May 1, 2018 • 22 mins
The migrant caravan coming from Honduras finally arrived at the US border. Reporter Steve Gregory was there to interview participants and share their story with us. We also spoke to Buzzfeed's David Mack about the mysterious sex cult that has ensnared several high profile heiresses and a Hollywood actress.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's Tuesday, May one, and this is the Daily Dive.
On Sunday, a caravan of asylum seekers from Central America
arrived at the Sandy Seguar Border Crossing Facility in San Diego,
hoping to turn themselves into US Border inspectors in the
hopes of being granted asylum from their home countries where
(00:21):
they are fleeing gangs and violence. They were denied entrance
because there's no space to accommodate them the way it
extended a second day into Monday. We will speak to
reporter Steve Gregory, who was there when migrants arrived and
tell us what happened and what they can expect. Next,
we'll also talk about a fascinating story about actress Alison
Matt has been accused of being a top recruiter for
(00:42):
a sex cult, which operates under the guise of a
self help group offering executive success programs. The organization, called Nexium,
is now facing scrutiny for being a front that recruits
women into being sex slaves for the group's founder. We
will speak to BuzzFeed reporter David Matt for the latest
in this story. It's news without the noise. Let's dive into.
(01:09):
He's been a tough journey. It's been also an adventure.
The hardest adventure was being on the train. We were
a couple of days without food, but there isn't people
in solidarity that gave us food and refuge. Joining us
now is Steve Gregory. He's a news reporter covering this
story of the caravan reaching the border. Explained to us
what happened. You were there on Sunday when the caravan
(01:30):
finally arrived. What happened and what are these people arriving for? Well,
oscar This group that I met up with in Chief
Jana on Sunday morning is part of a larger group
that started this journey from Central America a little over
a month ago, and the estimate was anywhere from a
thousand people. And these were mostly family that we're coming
(01:51):
up through Mexico writing Labstia, which is the beast for
the big train that you might see on the news,
and a lot of those families were on that train
came up and about a halfway through the journey, President
Trump had come out publicly against what was happening and
said there's no way that these people are going to
get into the country. Regardless of they're trying to seek
(02:13):
asylum or not so. Somewhere along the way, because the
President Tromp's comments and a lot of pressure, the Mexican
government sort of stepped in and issue temporary visas to
anyone who wanted. So that group of a little over
a thousand people quickly shrank to about half the size
because a lot of people decided to stay in Mexico.
So that group of about five continued the journey north,
(02:37):
but more and more people started to peel off because
they either got tired, they just wanted to go back home,
they got separated from their families, and then as they
got closer and closer to the border, they started to
get more and more information about what the asylum processes
into the United States. It's not as simple as people think.
All of the folks coming up from Longois and El
(02:59):
salda Are had been told back in their home countries
how easy it is to come into this country, and
it basically is a red carpet waiting for them when
they did here, and that is not the case. I
was there Sunday morning when the group first arrived to
the border fence, to see the border fence for the
very first time in the most northwestern part of the
(03:20):
Mexican country. And it's right where that corner of Mexico
meets the most southwesterly part of the United States. So
if you can amand two corners of these two countries
meeting right a Pacific Ocean on the beach, and that's
where those people met another group of people on the U.
S side that had walked down from Los Angeles to
(03:43):
greet them, to show that their solidarity for were they
being celebrated there at the time. I saw videos and
pictures of people jumping up on the fence at one Yeah,
I was on the Mexican side, so I was in.
I was right there at Friendship Park in Tijuana, Baja,
and you could you could kind of feel the tubulation
and the showy regulation of these people kind of like
(04:06):
finally arriving to their final destination. The mood was all happy.
It was all happy, hopeful, tears of joy. People, as
you mentioned, climbing up to the top of these tall
metal killers that make up the fence, and they were,
you know, the unfrilled flags, the Honduran flag. People had flowers,
they had posters and banners. Some of them read, you know,
(04:28):
refugees are welcome, racists are not that kind of thing.
Then after that they decided they were going to walk
over to the sedestrian gate together as they unified FRONT.
What they didn't expect was when they arrived at the
pedestrian gate that the Mexican immigration officials we're going to
be meeting them there and telling them, sorry, but the
US has shut down all asylum applications until further notice.
(04:53):
Up until this point, Oscar, these folks have gotten a
green light because they the people this published in fronteta's
group out of San Diego that organizes these types of
caravans every year. They know the people to call. They
make these arrangements and they figure it all out. Everything
up until that point, they had every indication that there
was a green light for them to proceed and to
(05:15):
come into the gate right and US officials ended up
telling them that there was no room there at that area,
that they couldn't accommodate them and process them. Correct. But
they have been processing is They have been processing people
that had already come through earlier in the week from
that caravan. Some people have already gotten advice from attorneys.
(05:36):
Some there in Tijuana and others coming down to the
United States to help, but some had already gone through
the process earlier in the week And as of Monday afternoon,
eleven refugees had been arrested for illegally crossing themes of
the country. And that had happened over the weekend. And
where did they where were they crossing that they got apprehended.
(05:57):
We know that there was at least a pregnant woman
and a four year old girl. The pregnant woman apparently
was trying to come through a very dark and dangerous
canyon just eat of the sanec through a border. The
four year old in the same canyon area. Some have
been climbing over the dilapidated metal fence just on the
west side of the Sandy sed report of entry. And
(06:18):
they were all taught within a forty hour period. So
the immigration officials and customs officials have been processing those
arrests on top of the people that are already coming
to seek asylum. So this is one of the reasons,
according to the US officials, that they were unable to
accommodate that big group of people on Sunday. Where are
(06:38):
these other people in the meantime, are there shelters set
up or are they staying there. There's a group of folks,
a group of refugees have chosen to camp out and
the Mexican government has allowed it. But there's a very
large sort of plaza, if you will, a big concrete
plaza in front of the pedestrial game. This is the
busiest landport in the United States. This is the number
(07:00):
one place where people to cross on a daily basis.
So this pedestrian game is much larger and much more
modern than the old one that's further east. And so
when they got there, there's this huge concrete plaza right front,
right next to a freeway or a bridge overpast rather
and there right now, there's a lot of them that
(07:22):
are just stamping out there with ten sleeping back blankets,
anything that that the people give them. And some people
have chosen to go back and stay in church as shelters.
But the US government has said that they're going to
started trying to accommodate twenty people at a time. But
I checked in with officials organizers. They still had process
to anybody, but they said to get twenty people ready
(07:43):
to go in that that was at midnight Sunday into
Monday morning, and most of these people are coming from
Honduras and El Salvador. And the people that you got
a chance to speak to, why are they claiming asylum?
What are they running from? Well, across the board, everyone
that I interviewed through interpreters told me that they were
escaped fear in their country is the fear of reprisals
(08:04):
from gang, the fear of being attacked, the fear of
being robbed, the fear of you know, living in a
corrupt government society in their home country. That was basically
the blanket response I got from everybody I interviewed. N
interviewed um, a couple of fathers, a mom, and a
fifteen year old girl, and they all had the same answer.
(08:25):
And this is fairly new now that the active asylum
has it for as long as the United States that's
had an immigration policy. What's fairly new in the last
decade is claiming asylum because of gang activity. Steve, tell
me a little bit more about this clubless scene Fronteta's group.
I know they've been organizing this thing for years, this
big caravan, but they're counseling these people, they're helping them
(08:46):
with lawyers and whatnot so they can get a better
chance at being granted asylum. Sure, these are the types
of individuals who have gotten together and said, listen, we
want to give these immigrants and these migrant workers and
anyone who comes up from a foreign kind of a
fighting chance, if you will, to get into the country,
and they want them to do it legally. They're they're
really promoting the legal way of doing it. The criticism
(09:08):
has come over the years with groups like Pie and
Fantatics and others like it. They're starting to blur the
line between what's ethical, what's legal, and what's proper. What's
happening now is we're noticing is a lot of these
individuals are being coached how to how to respond to
the questions because they know all the questions that customs
officers are going to ask. They know the process, the procedure,
(09:29):
and the lawyers know what what's legal what's not. But
there's been a lot of criticism lately because these individuals
are being coached on what to say when they go in.
So what happens is these customs officers are sitting there
and they're getting the same answer to the question from
everyone who comes through and at one point, customs officials
are gonna say, listen, if you're giving me false information
(09:50):
or you're being coached on what to say, that in
itself is actually an infraction of the law, and you'll
be presented to the Department of Justice or the Attorney
old Office for Prosecution. And the illustration has said as
much that they are not going to tolerate any fraudulent
asylum seekers. Right. The burden obviously is on the person
seeking asylum, and these officers are trained in what they
(10:13):
call credible fear interview, and you have to establish that
you have a credible fear of your home country in
order to be granted. Just past that first level, then
you've got to go into a hearing. Then you've got
to convince the judge of the same thing. If you
sit there and talking to this customs official, you have
(10:33):
to convince that individual, because I mean, where are you
gonna bring physical proof? I mean, if you bring pictures
of maybe some scars that you you've got, or medical
records or something that shows you've been attacked or something
along those lines, that might help the cause significantly. But
when you just sit there and you just say listen,
I you know, I don't like I hear gunshots in
my neighborhood all the time. That's not going to be
(10:55):
enough to grant you and your family asylum. So these individuals,
as you mentioned before, being coached on what to say
and what to do, and I'm not there individually witnessing it,
so I don't know what they're being told that I
can tell you that the answers to some of my
question for all the same from all the different individuals.
So this process takes how long from being interviewed there
(11:16):
at the border to the appearing before a judge? How
long does this all take? The average weight right now
for an immigration hearing is two years. Wow, it's estimated
that there was a little over two hundred thousand people
waiting for their hearing. That's over, they've already got a
hearing date. And there's also an estiment that there's a
little over two hundred thousand that are in the system
waiting for their court date. So you've got almost a
(11:39):
half a million people that are already stuck in the
asylum system. What happens though, when they go in for
that process, let's say, to pass that first hurdle, they
immediately split up the family and they're going to send
the kids. Sometimes they keep the kids and the moms together,
but the men are all put into one detention center,
the women in another, and the children in another. And
(12:00):
the ones that might make it through the Sunnythedral Center
would probably be sent to one of two shelters in
the Tech Satherea. And so they've got to be centers
set up, and that's where they have to stay. Some
of them may be released on their own recognizance with
a GPS bracelet. Some will just be released and expected
to show up for their hearing, And sometimes that happens,
(12:21):
and sometimes it doesn't right, And that's one of the
major fears, is losing people in the system and never
being able to find them again. Steve Gregory, thank you
very much for joining us by pleasure. I want to
be remembered for the things that are most important to me,
(12:44):
the way that I impacted people. I want to be
remembered as a woman who was honest and true and strong.
The most satisfying and purposeful thing I've ever done watching
the women who are involved in Geness, completely transformed and
involved in a way that is so pure, really literally
seeing people's lives Past completely. Joining us now is David Mack.
(13:08):
He's a BuzzFeed news reporter. Let's talk about this self
help group multi level marketing organization known as Nexium. What
is it and why is it in the news right now?
So Nextium was started by a man and Keith Rainier
in the late nineties and it is, as you said,
it's kind of like a self help community. Within it,
there are a bunch of different programs. One of them
(13:29):
is this Executive Success Program, which a couple of people
who are involved didn't have described to me as kind
of like such your average kind of self help motivational stuff,
similar to what you might see in at Tony Robbins,
you know, kind of session, a lot of sort of
the power of the individual, things like that. But there's
also another group in there called j NES, which is
targeted at women specifically in the group, and it's about this.
(13:54):
These members who are part of this program told me
the aim of this group is to sort of preach
on the differ friends between the sexes, according to Keith Rainia,
and how men are biologically more trustworthy and more reliable
and women have a lot more faults that need to
overcome and they need to be conscious of these in
order to live their best womanhood cells. And it's kind
(14:16):
of a female community though, a lot of women supporting women,
that kind of thing. But there's also a third secret
group in this Nexium group, and that such that other
Nextium members didn't even know who was involved in this group.
And this was a secret sex cult called Doss, which
prosecutors federal prosecutors say was set up by Keith Rainier
as a kind of sex cult pyramid scheme, if you will,
(14:38):
where there were layers and there was a master slave
situation at multiple levels in this group, and many of
the women were branded with what prosecutors say were Kith
Rainier's initials. What did that brand look like? I saw
some pictures, but please describe it. Women who were in
the group were told that it was a four elements
Earth's wind, air and fire as a kind of design.
(14:59):
But what it actually is, it's it's a kind of
a series of lines which when you turn it one
way on the skin, you can clearly see a K
and then an upside down our capital are as well.
So obviously being the initials of Keith ring in right,
just kind of hiding in plain sight. Really, that's right,
that's right, it's not. Maybe when you first look at it,
you might not see that, but when it's pointed out
(15:20):
to you, it's just certainly there. And that this, uh,
this an image of this branding is in the federal
indictment that prosecutors have unveiled. And what made this story
really crazy all of a sudden was this involvement of
this actress named Alison max She was on c W
show called Smallville. How did she get involved in what's
what is her place in this quote unquote sex Calt. Well,
(15:42):
that's right. She's a thirty five year old now, but
many years ago she was on this show small bill.
As you say, she was one of the top two
or three leads on this show, and consider kind of
a love interest for friend character for the Clark Kent
character there. She hasn't had much of a career since then,
but we know that for about the last ten years
or so, she's been involved in Maxium and then Jane
(16:02):
S something she posted about frequently on her social media channels,
and also now prosecutors say she was the second in
command to Keith ring Air as his his direct slave,
and she had a number of slaves underneath her as well,
and prosecutors have now charged her, like Keith Rainier, with
sex trafficking, sex trafficking conspiracy and forced labor conspiracy as
(16:27):
well for getting allegedly the other women in this cult
to essentially perform chores in this community. It's a pretty
horrific picture that prosecutors have painted where women who joined
this group who are told that they needed to provide
some sort of collateral. This is a term that was
used in order to join this secret group within Maxium,
(16:47):
and frequently that involved taking nude photographs and sexual photographs,
but it also involved writing or saying on camera false
defamatory statements about people you may love, and in for
the case Alison mac as well allegedly signing over even
the d to her house to Keith her and yet
such that if she ever broke her vow to him,
(17:07):
he would have her house. Women chosen to be part
of this group. I know she was recruiting them, but
was it, I mean, any woman that they felt they
could coerce into this or were they were all part
of this other Nexium branch the esp programs. So we
don't know exactly how women were chosen and how and
what and what sort of characteristics they were looking for.
But we do know that they did definitely recruit from
(17:28):
within the Nexium ranks and then also specifically from Jane
S as well. So I've spoken to two women who
have known Alison Matt for a very long time and
they were sort of going in and out of these
Nexium programs and involved in Jane S. They've both said
how they've noticed her change over the years and how
she began, as one woman said, a kind of bratty,
kind of a bit self full, of a self actress
(17:50):
that you might expect, and gradually become really really intensely
interested in this sp program and this Janus philosophy, and
UH prosecutors has said then that she's become obviously this
second in command to keep her and helping to recruit
women into this secret sex cold. The two women that
you talked to said that she started off very nice,
(18:11):
very interested in them, and then how did it turn
what did she start doing to really groom them for this.
Only one of the women that I spoke to was
specifically asked by another woman, not Alison mac but another woman,
she says was asked to join this secret sex cold
she said this. She declined upon seeing the branding of
(18:31):
the woman who revealed the obviously what we were just
talking about the letters KR she got out of their
quick smart But basically what they described was really, as
you said, a very intense sort of coach mental relationship
with Mac and these women where Mac was one of
them said, the sister you always wanted. She was always available,
always friendly, always willing to listen to you, even to
(18:53):
the point where these women were told then gradually over
the years to leave their partners, to leave their jobs,
to move up to Albany in upstate New York, where
this group was headquartered, and even two in one woman's case,
had her diet monitored by Mac. Prosecutives had said that
Keith Rainier preferred extremely thin women here, that was his
(19:13):
sexual preference. And one of these women told me about
how Alison Mac underwent this massive weight loss while she
she was already a small, yeah, very thin, and she
lost even more weight under this time in this group.
She described how she saw Alison counting out letter sleeps
in her salad. And they've described how over the years,
obviously in addition to losing weight, she became more sort
(19:36):
of quick to anger in what they said that she
was very disappointed in one of the women at one
point for not recruiting enough women into the Jane S program,
and she said to her, you need to essentially, you
should consider coming up to Albany if you want to
be serious about this, and made this woman cry and
then she had to Alison later apologize to this woman
for making a cry Nexium is the big umbrella corporation.
(19:59):
Then the smaller group within that is the Jen S
which is focused specifically on women. And then following that
they recruit you into this DOS group, which is the
quote unquote sex call. That seemed to be the map
that I was given of the group, because Doss was
described to the women as a kind of group that
was just for women. That they didn't know that it
was that Keith Rainier was actually at the top of
(20:21):
this little secret group within them. So they were recruiting
then from this Jens group. And this I should mention
These programs all cost thousands and thousands of dollars to join,
so people were spending a lot of money and then
going and these were taking a year long programs. You
were going back to sometimes up to Albany every year
for this annual gathering. You were participating in events, you
(20:42):
were constantly communicating with other members through social media and
through meetups, and then obviously this secret group dos. Yes,
it does appear that they were drawing specifically from this
Janes group. Keith Renier and Alison mac have been charged
with sex trafficking and other sex crimes. Where are they now?
I know Allison is out on bail and she's in
California currently, that's right. So she's under house arrest in California,
(21:07):
and she's also been barred by the judge from contacting
any person that's associated with the next thing, we should say,
she's not five million dollars bond. Her parents have also
put to put up a deed to their house in
order to get her out. And he's in jail. No,
no bond for him, I don't believe. So no, And
what's the next step for this prosecutor? They go to court,
they go to trial, that's right. So prosecute seem very
(21:29):
serious about this. This is a real you know, they're
really pressing forward with this case of very horrific details.
We can expect that prosecutors here in the southern district
of New York, or rather easy district. I should say,
very serious about pursuing this. Well, it's an amazing story.
David mac, BuzzFeed News reporter. Thank you for joining us,
My pleasure. All right, that's it for today. Join us
(21:53):
on social media at Daily Dive Pod on Twitter and
Daily Dive Podcast on Facebook. Follow the Daily Dive on
iHeart Radio, or subscribe wherever you get your podcast. The
Daily Dive is produced by Miranda Moreno and engineered by
Tony Sarantino. I'm Oscar Rumors in Los Angeles and this
was your Daily Dive.
It's Tuesday, May one, and this is the Daily Dive.
On Sunday, a caravan of asylum seekers from Central America
arrived at the Sandy Seguar Border Crossing Facility in San Diego,
hoping to turn themselves into US Border inspectors in the
hopes of being granted asylum from their home countries where
(00:21):
they are fleeing gangs and violence. They were denied entrance
because there's no space to accommodate them the way it
extended a second day into Monday. We will speak to
reporter Steve Gregory, who was there when migrants arrived and
tell us what happened and what they can expect. Next,
we'll also talk about a fascinating story about actress Alison
Matt has been accused of being a top recruiter for
(00:42):
a sex cult, which operates under the guise of a
self help group offering executive success programs. The organization, called Nexium,
is now facing scrutiny for being a front that recruits
women into being sex slaves for the group's founder. We
will speak to BuzzFeed reporter David Matt for the latest
in this story. It's news without the noise. Let's dive into.
(01:09):
He's been a tough journey. It's been also an adventure.
The hardest adventure was being on the train. We were
a couple of days without food, but there isn't people
in solidarity that gave us food and refuge. Joining us
now is Steve Gregory. He's a news reporter covering this
story of the caravan reaching the border. Explained to us
what happened. You were there on Sunday when the caravan
(01:30):
finally arrived. What happened and what are these people arriving for? Well,
oscar This group that I met up with in Chief
Jana on Sunday morning is part of a larger group
that started this journey from Central America a little over
a month ago, and the estimate was anywhere from a
thousand people. And these were mostly family that we're coming
(01:51):
up through Mexico writing Labstia, which is the beast for
the big train that you might see on the news,
and a lot of those families were on that train
came up and about a halfway through the journey, President
Trump had come out publicly against what was happening and
said there's no way that these people are going to
get into the country. Regardless of they're trying to seek
(02:13):
asylum or not so. Somewhere along the way, because the
President Tromp's comments and a lot of pressure, the Mexican
government sort of stepped in and issue temporary visas to
anyone who wanted. So that group of a little over
a thousand people quickly shrank to about half the size
because a lot of people decided to stay in Mexico.
So that group of about five continued the journey north,
(02:37):
but more and more people started to peel off because
they either got tired, they just wanted to go back home,
they got separated from their families, and then as they
got closer and closer to the border, they started to
get more and more information about what the asylum processes
into the United States. It's not as simple as people think.
All of the folks coming up from Longois and El
(02:59):
salda Are had been told back in their home countries
how easy it is to come into this country, and
it basically is a red carpet waiting for them when
they did here, and that is not the case. I
was there Sunday morning when the group first arrived to
the border fence, to see the border fence for the
very first time in the most northwestern part of the
(03:20):
Mexican country. And it's right where that corner of Mexico
meets the most southwesterly part of the United States. So
if you can amand two corners of these two countries
meeting right a Pacific Ocean on the beach, and that's
where those people met another group of people on the U.
S side that had walked down from Los Angeles to
(03:43):
greet them, to show that their solidarity for were they
being celebrated there at the time. I saw videos and
pictures of people jumping up on the fence at one Yeah,
I was on the Mexican side, so I was in.
I was right there at Friendship Park in Tijuana, Baja,
and you could you could kind of feel the tubulation
and the showy regulation of these people kind of like
(04:06):
finally arriving to their final destination. The mood was all happy.
It was all happy, hopeful, tears of joy. People, as
you mentioned, climbing up to the top of these tall
metal killers that make up the fence, and they were,
you know, the unfrilled flags, the Honduran flag. People had flowers,
they had posters and banners. Some of them read, you know,
(04:28):
refugees are welcome, racists are not that kind of thing.
Then after that they decided they were going to walk
over to the sedestrian gate together as they unified FRONT.
What they didn't expect was when they arrived at the
pedestrian gate that the Mexican immigration officials we're going to
be meeting them there and telling them, sorry, but the
US has shut down all asylum applications until further notice.
(04:53):
Up until this point, Oscar, these folks have gotten a
green light because they the people this published in fronteta's
group out of San Diego that organizes these types of
caravans every year. They know the people to call. They
make these arrangements and they figure it all out. Everything
up until that point, they had every indication that there
was a green light for them to proceed and to
(05:15):
come into the gate right and US officials ended up
telling them that there was no room there at that area,
that they couldn't accommodate them and process them. Correct. But
they have been processing is They have been processing people
that had already come through earlier in the week from
that caravan. Some people have already gotten advice from attorneys.
(05:36):
Some there in Tijuana and others coming down to the
United States to help, but some had already gone through
the process earlier in the week And as of Monday afternoon,
eleven refugees had been arrested for illegally crossing themes of
the country. And that had happened over the weekend. And
where did they where were they crossing that they got apprehended.
(05:57):
We know that there was at least a pregnant woman
and a four year old girl. The pregnant woman apparently
was trying to come through a very dark and dangerous
canyon just eat of the sanec through a border. The
four year old in the same canyon area. Some have
been climbing over the dilapidated metal fence just on the
west side of the Sandy sed report of entry. And
(06:18):
they were all taught within a forty hour period. So
the immigration officials and customs officials have been processing those
arrests on top of the people that are already coming
to seek asylum. So this is one of the reasons,
according to the US officials, that they were unable to
accommodate that big group of people on Sunday. Where are
(06:38):
these other people in the meantime, are there shelters set
up or are they staying there. There's a group of folks,
a group of refugees have chosen to camp out and
the Mexican government has allowed it. But there's a very
large sort of plaza, if you will, a big concrete
plaza in front of the pedestrial game. This is the
busiest landport in the United States. This is the number
(07:00):
one place where people to cross on a daily basis.
So this pedestrian game is much larger and much more
modern than the old one that's further east. And so
when they got there, there's this huge concrete plaza right front,
right next to a freeway or a bridge overpast rather
and there right now, there's a lot of them that
(07:22):
are just stamping out there with ten sleeping back blankets,
anything that that the people give them. And some people
have chosen to go back and stay in church as shelters.
But the US government has said that they're going to
started trying to accommodate twenty people at a time. But
I checked in with officials organizers. They still had process
to anybody, but they said to get twenty people ready
(07:43):
to go in that that was at midnight Sunday into
Monday morning, and most of these people are coming from
Honduras and El Salvador. And the people that you got
a chance to speak to, why are they claiming asylum?
What are they running from? Well, across the board, everyone
that I interviewed through interpreters told me that they were
escaped fear in their country is the fear of reprisals
(08:04):
from gang, the fear of being attacked, the fear of
being robbed, the fear of you know, living in a
corrupt government society in their home country. That was basically
the blanket response I got from everybody I interviewed. N
interviewed um, a couple of fathers, a mom, and a
fifteen year old girl, and they all had the same answer.
(08:25):
And this is fairly new now that the active asylum
has it for as long as the United States that's
had an immigration policy. What's fairly new in the last
decade is claiming asylum because of gang activity. Steve, tell
me a little bit more about this clubless scene Fronteta's group.
I know they've been organizing this thing for years, this
big caravan, but they're counseling these people, they're helping them
(08:46):
with lawyers and whatnot so they can get a better
chance at being granted asylum. Sure, these are the types
of individuals who have gotten together and said, listen, we
want to give these immigrants and these migrant workers and
anyone who comes up from a foreign kind of a
fighting chance, if you will, to get into the country,
and they want them to do it legally. They're they're
really promoting the legal way of doing it. The criticism
(09:08):
has come over the years with groups like Pie and
Fantatics and others like it. They're starting to blur the
line between what's ethical, what's legal, and what's proper. What's
happening now is we're noticing is a lot of these
individuals are being coached how to how to respond to
the questions because they know all the questions that customs
officers are going to ask. They know the process, the procedure,
(09:29):
and the lawyers know what what's legal what's not. But
there's been a lot of criticism lately because these individuals
are being coached on what to say when they go in.
So what happens is these customs officers are sitting there
and they're getting the same answer to the question from
everyone who comes through and at one point, customs officials
are gonna say, listen, if you're giving me false information
(09:50):
or you're being coached on what to say, that in
itself is actually an infraction of the law, and you'll
be presented to the Department of Justice or the Attorney
old Office for Prosecution. And the illustration has said as
much that they are not going to tolerate any fraudulent
asylum seekers. Right. The burden obviously is on the person
seeking asylum, and these officers are trained in what they
(10:13):
call credible fear interview, and you have to establish that
you have a credible fear of your home country in
order to be granted. Just past that first level, then
you've got to go into a hearing. Then you've got
to convince the judge of the same thing. If you
sit there and talking to this customs official, you have
(10:33):
to convince that individual, because I mean, where are you
gonna bring physical proof? I mean, if you bring pictures
of maybe some scars that you you've got, or medical
records or something that shows you've been attacked or something
along those lines, that might help the cause significantly. But
when you just sit there and you just say listen,
I you know, I don't like I hear gunshots in
my neighborhood all the time. That's not going to be
(10:55):
enough to grant you and your family asylum. So these individuals,
as you mentioned before, being coached on what to say
and what to do, and I'm not there individually witnessing it,
so I don't know what they're being told that I
can tell you that the answers to some of my
question for all the same from all the different individuals.
So this process takes how long from being interviewed there
(11:16):
at the border to the appearing before a judge? How
long does this all take? The average weight right now
for an immigration hearing is two years. Wow, it's estimated
that there was a little over two hundred thousand people
waiting for their hearing. That's over, they've already got a
hearing date. And there's also an estiment that there's a
little over two hundred thousand that are in the system
waiting for their court date. So you've got almost a
(11:39):
half a million people that are already stuck in the
asylum system. What happens though, when they go in for
that process, let's say, to pass that first hurdle, they
immediately split up the family and they're going to send
the kids. Sometimes they keep the kids and the moms together,
but the men are all put into one detention center,
the women in another, and the children in another. And
(12:00):
the ones that might make it through the Sunnythedral Center
would probably be sent to one of two shelters in
the Tech Satherea. And so they've got to be centers
set up, and that's where they have to stay. Some
of them may be released on their own recognizance with
a GPS bracelet. Some will just be released and expected
to show up for their hearing, And sometimes that happens,
(12:21):
and sometimes it doesn't right, And that's one of the
major fears, is losing people in the system and never
being able to find them again. Steve Gregory, thank you
very much for joining us by pleasure. I want to
be remembered for the things that are most important to me,
(12:44):
the way that I impacted people. I want to be
remembered as a woman who was honest and true and strong.
The most satisfying and purposeful thing I've ever done watching
the women who are involved in Geness, completely transformed and
involved in a way that is so pure, really literally
seeing people's lives Past completely. Joining us now is David Mack.
(13:08):
He's a BuzzFeed news reporter. Let's talk about this self
help group multi level marketing organization known as Nexium. What
is it and why is it in the news right now?
So Nextium was started by a man and Keith Rainier
in the late nineties and it is, as you said,
it's kind of like a self help community. Within it,
there are a bunch of different programs. One of them
(13:29):
is this Executive Success Program, which a couple of people
who are involved didn't have described to me as kind
of like such your average kind of self help motivational stuff,
similar to what you might see in at Tony Robbins,
you know, kind of session, a lot of sort of
the power of the individual, things like that. But there's
also another group in there called j NES, which is
targeted at women specifically in the group, and it's about this.
(13:54):
These members who are part of this program told me
the aim of this group is to sort of preach
on the differ friends between the sexes, according to Keith Rainia,
and how men are biologically more trustworthy and more reliable
and women have a lot more faults that need to
overcome and they need to be conscious of these in
order to live their best womanhood cells. And it's kind
(14:16):
of a female community though, a lot of women supporting women,
that kind of thing. But there's also a third secret
group in this Nexium group, and that such that other
Nextium members didn't even know who was involved in this group.
And this was a secret sex cult called Doss, which
prosecutors federal prosecutors say was set up by Keith Rainier
as a kind of sex cult pyramid scheme, if you will,
(14:38):
where there were layers and there was a master slave
situation at multiple levels in this group, and many of
the women were branded with what prosecutors say were Kith
Rainier's initials. What did that brand look like? I saw
some pictures, but please describe it. Women who were in
the group were told that it was a four elements
Earth's wind, air and fire as a kind of design.
(14:59):
But what it actually is, it's it's a kind of
a series of lines which when you turn it one
way on the skin, you can clearly see a K
and then an upside down our capital are as well.
So obviously being the initials of Keith ring in right,
just kind of hiding in plain sight. Really, that's right,
that's right, it's not. Maybe when you first look at it,
you might not see that, but when it's pointed out
(15:20):
to you, it's just certainly there. And that this, uh,
this an image of this branding is in the federal
indictment that prosecutors have unveiled. And what made this story
really crazy all of a sudden was this involvement of
this actress named Alison max She was on c W
show called Smallville. How did she get involved in what's
what is her place in this quote unquote sex Calt. Well,
(15:42):
that's right. She's a thirty five year old now, but
many years ago she was on this show small bill.
As you say, she was one of the top two
or three leads on this show, and consider kind of
a love interest for friend character for the Clark Kent
character there. She hasn't had much of a career since then,
but we know that for about the last ten years
or so, she's been involved in Maxium and then Jane
(16:02):
S something she posted about frequently on her social media channels,
and also now prosecutors say she was the second in
command to Keith ring Air as his his direct slave,
and she had a number of slaves underneath her as well,
and prosecutors have now charged her, like Keith Rainier, with
sex trafficking, sex trafficking conspiracy and forced labor conspiracy as
(16:27):
well for getting allegedly the other women in this cult
to essentially perform chores in this community. It's a pretty
horrific picture that prosecutors have painted where women who joined
this group who are told that they needed to provide
some sort of collateral. This is a term that was
used in order to join this secret group within Maxium,
(16:47):
and frequently that involved taking nude photographs and sexual photographs,
but it also involved writing or saying on camera false
defamatory statements about people you may love, and in for
the case Alison mac as well allegedly signing over even
the d to her house to Keith her and yet
such that if she ever broke her vow to him,
(17:07):
he would have her house. Women chosen to be part
of this group. I know she was recruiting them, but
was it, I mean, any woman that they felt they
could coerce into this or were they were all part
of this other Nexium branch the esp programs. So we
don't know exactly how women were chosen and how and
what and what sort of characteristics they were looking for.
But we do know that they did definitely recruit from
(17:28):
within the Nexium ranks and then also specifically from Jane
S as well. So I've spoken to two women who
have known Alison Matt for a very long time and
they were sort of going in and out of these
Nexium programs and involved in Jane S. They've both said
how they've noticed her change over the years and how
she began, as one woman said, a kind of bratty,
kind of a bit self full, of a self actress
(17:50):
that you might expect, and gradually become really really intensely
interested in this sp program and this Janus philosophy, and
UH prosecutors has said then that she's become obviously this
second in command to keep her and helping to recruit
women into this secret sex cold. The two women that
you talked to said that she started off very nice,
(18:11):
very interested in them, and then how did it turn
what did she start doing to really groom them for this.
Only one of the women that I spoke to was
specifically asked by another woman, not Alison mac but another woman,
she says was asked to join this secret sex cold
she said this. She declined upon seeing the branding of
(18:31):
the woman who revealed the obviously what we were just
talking about the letters KR she got out of their
quick smart But basically what they described was really, as
you said, a very intense sort of coach mental relationship
with Mac and these women where Mac was one of
them said, the sister you always wanted. She was always available,
always friendly, always willing to listen to you, even to
(18:53):
the point where these women were told then gradually over
the years to leave their partners, to leave their jobs,
to move up to Albany in upstate New York, where
this group was headquartered, and even two in one woman's case,
had her diet monitored by Mac. Prosecutives had said that
Keith Rainier preferred extremely thin women here, that was his
(19:13):
sexual preference. And one of these women told me about
how Alison Mac underwent this massive weight loss while she
she was already a small, yeah, very thin, and she
lost even more weight under this time in this group.
She described how she saw Alison counting out letter sleeps
in her salad. And they've described how over the years,
obviously in addition to losing weight, she became more sort
(19:36):
of quick to anger in what they said that she
was very disappointed in one of the women at one
point for not recruiting enough women into the Jane S program,
and she said to her, you need to essentially, you
should consider coming up to Albany if you want to
be serious about this, and made this woman cry and
then she had to Alison later apologize to this woman
for making a cry Nexium is the big umbrella corporation.
(19:59):
Then the smaller group within that is the Jen S
which is focused specifically on women. And then following that
they recruit you into this DOS group, which is the
quote unquote sex call. That seemed to be the map
that I was given of the group, because Doss was
described to the women as a kind of group that
was just for women. That they didn't know that it
was that Keith Rainier was actually at the top of
(20:21):
this little secret group within them. So they were recruiting
then from this Jens group. And this I should mention
These programs all cost thousands and thousands of dollars to join,
so people were spending a lot of money and then
going and these were taking a year long programs. You
were going back to sometimes up to Albany every year
for this annual gathering. You were participating in events, you
(20:42):
were constantly communicating with other members through social media and
through meetups, and then obviously this secret group dos. Yes,
it does appear that they were drawing specifically from this
Janes group. Keith Renier and Alison mac have been charged
with sex trafficking and other sex crimes. Where are they now?
I know Allison is out on bail and she's in
California currently, that's right. So she's under house arrest in California,
(21:07):
and she's also been barred by the judge from contacting
any person that's associated with the next thing, we should say,
she's not five million dollars bond. Her parents have also
put to put up a deed to their house in
order to get her out. And he's in jail. No,
no bond for him, I don't believe. So no, And
what's the next step for this prosecutor? They go to court,
they go to trial, that's right. So prosecute seem very
(21:29):
serious about this. This is a real you know, they're
really pressing forward with this case of very horrific details.
We can expect that prosecutors here in the southern district
of New York, or rather easy district. I should say,
very serious about pursuing this. Well, it's an amazing story.
David mac, BuzzFeed News reporter. Thank you for joining us,
My pleasure. All right, that's it for today. Join us
(21:53):
on social media at Daily Dive Pod on Twitter and
Daily Dive Podcast on Facebook. Follow the Daily Dive on
iHeart Radio, or subscribe wherever you get your podcast. The
Daily Dive is produced by Miranda Moreno and engineered by
Tony Sarantino. I'm Oscar Rumors in Los Angeles and this
was your Daily Dive.
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