Mutual Aid Work on the Border

James talks to two members of the Borderlands Relief Collective about their work dropping water on the border and how Border Patrol destroyed lifesaving humanitarian aid supplies.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hello, podcast fans, it's just me today, It's just James,
and we're doing another episode about the border. I'm joined
today by Emmett and David from the Borderlands Relief Collective.
We're going to talk a little bit about people doing
mutual aid on the border, the situation on the border
and for those of you who live a long way

(00:25):
away from it, and a sort of pretty shitty thing
that Border patrol did to some supplies which were left
out on the border earlier this month. So yeah, I
met and David. If you'd like to sort of introduce
yourself and expend a little bit about the roles you play,
that would be great either. I'm happy to be here.
My name's Emmett. I am putting my time between being

(00:46):
a geochemist descriptionsitition of oceanography, a PhD student, and trying
to reconcile what it means to be living in this
border lands and being a private community that is partially
criminalized depending on who you were, where you come from,
and also what it means for you to seek safety
and freedom in your life. So I work in several

(01:09):
organizing spaces trying to shut down different detention centers as
well as supporting folks just mckends meet in San Diego
and also supporting people keeping their lives and staying alive

(01:29):
in this extreme border borderlands that we live on. Hey,
my name's David. My job I work as a surgeon.
I've been living in San Diego for about ten years
and I've been doing humanitarian volunteer work in the borderlands,

(01:53):
which we call doing water drops, for something like six years.
Got started with Border Angels and also did volunteer work
with Border Kindness highly recommend that organization, and more recently

(02:18):
have been doing water drops in a mountainous area between
San Diego and TJ with friends and we just recently
found a name for our group and it's Borderlands Relief Collective. Great. Yeah,

(02:39):
And I think maybe I think if people think of
San Diego, they think of like the zoo and maybe
SeaWorld and at the beach, you know that kind of shit. So, like,
can you explain what it's like. I've spent a lot
of time in the area where you guys do water drops.
Can you explain what it's like and why it's such
a difficult area to par through for people who are

(03:01):
trying to move north. Well, yeah, San Diego. As you said,
people think of the beach, but actually I think someone
told me that San Diego County has some of the
most diverse kind of ecosystems of any county in the
so called USA. We have high mountains where it snows

(03:25):
when it gets cold out. We have low deserts where
it routinely exceeds one hundred degrees fahrenheit in the summertime,
I mean one hundred twenty degrees fahrenheit in the summertime.
And as far as the geography of migration, it really

(03:48):
goes back to you know, it's a direct consequence of
federal border policy. I think many people will be familiar
with the term prevention through deterrence, which is sometimes elaborated
as prevention of migration through environmental deterrence, and the whole

(04:11):
concept is going way back to Clinton administration. The areas
of the border near cities like San Diego were increasingly militarized,
with high border fans, intense patrol by armed officers, and
increasingly recently electronic surveillance, with the idea of relying on

(04:38):
the extremely harsh terrain of the deserts and mountains to
form a kind of a natural depense. But they quickly
found out within you know, basically the first year or
so of that federal policy, that numbers of people crossing
the border did not decrease. However, of our deaths skyrocketed.

(05:03):
And that's something we understood, you know, people in Washington,
DC understood many many years ago. But the policy persists.
So the bottom line is people who are crossing the
border from Mexico to the USA often resort to crossing

(05:24):
in the most remote and dangerous areas of the border.
So the area that we're going to be talking about,
this mountainous region between San Diego and Tijuana. Literally folks
are going up and over the tallest mountain in the area,

(05:45):
literally up and over the mountain, extremely arduous walk. When
we do these water drops, we're well rested. We hike
all day, and we come home exhausted, and we look
at our our Gaya apps and find that we've only

(06:06):
hiked a very small portion of the actual total journey.
And we're always humbled by just the resilience and determination
of people who do this crossing. Yeah, it's that's another
thing I think people don't realize is that the amount
of like physical just difficulty that people have to enjoy

(06:28):
coming here is immense. And of course the reason that
people are willing to take those risks because that it's
not like they come from a place of safety, right,
And it's not it's not it's not that they you know,
the reason they're willing to take risks is because it's
a risk. Being where they were is a risk. I
think a lot of people will maybe have become more
engaged with Board of policy during the Trump here is
certainly like the like legacy media narrative focused on the

(06:53):
boarder very briefly, like maybe it peaked around the mid
terms in twenty eighteen, I think, and then people have
lost a lot of interests insane. So for those of
us who live on the boarder, it's remarkable how little
has changed. I think maybe it's not particularly remarkable because
I don't think we're really effected it too, But like,
can you explain what if anything has changed since twenty

(07:16):
twenty one and how things have sort of remained the
same in many ways? Yeah, I think it's a really
good question, and it brings up a lot of the
political nature or kind of skewed identity based conversations that
exist in migration, and obviously there's a lot of rhetoric

(07:41):
that is quite hyperbolic around the so called morality of
people who are migrants in general, and then kind of
categorizing certain people as worthy or not worthy of entrance
in to the so called nation, and kind of further

(08:04):
and more, what does it mean for people to believe
any of those narratives and then support them at a
federal political level. And as you're saying, during Trump era,
there was a lot of conversation in response to very
very hateful rhetoric from Trump and administration targeted at certain people,

(08:25):
but not from a deep place of really understanding or
characterizing the conversation in general or speaking by the fact
that in San Diego or in California at large, more
than half of the farm workers who kind of create
this city that we are or the state that we are,
and support the very backbone of the fact that we're

(08:47):
all still having our hearts beat our migrants, and that
our economy at large, as well as just the fabric
of our nation is based on migrants and immigration. So
for us to can choose what that looks like is
not only missing the majority of the point, but is
using as a talking piece is really as a talking
piece for certain identities to feel vindicated to spend money

(09:11):
and support certain for profit corporations like for example, of course, Civic,
one of the largest prison corporations d prison corporations in
the in the country, got one point nine billion dollars
the previous year from the federal government. And therefore, like
you think about the connection between these enterprises and stories

(09:32):
about immigration are quite linked. So I don't have all
the statistics in front of me about how the sepific
number of crossings has changed or the population has changed,
but on the whole, nothing has really changed as far
as the need goes. So thinking about four years ago,
what were the specific crises that were occurring that we're

(09:55):
causing people to seek seek safety United States? Maybe some
specific decision of change and others have arisen. And as
more and more people are come to United States leaning
from climate related disasters as well as ongoing stability, it's
not as if the US has engaged in any real

(10:16):
project to support people to begin with or understand the
underlying causes. So from that standpoint, nothing meaningfully has happened
from either administration to really understand or create policices that
would support anyone seeking safety or from making decisions that
are quote unquote aligned with US best interests. It's never

(10:39):
been a part of the conversation. It's more to basically
capitalize off of people in their suffering. Whether will that
be to the you know, to be a storyline that
US is helping people or is a savior of others,
or is trying to crack down on armed bandits or

(11:01):
or criminals who are crossing crossing this borderland. I think
it is worth like that's the quote civic example is
really interesting because Biden made a big thing of like
talking about shutting down like quote unquote private prisons, but
it's still very much like funding the same things when
they're doth people who are citizens of this country or Yeah,

(11:23):
and for those of those who aren't fully versed in
kind of the basic relationship between private prisons and immigration UM.
There are is a relationship that between customs and Border
Protection UM and different prison corporations to basically UM. But

(11:44):
people who are apprehended who are not initially deported under
Title forty two in in the tension while their cases
are ongoing and investigated UM or asylum or a refugee status.
And so these prisons make a profit and can basically

(12:05):
demand a certain money amount of money from the government
per person who is within one of their facilities. And
there's also a minimum that they will continually get money
from the government regardless of whether the beds are filled,
but they have an incentive to keep beds filled. So
there is an economic relationship between these corporations and a

(12:26):
government to basically put more people in detention. So that's
a huge underpinning of this of this whole conversation is
who is getting money and how does it kind of
further the certain aims of corporations but also agencies that
basically get a larger amount of federal funding through apprehension
of people. Right, Yeah, like Biden has funded DHS more

(12:49):
than Trump did, and like DHS's budget does Department of
homedown security, of which Customs and Border Protection is a part.
A border patrol is a part of customs and Border protection.
It's pyramid of yeah, people putting people in prison, and
it's also worth like reinforcing I think for people that
like the people have done nothing wrong at the point

(13:09):
in which they are incarcerated, right, Like they have obeyed
all relevant laws and are yet in conditions which we've
decided not befitting prisoners in the United States, but are
okay for these people. Not that anyone should be incarcerated,
but yeah, there's still a two tier system. So can
you explain a little bit about your effort to do

(13:33):
mutual aid and to like do a little bit of
kindness on the border and make things a little bit
better out there for people who are coming north. Yeah,
what we do again just is in collaboration with other
organizations that have been around a long time, a lot

(13:53):
longer than we have a border Angels Order Kindness in California,
nor our Deaths in Arizona, many other organizations, and it really,
you know, boils down to we don't want people to
die on you know, the trails crossing through the borderlines,

(14:14):
and that actually informs where we drop Unfortunately, you know,
all of our recent new routes that we supply, they're
directly because we know that people have died in those
locations or required rescue. We work in very close relationship

(14:41):
with other volunteer organizations that focus on search and rescue
and search and recovery. Search and recovery meaning recovering human
remains of people who have died. So there's a number
about standing organizations that operate in California, Arizona, Texas. These

(15:02):
include Eagles of the Desert, Armadillo's many other organizations. Most
of these are actually made up of volunteers who are
first generation immigrants, mostly from Mexico. And so when people
die or require rescue, we do find out for from

(15:25):
our our friends and comrades in these uh SAR organizations
and we build um water drop routes directly around that knowledge.
So yeah, it really boils down to, yeah, we don't
want more people to die making making this journey, and

(15:47):
so as far as what kind of supplies we leave,
it's what we think may make a difference. We leave
bottles of water, energy drinks like Electrolyte, Gatorade and so on,
hands of food with poptops, all kinds of cans of
fruit beans, you know, chili, whatever, you know, whatever we

(16:08):
think people may need. Of course, we tailor it based
on the time of year. In the mountains, in the
winter gets freezing cold, lots and lots of rain. So
we've been leaving waterproof ponchos, warm clothing and the summer.
Of course, it gets scorching hot in the desert. People
die of hyperthermia. They literally cooked to death. That's where

(16:32):
electrolytes come in. Handy sun hats, bandanas, baseball hats, first
aid gets. We leave kits full of medical supplies, and
more recently, you know, just observing the kind of used
items that we find on the trail. Kids stuff, diapers, pacifiers,

(16:59):
you know, we leave you know, tampons, um, you know
that kind of stuff, um, containers of infant formula. So
it's a it's a it's kind of an iterative process.
M just leaving what we think people need. And yeah,
that's that's kind of what we do. And just so
folks are super clear, this is all like an initiative

(17:22):
among you and your comrades, right, right, then you're not
supported by any like government entity. That's the government entity
is kind of doing quite the opposite of what you're doing. Yeah, correct,
We are all volunteers in the sense that nobody is paid.
We don't have any formal affiliations with any other NGOs,
much less governmental organizations. Right, So maybe people are wondering

(17:47):
they might have been familiar with the court case in
Arizona or they might not be like, if what you're
doing is considered to be like legal humanitarian aid or not,
are you comfortable talking about that? Yeah? So I think
that's that's definitely a gray area that we find ourselves
really occupying. Um And I think that's a bit of

(18:09):
this kind of propaganda machine, is what does it mean
to engage with somebody who is seeking safety and fleeing
for their lives. There's a certain place where that's how
died to be a wonderful thing if you're Catholic charities
and are providing beds um And for example, I wanted
to make that distinction between several kind of charity organizations

(18:33):
who do receive federal money to be engaged in this
conversation versus grassroots mutual aid networks and communities who are
doing this because it feels like it's part of their
communities mission, their families mission, or it means it's part
of them being true to themselves and true to what
feels just in this in this very confusing world. So

(18:56):
what we're doing is very explicitly leaving humanitarian aids supplies
that are potentially life saving in areas where we know
people need them. We are not having any specific or
hands on or person to person engagement with with anybody,
so they're in in Arizona. Nomamrtes became part of a

(19:19):
conversation about providing critical medical support, and that was a
court case that really test the limits of what does
it mean to be in this gray area and what
was really important from the nuances in that conversation where
what constitutes aiding and a betting or so called aiding

(19:39):
and abetting of legal immigration, which is basically again a
very large gray area between are you are you enticing
people to cross? Are you being paid as a smuggler
to cross? Are you doing something which is encouraging people
to cross? None of which was activity that was engaged

(20:00):
with the most MUDs or us, but in their case
specifically providing medical aid across the boundary, and they were
rated their their their camp and their impromptu field tents
where they were providing life saving medical support where it
was rated and the kind of the finer points of

(20:22):
that were that the outset being that the First Amendment
protects humans in their religious freedom to practice whatever it
be that furthers their religious beliefs in a faith and
a very large point of their work was their affiliation
and dedication to preserving human life, which, as we can

(20:45):
imagine for many folks listening to this or in general,
that is very core to their belief system. And so
there are very clear protections in the First Amendment of
preserve people's right to practice their religion. So that was
a case that that kind of established a lot of

(21:06):
what we're working under is these basic protections to be
humanitarian aid workers, um, following basic belief systems. What we're
doing specifically is leaving supplies. So leaving supplies, the most
egregious thing you can you can basically say about that
is that we're littering or that we're other abandoning property.

(21:31):
And so again no mass markets. And in this in
this larger conversation, UH was established in the court that
leaving humanitarian aid supplies that we're with the intent of
saving lives is not litter. So that was also a
very big point, which is saying, no, we are not
just kind of going walking down the street and throwing
out your bottle the back of your truck. This is

(21:53):
specifically with the intent of saving lives. And the third
place is that we are abandoning something in this in
this area that would be constituted abandoned property. And as
we'll speak about Meybere in the future, our supplies are
consumed quite rapidly, and there is a statute in this

(22:14):
in this state of it is it a ban of
property has to be it has to be left for
more than ten days to be considered a band of property.
So even if we are leaving things in these regions,
it is not considered a ban of property. It's been
less than ten days. So basically I guess just to
to say that nothing we're doing is illegal from any standpoint.

(22:34):
And also the case in Arizona kind of helped make
a distinguishing mixing distinctions between whether our activity is is
also frowned upon in public land, which it is not,
because it is constituting humanitarian aid in a place that
it is desperately needed. Right. And I think if folks

(22:55):
go out to like I mean most people aren't going
out to like Value of the Moon or what have you,
but like, if you want to look for abandoned stuff,
that it's not hard to find, and it's not you
guys doing that like shooting barrels or whatever that like
some almost shooting the barrel last time I was let's

(23:22):
talk about how quickly those supplies are consumed, because I
think again that will be like news to some people, right,
like you guys are out there every week and like
how much stuff are dropping and how quick news it go. Yeah,
to tell you the truth, we're still we're still finding
out ourselves because every time we think we know the answer,
we're surprised by how fast it's being consumed. The bottom

(23:46):
line is it's being consumed as fast as we can
leave this supply. So Emma and I and many other
of the members of our organization, Borderland's Relief Collective, we
also are active in border kindness and in the past
with Border Angels, and so we're used to a certain

(24:08):
rhythm of doing a water drop, circling back usually a
month later, and we're happy if maybe half of the
supplies have been consumed, that's a good day. When we
started doing water drops in this mountainous region, first of all,
we were just blown away by the evidence of heavy

(24:29):
foot travel. I mean, these are even though you'll never
find a hiker, a recreational hiker on these trails, they
look like like established trails. They're worn in trails, and
when we started doing these water drops, there's there's just
a river of discarded water bottles, clothing, food wrappers, and

(24:53):
just things that we have never seen before, that amount
of human activity, literally on the top of a mountain
where you never would think why would someone cross over
a top of a mountain to get from point eight
to point B. So, like I said, we're still learning
what the proper interval is. Some of these locations that

(25:15):
we drop, we come back a week later and they're
pretty much one hundred percent consumed. So yeah, we really
it's become apparent. We've been having a lot of discussions
that we're very eager in trying to expand our number
of volunteers because the more we do this in this

(25:37):
mountainous region, the more we learn how pressing the need is.
So we're having a hard time just supplying essentially one
path that goes up and over the mountain, and we
know that this is just one of many paths that
are used by people in this region. And so really

(26:02):
we're finding one hundred percent consumption every week or two
at most of our drop spots. Yeah, so if people
did want to, we could just get that in here
now if people did want to help you and they're
in the region, it would they be able to deserve
where they could reach out? Yeah? Sure, we just like
I said, we just came up with our name after

(26:24):
a fun communal decision making process, and we just a
couple of days ago did our first post on social media.
So if anybody's on Instagram, just search for Borderland's Relief
Collective and click on you know, the email and send
us a DM. Get in touch if you're anywhere near

(26:47):
the San Diego we'd love to talk to you and
definitely would like to expand the number of volunteers. So
you spoke a little bit about like we spoke about
this Arizona case right where people got rated. I know
you guys have also had some less than stellar interactions
with CBP Border Patrol specifically, and as I get really

(27:11):
mad if I call it customs, the Border patrols customer
Border Protection. So you guys had a thing, was it
last month now in March? And do you want to
explain a little bit about what what happened in the instant?
First of all, Yeah, So as part of our so
I think, as we already talked about, we go out
every weekend. And that's again we're all busy lives. David

(27:35):
is literally a surgeon, and um, we're basically trying to
find a time that we can get people together to
go out there. So we picked the weekends, and we
have a changing number of people who are able to
be out there with us. So as one of our
normal water drop weekends, a route that starts basically at

(27:56):
a road that has been along the ridge of Thaie Mountain.
We start hiking down on the south side towards towards
the towards the border. Um and I've established multiple routes
along that path, and this one particularly is so slow going.
Um you only go a couple of miles and it

(28:18):
takes you most of your Saturday because of how steep
it is, the how thick though the brush is, UM
and also kind of as they was saying earlier, even
in the middle of day day daytime, with hiking boots,
it's really treacherous. And we've we've spent a lot of
time making sure that we're safe in the process of

(28:40):
of going there ourselves. So as we we left our
first drop and then a second and went down to
our final drop and turned back and started going back
up the mountain and we came to our second drop site,
and as we arrived, we found um something that was

(29:00):
kind of really hard to process at first for us,
which was that every single item that we had purposefully
put inside of a crate and we had counted and
we had a left as we do, was scattered and
littered across the ground. We had left more than twenty

(29:24):
liters of water, and every single bottle of water was
opened and dumped out and thrown indiscriminately around the site.
We had left again something like twenty hands of food beans, tuna,
condensed milk, fruit, and every single can had been opened

(29:49):
and had been its content thrown around the area. We
had left bags of socks and hats, and those were
covered in beans and fruit and again thrown into bushes
like not be used. We had handwarmers because it's very
cold and handwarmers are essential to kind of keep mobility,

(30:14):
and every single one was diligently opened, as if someone
had really enjoyed taking time opening it and thrusting into
the dirt. And that was something that was like so
painful and just confusing, very demoralizing, as you can imagine
after just hiking that far, but more so it's felt

(30:35):
so deliberate and hurtful, and initially we're, of course wondering
what had happened. We've done this for several years, many years,
and never had we seen something like this before. And
it became very apparent that someone had deliberately destroyed our
our crate, even the create itself. This milk carton was

(30:57):
smashed in half. The bottom of it was torn out,
and that is something that's very hard to achieve. Milk
cartons are not very light, thin plastic. This was someone
had had actively put a lot of force into smashing
a milk cart so that nothing was left behind we
on the way down. One thing that I didn't say

(31:19):
a second ago was that we had seen an agent
on the trail, which was unique for us because normally
they're just in their cars with binoculars looking from the road.
So we had seen someone near the trail but lost
track of them earlier, and we had kind of put
it out of our minds. So after this happened, we
had kind of put two and two together and were

(31:41):
wondering if this agent had followed us down the trail
to this site. And then while we had left stayed
behind and destroyed the goods. It seemed like the beans
were still drying and the fruit was still drying in
the sunlight, so it hadn't have been too too far
from the time that we had dropped initially. UM. And
this is at a moment that there was five of

(32:03):
us and trying to figure out what it meant for
us to deal with this. Several two of us, including
myself UM, raced ahead to try to interact with whoever
has up the trail, knowing that they couldn't have been
too far away, not with any specific plan other than
just ask them what what did they do and why

(32:23):
did they do that? Just in the sense of outrage
that this sense of just like moral corruption that someone
would destroy this in a time that the CBP as
well as we know that people are losing our lives
because of lack of access to these very goods that
were destroyed. Yeah, so we raced race back as fast

(32:45):
as we could. It was about a forty five minute
hike back up, and we were really breathless and almost
at the kind of point of feeling sick to our
stomach because we were both outraged and also hikes faster
than we should have. Um, And just as we've gotten
back to our car, is kind of giving up hope
that we'd interact with them. We saw two agents in
their cars kind of pull away, and we flagged them

(33:06):
down and got in front of them and kind of
motion for them to come back so we could speak
to them. And I'm not saying we're the most savvy people,
but we basically ramped them and said, did you destroy
these are our supplies, to which they acknowledged that they did.
And only afterwards were we able to get our wits

(33:26):
together to start recording them. And as both here in
the audio, they acknowledged the fact that they knew where
our site was, and they acknowledge the fact that they
regularly destroy goods. And for us, the entire interaction was
just so sickening, um first of it. After a while
there was five of them with their guns and there

(33:46):
they're large guns out. As well as their basic intention
to use intimidation, their sheer numbers, as well as this
kind of reverse authority they have as the sole kind
of agents in charge of this public land, this is
wilderness and BLM land, which they have no authority over us,

(34:08):
yet use this this sense of just power and ability
to cause harm, to minimize anybody else being able to
advocate for themselves. So we tried to stop them from
from doing that, and it kept asking them did you
destroy our water? And why did you do that? And
is that within your job description? Because there was something
very clear to them to us that they didn't even

(34:29):
know what their legality was. They kept trying to deflect
it the conversations saying, oh, migrants are leaving trash all
the time, and referring to people as illegal aliens with
this kind of larger rhetoric, as saying that like they're
they're trashing the mountain side, like it's it's their fault.
And as we repeatedly asked them, did you destroy our water,

(34:50):
and they repeatedly said, well have you seen have you
seen what they do and then kind of also saying well, yeah,
we try to clean things up, we try to pick
them up, but but but that specific site was too far,
so we just left it. We just destroyed it and
left it. Which as on the on the piggybacking on
their conversation about this trash and that we're littering, and

(35:12):
they're accusing us of aiding and abetting illegal immigration. They
basically have nothing left to say about what their actions
meant and without within their purview their mandate of their jobs.
And it was an act you could tell they were
uncomfortable with because they were not within their job description.
And we asked for their supervisor. They said they're going

(35:33):
on the phone supervisor. Upriser never materialized, and we can
only assume that they had a conversation with somebody in
a superior saying back down, what you're doing is is
not correct and don't engage further. And since then we've
had a conversation with their superiors and with with CVP

(35:54):
offices to the effect of saying that this was not
within their job description and this they did not condone
this act of it, so um kind of looking into
that further. They were very much acting as individuals, but
individuals within a culture of abuse and within a culture
of of sabotaging humans access to life saving supplies. And

(36:16):
that was nothing new to them, that they did nothing.
They had never encountered somebody trying to oppose them for
doing that. It is back to let me ask you,

(36:42):
let me ask you, SPO that was that yours? Was
that yours? Too, is your property exactly and you and
you slash I'm wondering why you did that property? You
did not we were going on a fight in your

(37:05):
duck description to slash water and open cans and damn
this area, tobend the property and it's a long hig
Would I do that get you? Oh? I'm like curious.
I'm just so paid for you to do. You have
and patrols in twenty five and look for property property

(37:33):
illegal and what do you do with it? What you
do with it? We destroy, We try to clean it up.
That's cleaning it up. That's one of the things that
was not cleaning it up or try to clean it up.
That was too far for us. So we decided to
just trash the whole area. Like when when they funded

(37:54):
and equipped and transported and armed by the state, and
like's that's not the same as in individuals, just because
we've seen that in Arizona, right, like people who are
militias or what have you going out and sabotaging life
saving supplies as well. But it's still a little different
when you know, we have to pay taxes for them
to go destroy water cashes. And these are people who

(38:15):
regularly as we've seen on multiple occasions use helicopters to
try to blush people out of under a tree that
they fly within thirty feet of the ground and use
the force of the rotors to force people out and
upper hillside to waiting cars. So their use of money

(38:35):
and their use of force is definitely central to the tactics. Yeah, yeah,
or he's helicopters to fied two guests into Mexico and
it did a few years ago. But yeah, it's certainly,
and that intimidation is like if I think people again
who don't live here might not be familiar with it.
Like I've been out in down by the border with
KUMIAI people doing religious ceremony and had bought at guys

(38:58):
dressed like you know, like navy seals hanging out with
are fifteens and plate carriers. Well, people like burn stage
and pray. It's yeah, I mean the militarization. If you
somehow can't conceive the care of people dying in the desert,
the militarization of the border still affects everyone here and
it makes our lives left safe. There's a crime crime

(39:21):
thinks logan that I always like to like use in
these things, which is the border doesn't protect you, it
controls you, which I think it's kind of apt for this.
So now that they've trashed your supplies, right and you
found out they weren't supposed to, I'm interested like, how
going forward, does that mean that you can't use that
you can't terrupt stuff there anymore because you're worried about

(39:43):
it happening again, or because you're worried about them hanging
out there to intersect people who are using your like
supply cash. On the contrary, we've learned from the examples
of other people who have been doing this work. Emma
had already mentioned no mas mertes, no more debts in Arizona,

(40:06):
Doctor Scott Warren. We've learned so much from their example
where you know, they were hauled into federal court and
one and so we've learned from from their examples of
how to how to do this as well as within
here in California. The history of Border Angels so back

(40:28):
a few years ago, Border Patrol was slashing gallons of
water in the deserts of eastern San Diego County as
well as Imperial County. On one particular day, the Border
Angels volunteers found about fifty gallons of water slashed and
the most violent way, and they knew it was Border Patrol.

(40:51):
And so the way Border Angels responded was number One,
to change their actics to start dropping supplies deeper in
the backcountry where the Border Patrol agents. Uh you know,
it's rare to find a BP agent that's motivated enough

(41:14):
to really hike hike for too far away from their
air conditioned vehicles in the summertime. So number one, they
were going farther away from the roads and highways to
the actual routes that people are walking. Number Two, they
punched back hard, h in in public using social media

(41:38):
back then it was Facebook. You know this is going
to be you know, right when Instagram was getting popular,
but just you know, getting the word out. And Border
Angels is an organization that's been around for decades. They
have a big following. The words spread and just like
many bullies, um, you know, they kind of back down
if you get in their face, uh sometimes so, so

(42:02):
that was our experience with this practice of Border Patrol
slashing gallons in the desert with Border Angels. So when
this um this crime occurred on March eighteenth in the mountains.
We knew we could not back down, so we went
back a few days later. That's when, as Emmett mentioned,

(42:23):
we witnessed Border patrol helicopter for about an hour flying about.
You know, it seemed like, you know, ten fifteen feet
off the ground, uh, really really low, using the the
rotor wash to flush a flush human beings out of
the brush as if they were hunting animals. Um. And
then we were back, you know, the next seven days later,

(42:46):
after they destroyed the supplies, we went back with a
good group number one to clean up this, uh, this
shameful mess these these two Border patrol goons left. We
cleaned up all of all of that stuff, and we
probably what three times the amount of original supplies and
on our milk rates. We actually left laminated signs that

(43:10):
addressed one by one all of the accusations that these
Border Patrol agents tried to make against us. So the
signs say, do not destroy, do not remove. This is
not garbage, We are not littering, and this is not

(43:31):
abandoned property. This is these are humanitarian aid supplies protected
by federal case law, the nineteen ninety four Protection of
Religious Freedom Act, and so on and so forth, So
we put those signs just prominently on the milk rates,

(43:54):
you know, just to send a message that no, we're
not going to back down. We are going to leave supplies. Uh.
It is within our rights and it is in support
of human rights to do this. So of course we
have to be strategic about this. I mean there is
the danger, you know, if we're always going back to
the same place. You know, we're kind of you know,

(44:14):
blowing up the spot as it were. You know, we're
bringing heat to a route that's that's needed by people
making a crossing, and so we are we are mindful
of that, you know, we don't we try to go
to different places on different weekends and not trying to
bring too much attention to these paths. Yeah, yeah, that

(44:37):
makes a lot of sense. And I wonder that like
if people are I was just thinking for people to
visualize the area, if there are a place I could
look up on like Google ass, so they could see
like where this kind of stuff is happening. If you comfortable,
you don't have to give like a exact location obviously.
But yeah, actually, I mean, speaking of Google Earth, you

(44:58):
mentioned a valley of the moon. I mean Google Earth
is impressive enough. Anybody can just use Google Earth and
zoom in all the way and just follow along the
border and you'll find thousands of footpaths. So yeah, it
doesn't take yeah, like a much detective work to actually

(45:18):
visually see these footpaths. But yeah, it's real steep terrain.
As Emmett mentioned, the last couple times we've gone back
to this spot where the two agents destroyed the supplies,
Emmett has actually brought a mountain climbing rope just to
make certain sections easier where we're kind of repelling down

(45:39):
this dry waterfalls. So really really steep, very loose trails,
very easy to break an ankle, and it just in
that context, it really it really hits you. We see
so many shoes and boots along the path and just

(46:00):
have to kind of just pause and think, well, this
person lost their shoe, if the if they're the soul
of their boot melted off, and they're hours away from
the nearest road, what does it mean? How did they
complete the journey? Did they complete their journey? Um, So yeah,

(46:23):
a little bit hard to describe, but I guess any yeah,
anybody who's I guess kind of familiar with with the
southern California, steep, steep mountains, loose terrain, kind of get
the picture. Yeah, yeah, yeah, they kind of got value
the main it's plenty of pictures of the very intimidating
board offense that they have, like three foot and rusty.

(46:56):
Is there anything else that you guys wanted to address
that you feel like maybe people don't the people should
know about the board that they don't about the work
you do that maybe is misunderstood. Yeah, I guess I
want to maybe bring up some of what it I
think is hard to convey to people who aren't there

(47:21):
and I aren't m connected to a community who is
suffering because of this, or who aren't maybe thinking along
the lines of, um, what it means to be a
human in this space and actually be risking your life

(47:41):
and coming up against helicopters and a federally backed militia
who is actively seeking to harm you. None of us
in our group are claiming any anything more than just witnessing, um,
what it means to be out there. But I guess

(48:04):
what's been true for me and in kind of my
conversations with my community as over the last couple of years,
is trying to share this there is there is so
much pain that is being inflicted upon this landscape, and
there is so much harm that is actively supported by

(48:25):
our nation while people are in some of the most
intimate and painful moments of their lives. Leaving your home,
whether it be in another continent where you need to
take a flight over to make this crossing, or whether
it be piking through Central America starting in South America

(48:49):
for months before reaching this moment, or leaving your your
your family, in your in your community closer to the
to the to the border. These are moments that anyone
who is alive could feel the pain of and the
misery of having to abandon all that you know, UM

(49:10):
and put yourself at the mercy of the desert and
cbps overly aggressive and and and and harmful tactics. UM.
So beyond all of the cases and the politics, I
just I, oftentimes, as we're walking, just try to put
myself in the position of someone who is who is

(49:33):
making these decisions. And as Dave was saying, we're coming
across people's clothing, food, underwear, places they've slept, and the
amount of UM, the poignancy of human desire to be safe,
to to come to a place where they feel like
their lives can be um protected or that that choice

(49:58):
is worthwhile. Is something that so lost in the numbers,
in the amount of people who die or what happens
after it, And so for us, I think making it
not about your political beliefs or the asylum process, but
just the actual choices people are are having to make

(50:18):
very human decisions. That is something that is kind of
haunts us. And the feeling that all we can do
is leave water in a place that it might make
the difference between someone in that position surviving or not.
And furthermore, just living in a community where you know,

(50:40):
from the top of the mountain we can see downtown
San Diego and all of the luxury of this military town,
all of the universities, and all of this opportunity that
we enjoy, and just a couple of miles away, the
lack of access to just water, feeling how similar humans
are to each other in our basic needs and how

(51:02):
that's being taken from people is really is really harmful.
And particularly as you were saying, these are areas held
sacred by the Kumiai people and have been have been
places of migration for at least ten thousand years. These
are places that were difficult to travel and that people
did for similar reasons to survive, to be safe. And

(51:24):
there is a legacy of oyas of of clay pots
buried in the sand for travelers that has been ongoing
for thousands of years. And for our current administration and
government to create this wall in this place of so
much pain is just testament to just the insanity of

(51:48):
our desire to protect border against something else, protecting the
borders against something that we feel is harmful to us. Meanwhile,
this migration is fundamentally how we survive and how we
respond to these moments of change in humanity. And criminalizing
that and cluding hearts of that is just by back.
I'll let you collect your thoughts and you can come

(52:10):
back and make that statement, because I think you do
it very eloquently. But I want to jump on there
and just kind of echo and elaborate on what you said. Yeah,
we find lots and lots of physical items, but we
also meet people on the trails, and that's a new thing.
You know, I've been doing these water drops for some
time now. But you know, when you say what has

(52:33):
changed under Biden, not much there's more people crossing the
border than ever, there are more people dying than ever.
As far as as a volunteer who spends most weekends
out in the borderlines, the only thing I notice is
they stopped building Trump's thirty foot high fence and they

(52:55):
started pouring all that money into electronic surveillance, where every
single we see more towers popping up all along the
border with all kinds of very very fancy, military grade
surveillance equipment, and as well as aerial surveillance, lots of airplanes, helicopters.

(53:15):
I'm not sure if they're using drones, but we certainly
there's a lot of aerial surveillance. But what we see
as far as the human dimension is In the old days,
you know, we see footprints, We see shoe covers, you know,
which people wear on their feet to hide their footprints
from border patrol. We see the empty water bottles and

(53:38):
discarded clothing. But now we're encountering people pretty much every
time we do a water drop because the number of
people crossing is so high. People are crossing in the daytime,
whereas in the past usually they would cross at night.
So why don't you say emmet like pretty much. It's
pretty much every time we go out, at least one

(54:01):
of our volunteers, if not the whole group sees or
even interacts with a migrant on the paths. And you know,
and of course we respect, we respect their autonomy, their privacy.
We don't engage with them if they don't want to
engage with us. But the thing that I'll never forget

(54:26):
is about a month ago, we were out in this
exact same area, supplying the same path, and it was
a rainy day, cold, we were wearing our gortex insulated clothing.
We'd done a water drop. While we were doing the
water drop, we can see on the next mountain peak,

(54:47):
Border Patrol helicopter landing to pick up somebody who required rescue.
And this is a case that we had been getting
updates all night with Armadillos, one of the search groups.
And thankfully this this person was found alive and Border
Patrol was so called rescuing him another word for arresting him.

(55:13):
And after we witnessed that, we hiked back to our
vehicles and just as we were getting to the trailhead
the exact same location where on March eighteenth, Emmet and
other volunteers had this interaction with the two border patrol
agents who destroyed the humanitarian aid supplies the exact same

(55:34):
parking spot. We we pop out and start walking toward
our vehicles, and it starts snowing, and two individuals come
out of the mist and you know, approach us and
start talking to us in Spanish and talking to these
two people, these two men, one one young, one middle aged.

(55:58):
In the course of the conversation and you know, sorry,
I kind of choke up when I talk about this stuff.
Yeah it's okay, but yeah, so this is uh, the
younger of the two, I was sixteen years old and
the older dude was his father. We encountered them as

(56:18):
it was snowing, so of course, first thing we did
is got them in our vehicles. One of our volunteers,
Avid Hiker, had his backpacking stove with him and cooked
up some tea and some um, you know, gave them
food and and you know, let them warm up. We
gave them literally the you know, gortex winter coat software

(56:40):
backs to warm up. And once the you know, the
dad was shivering violently, really really showing signs of clinical
hypothermia and talking to the younger man who was in
better physical shape. He was explaining that the two of
them were hiking through the mountain because his mother was

(57:03):
already living in the USA. They were trying to reunite
with her, and they had been in this mountainous region
for the past two days. And looking at them, they're
wearing hoodies, you know, like uh, you know, sweatshirts, sweatpants
and sneakers in this and anybody who lives down here

(57:26):
in southern California, you know, we've had a very unusual winter,
lots and lots of rain. So it had been raining
heavily over the past two days and nighttime temperatures in
the thirties. And these two men had been out there
for two days soaked to the bone. And that's why

(57:49):
they approached us, because they were in trouble and they
were asking for help. So after they warmed up, we
discussed the options. Of course, you know, we respect their autonomy. Um,
you know, they have the option to try to continue
going on their way with with supplies or if they

(58:11):
felt it was unsafe to do so, we were ready
to help them. The heartbreaking thing is, you know, they
did ask us could we let them ride in our
vehicles off the Mountain, and we had to explain that,
you know, we were we were pretty much guaranteed to
encounter border patrol agents on that road, and that really

(58:34):
it's not something that we could do because you know
that that that you know, we would we could be
arrested and charged, you know, for federal felony crimes. But
we said, look, you know, if you really feel you
can't continue, we will help you contact you know, call
nine one one. But we explained that's that's one hundred
percent going to result in border patrol coming. Because as

(58:58):
folks may know, you know, you know, in the USA
along the border, you know, emergency medical response, search and
rescue is unfortunately considered in the domain of law enforcement.
So if you are a US citizen, or if you
are someone from another country that happened to come here

(59:21):
and have a visa or just be considered the good
type of foreigner, you know, you're gonna have a very
impressive response with sheriff's Sheriff's Department, search and rescue volunteer organizations.
If there's any hint that you may be a so
called undocumented person, it immediately gets sent to border patrol

(59:42):
and you have you know, boor star respond the Border
Patrol search and rescue group, which is a far cry
from the civilian search and rescue folks. So we explain
to them, if we call nine one one, you're you're
gonna be apprehended, You're going to be arrested by Border patrol.
And after thinking about it and discussing, they said, yeah,

(01:00:03):
we you know, we cannot continue were where. You know,
this is too dangerous. So we did call nine one one,
and Border Patrol did come and risk to them and
cuff them and uh yeah, yeah, did arrest them, and
uh yeah, that's not the only time that too often

(01:00:26):
we have witnessed human beings being arrested by border patrol. Yeah,
thank you for sharing that. I think I think it's
really important to give like put like faces and names
to these things rather than they could. Border patrol will
constantly talk about the million whatever encounters, right, they like

(01:00:47):
to fucking inflict the numbers. It's often the same people,
but um, it's each one of those who's a tragedy.
Right every time someone has to make a choice between
risking their life in one place or risking their life
coming to another place just so their kids can have
a crack at growing up safely, or so they can
be safe, so they can experience like one tenth of

(01:01:08):
the things that we take for granted every day. I
think that's an incredible human tragedy. And yeah, they happen
every single day, every hour of every day at our
border because of the things that our government does there.
And yeah, it's important to feel that stuff, because I
think that's it should provoke in all of us a
very strong reaction. It's pretty messed up that there's almost

(01:01:32):
universal bipartisan agreement that it's fine and okay by people
who have never been here and don't understand. One other
thing I want to add, and you may have other things.
One thing I wanted to really center is something we've
referenced several times. Kumyer You know this is this is

(01:01:54):
Kumyer Land. These are the indigenous people who have lived
here since the beginning of time time. Um, the archaeological
record goes back ten thousand years, but we know people
have been here since the beginning of human hit time.
Really and um, look at the map um this so

(01:02:15):
called border cuts in half traditional Kuma territory. Uh. When
we do these water drops out in the desert or
in the mountains. You know, these these paths that that
people are using to migrate are often or in many
many cases traditional Kumya paths, and we see evidence of

(01:02:40):
that every time we you know, do a water drop,
especially out out in the desert areas where it's a
rare water drop, that we will not find pottery shards
lying lying in the sand, or come across rock shelters,
some with pictographs. Um and uh, the you know, it's

(01:03:02):
just you know, very poignant juxtaposition of of Kumi cultural
artifacts with modern day you know, shoe covers, discarded water bottles,
and of course many people who do migrate are indigenous
them themselves. Um So yeah, personally, you know, I view

(01:03:24):
all of these border issues, uh through the lens of
history culture with with the core truth that this is
indigenous land, This is Kumii land and it has always
been and the modern so called border is a very

(01:03:46):
recent uh political um creation. You know that, you know,
mid nineteenth century, you know before that this was Mexico
and now now where we call it the US. But
this is all recent and from my perspective, unless you
are a Kumier, I really don't know how anybody could

(01:04:09):
can really get on their high horse and really speak
with any authority about who belongs here, who belongs here,
who doesn't belong here, because the rest of us, we
are all guests on Kumie land. That includes every single
border patrol agent. And that's that's something I always like
to remember. Yeah, yeah, the border is very much like

(01:04:32):
colonialism in action. It's even We're going to have some
Kumi folks, hopefully in the next couple of weeks, to
talk about the desecration of Kumi burial site by the
border wall, which is an ongoing thing. Like I haven't
stopped when they just I can't tell stories about it
like I could in twenty twenty because you know, Orange
Man Bad isn't a thing anymore. But yeah, like all

(01:04:53):
across the border, right, noticed here that the Yaki all
across the border is Native. Now the whole of the
circled United States is Native land, and it's not indigenous
folks out there trying to kill people in the desert.
Is there anythink Emmett that you wanted to add? Yeah,
I just want to say this, Well, I don't know,

(01:05:14):
we'll so we can ramble forever. So we'll stop stop
rambling a second. But Um, I guess I really want
to say, and this is coming from a very skewed
white males perspective, but I just feel like so much
of these power structures that we're engaged with, and us
as a nation trying to find our identity, it's so hypocritical,

(01:05:35):
particularly in this moment where a climate and social instability
is at it's it's it's height. I mean in my lifetime,
and I think in many of our lifetimes, we see
this as a really precarious moment. Yeah, it just feels
so so hypocritical to police people's sovereignties to find safety
and to be in safety. UM. You know, we we

(01:05:57):
have all of these ideals in our country around respecting
each other's freedoms, um. And also as we are importing
and exporting so many goods and also so much culture
and so fundamentally intertwined with, um, the lives of people
from all over the world. For us to say what

(01:06:18):
is wrong and what is right in this moment, and
for us to have this this moral authority to to
put people in in prison just for for for seeking
safety for many years, and of course I have many
people who I know and lived with who have been
in in who when we're in attention for for several
years UM for seeking that the amount of UM. Just

(01:06:42):
how twisted it is that we are comfortable spending our
lives as Americans never considering UM or never really critically
engaging UM with this active pursuit, this acting, these actions
to to to limit people's ability to survive. UM two

(01:07:03):
feels like it really needs to be centered in this conversation.
And again this is coming from my skewed perspective, but
I just UM, I really want to make the point clear.
This is not about this is not about these these
lofty ideals of what a country could be or who

(01:07:23):
and who is not justified or useful in our country,
we make these arbitrary assessments of what's justified or what's
legal and not legal, and very often those are just
continuing the legacy of exploitation of black and brown people,
the exploitation of landscapes, the exploitation of labor, the exploitation

(01:07:46):
of people whose voices are not heard and politically, economically
and continuing a conversation of in O Time Astance Center UM,
people who are attained are are cleaning their own cells
and there their their their labors actually being exploited as well.
You can't distinguish the fact that there is the history

(01:08:09):
of policing in our country, and the history of prisons
is specifically a project to continue white supremacy. Um. And
you can see particularly the differential policing of immigration currently
and the differential way that certain people from certain countries
are or are not valid to enter this country and

(01:08:32):
at the very least be treated with respect and dignity
in their process. And that's what we see CBP every
single day, violating people's basic access to human dignity, acts
to life, which are protected by all nations in writing
and very often not in practice. Yeah, yeah, I think

(01:08:54):
this will said like, it's a very basic human thing.
It doesn't need to be like shrouds and in constitutional
and thank you also said a capital flow is very
freely across across the border, but people aren't allowed to
the Yeah, it's pretty messed up. Guys. Where can people
if they want to support, if they want to just
send a kind word. Where can people find you on

(01:09:17):
the internet? Now? The best way probably is on Instagram.
We have an account Borderland's Relief Collective reach out to
us and I do want to give a shout out
to our sister organizations Border Kindness. Their water drop program,

(01:09:39):
led by Jacqueline and James, has been doing tremendous work
for years. Border Angels, which is kind of the parent
organization of water Drop volunteer groups in California. Our comrades
who do search and rescue as well as recovery of

(01:10:01):
those who have have died, including Armadillos and Aguilas Eagles
of the Desert. Very very proud to be in this
community of people who are trying to help people in
the borderliness. Yeah, yeah, thank you very much. Guys. That's
pretty great. It could happen here as a production of

(01:10:27):
cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media,
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Thanks for listening.