, right, Like I know
tons of people have more miles that they can use
because they fly at the time for work. You don't
want to fly when you're done flying, you want to
stay at home. So that's another way that people can help.
(38:33):
And yeah, just I guess it's it's a crisis that
will continue unabated because the cruelty is the point, and
it's for once. Like you know, we can't stop all
the climate change and all this bad shit, but this
is something that it is within our power to a bet.
We can't. We can't make it go away yet. But
(38:57):
like we spoke to the people who are doing water
drops on the border, there are meaningful things every single
one of us can do to help.
Speaker 2 (39:03):
Yeah, go into the world. Do not let the violence
done in our name be who we are.
Speaker 1 (39:12):
Yeah, sure, people get better than this. I guess it
could happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2 (39:22):
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
coolzonemedia dot com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever.
Speaker 1 (39:29):
You listen to podcasts.
Speaker 2 (39:31):
You can find sources for It Could Happen here, updated
monthly at coolzonemedia dot com slash sources.
Speaker 1 (39:36):
Thanks for listening.
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James Stout
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