March 12, 2020 • 58 mins
Helen Perry, the Executive Director of Global Response Management, joins us to describe the conditions of the refugees waiting at the US border in Matamoros, Mexico, how it specifically impacts women, and what we can do about it.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, this is Samantha and this is Annie Wilson to stuff.
Mom never told you a production of I Heart Radio.
So hello, everybody. Condue to a scheduling mix up in
our publication are massive meta sheet of what has been
(00:28):
published and what will publish, and we've been ahead of schedule.
So we have been ahead of schedule. Yeah, there's a
lot of stuff waiting to be put out there. There is,
but because of that sometimes some confusion happened. So you're
gonna hear in this episode as mentioned two women, Coco
and Kim, who you probably do not know who they are,
(00:50):
not yet, Yes, not yet. I will mention them a
couple of times because we recorded an interview with them
prior to this interview that is in this episode, and
they put us in touch with um, the woman that
we're interviewing in this one, Helen Perry. So keep on
(01:10):
the lookout or the listen out, however you want to
put that for a future episode featuring Cocoa and Kim,
who are fantastic, amazing about sex and gender based silence
in the Democratic Republic of Congo. It sounds like a
superhero team. They should be. They are listen I believe
Coco on her resume had an a line item that
(01:32):
said underwater helicopter escape training. I'm not messing with that.
Let me She's definitely gonna survive any of the scenarios
case scenario bits. Yes, which, with the news as it
is today, very may need that. Very useful, very useful.
But today we are talking with Helen Perry, who is
(01:54):
the executive director of Global Response Management, and Helen is
also amazing. She is running a project in Matamorrow's, Mexico.
For those not familiar, this is town of half a
million population wise ums and five feet past the Mexican border,
across a bridge from Brownsville, Texas, where three thousand refugees
(02:18):
and asylum seekers are gathered, many in need of medical attention,
many without food, water, or bathrooms, no access to basic hygiene.
Some have been there for several months. This is the
largest refugee camp on the US border. And before we
get further into this, trigger warning for discussion around violence,
(02:39):
sexual assault, trafficking, and generally bad conditions and some of
it is really grim, so just it heads up there.
There's a little bit of detail in there, so prepare yourself, um,
but it is an important conversation area, and to make
matters words, it's a hotbed for the mafia's and rival
drug gains. In one interview the interview, He's described it
(03:00):
as the most dangerous place in Mexico, and the US
government has advised tours not to visit the area due
to violence and kidnappings. Only a few a day are
allowed to seek asylum in the US in a policy
known as metering, and over a thousand are on the
list managed by Mexican officials. Some are asked for bribes
in exchange for a place on that list, and some
(03:21):
are kidnapped and extorted. Unfortunately, yes, very unfortunately, And Helena
is going to get more into this, but just so
we're on the same page when we get started. In
January tween nineteen, the U s expanded a policy requiring
asylum seekers to wait in Mexico, colloquially called remain in Mexico.
Refugees are given a date to return for an immigration
(03:42):
court hearing, where the US government doesn't have to provide
a lawyer, and getting one can be time consuming and expensive.
Some asylum seekers in Texas were sent back to Mexico.
The US also threatened to impose tariffs if Mexico did
not start cracking down on migrants, which is termed they
frequently you use. From January two September of twenty nineteen,
(04:03):
only eleven were granted asylum, and each day the government
sends dozens of refugees to Metamoras. Many sleep outside until
they can find a tent since there aren't showers. Many
bathe and wash their clothes in a nearby river, river
that once washed up a headless corpse. And as we're
(04:24):
all hearing in the news about COVID nineteen coronavirus, this
is a really big concern there as well, because it
would spread so rapidly, and tensions with the locals have
resulted in relocating with tents right, and some parents are
so desperate that they're sending their children across the border alone.
(04:45):
And children don't have to go to the same level
of bureaucracy. Rochelle Garza of the American Civil Liberties Union
of Texas said at the situation, these parents have been
forced to consider an unthinkable choice to save their children
by sending them into the US all loan, or to
keep them in northern Mexico where they will be exposed
to severe illness, kidnapping, tortured and rape um and you
(05:07):
have to remember, for a lot of these families, they
fled to protect their children. And you will also hear
in the interview where she specifically talks about parents bringing
her child through all of these back areas to come
to this refugee area and all of the suffering they
had to go to and how normalized it was in
stating that in comparison to what they would have had
(05:28):
to face, it was easier, and it's just so heartbreaking.
I think this is a lot of the conversations that
we've had every day when we talk about why are
they bringing their children doing it? Why are they doing
this legally? And we have these conversations constantly, and we
have to realize they are refugees, they are seeking a refuge,
(05:49):
They are trying to find a place of safety, and
you will do whatever you can, even it means your
own death and hopes that your child can have a chance.
Just I just find that heartbreaking, and I think that's
part of the we are divisive debate that continues to
happen about this level of well if you left your
children alone and forgetting what the cost truly was right,
(06:12):
And those are the stakes of the conversation that we
had with Helen, which we will get into. But first
we're going to get into a quick break for word
from our sponsor, and we're back, Thank you sponsor. So
(06:39):
now that we've set the stage a little bit, let's
let's talk to someone who's actually there and who's actually
on the ground and seeing these things. Let's get into
our interview with Helen. I'm Helen Harry and I am
the executive director for Global Response Management, which is a
three international medical nonprofit that catered to providing emergency, trauma
(07:02):
and pre hospital medicine in areas of the world that
are predominantly impacted by war conflict. And his act and
how did you get into that? Oh? Yeah, so I
was in the Army for I'm actually still technically in
the Army, but I did five years on actual duty
and then I went into the reserve. And there's like
(07:25):
a whole big, longsidebar story there. My husband was also
in the Marines and he got injury Afghanistan and so
he had a full traumatic brain injury, up losing all
his memory. So I ended up leaving active duty and
go to reserve. YadA YadA, all that kind of stuff.
And so when I was actually finishing grad school, you know,
I had done all of the specifically war trauma while
(07:48):
I was in the military, which is sort of a
very specific step set of trauma medicine. And I got
an email asking me if I would be interested in
going to Los i Raq and helping to run Trauma
Stable alevision point for civilians who are injured by the
fight to push out ISIS. And I was like, yeah,
I mean absolutely, Like I had been watching all of
(08:08):
you know, the news, and you always see these videos
with like people and you know, like these babies in
Syria being pulled out of the rubble, you know, and
and all these terrible things. But it's like, you know,
I had just been waiting on me like so much,
or the months that we're kind of surrounding like me
getting this email. So I did. I was on a
three week break from GROAD school between semesters, like finishing up,
(08:28):
and so I went over and I worked in Iraq
with the organization, and I loved it. I loved their mentality.
I loved that I loved sort of their work ethic
and that they were dedicated to going into these areas
where traditional organizations really we're not capable of operating um
(08:49):
and then providing literally life stating care that they would
not get anywhere else. So yeah, and then I I've
I stuck with it. I just you know, I kept
offering to volunteer if you are going to be shin. Uh.
They asked me to be on the board of directors,
so I did that. Then I started working uh and
like actually getting involved more in than a day to
day business. So then like a year ago I started
(09:11):
actually running the organization. And then about four or five
months ago I took over formally as the executive director. Wow, congratulations,
Yeah it sounds like a heavy duty. Yeah. Yeah, it's uh,
it's intense. To give you the context, I actually had
a very pushy job at a private hospital as a
(09:31):
nurse practitioner, and I walked away from a six figure
salary with no guarantee that I was getta get paid,
and was like, you know what, like this is this
is worth doing and dedicating my time too, And so
I turned down six figures and and came to do
this full time sort of on a on a hope
and a dream that we would be able to to
sort of get to a point where we could actually
(09:53):
pay people to produce some of the day to day
running of the organization. So um, yeah, it's been hugely
but faith Yeah, thank you first and foremost because that's
an amazing calling. I guess that's the best just falling
into that and the huge responsibility. And I'm not gonna
(10:16):
lie it as a social worker, that kind of have
you Before a minute, I was like, oh gosh, he's
doing all the things. Yeah yeah, before I actually really
got involved in the work, you know, I I just
kind of assumed that like these things were getting done
these areas, you know, we're getting the help that thing need.
I mean, you to get on the news, and you
sort of assume like, oh, somebody else got that right,
(10:37):
you know. And what I realized is like that stuff
like read like not the case at all. I mean
it is that is the farthest thing from the truth.
In fact, most of these areas that are impacted by war,
it's the exact opposite. Groups you don't go in because
they don't feel that they can address the risks appropriately.
And you know, when you're talking about military veteran to
(11:00):
who have you know, we've been trained our whole career
to work in these environments, and so yes, that's what
we've done, and we've done it really well. We've operated
in Iraq, Yemen, Bangladesh, Theoria, we were in the Bahamas
after Dorian, and now we're working in cartel controlled Matamortals Mexico. Yeah,
(11:21):
and that's one of the reasons we wanted to talk
to you today because a couple of weeks ago we
talked with um Coco and Kim m about gender and
sex based violence in the DRC and at the end
they're like, Oh, you've got to talk to Helen about
what's going on in Matamorro. So could you tell us,
(11:41):
could you give us kind of a rundown of what's
happening there. Yeah, So to give a little bit of
context to kind of the situation. You know, everybody is
pretty familiar or has at least been exposed to in
some degree, the cartel violence that has been incurring in
Central and South America. There's a lot of political and
reps in countries like Venezuela and on Birth and Nicaragua,
(12:06):
and then on top of that, there's also this those
predominant cartel violence that happens and when we talked about
cartel violence, you know, just to give people the clarity,
like we're talking about the same types of violence that
we saw with ISA. We're talking about five year old
children being strang up on trees and went on fire
(12:26):
because their parents couldn't pay extortion fees that month. We're
talking about women who have been brutally assaulted and raped
and mutilated because they had a family member who you know,
prof cartel lines and did something they weren't supposed they
were not supposed to do. I mean, we're talking about
(12:48):
unimaginable levels of violence. And so there's this misconception that
was currently gone on at the border, like people commonly
referred to them as migrants, and my argument, these are
not migrants, These are refugees. These are people who are
fleeing violence and persecution in the same ways that Theorians
(13:08):
are failish fleeing the war. So that's been going on
for for several years now that we've we've sort of
had this unrest and this sort of horrible violence that's
been going on down there. But the change happened in
twenty nineteen. The administration adopted a policy called MPP, which
is a migrant Protection Program, otherwise known as Remain in Mexico.
(13:32):
And basically what that said was that, you know, we've
had existing asylum lawn in our country since the nineteen
fifties after World War Two, and all of those laws
said that if you were, you know, coming to the
United States fleeing persecution, you know, you had to meet
these specific criterions, you know, persecution for religious, political and
(13:55):
or you know, social beliefs, etcetera, etcetera. Um, but while
you waited for your court hearing could go through, you
could stay in the United States in safety, and that
we would you know, offer you, in accordance with some
international policies, a level of protection and services like while
the courts figured out, you know, do you qualify for asylum. Well,
(14:18):
when mp P went to assess that change that policy
and made said now anybody who's requesting asylum has to
wait in Mexico for their asylum cases to go through.
And basically what that meant was that between Tiajuana and
Madam More, about sixty thousand asylum speakers and refugees were
now being pushed back into cartel controlled areas along the
(14:42):
border areas. And if you you know, if you're familiar
with what's been going on in border towns to the
last couple of years. They're also base and so that
policy it took effect in January twenty nineteen in Tijuana
and it didn't go into A five until July of
nineteen and Multi Models where we are working since July.
(15:05):
There's now a camp of like thirty five hundred of
VILM speakers and refugees living I mean like fifteen from
in Mexico and their their conditions are pretty pretty horrible.
These are they're living in tense like little Coleman weekend
camping tents. They don't have enough you know, when we
first got there, they had no bathrooms, they had no
(15:27):
running water, they had you know, nothing, no access to
medical care. And so we are organization went in and
started in September doing our initial assessment and then we've
been working in the camp every day starts October twentie
full time. Since you've been there. What kind of things
have you dealt with or have you seen? Yeah, so,
(15:52):
you know, I kind of call it the normal refugee stuff,
you know, health concerned, you know, skaties, the things that
I have hard time explaining to people to get some
time understand in fact, you know, for example, when we
first got there, we were seeing children who were actually
going blind from pink guy. Right. Like pink guys, it's
totally terrible, normal thing for kids to experience, but when
(16:15):
it's not treated and it becomes chronic and recurrent, they
actually end up with corneal scarring that causes them to
lose their vision. And they were getting pink eye because
the only area that they had to bathe in was
the river. And so regardless of the fact that they
were using soap and water, you're still bathing and dirty
infected water, and so these kids are just getting these
horrible infections. We were seeing kids to her risks of
(16:39):
losing their limbs because they had contracted fungal infections that
had advanced so far that they were starting to have
contractor or scarring that was causing them to lose circulation.
One little girl was actually losing range of motion and
circulation in her arm and she was I mean she
was very young, she was like maybe a year old.
(16:59):
And sin see all these kinds of normal things, like
things that we would you know, commonly see in the
United States, that they're just exacerbated to this extreme level
because of the conditions that they were in. We also
have we have strong suspicion women and children are being
trafficked out of these camps. There's not a lot of
(17:20):
great oversight. You know, Normally, in a in a displacement situation,
the u N would come in at the request of
either the country that they're fleeing from or the country
that's receiving them, and they would start monitoring and protection programs.
They would start a registration program. Yet there's there's these
formal processes that take place, but unfortunately at the border
(17:43):
that's not happening because both governments are sort of unwilling
to admit that this is a problem. This is happening.
I mean literally fifteen feet from the US borders, Like
in one part of the camp, I can be standing
at someone's tent and I can see the campus where
Texas this other most college, like right across the river.
I can literally way that people were walking to class
(18:05):
and a concini And it's like it is being the
most extremely flash that I had ever experienced. Because, like
I mean, I've worked in new situations all over the world.
They've been to Cope Bazaar in Bangladesh. She has been
in a rock has been. It was during border you know,
I was involved in affecting the camp in Yen there
and although one wasn't physically there, but I was getting
the pictures every day, like what was you know, happening
(18:25):
in those stamps, like all these kinds of things. But
like I always meant to take like an eighteen hour
flight to get to those places. And again the misconception
is that people keep saying, well, these are migrants, but
I'm like, no, they're not, like these are refugees, like
these are people. The stories that I have been told,
this one one that I met, She fled Honduras with
her daughter. Her daughter was ten, and she was working
(18:50):
for the police department in Honduras. She was very well respected,
she was very highly educated, and she found out through
her police department that she had been put on a
cartel hit with her and her whole family. And so
she had less than twenty four hours to ground her
daughter and everything that she owned and and free more.
Because she made the decision, and she was smart enough
(19:10):
to know that she couldn't travel with the caravans because
the cartel watches the caravan and you know, people were
missing there all the time, nobody goes to look for them.
And so she knew that she couldn't travel at the caravans,
that she would only travel at night, and she would
only take the roads, you know, the roads that were
off kind of the beaten path. And she told me
stories about how her and her daughter were serially raped
(19:33):
along the way, and I mean I literally and she's
telling me just the graph with detail about like this
horrible experience that she had, and I was just like,
oh my god, like I just I heard thro learn
her from your daughter, who's hard to go through this.
And she said, no, you don't understand, she said, she said,
she said, whatever the horrible situation she went through on
the way up here, that is nothing compared to what
(19:56):
they would do to her and hunder us. She said,
this is better. And I cannot have them a life
where what is behind you is that bad that being
serially rates trying to get to the United States to
safety is a better option, you know. And then most
I think the most thing is the whole thing was
(20:18):
at the end of this conversation where I just like
crying to she's telling me this horrible story. She said,
to me, and she's like, I just I really want
you to know that I appreciate everything that you are
doing for us, because I know that this is not free.
I know that this cost do something to be here.
And I was like, oh my god, lady, like the
cost is like not even the concern here, like you know,
(20:42):
so she would and to hear the story every day.
I mean our R O B G. I. N went
to do a forensic exam for a woman who a
woman who had been actually assaulted, and he had asked
us for a measuring tape where he could measure for scars,
and so we have these little side and paper measuring
tape that we use for like mounds and stuff like that.
(21:03):
So we brought him when you went in and was
in for a fewness the petition, and he came back
out and he said, no, I need a bigger measuring
tape and we had to bring him a sixty cloth
measuring teep so that he could accurately document this woman's scarring.
I mean, it was just so horrific. And you see
(21:24):
that every day. I mean, that's the normal day for
us there. You know. It's just totally shocking to me
that people are just not aware of the horrible things
that are happening to these people, and then the positions
that they're being put in as a results of the
policies you know that's the administration and adopted. So when
(21:45):
they arrive um at the centers and areas, it's not
like that they're safe. These continued harassment and or assaults
are happening. There's and there's nobody really there to regulated.
Is that correct or no? Yeah, exactly. Now it's different
because the a p A, the Asylum Cooperative Agreement just
put into effect, and so that is greatly changing that's
(22:08):
happening to them. Now. They're being directly deported to Guatemala
to get an asylum in Guatemala, which is the biggest
irony because um, the head of immigration in Guatemala actually
just got granted asylum in the United States because it
wasn't safe for her in Guatemala. I was gonna wait,
there's like that doesn't even it's eem to make sense
(22:28):
because people are trying to get from Guatemala to the
US as well, or trying to find a refugee area
as well. Yep, I mean it. It is the biggest
force that we've created these policies, and it's so funny
to me because any same person could look at it
and be like, this makes no sense. Like Guatemala is
also equally impacted by these same problems, But why are
(22:51):
we sending people there as if it's safer. It's not safe,
and you need to give people that the contract of this.
Matamata's Mexico is in the state of Melopas and Tama Lupas.
The state in Mexico has the same security rating hysteria.
According to the Department of State, it is a level
four do not travel areas and so, and we're forcing
people to wait there on their asylum cases. I mean,
(23:14):
we've had dozens of documented kidnapped, We've had dozens of
documents and assaults um rates. Women are being trafficks, I mean,
children are being trafficked. People go missing all the time,
Like we know this, and yet you know, it's just
just another day. You know, there's you know, it's sort
of kind of the life the lesser evil. Yeah, well,
(23:38):
and you know a p A is going to be
equally horrible because now people just don't missing and they're
so you know, at least in Matamoros, there's some level
of overfight because it's so close to the United States,
that's the way there to to kind of you know,
reporters going and out. But in in Guatemala, there's no
out of sight, out of mind, you know, God, and
(23:59):
out of ada. Because one of the things that Kim
and Cooko we're talking about was the trauma assessments that
were they were in the drc A trying to get
some assessments and just the level of treatment that's needed,
especially like psychological as well as trauma based. I know
you were saying you're doing a lot of the medical
Do you guys even have the time to do those
levels of assessments as well, especially with the gender based
(24:21):
violence or is it just pretty much meet the basic
needs so they can survive a little bit of both.
We're working on, you know, we do have collaborative partners
in the area providing some mental health resources and we're
working on trying to figure out how we addressed needs,
you know, in a population that's very transient and as
you know, kind of moving around constantly. But a lot
(24:45):
of it is you know, like we're just we're just
trying to get basic health care to them, you know,
that's the deep one. You know, they gotta survived the
pneumonia that they got from living in a tent on
a thirty degree night before we can actually start to
address the long term needs of mental and psychologic the support.
But we've done a couple of things that created women's
groups that meet every Friday so that women can just
(25:06):
you know, kind of gather and talk about whatever it
is that they want to talk about, you know, sort
of freeforming and and sort of free flowing for them
to kind of they can addrest issues. They can just
sit there and listen to music and have some coffee.
They can you know, do whatever kind of thing, just
have that little bit of normality in their life. We've
also started addressing the psychological support for kids. So often
(25:29):
in humanitarian situations and in disaster situation, you know, people
will see these kids, you know, outplaying, and they look like,
aren't they're well, you know, look at them just being kids.
Isn't that so great? And like in reality, like these
kids have experienced unimaginable levels of trauma that like, yeah, okay,
it may not be like impacting them right now, but
(25:52):
like wait until they're twenty five and they're a heroin addict,
because you know, they've had this unimaginable childhood trauma that
just never got dealt with. So, um, we actually started
a child safe space where we have I mean, it's
just it's like a little playroom. They've got some toys,
they've got some some bright colors, the Friendly Face pick
up books, and they can go in and just kind
(26:14):
of be kids for like Tedter fifteen minutes today, um,
and kind of have that separation. So well, I wonder
how normal this is to them, Like all that trauma
that we see that we know is bad and it's
going to affect them. They're like, well, this is a
normal day, So this is a part of my childhood.
I'm gonna go ahead and play here and be assaulted here.
And they just kind of move on, not realizing this
(26:34):
is not normal and it shouldn't be normal for you.
Oh my god, it's so I mean, like there was
a one little girl, Andrea and I, um, one of
the awesome people that I work with, We were walking
in the camp and these little girls came up to
us and we were just chatting with them, and we
were like, oh, you know, like why why did you come?
Like why are you here, and she said, oh yeah,
and she said it, Oh my god. She said it
(26:55):
like it was this was just an average day. She goes, oh,
you know, because my cousin's got machette, you know where
they get where they get hacked up. Do you want
to see pictures? And I really like, oh my god, no,
like we do not want to see pictures. And then
she was like, well, do you want to see my barbies?
And we're like, yeah, show show us the barbies. I mean,
(27:18):
I mean, just so, I mean, these poor kids are
just going to grow up work like I'm imaginable trauma
because of what they've had in their childhood. It's just
unreal and they think that's the norm. That's just it
was heartbreaking part of the whole situation that it is.
(27:40):
It's like, hey, someone got murdered in my family. Hey
you want to see my barbie? And it goes hand
in hand for them as childhood, Like that's the most
unfortunate part. And I feel like oftentimes, especially with the
climate today, when we're talking about politics, they take their
normalcy so them not maybe overreacting and being traumatized. We
(28:00):
see in Hallmark movies and or in the U s alone,
maybe that that's they're fine. See, they're great, They're okay,
they can cope where they are, instead of saying, no,
this is a problem for all of us as humans
and we need to see how wrong this is. Yeah,
I mean, it's it's just insane to me that that
(28:23):
this has become sort of the acceptable norms. You know,
everybody was so outraged by family separation, you know, but
like it's it's we haven't seen that same level of
outrage the MPP has gone into effect and since and
since a p A has gone into effect, and speaking
of that, I know you've touched on it a little
(28:44):
bit and how it's changing. But when when refugees arrive,
what happens next? Like what in theory is supposed to happen? Yeah,
can you give us a route of what happens when
they are their dreams are dashed essentially, or when they're
actually a possibility that they could be sent to a
(29:05):
safe space. Yeah, So, so what should happen is that
they get allowed into the United States to wait for
the appropriate asylum hearings in apport, you know that they
have representation and a lawyer and all this kind of stuff.
Stuff was supposed to happen after the AHA went into effect.
They went into effect in November. Now what happens is
(29:27):
when anybody finally reaches the US Mexico border and they
present to apport an entry to ask for asylum. First
of all, um, there are very specific words that they
have to say in a very specific order. It's almost
like the magic words. The set of words and the
order in which those worth he said, actually constantly changes.
(29:47):
The VP changes the requirement quite frequently too, regardless of
the fact that somebody is trying to tell you that
they fear for their lives. Uh. If they don't specifically
say those words I fear for my life if I
go back to X, Y, and Z, that doesn't count
as as an appeal for asylum. If they don't specifically
(30:08):
ask for asylum, if they say I want to be
safe in the United States, that doesn't count. They have
to say I want asylum in the United States. They
can't say if I go home, I'm going to be
tortured and they're gonna kill me. They have to say,
if I go home, I'm afraid that I will be killed. Um.
And then not only that, but then they actually have
(30:29):
to know who's going to do it, Like the US
has actually put the burden of proof on these people
to prove that they will be persecuted and killed, right, Like,
how do you prove that somebody's gonna kill you? Like,
I mean, you know what I mean. Like our our
friend Ray actually got asylum from Cuba. He was having
issues because he came out of being gay and when
(30:50):
he went in for his questioning with CDP, they said, well,
how do we know you're gay? And I was like, right,
how did you prove that? And he was like he
was like you know, And I was like, hey, listen,
no judgment, whatever you gotta do, you know, like I'm
happy for you. That is so debasing just to have
to say, oh, let me prove what is being persecuted,
(31:10):
like my persecution essentially to you in the most meaning
way I can think of, because you have to have proof, right.
And it's crazy because I mean, the thing I mean,
the story to get me here out of court became
of these the individuals were told are just insane, you know,
things like well, I'm sorry you were kidnapped, but it
doesn't sound like you were tortured enough to qualify for asylum,
(31:32):
Like what like I mean, and these are like this
is legitimate, like this is what they're being told is
like I'm sorry your child was killed. Because you don't
have pictures of his charred body being taken out of
the tree, you actually can't prove his death and therefore
you don't qualify for a stylum. Just just insane thing.
(31:55):
So so now what's actually happening is that when they
get to the border and they don't say their special
magic words, they're actually being immediately deported as as being
at the border without an appropriate beat the documentation. They
actually say the right magic words in the right order,
then creaking in and that's when USL and Cooperative Agreement
(32:15):
otherwise called ADA, that's when a CI takes effect. And
what happens is they're immediately taken into custody to these
detention centers and from there there they have no du process.
They're not allowed to they're not allowed to make a
phone call, they're not allowed to call a lawyer, they're
not allowed to talk with anyone um. The detention centers
actually use known forms of torture. They're not fun places
(32:38):
to be. They keep the ambient temperatures of the room
unnaturally cold, but around sixty degrees. They're not allowed to
go jackets. They're not get to a blanket or than
the mile are sheets and their blankets. They're not allowed
to wear shoes. The lights are kept on twenty four
hours a day. The led lights that they use actually
make an audible hump that you can actually hear, like
(32:59):
and it's the as like Chinese water torture. They're not
provided with that's to sleep on. They're not allowed to
touch or talk to any of the other people surrounding them.
They are quite literally kept in Shaneley cages. Um. Like,
these are all very similar tactics that are used on
the international circuit for like interrogating terrorists. And we're viewing
(33:23):
this to children and and like pregnant women. I mean
that is just like to me, like I'm just like,
oh my god, like we are still lost in our
priorities here. So when they get to detention, uh, they're
not allowed your phone call, they're basically sort of the
qustered off and then they're immediately turned around and put
(33:45):
on a flight to Guatemala. And they're not told that
they're going to Guatemala. We found this out recently because
the contract in Guatemala that we've been coordinating with UM,
they're also not told that they can apply for a
style wom in Guatemala. To imagine that you've just made
this horrible forty five day journey, you know, from your
home where somebody has statened to kill you or maybe
just killed all of your family or killed your children,
(34:07):
and you finally make it to the United States and
you say the right magic words in the right word,
and you have all of your proofs in hand, only
to then be put on a flight and flown basically
we're right black to where you came from. Yeah, that's horrific.
That's like the most awful gaming of the system to
to be like, oh, yeah, here's this opportunity. Here, we
(34:30):
have this chance for you, and then really it's rigged.
Oh yeah, yeah. I mean the entire system that we
have right now is set up to discriminate against anyone
coming to the United States under the status of asylum
or or refugees. And I think that that, you know,
(34:52):
we in the ninth New forties, we turned away Jews
who were fleeing from Germany and Poland and France. As
you know, the Nazi regime was you know, capturing entertaining people,
and history does not look kindly back on that, you know.
I think I think everyone can look back at our
history and say, you know, that was a gross mistake
(35:13):
on our part. We should never have done that. We
should have we should have stuffed up and taking care
of these people and provided them, you know, with safety
and with refuge. And yet here we are doing the
exact same things again, and it's like we haven't learned
our lesson, you know, and that's unfortunate. Very yeah. Yeah.
(35:38):
I keep thinking about on the Statue of Liberty what
it says, and and the fact that the president was like,
I'm willing to change it. God, I'm just I'm just
I'm just right now, I'm a little paul. I'm trying
to shake it all a little bit. I'm going to
take a deep breath. And I can't imagine you're seeing
this every damn day. How do you keep And we're
gonna come back to but I just got to know,
(35:58):
how do you keep yourself saying in this because just
hearing this and I again like in my field, I
only worked with kids who were in the state and
in the state of Georgia, and we had a few
refugees with us, and we had a few that were
on visas, and I had to try my best to
be like, hey, I'm so sorry, but you might not
want to want to ask for this kind of help
right now, because this kind of help make it you deported,
(36:21):
And like being heartbroke and just being able having to
tell them that with that small fear of them being deported,
I can't imagine being in an area where they're being
told daily, yeah, no, your trauma is not good enough
for you to go find safety and haven in a
place that could offer that for you. How do you
deal with all that? I mean, I think for me
(36:45):
is I don't know. You know, everybody had out of
their own, their own way of dealing with things. Um,
you know, this is definitely a very different type of
trauma than we experience, like in a rock you know,
where we were seeing ben shout wounds and blast injuries
and so and you know, and you sort of have
this like compartment movation and that sort of takes over
and you just sort of shove your emotions deep down
(37:08):
into the pits of your gallbladder and hope that you
don't ever see them again, because this is different because
you know, you like, we know these families, you know,
we've known them over the course of months, and they
see them and their kids and all this kind of stuff,
and so you know, I have a really highly paid therapist. Um.
I think that that's like step one is sort of
acknowledging your trauma and being like, you know, if this
(37:30):
isn't screwing me up, it probably should be. And so
I'm not sure which is more of a problem. It's like,
you know, so I think also it would be a
lot harder for me it wasn't doing something. I think
it was harder to talent if I if I wasn't
actively taking action and working to help these people in
some way. And you know, when I talk to people,
(37:50):
that's the thing that I tell people then, like listen,
I'm a thirty two year old blonde chick from Florida.
That's like running a refuge. You camp at the border
for bol Like, don't tell me that you're not capable
of making some kind of change, Like I've wrong with you.
There's put you to work, you know. And I think
the hard thing for a lot of Americans, like you know,
(38:12):
I think we look around currently in the state of
affairs in our country, and like this is totally like
my own personal rant and not the rant of the organization,
but like, you know, like we we look around and
like we see all these things happening, right, Like we're
seeing all these injustices against people of color and you know,
the LGBTQ community, and you know, all of these terrible
things that are happening. And I think so many people
(38:35):
feel helpless to do anything about it because they think,
oh my god, I'm you know, I'm just a thirty
two year old blondet in Florida. Like I can't change
national policy. I can't help thirty refugees as the porter,
Like what am I going to do? I'm just one person.
And I think that people have been brainwashed to believe
that because you absolutely can change. Like listen in a
(39:00):
thirty two year old to check from Florida, and I'm
running a camp for people and I'm keeping them alive
on a daily basis. Like I promise you there is
something you can do, and if we all just do
that one thing, regardless of whether it's you know, the
border crisis or you know, you know first and thement
rate at castle a person then or right for or
(39:20):
you know, working to improve policing policies to ensure that
they're equitable and that they're you know, not targeting people
of color unjustly. You know, whatever it is that you
use to put your energy into, Like I promise you
can do something about this. You can literally just have
to do it. That's it. I think if we I
think people feel so much differently about it, if they
(39:42):
would just start getting to work, you know, that's kind
of it. Yeah, and that's that's a great message for
our listeners are really awesome, um and they love having
those things like what can I do? Because they want
to help. And I feel the same way, like I
of I love that whole idea of just you can
(40:03):
find something right, there is something for you that you
can help. Yeah, you know, even if it's going out
in your front yard every day and holding a sign
you know that says slow down in my neighborhood, you know,
like whatever it is, Like there's it's the inaction that
we have right now that's just paralyzing us as a
nation because we expect the government to do it. And
(40:25):
like I'll be honest with you, I am really tired
of waiting for the government to show up in the
fixed problems right like their track records. So far, it's
also has been terrible, pretty terrible if you look at
the War on homelessness, the War on drugs, like any
of the wars on that they created have all it
did and pretty chasteepic policy. Um So I was like,
(40:45):
you know what, they're not going to do it. Fine,
I will, you know, I'll figure it out. And that's
something we hear a lot when we talk to when
we have people on the show, and also when we
research woment of the past that have done something, is
like seeing, well, no one else is doing it, I'm
just going have to do it right. Yeah, yeah, I
did want to ask about the state what the locals
(41:08):
they're like, how, how is that situation? How are they
handling this? So this is a lot of unfortunately sort
of systemic biases and Central and South America again other countries.
In Mexico specifically, there's a lot of resentment towards Central
and South Americans who are coming up and in Motimoral
(41:32):
that resentment has kind of build over into the community
and so it's controversial and it's not black like you
saw this in Bangladesh as well. You know, imagine that
you and your family, you know, it's been living in
this country for years, and by this country and New Mexico,
and then all of a sudden, like you're starving and
you don't have access in that of than and you're
(41:52):
impoverished and all these kinds of things. And then imagine
that like these other groups of people show up and
like they're all so pretty bad off, but like they
get help and you don't. You know, that's not always fair,
and so it creates a lot of resentment in a
lot of communities. And so one of the ways that
we try to address that is that as an organization,
(42:13):
we see everybody. We don't turn away. We've had locals
from the community come and see us for free access
to medical care, and we see them just the same
as we would see someone who was living in the camp.
And we've tried to be you know, good terrors and
that we try to take care of the area that
we're in and keep it clean and keep it nice,
and and that's something that you know, we've we've worked
(42:34):
very hard to to try and keep up. So you know,
I'm hoping that that that sentiment starts to change. But
I mean, for many of those people, they're they're in
equally terrible situation, and so, you know, it's very challenging.
You've already touched on some some of the ways that
(42:55):
women are specifically being impacted, wondering if there if you
have any other insight, have you seen patterns? Are are
just things that are specific to women in this whole situation. Yeah,
you had mentioned about the fact that the women and children.
You think there's obvious signs of trafficking happening within the
(43:17):
camps as well, and that no one's necessarily safe just
because they're there. What exactly is the impact? What is
the level um that's happening. Yeah, I mean I think
you know, we know spetistically speaking that in areas of
conflicts of war, that women and children are far more
likely to experience the negative impact, that that they're more
likely to be economically underserved, the more ready to have,
(43:41):
you know, less access to human try and resources. They're
more likely to be targeted, you know, for things like
trafficking and and acts of violence and things like that. Um,
and in general, there's just more vulnerable population. I think
that the biggest issue that may have is that because
like we just don't know how bad they're being targeted.
(44:03):
You know, we don't know how bad the situation really
is because the responses being coordinated and funded at the
private level, which is like, by the way, unheard of, right, Like,
humanitarian responses are generally funded by the u N or
by the countries that are experiencing these crisis and we're
talking about in millions of dollars, you know, hundreds of
(44:26):
millions of dollars range that's not happening, and not the lotos,
and it's not happening all along the border. These are
all privately funded responsive and because of that, we lack
the resources to really fully understand how these women are
are being and how like the LGBTQ community that's there
(44:46):
is really being impacted. And so that's something that we're
likely not going to know the full results of for years,
you know, I guess sort of related and you definitely
already touched on this a little bit with regards to
um calling people migrants when we should be using the
(45:07):
term refugees. What do you think the media gets wrong
in reporting this and what do you wish the general
public would take away from this conversation. Yeah, so simag
thing is parking on on the terminology, right, like the
migrants versus refugees, And then you know people will get
into the whole like well or technically asylum speakers, they
(45:29):
can't be a refugee until they've had an asylum process.
And and my my spainents that is, you know, we're
not calling experience who are fleeing THEIA lence, you know,
like we just kind of give them the credit of
their situation and say refugee. So you know, the semantics
for that really kind of as frustrating. I think one
(45:52):
of the things that has not been well reported in
mstimoreal specific is like just how terrible these conditions are.
I mean, some of these people have been living in
this camp since July of last year. They're going through
extremes in temperature, I mean just incredibly hot, you know,
(46:12):
hundred less degree days, rain, you know, all of the
terrible you know, like imagine a camping trip that just
never ends, you know. I once sort of jokingly described
it as like the worst music festival you've ever been to,
where it's like the last day, all the fun drugs
are gone, there's you know, human species everywhere. The bathrooms
are overflowing, there's no food, and it's raining, and everybody's miserable,
(46:36):
you know, and and like they're living in this every day.
And I think that when media comes in and they
started to these lacks, you know, like we're gonna get
our fifteen minutes footage and then we're out, they're sort
of missing, like yeah, like you go over for fifteen
minutes and it's like not so bad. You know, you're
there a day or two or three or whatever, and
(46:58):
it's you know, it feels okay. It feels like you
get back to your hotel with your air conditioning at night,
nearly cool beat you know, in a long day. Right,
But like there are people who don't leave that situation.
They have nowhere to go, they have no reprieve. And
imagine doing that months on end, and then imagine that
like your alternative is like if you get sent back home,
(47:19):
you're at a dock. I mean, Human Rights Watch just
followed two hundred El Salvadorians back to El Salvador but
been deported from the United States, either for failed asylum
planes or for just regular deportation for being a documented
in the country and within the first year, a hundred
and thirty eight of them were murders. The other sixty
(47:41):
two of them had either experienced extortions, torture, kidnap, or
some type of other physical abuse that put their life
at risk. And we're sending people back by this album,
you know. And I think the other thing that that
really getsmissed is like just how terrible the conditions are
(48:03):
and how bad the safety situation is in a lot
of these countries. I think that we have sort of,
you know, the media has sort of put this focus
on people who are coming here as quote, you know, migrants,
like meaning they're just looking for better jobs, and in reality,
it's like cleaning that kind of violence. It does not
make you a migrant, it makes you a refugee. Yeah.
And to have it, as you said, so close to
(48:26):
our border, like it's just happening, it's just right there.
So what do you foresee in the future, both for
this project and for yourself, what are you hoping will happen?
So we're planning to be in the camp and Nottamortals
until probably about August for sort of anticipating that as
(48:49):
sort of stuck in in third cases get hurt in court,
people are either going to get you know, admitted of
the d through the silent process, or they will get
supported because they'll they are silence process will have failed.
Now that a c A has gotten into effect, we
are already anticipating the need for a medical response in
guatemala Um, and we're in the early phases of doing
(49:12):
some investigation and figuring out where people are going and
how we can help and to provide them with whatever
support and resources that they need. And so I think
along with that, the other goal that we have as
an organization is really to start engaging the community around us,
all of those people out there who are like snealing,
(49:33):
who are we helpless and listening to these terrible stories
and saying, oh my god, someone should help them like
that the listen is you, you know that person with me, right,
and so like we need you know, as an organizations,
we need help in all areas. We need accounting help,
logistics help. You know, I need people who can translate
(49:54):
documents into Spanish. I need people who can translate documents
into French. Like I promised you, people have a skill
that we can put to work. And if we would
all just collectively together stand up and get to work.
These problems would start to get sick, right like we
would start to see solutions and so so yeah, I
mean I think that's the other goal is that you know,
(50:15):
hopefully when we do these kinds of outreach, that we
can continue to motivate people to get engaged, you know,
to start taking action because you know, I don't you
know if you can't if you've got a family and
kids and a job and all that kind of stuff
and you can't drop everything and had the guara milo
with us, like I got it, but like, you know,
can you can you really share a social media posts?
(50:37):
I mean that's a simple click, you know. Can you um,
you know, take take an hour out of your weekend
to help us that volunteers to go down and work.
I mean that's the simple too here. You know, there's
all these simple things that people could do that ultimately
still results in the end goal. And that's you know,
that's what we're hoping to do is inspire a whole
(50:58):
a whole nation of do who just stood out there
and start getting the work. I love it. Yeah, I
just gave Annial early whistful look. Thank you so much
for sharing all of this. It makes me hopeful to
hear people fighting to make this. And you were talking
(51:21):
about all amazing things that people can get involved in,
all the things that you might need as an organization.
What specifically, how specifically can our listeners jump on board
to be a part of that? Where can we find you?
Where can they go? Look? So we're on uh, we're
on Facebook, Spacebook, dot com, slash Forward Response Management. You
can also find us on our website which is Global
(51:42):
dash Response dot org. And if you go onto our
web page, you'll see in the operating corner and there's
actually a link that says take action and that will
take you to the volunteer page, to donate page. You know,
we'll talk to you about, you know, donating medical supplies,
all those kinds of things. And so that's the easiest nighters. Also, um,
if you run a business, then you do cool technology stuff.
(52:05):
You know, there's a link on there to send an
email to us to talk about doing partnerships with us.
One way is that we're able to go and do
what we do so successfully is that we we rely
heavily on innovation and technology so that we're working smarter
and not harder in these areas. And so we have
cool partnership that we've started with other with other organizations
(52:27):
and Josh, so if you run a cool business and
you're innovative and and sort of in that field, you know,
you can also hit a stup that way. So those
are the and then we're also on Instagram Global dot Response,
UM you can follow our work and and sort of
see what we're doing all over the world. So um,
you know, the easiest dot is way for people to
donate is to just kick us five buck or you know,
(52:48):
to get involved. You know, money makes the world go around,
and we have to pay for everything from medical supplies
and equipment to country registrations to you know, travel for
for key individuals who are flying out to run projects
and and do you know, humanitarian monitoring assessment and things
like that. So it's simple as a couple of clicks
that it's Global dash Response dot org slash donate UM
(53:11):
and they'll take you right to the spot. And you know,
we're a five oh one C three so it's all
tax deductible. And then you know, just spreading the word
and telling your friends and following the work that we're
doing and every time you see like great works, like
it's simple as like hitting share and just being like, hey, like,
look at what these great people are doing. I think
we're great. I'm biased, um, you know, like look at
(53:34):
look at what they're doing and how they're changing the world,
and isn't this awesome? And I mean that's honestly how
we've gotten where we've been. It's just word of mouth
about you know, people who have been, you know, impressed
with our work. And then obviously I always tell people
that if you have rich answer uncles. I don't have them,
but if you do, we want to meet them, because
that's how that's how we keep you know, keep organizations running,
(53:58):
is people. It is very wonderful a chance to don
fees and uncle's you know, contributing to our efforts and
things like that. So so that's the easiest way for
for people to get involved. And then you know, shooting
the emails and figuring out how you can get involved
to help with all of the other things. We can
do that too. I love that go bother you're rich
and uncle's official perfect. I keep asking my family. I'm like,
(54:25):
so like who's gonna marry? Like who've gonna because like,
you know, like good for Like yeah, I was like,
you guys are good for like you know, Christmas time.
But like, come on, who's I need? I need someone
to take one for the team and like marry into
like the Rockefellers or something. Now this simple thank you
(54:50):
guys for the opportunity to talk about our work. You know,
we're we're always excited to share what we're doing with people,
and I'm always eager to motivate people out there to
to take action and to get involved. I mean I
tell people frequently like I I am a basic white girl, right,
Like I love my leggings and my and my Starbucks
and my like I am nothing special, you know, like
(55:12):
other than I just I figured out that I got
tired of waiting for the government to solve our problems
and I just got to work. I mean, that's the
only that's that that's the only thing about me that
that's maybe a little bit different, and so um, I
always I always look for those opportunities to courage and
and sort of motivate other people to get out there
and really start making change, because that's that's the only
(55:35):
way that that we're going to actually start seeing this
change that we're looking for, believing for our country. That
brings us to the end of our interview. But we
do have a little bit more for you listeners. But
first we have one more quick break for work fromer
sponsor and we're back. Thank you sponsor. So we know
(56:10):
that a lot of that was probably not easy to hear,
but so so necessary. And also I love and talking
to Helen. She just had this this outlook of you
can make a difference, you can make a change, So
be sure to check out all of the things she mentioned.
If this is something that you found impactful or something
(56:34):
you want to be involved in. In the meantime, you
can look out for our episode with Cocoa and Kim
in the coming weeks. It is coming, it did happen,
And you can also check out our book of the
month for Feminist Book Club. It is Ash by Melinda Lowe,
which had the tenth anniversary last year, so we're excited
(56:55):
to revisit it. Yes, yes, for those who don't know,
it is a retelling of a popular fairy tale. I
don't really want to spoil it, but you should get
in on this book club. I already posted it up
on our social media, and I've already had a couple
of comments on it, so you know people are interested.
(57:15):
I'm excited, yes, And I'm also excited about our movie
pick of this month, A Girl Walks Home Alone at night.
If you want to follow along with that, I believe
it's still on Netflix. If not, sorry about it. But
it's really good and it's sort of like a It's
not a horror movie. I wouldn't label it that way. Um,
(57:37):
it does have to deal with vampires. It does a vampire,
it does have some vengeance, it has some vengeance, it
has some violence. I just I wouldn't call it a horror,
but it's very cinematic for sure. It is very cinematic. Um.
And if you have any ideas for what should be
in next month's book pick or movie pick, you can
(57:58):
send them to us. All right. Email is Stuff Media
mom Stuff at iHeart media dot com. You can find
us on Twitter, app, Mom Stuff Podcast, or on Instagram
at Stuff I've Never Told You. Thanks as always to you,
our super producer, Andrew Howard, thank you. Thanks to our
interviewee Fillen Perry, thank you, and thanks to you for
listening Stuff I've Never Told Your protection of i heart
(58:18):
Radio for more podcast from my I heart Radio is
the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
Hey, this is Samantha and this is Annie Wilson to stuff.
Mom never told you a production of I Heart Radio.
So hello, everybody. Condue to a scheduling mix up in
our publication are massive meta sheet of what has been
(00:28):
published and what will publish, and we've been ahead of schedule.
So we have been ahead of schedule. Yeah, there's a
lot of stuff waiting to be put out there. There is,
but because of that sometimes some confusion happened. So you're
gonna hear in this episode as mentioned two women, Coco
and Kim, who you probably do not know who they are,
(00:50):
not yet, Yes, not yet. I will mention them a
couple of times because we recorded an interview with them
prior to this interview that is in this episode, and
they put us in touch with um, the woman that
we're interviewing in this one, Helen Perry. So keep on
(01:10):
the lookout or the listen out, however you want to
put that for a future episode featuring Cocoa and Kim,
who are fantastic, amazing about sex and gender based silence
in the Democratic Republic of Congo. It sounds like a
superhero team. They should be. They are listen I believe
Coco on her resume had an a line item that
(01:32):
said underwater helicopter escape training. I'm not messing with that.
Let me She's definitely gonna survive any of the scenarios
case scenario bits. Yes, which, with the news as it
is today, very may need that. Very useful, very useful.
But today we are talking with Helen Perry, who is
(01:54):
the executive director of Global Response Management, and Helen is
also amazing. She is running a project in Matamorrow's, Mexico.
For those not familiar, this is town of half a
million population wise ums and five feet past the Mexican border,
across a bridge from Brownsville, Texas, where three thousand refugees
(02:18):
and asylum seekers are gathered, many in need of medical attention,
many without food, water, or bathrooms, no access to basic hygiene.
Some have been there for several months. This is the
largest refugee camp on the US border. And before we
get further into this, trigger warning for discussion around violence,
(02:39):
sexual assault, trafficking, and generally bad conditions and some of
it is really grim, so just it heads up there.
There's a little bit of detail in there, so prepare yourself, um,
but it is an important conversation area, and to make
matters words, it's a hotbed for the mafia's and rival
drug gains. In one interview the interview, He's described it
(03:00):
as the most dangerous place in Mexico, and the US
government has advised tours not to visit the area due
to violence and kidnappings. Only a few a day are
allowed to seek asylum in the US in a policy
known as metering, and over a thousand are on the
list managed by Mexican officials. Some are asked for bribes
in exchange for a place on that list, and some
(03:21):
are kidnapped and extorted. Unfortunately, yes, very unfortunately, And Helena
is going to get more into this, but just so
we're on the same page when we get started. In
January tween nineteen, the U s expanded a policy requiring
asylum seekers to wait in Mexico, colloquially called remain in Mexico.
Refugees are given a date to return for an immigration
(03:42):
court hearing, where the US government doesn't have to provide
a lawyer, and getting one can be time consuming and expensive.
Some asylum seekers in Texas were sent back to Mexico.
The US also threatened to impose tariffs if Mexico did
not start cracking down on migrants, which is termed they
frequently you use. From January two September of twenty nineteen,
(04:03):
only eleven were granted asylum, and each day the government
sends dozens of refugees to Metamoras. Many sleep outside until
they can find a tent since there aren't showers. Many
bathe and wash their clothes in a nearby river, river
that once washed up a headless corpse. And as we're
(04:24):
all hearing in the news about COVID nineteen coronavirus, this
is a really big concern there as well, because it
would spread so rapidly, and tensions with the locals have
resulted in relocating with tents right, and some parents are
so desperate that they're sending their children across the border alone.
(04:45):
And children don't have to go to the same level
of bureaucracy. Rochelle Garza of the American Civil Liberties Union
of Texas said at the situation, these parents have been
forced to consider an unthinkable choice to save their children
by sending them into the US all loan, or to
keep them in northern Mexico where they will be exposed
to severe illness, kidnapping, tortured and rape um and you
(05:07):
have to remember, for a lot of these families, they
fled to protect their children. And you will also hear
in the interview where she specifically talks about parents bringing
her child through all of these back areas to come
to this refugee area and all of the suffering they
had to go to and how normalized it was in
stating that in comparison to what they would have had
(05:28):
to face, it was easier, and it's just so heartbreaking.
I think this is a lot of the conversations that
we've had every day when we talk about why are
they bringing their children doing it? Why are they doing
this legally? And we have these conversations constantly, and we
have to realize they are refugees, they are seeking a refuge,
(05:49):
They are trying to find a place of safety, and
you will do whatever you can, even it means your
own death and hopes that your child can have a chance.
Just I just find that heartbreaking, and I think that's
part of the we are divisive debate that continues to
happen about this level of well if you left your
children alone and forgetting what the cost truly was right,
(06:12):
And those are the stakes of the conversation that we
had with Helen, which we will get into. But first
we're going to get into a quick break for word
from our sponsor, and we're back, Thank you sponsor. So
(06:39):
now that we've set the stage a little bit, let's
let's talk to someone who's actually there and who's actually
on the ground and seeing these things. Let's get into
our interview with Helen. I'm Helen Harry and I am
the executive director for Global Response Management, which is a
three international medical nonprofit that catered to providing emergency, trauma
(07:02):
and pre hospital medicine in areas of the world that
are predominantly impacted by war conflict. And his act and
how did you get into that? Oh? Yeah, so I
was in the Army for I'm actually still technically in
the Army, but I did five years on actual duty
and then I went into the reserve. And there's like
(07:25):
a whole big, longsidebar story there. My husband was also
in the Marines and he got injury Afghanistan and so
he had a full traumatic brain injury, up losing all
his memory. So I ended up leaving active duty and
go to reserve. YadA YadA, all that kind of stuff.
And so when I was actually finishing grad school, you know,
I had done all of the specifically war trauma while
(07:48):
I was in the military, which is sort of a
very specific step set of trauma medicine. And I got
an email asking me if I would be interested in
going to Los i Raq and helping to run Trauma
Stable alevision point for civilians who are injured by the
fight to push out ISIS. And I was like, yeah,
I mean absolutely, Like I had been watching all of
(08:08):
you know, the news, and you always see these videos
with like people and you know, like these babies in
Syria being pulled out of the rubble, you know, and
and all these terrible things. But it's like, you know,
I had just been waiting on me like so much,
or the months that we're kind of surrounding like me
getting this email. So I did. I was on a
three week break from GROAD school between semesters, like finishing up,
(08:28):
and so I went over and I worked in Iraq
with the organization, and I loved it. I loved their mentality.
I loved that I loved sort of their work ethic
and that they were dedicated to going into these areas
where traditional organizations really we're not capable of operating um
(08:49):
and then providing literally life stating care that they would
not get anywhere else. So yeah, and then I I've
I stuck with it. I just you know, I kept
offering to volunteer if you are going to be shin. Uh.
They asked me to be on the board of directors,
so I did that. Then I started working uh and
like actually getting involved more in than a day to
day business. So then like a year ago I started
(09:11):
actually running the organization. And then about four or five
months ago I took over formally as the executive director. Wow, congratulations,
Yeah it sounds like a heavy duty. Yeah. Yeah, it's uh,
it's intense. To give you the context, I actually had
a very pushy job at a private hospital as a
(09:31):
nurse practitioner, and I walked away from a six figure
salary with no guarantee that I was getta get paid,
and was like, you know what, like this is this
is worth doing and dedicating my time too, And so
I turned down six figures and and came to do
this full time sort of on a on a hope
and a dream that we would be able to to
sort of get to a point where we could actually
(09:53):
pay people to produce some of the day to day
running of the organization. So um, yeah, it's been hugely
but faith Yeah, thank you first and foremost because that's
an amazing calling. I guess that's the best just falling
into that and the huge responsibility. And I'm not gonna
(10:16):
lie it as a social worker, that kind of have
you Before a minute, I was like, oh gosh, he's
doing all the things. Yeah yeah, before I actually really
got involved in the work, you know, I I just
kind of assumed that like these things were getting done
these areas, you know, we're getting the help that thing need.
I mean, you to get on the news, and you
sort of assume like, oh, somebody else got that right,
(10:37):
you know. And what I realized is like that stuff
like read like not the case at all. I mean
it is that is the farthest thing from the truth.
In fact, most of these areas that are impacted by war,
it's the exact opposite. Groups you don't go in because
they don't feel that they can address the risks appropriately.
And you know, when you're talking about military veteran to
(11:00):
who have you know, we've been trained our whole career
to work in these environments, and so yes, that's what
we've done, and we've done it really well. We've operated
in Iraq, Yemen, Bangladesh, Theoria, we were in the Bahamas
after Dorian, and now we're working in cartel controlled Matamortals Mexico. Yeah,
(11:21):
and that's one of the reasons we wanted to talk
to you today because a couple of weeks ago we
talked with um Coco and Kim m about gender and
sex based violence in the DRC and at the end
they're like, Oh, you've got to talk to Helen about
what's going on in Matamorro. So could you tell us,
(11:41):
could you give us kind of a rundown of what's
happening there. Yeah, So to give a little bit of
context to kind of the situation. You know, everybody is
pretty familiar or has at least been exposed to in
some degree, the cartel violence that has been incurring in
Central and South America. There's a lot of political and
reps in countries like Venezuela and on Birth and Nicaragua,
(12:06):
and then on top of that, there's also this those
predominant cartel violence that happens and when we talked about
cartel violence, you know, just to give people the clarity,
like we're talking about the same types of violence that
we saw with ISA. We're talking about five year old
children being strang up on trees and went on fire
(12:26):
because their parents couldn't pay extortion fees that month. We're
talking about women who have been brutally assaulted and raped
and mutilated because they had a family member who you know,
prof cartel lines and did something they weren't supposed they
were not supposed to do. I mean, we're talking about
(12:48):
unimaginable levels of violence. And so there's this misconception that
was currently gone on at the border, like people commonly
referred to them as migrants, and my argument, these are
not migrants, These are refugees. These are people who are
fleeing violence and persecution in the same ways that Theorians
(13:08):
are failish fleeing the war. So that's been going on
for for several years now that we've we've sort of
had this unrest and this sort of horrible violence that's
been going on down there. But the change happened in
twenty nineteen. The administration adopted a policy called MPP, which
is a migrant Protection Program, otherwise known as Remain in Mexico.
(13:32):
And basically what that said was that, you know, we've
had existing asylum lawn in our country since the nineteen
fifties after World War Two, and all of those laws
said that if you were, you know, coming to the
United States fleeing persecution, you know, you had to meet
these specific criterions, you know, persecution for religious, political and
(13:55):
or you know, social beliefs, etcetera, etcetera. Um, but while
you waited for your court hearing could go through, you
could stay in the United States in safety, and that
we would you know, offer you, in accordance with some
international policies, a level of protection and services like while
the courts figured out, you know, do you qualify for asylum. Well,
(14:18):
when mp P went to assess that change that policy
and made said now anybody who's requesting asylum has to
wait in Mexico for their asylum cases to go through.
And basically what that meant was that between Tiajuana and
Madam More, about sixty thousand asylum speakers and refugees were
now being pushed back into cartel controlled areas along the
(14:42):
border areas. And if you you know, if you're familiar
with what's been going on in border towns to the
last couple of years. They're also base and so that
policy it took effect in January twenty nineteen in Tijuana
and it didn't go into A five until July of
nineteen and Multi Models where we are working since July.
(15:05):
There's now a camp of like thirty five hundred of
VILM speakers and refugees living I mean like fifteen from
in Mexico and their their conditions are pretty pretty horrible.
These are they're living in tense like little Coleman weekend
camping tents. They don't have enough you know, when we
first got there, they had no bathrooms, they had no
(15:27):
running water, they had you know, nothing, no access to
medical care. And so we are organization went in and
started in September doing our initial assessment and then we've
been working in the camp every day starts October twentie
full time. Since you've been there. What kind of things
have you dealt with or have you seen? Yeah, so,
(15:52):
you know, I kind of call it the normal refugee stuff,
you know, health concerned, you know, skaties, the things that
I have hard time explaining to people to get some
time understand in fact, you know, for example, when we
first got there, we were seeing children who were actually
going blind from pink guy. Right. Like pink guys, it's
totally terrible, normal thing for kids to experience, but when
(16:15):
it's not treated and it becomes chronic and recurrent, they
actually end up with corneal scarring that causes them to
lose their vision. And they were getting pink eye because
the only area that they had to bathe in was
the river. And so regardless of the fact that they
were using soap and water, you're still bathing and dirty
infected water, and so these kids are just getting these
horrible infections. We were seeing kids to her risks of
(16:39):
losing their limbs because they had contracted fungal infections that
had advanced so far that they were starting to have
contractor or scarring that was causing them to lose circulation.
One little girl was actually losing range of motion and
circulation in her arm and she was I mean she
was very young, she was like maybe a year old.
(16:59):
And sin see all these kinds of normal things, like
things that we would you know, commonly see in the
United States, that they're just exacerbated to this extreme level
because of the conditions that they were in. We also
have we have strong suspicion women and children are being
trafficked out of these camps. There's not a lot of
(17:20):
great oversight. You know, Normally, in a in a displacement situation,
the u N would come in at the request of
either the country that they're fleeing from or the country
that's receiving them, and they would start monitoring and protection programs.
They would start a registration program. Yet there's there's these
formal processes that take place, but unfortunately at the border
(17:43):
that's not happening because both governments are sort of unwilling
to admit that this is a problem. This is happening.
I mean literally fifteen feet from the US borders, Like
in one part of the camp, I can be standing
at someone's tent and I can see the campus where
Texas this other most college, like right across the river.
I can literally way that people were walking to class
(18:05):
and a concini And it's like it is being the
most extremely flash that I had ever experienced. Because, like
I mean, I've worked in new situations all over the world.
They've been to Cope Bazaar in Bangladesh. She has been
in a rock has been. It was during border you know,
I was involved in affecting the camp in Yen there
and although one wasn't physically there, but I was getting
the pictures every day, like what was you know, happening
(18:25):
in those stamps, like all these kinds of things. But
like I always meant to take like an eighteen hour
flight to get to those places. And again the misconception
is that people keep saying, well, these are migrants, but
I'm like, no, they're not, like these are refugees, like
these are people. The stories that I have been told,
this one one that I met, She fled Honduras with
her daughter. Her daughter was ten, and she was working
(18:50):
for the police department in Honduras. She was very well respected,
she was very highly educated, and she found out through
her police department that she had been put on a
cartel hit with her and her whole family. And so
she had less than twenty four hours to ground her
daughter and everything that she owned and and free more.
Because she made the decision, and she was smart enough
(19:10):
to know that she couldn't travel with the caravans because
the cartel watches the caravan and you know, people were
missing there all the time, nobody goes to look for them.
And so she knew that she couldn't travel at the caravans,
that she would only travel at night, and she would
only take the roads, you know, the roads that were
off kind of the beaten path. And she told me
stories about how her and her daughter were serially raped
(19:33):
along the way, and I mean I literally and she's
telling me just the graph with detail about like this
horrible experience that she had, and I was just like,
oh my god, like I just I heard thro learn
her from your daughter, who's hard to go through this.
And she said, no, you don't understand, she said, she said,
she said, whatever the horrible situation she went through on
the way up here, that is nothing compared to what
(19:56):
they would do to her and hunder us. She said,
this is better. And I cannot have them a life
where what is behind you is that bad that being
serially rates trying to get to the United States to
safety is a better option, you know. And then most
I think the most thing is the whole thing was
(20:18):
at the end of this conversation where I just like
crying to she's telling me this horrible story. She said,
to me, and she's like, I just I really want
you to know that I appreciate everything that you are
doing for us, because I know that this is not free.
I know that this cost do something to be here.
And I was like, oh my god, lady, like the
cost is like not even the concern here, like you know,
(20:42):
so she would and to hear the story every day.
I mean our R O B G. I. N went
to do a forensic exam for a woman who a
woman who had been actually assaulted, and he had asked
us for a measuring tape where he could measure for scars,
and so we have these little side and paper measuring
tape that we use for like mounds and stuff like that.
(21:03):
So we brought him when you went in and was
in for a fewness the petition, and he came back
out and he said, no, I need a bigger measuring
tape and we had to bring him a sixty cloth
measuring teep so that he could accurately document this woman's scarring.
I mean, it was just so horrific. And you see
(21:24):
that every day. I mean, that's the normal day for
us there. You know. It's just totally shocking to me
that people are just not aware of the horrible things
that are happening to these people, and then the positions
that they're being put in as a results of the
policies you know that's the administration and adopted. So when
(21:45):
they arrive um at the centers and areas, it's not
like that they're safe. These continued harassment and or assaults
are happening. There's and there's nobody really there to regulated.
Is that correct or no? Yeah, exactly. Now it's different
because the a p A, the Asylum Cooperative Agreement just
put into effect, and so that is greatly changing that's
(22:08):
happening to them. Now. They're being directly deported to Guatemala
to get an asylum in Guatemala, which is the biggest
irony because um, the head of immigration in Guatemala actually
just got granted asylum in the United States because it
wasn't safe for her in Guatemala. I was gonna wait,
there's like that doesn't even it's eem to make sense
(22:28):
because people are trying to get from Guatemala to the
US as well, or trying to find a refugee area
as well. Yep, I mean it. It is the biggest
force that we've created these policies, and it's so funny
to me because any same person could look at it
and be like, this makes no sense. Like Guatemala is
also equally impacted by these same problems, But why are
(22:51):
we sending people there as if it's safer. It's not safe,
and you need to give people that the contract of this.
Matamata's Mexico is in the state of Melopas and Tama Lupas.
The state in Mexico has the same security rating hysteria.
According to the Department of State, it is a level
four do not travel areas and so, and we're forcing
people to wait there on their asylum cases. I mean,
(23:14):
we've had dozens of documented kidnapped, We've had dozens of
documents and assaults um rates. Women are being trafficks, I mean,
children are being trafficked. People go missing all the time,
Like we know this, and yet you know, it's just
just another day. You know, there's you know, it's sort
of kind of the life the lesser evil. Yeah, well,
(23:38):
and you know a p A is going to be
equally horrible because now people just don't missing and they're
so you know, at least in Matamoros, there's some level
of overfight because it's so close to the United States,
that's the way there to to kind of you know,
reporters going and out. But in in Guatemala, there's no
out of sight, out of mind, you know, God, and
(23:59):
out of ada. Because one of the things that Kim
and Cooko we're talking about was the trauma assessments that
were they were in the drc A trying to get
some assessments and just the level of treatment that's needed,
especially like psychological as well as trauma based. I know
you were saying you're doing a lot of the medical
Do you guys even have the time to do those
levels of assessments as well, especially with the gender based
(24:21):
violence or is it just pretty much meet the basic
needs so they can survive a little bit of both.
We're working on, you know, we do have collaborative partners
in the area providing some mental health resources and we're
working on trying to figure out how we addressed needs,
you know, in a population that's very transient and as
you know, kind of moving around constantly. But a lot
(24:45):
of it is you know, like we're just we're just
trying to get basic health care to them, you know,
that's the deep one. You know, they gotta survived the
pneumonia that they got from living in a tent on
a thirty degree night before we can actually start to
address the long term needs of mental and psychologic the support.
But we've done a couple of things that created women's
groups that meet every Friday so that women can just
(25:06):
you know, kind of gather and talk about whatever it
is that they want to talk about, you know, sort
of freeforming and and sort of free flowing for them
to kind of they can addrest issues. They can just
sit there and listen to music and have some coffee.
They can you know, do whatever kind of thing, just
have that little bit of normality in their life. We've
also started addressing the psychological support for kids. So often
(25:29):
in humanitarian situations and in disaster situation, you know, people
will see these kids, you know, outplaying, and they look like,
aren't they're well, you know, look at them just being kids.
Isn't that so great? And like in reality, like these
kids have experienced unimaginable levels of trauma that like, yeah, okay,
it may not be like impacting them right now, but
(25:52):
like wait until they're twenty five and they're a heroin addict,
because you know, they've had this unimaginable childhood trauma that
just never got dealt with. So, um, we actually started
a child safe space where we have I mean, it's
just it's like a little playroom. They've got some toys,
they've got some some bright colors, the Friendly Face pick
up books, and they can go in and just kind
(26:14):
of be kids for like Tedter fifteen minutes today, um,
and kind of have that separation. So well, I wonder
how normal this is to them, Like all that trauma
that we see that we know is bad and it's
going to affect them. They're like, well, this is a
normal day, So this is a part of my childhood.
I'm gonna go ahead and play here and be assaulted here.
And they just kind of move on, not realizing this
(26:34):
is not normal and it shouldn't be normal for you.
Oh my god, it's so I mean, like there was
a one little girl, Andrea and I, um, one of
the awesome people that I work with, We were walking
in the camp and these little girls came up to
us and we were just chatting with them, and we
were like, oh, you know, like why why did you come?
Like why are you here, and she said, oh yeah,
and she said it, Oh my god. She said it
(26:55):
like it was this was just an average day. She goes, oh,
you know, because my cousin's got machette, you know where
they get where they get hacked up. Do you want
to see pictures? And I really like, oh my god, no,
like we do not want to see pictures. And then
she was like, well, do you want to see my barbies?
And we're like, yeah, show show us the barbies. I mean,
(27:18):
I mean, just so, I mean, these poor kids are
just going to grow up work like I'm imaginable trauma
because of what they've had in their childhood. It's just
unreal and they think that's the norm. That's just it
was heartbreaking part of the whole situation that it is.
(27:40):
It's like, hey, someone got murdered in my family. Hey
you want to see my barbie? And it goes hand
in hand for them as childhood, Like that's the most
unfortunate part. And I feel like oftentimes, especially with the
climate today, when we're talking about politics, they take their
normalcy so them not maybe overreacting and being traumatized. We
(28:00):
see in Hallmark movies and or in the U s alone,
maybe that that's they're fine. See, they're great, They're okay,
they can cope where they are, instead of saying, no,
this is a problem for all of us as humans
and we need to see how wrong this is. Yeah,
I mean, it's it's just insane to me that that
(28:23):
this has become sort of the acceptable norms. You know,
everybody was so outraged by family separation, you know, but
like it's it's we haven't seen that same level of
outrage the MPP has gone into effect and since and
since a p A has gone into effect, and speaking
of that, I know you've touched on it a little
(28:44):
bit and how it's changing. But when when refugees arrive,
what happens next? Like what in theory is supposed to happen? Yeah,
can you give us a route of what happens when
they are their dreams are dashed essentially, or when they're
actually a possibility that they could be sent to a
(29:05):
safe space. Yeah, So, so what should happen is that
they get allowed into the United States to wait for
the appropriate asylum hearings in apport, you know that they
have representation and a lawyer and all this kind of stuff.
Stuff was supposed to happen after the AHA went into effect.
They went into effect in November. Now what happens is
(29:27):
when anybody finally reaches the US Mexico border and they
present to apport an entry to ask for asylum. First
of all, um, there are very specific words that they
have to say in a very specific order. It's almost
like the magic words. The set of words and the
order in which those worth he said, actually constantly changes.
(29:47):
The VP changes the requirement quite frequently too, regardless of
the fact that somebody is trying to tell you that
they fear for their lives. Uh. If they don't specifically
say those words I fear for my life if I
go back to X, Y, and Z, that doesn't count
as as an appeal for asylum. If they don't specifically
(30:08):
ask for asylum, if they say I want to be
safe in the United States, that doesn't count. They have
to say I want asylum in the United States. They
can't say if I go home, I'm going to be
tortured and they're gonna kill me. They have to say,
if I go home, I'm afraid that I will be killed. Um.
And then not only that, but then they actually have
(30:29):
to know who's going to do it, Like the US
has actually put the burden of proof on these people
to prove that they will be persecuted and killed, right, Like,
how do you prove that somebody's gonna kill you? Like,
I mean, you know what I mean. Like our our
friend Ray actually got asylum from Cuba. He was having
issues because he came out of being gay and when
(30:50):
he went in for his questioning with CDP, they said, well,
how do we know you're gay? And I was like, right,
how did you prove that? And he was like he
was like you know, And I was like, hey, listen,
no judgment, whatever you gotta do, you know, like I'm
happy for you. That is so debasing just to have
to say, oh, let me prove what is being persecuted,
(31:10):
like my persecution essentially to you in the most meaning
way I can think of, because you have to have proof, right.
And it's crazy because I mean, the thing I mean,
the story to get me here out of court became
of these the individuals were told are just insane, you know,
things like well, I'm sorry you were kidnapped, but it
doesn't sound like you were tortured enough to qualify for asylum,
(31:32):
Like what like I mean, and these are like this
is legitimate, like this is what they're being told is
like I'm sorry your child was killed. Because you don't
have pictures of his charred body being taken out of
the tree, you actually can't prove his death and therefore
you don't qualify for a stylum. Just just insane thing.
(31:55):
So so now what's actually happening is that when they
get to the border and they don't say their special
magic words, they're actually being immediately deported as as being
at the border without an appropriate beat the documentation. They
actually say the right magic words in the right order,
then creaking in and that's when USL and Cooperative Agreement
(32:15):
otherwise called ADA, that's when a CI takes effect. And
what happens is they're immediately taken into custody to these
detention centers and from there there they have no du process.
They're not allowed to they're not allowed to make a
phone call, they're not allowed to call a lawyer, they're
not allowed to talk with anyone um. The detention centers
actually use known forms of torture. They're not fun places
(32:38):
to be. They keep the ambient temperatures of the room
unnaturally cold, but around sixty degrees. They're not allowed to
go jackets. They're not get to a blanket or than
the mile are sheets and their blankets. They're not allowed
to wear shoes. The lights are kept on twenty four
hours a day. The led lights that they use actually
make an audible hump that you can actually hear, like
(32:59):
and it's the as like Chinese water torture. They're not
provided with that's to sleep on. They're not allowed to
touch or talk to any of the other people surrounding them.
They are quite literally kept in Shaneley cages. Um. Like,
these are all very similar tactics that are used on
the international circuit for like interrogating terrorists. And we're viewing
(33:23):
this to children and and like pregnant women. I mean
that is just like to me, like I'm just like,
oh my god, like we are still lost in our
priorities here. So when they get to detention, uh, they're
not allowed your phone call, they're basically sort of the
qustered off and then they're immediately turned around and put
(33:45):
on a flight to Guatemala. And they're not told that
they're going to Guatemala. We found this out recently because
the contract in Guatemala that we've been coordinating with UM,
they're also not told that they can apply for a
style wom in Guatemala. To imagine that you've just made
this horrible forty five day journey, you know, from your
home where somebody has statened to kill you or maybe
just killed all of your family or killed your children,
(34:07):
and you finally make it to the United States and
you say the right magic words in the right word,
and you have all of your proofs in hand, only
to then be put on a flight and flown basically
we're right black to where you came from. Yeah, that's horrific.
That's like the most awful gaming of the system to
to be like, oh, yeah, here's this opportunity. Here, we
(34:30):
have this chance for you, and then really it's rigged.
Oh yeah, yeah. I mean the entire system that we
have right now is set up to discriminate against anyone
coming to the United States under the status of asylum
or or refugees. And I think that that, you know,
(34:52):
we in the ninth New forties, we turned away Jews
who were fleeing from Germany and Poland and France. As
you know, the Nazi regime was you know, capturing entertaining people,
and history does not look kindly back on that, you know.
I think I think everyone can look back at our
history and say, you know, that was a gross mistake
(35:13):
on our part. We should never have done that. We
should have we should have stuffed up and taking care
of these people and provided them, you know, with safety
and with refuge. And yet here we are doing the
exact same things again, and it's like we haven't learned
our lesson, you know, and that's unfortunate. Very yeah. Yeah.
(35:38):
I keep thinking about on the Statue of Liberty what
it says, and and the fact that the president was like,
I'm willing to change it. God, I'm just I'm just
I'm just right now, I'm a little paul. I'm trying
to shake it all a little bit. I'm going to
take a deep breath. And I can't imagine you're seeing
this every damn day. How do you keep And we're
gonna come back to but I just got to know,
(35:58):
how do you keep yourself saying in this because just
hearing this and I again like in my field, I
only worked with kids who were in the state and
in the state of Georgia, and we had a few
refugees with us, and we had a few that were
on visas, and I had to try my best to
be like, hey, I'm so sorry, but you might not
want to want to ask for this kind of help
right now, because this kind of help make it you deported,
(36:21):
And like being heartbroke and just being able having to
tell them that with that small fear of them being deported,
I can't imagine being in an area where they're being
told daily, yeah, no, your trauma is not good enough
for you to go find safety and haven in a
place that could offer that for you. How do you
deal with all that? I mean, I think for me
(36:45):
is I don't know. You know, everybody had out of
their own, their own way of dealing with things. Um,
you know, this is definitely a very different type of
trauma than we experience, like in a rock you know,
where we were seeing ben shout wounds and blast injuries
and so and you know, and you sort of have
this like compartment movation and that sort of takes over
and you just sort of shove your emotions deep down
(37:08):
into the pits of your gallbladder and hope that you
don't ever see them again, because this is different because
you know, you like, we know these families, you know,
we've known them over the course of months, and they
see them and their kids and all this kind of stuff,
and so you know, I have a really highly paid therapist. Um.
I think that that's like step one is sort of
acknowledging your trauma and being like, you know, if this
(37:30):
isn't screwing me up, it probably should be. And so
I'm not sure which is more of a problem. It's like,
you know, so I think also it would be a
lot harder for me it wasn't doing something. I think
it was harder to talent if I if I wasn't
actively taking action and working to help these people in
some way. And you know, when I talk to people,
(37:50):
that's the thing that I tell people then, like listen,
I'm a thirty two year old blonde chick from Florida.
That's like running a refuge. You camp at the border
for bol Like, don't tell me that you're not capable
of making some kind of change, Like I've wrong with you.
There's put you to work, you know. And I think
the hard thing for a lot of Americans, like you know,
(38:12):
I think we look around currently in the state of
affairs in our country, and like this is totally like
my own personal rant and not the rant of the organization,
but like, you know, like we we look around and
like we see all these things happening, right, Like we're
seeing all these injustices against people of color and you know,
the LGBTQ community, and you know, all of these terrible
things that are happening. And I think so many people
(38:35):
feel helpless to do anything about it because they think,
oh my god, I'm you know, I'm just a thirty
two year old blondet in Florida. Like I can't change
national policy. I can't help thirty refugees as the porter,
Like what am I going to do? I'm just one person.
And I think that people have been brainwashed to believe
that because you absolutely can change. Like listen in a
(39:00):
thirty two year old to check from Florida, and I'm
running a camp for people and I'm keeping them alive
on a daily basis. Like I promise you there is
something you can do, and if we all just do
that one thing, regardless of whether it's you know, the
border crisis or you know, you know first and thement
rate at castle a person then or right for or
(39:20):
you know, working to improve policing policies to ensure that
they're equitable and that they're you know, not targeting people
of color unjustly. You know, whatever it is that you
use to put your energy into, Like I promise you
can do something about this. You can literally just have
to do it. That's it. I think if we I
think people feel so much differently about it, if they
(39:42):
would just start getting to work, you know, that's kind
of it. Yeah, and that's that's a great message for
our listeners are really awesome, um and they love having
those things like what can I do? Because they want
to help. And I feel the same way, like I
of I love that whole idea of just you can
(40:03):
find something right, there is something for you that you
can help. Yeah, you know, even if it's going out
in your front yard every day and holding a sign
you know that says slow down in my neighborhood, you know,
like whatever it is, Like there's it's the inaction that
we have right now that's just paralyzing us as a
nation because we expect the government to do it. And
(40:25):
like I'll be honest with you, I am really tired
of waiting for the government to show up in the
fixed problems right like their track records. So far, it's
also has been terrible, pretty terrible if you look at
the War on homelessness, the War on drugs, like any
of the wars on that they created have all it
did and pretty chasteepic policy. Um So I was like,
(40:45):
you know what, they're not going to do it. Fine,
I will, you know, I'll figure it out. And that's
something we hear a lot when we talk to when
we have people on the show, and also when we
research woment of the past that have done something, is
like seeing, well, no one else is doing it, I'm
just going have to do it right. Yeah, yeah, I
did want to ask about the state what the locals
(41:08):
they're like, how, how is that situation? How are they
handling this? So this is a lot of unfortunately sort
of systemic biases and Central and South America again other countries.
In Mexico specifically, there's a lot of resentment towards Central
and South Americans who are coming up and in Motimoral
(41:32):
that resentment has kind of build over into the community
and so it's controversial and it's not black like you
saw this in Bangladesh as well. You know, imagine that
you and your family, you know, it's been living in
this country for years, and by this country and New Mexico,
and then all of a sudden, like you're starving and
you don't have access in that of than and you're
(41:52):
impoverished and all these kinds of things. And then imagine
that like these other groups of people show up and
like they're all so pretty bad off, but like they
get help and you don't. You know, that's not always fair,
and so it creates a lot of resentment in a
lot of communities. And so one of the ways that
we try to address that is that as an organization,
(42:13):
we see everybody. We don't turn away. We've had locals
from the community come and see us for free access
to medical care, and we see them just the same
as we would see someone who was living in the camp.
And we've tried to be you know, good terrors and
that we try to take care of the area that
we're in and keep it clean and keep it nice,
and and that's something that you know, we've we've worked
(42:34):
very hard to to try and keep up. So you know,
I'm hoping that that that sentiment starts to change. But
I mean, for many of those people, they're they're in
equally terrible situation, and so, you know, it's very challenging.
You've already touched on some some of the ways that
(42:55):
women are specifically being impacted, wondering if there if you
have any other insight, have you seen patterns? Are are
just things that are specific to women in this whole situation. Yeah,
you had mentioned about the fact that the women and children.
You think there's obvious signs of trafficking happening within the
(43:17):
camps as well, and that no one's necessarily safe just
because they're there. What exactly is the impact? What is
the level um that's happening. Yeah, I mean I think
you know, we know spetistically speaking that in areas of
conflicts of war, that women and children are far more
likely to experience the negative impact, that that they're more
likely to be economically underserved, the more ready to have,
(43:41):
you know, less access to human try and resources. They're
more likely to be targeted, you know, for things like
trafficking and and acts of violence and things like that. Um,
and in general, there's just more vulnerable population. I think
that the biggest issue that may have is that because
like we just don't know how bad they're being targeted.
(44:03):
You know, we don't know how bad the situation really
is because the responses being coordinated and funded at the
private level, which is like, by the way, unheard of, right, Like,
humanitarian responses are generally funded by the u N or
by the countries that are experiencing these crisis and we're
talking about in millions of dollars, you know, hundreds of
(44:26):
millions of dollars range that's not happening, and not the lotos,
and it's not happening all along the border. These are
all privately funded responsive and because of that, we lack
the resources to really fully understand how these women are
are being and how like the LGBTQ community that's there
(44:46):
is really being impacted. And so that's something that we're
likely not going to know the full results of for years,
you know, I guess sort of related and you definitely
already touched on this a little bit with regards to
um calling people migrants when we should be using the
(45:07):
term refugees. What do you think the media gets wrong
in reporting this and what do you wish the general
public would take away from this conversation. Yeah, so simag
thing is parking on on the terminology, right, like the
migrants versus refugees, And then you know people will get
into the whole like well or technically asylum speakers, they
(45:29):
can't be a refugee until they've had an asylum process.
And and my my spainents that is, you know, we're
not calling experience who are fleeing THEIA lence, you know,
like we just kind of give them the credit of
their situation and say refugee. So you know, the semantics
for that really kind of as frustrating. I think one
(45:52):
of the things that has not been well reported in
mstimoreal specific is like just how terrible these conditions are.
I mean, some of these people have been living in
this camp since July of last year. They're going through
extremes in temperature, I mean just incredibly hot, you know,
(46:12):
hundred less degree days, rain, you know, all of the
terrible you know, like imagine a camping trip that just
never ends, you know. I once sort of jokingly described
it as like the worst music festival you've ever been to,
where it's like the last day, all the fun drugs
are gone, there's you know, human species everywhere. The bathrooms
are overflowing, there's no food, and it's raining, and everybody's miserable,
(46:36):
you know, and and like they're living in this every day.
And I think that when media comes in and they
started to these lacks, you know, like we're gonna get
our fifteen minutes footage and then we're out, they're sort
of missing, like yeah, like you go over for fifteen
minutes and it's like not so bad. You know, you're
there a day or two or three or whatever, and
(46:58):
it's you know, it feels okay. It feels like you
get back to your hotel with your air conditioning at night,
nearly cool beat you know, in a long day. Right,
But like there are people who don't leave that situation.
They have nowhere to go, they have no reprieve. And
imagine doing that months on end, and then imagine that
like your alternative is like if you get sent back home,
(47:19):
you're at a dock. I mean, Human Rights Watch just
followed two hundred El Salvadorians back to El Salvador but
been deported from the United States, either for failed asylum
planes or for just regular deportation for being a documented
in the country and within the first year, a hundred
and thirty eight of them were murders. The other sixty
(47:41):
two of them had either experienced extortions, torture, kidnap, or
some type of other physical abuse that put their life
at risk. And we're sending people back by this album,
you know. And I think the other thing that that
really getsmissed is like just how terrible the conditions are
(48:03):
and how bad the safety situation is in a lot
of these countries. I think that we have sort of,
you know, the media has sort of put this focus
on people who are coming here as quote, you know, migrants,
like meaning they're just looking for better jobs, and in reality,
it's like cleaning that kind of violence. It does not
make you a migrant, it makes you a refugee. Yeah.
And to have it, as you said, so close to
(48:26):
our border, like it's just happening, it's just right there.
So what do you foresee in the future, both for
this project and for yourself, what are you hoping will happen?
So we're planning to be in the camp and Nottamortals
until probably about August for sort of anticipating that as
(48:49):
sort of stuck in in third cases get hurt in court,
people are either going to get you know, admitted of
the d through the silent process, or they will get
supported because they'll they are silence process will have failed.
Now that a c A has gotten into effect, we
are already anticipating the need for a medical response in
guatemala Um, and we're in the early phases of doing
(49:12):
some investigation and figuring out where people are going and
how we can help and to provide them with whatever
support and resources that they need. And so I think
along with that, the other goal that we have as
an organization is really to start engaging the community around us,
all of those people out there who are like snealing,
(49:33):
who are we helpless and listening to these terrible stories
and saying, oh my god, someone should help them like
that the listen is you, you know that person with me, right,
and so like we need you know, as an organizations,
we need help in all areas. We need accounting help,
logistics help. You know, I need people who can translate
(49:54):
documents into Spanish. I need people who can translate documents
into French. Like I promised you, people have a skill
that we can put to work. And if we would
all just collectively together stand up and get to work.
These problems would start to get sick, right like we
would start to see solutions and so so yeah, I
mean I think that's the other goal is that you know,
(50:15):
hopefully when we do these kinds of outreach, that we
can continue to motivate people to get engaged, you know,
to start taking action because you know, I don't you
know if you can't if you've got a family and
kids and a job and all that kind of stuff
and you can't drop everything and had the guara milo
with us, like I got it, but like, you know,
can you can you really share a social media posts?
(50:37):
I mean that's a simple click, you know. Can you um,
you know, take take an hour out of your weekend
to help us that volunteers to go down and work.
I mean that's the simple too here. You know, there's
all these simple things that people could do that ultimately
still results in the end goal. And that's you know,
that's what we're hoping to do is inspire a whole
(50:58):
a whole nation of do who just stood out there
and start getting the work. I love it. Yeah, I
just gave Annial early whistful look. Thank you so much
for sharing all of this. It makes me hopeful to
hear people fighting to make this. And you were talking
(51:21):
about all amazing things that people can get involved in,
all the things that you might need as an organization.
What specifically, how specifically can our listeners jump on board
to be a part of that? Where can we find you?
Where can they go? Look? So we're on uh, we're
on Facebook, Spacebook, dot com, slash Forward Response Management. You
can also find us on our website which is Global
(51:42):
dash Response dot org. And if you go onto our
web page, you'll see in the operating corner and there's
actually a link that says take action and that will
take you to the volunteer page, to donate page. You know,
we'll talk to you about, you know, donating medical supplies,
all those kinds of things. And so that's the easiest nighters. Also, um,
if you run a business, then you do cool technology stuff.
(52:05):
You know, there's a link on there to send an
email to us to talk about doing partnerships with us.
One way is that we're able to go and do
what we do so successfully is that we we rely
heavily on innovation and technology so that we're working smarter
and not harder in these areas. And so we have
cool partnership that we've started with other with other organizations
(52:27):
and Josh, so if you run a cool business and
you're innovative and and sort of in that field, you know,
you can also hit a stup that way. So those
are the and then we're also on Instagram Global dot Response,
UM you can follow our work and and sort of
see what we're doing all over the world. So um,
you know, the easiest dot is way for people to
donate is to just kick us five buck or you know,
(52:48):
to get involved. You know, money makes the world go around,
and we have to pay for everything from medical supplies
and equipment to country registrations to you know, travel for
for key individuals who are flying out to run projects
and and do you know, humanitarian monitoring assessment and things
like that. So it's simple as a couple of clicks
that it's Global dash Response dot org slash donate UM
(53:11):
and they'll take you right to the spot. And you know,
we're a five oh one C three so it's all
tax deductible. And then you know, just spreading the word
and telling your friends and following the work that we're
doing and every time you see like great works, like
it's simple as like hitting share and just being like, hey, like,
look at what these great people are doing. I think
we're great. I'm biased, um, you know, like look at
(53:34):
look at what they're doing and how they're changing the world,
and isn't this awesome? And I mean that's honestly how
we've gotten where we've been. It's just word of mouth
about you know, people who have been, you know, impressed
with our work. And then obviously I always tell people
that if you have rich answer uncles. I don't have them,
but if you do, we want to meet them, because
that's how that's how we keep you know, keep organizations running,
(53:58):
is people. It is very wonderful a chance to don
fees and uncle's you know, contributing to our efforts and
things like that. So so that's the easiest way for
for people to get involved. And then you know, shooting
the emails and figuring out how you can get involved
to help with all of the other things. We can
do that too. I love that go bother you're rich
and uncle's official perfect. I keep asking my family. I'm like,
(54:25):
so like who's gonna marry? Like who've gonna because like,
you know, like good for Like yeah, I was like,
you guys are good for like you know, Christmas time.
But like, come on, who's I need? I need someone
to take one for the team and like marry into
like the Rockefellers or something. Now this simple thank you
(54:50):
guys for the opportunity to talk about our work. You know,
we're we're always excited to share what we're doing with people,
and I'm always eager to motivate people out there to
to take action and to get involved. I mean I
tell people frequently like I I am a basic white girl, right,
Like I love my leggings and my and my Starbucks
and my like I am nothing special, you know, like
(55:12):
other than I just I figured out that I got
tired of waiting for the government to solve our problems
and I just got to work. I mean, that's the
only that's that that's the only thing about me that
that's maybe a little bit different, and so um, I
always I always look for those opportunities to courage and
and sort of motivate other people to get out there
and really start making change, because that's that's the only
(55:35):
way that that we're going to actually start seeing this
change that we're looking for, believing for our country. That
brings us to the end of our interview. But we
do have a little bit more for you listeners. But
first we have one more quick break for work fromer
sponsor and we're back. Thank you sponsor. So we know
(56:10):
that a lot of that was probably not easy to hear,
but so so necessary. And also I love and talking
to Helen. She just had this this outlook of you
can make a difference, you can make a change, So
be sure to check out all of the things she mentioned.
If this is something that you found impactful or something
(56:34):
you want to be involved in. In the meantime, you
can look out for our episode with Cocoa and Kim
in the coming weeks. It is coming, it did happen,
And you can also check out our book of the
month for Feminist Book Club. It is Ash by Melinda Lowe,
which had the tenth anniversary last year, so we're excited
(56:55):
to revisit it. Yes, yes, for those who don't know,
it is a retelling of a popular fairy tale. I
don't really want to spoil it, but you should get
in on this book club. I already posted it up
on our social media, and I've already had a couple
of comments on it, so you know people are interested.
(57:15):
I'm excited, yes, And I'm also excited about our movie
pick of this month, A Girl Walks Home Alone at night.
If you want to follow along with that, I believe
it's still on Netflix. If not, sorry about it. But
it's really good and it's sort of like a It's
not a horror movie. I wouldn't label it that way. Um,
(57:37):
it does have to deal with vampires. It does a vampire,
it does have some vengeance, it has some vengeance, it
has some violence. I just I wouldn't call it a horror,
but it's very cinematic for sure. It is very cinematic. Um.
And if you have any ideas for what should be
in next month's book pick or movie pick, you can
(57:58):
send them to us. All right. Email is Stuff Media
mom Stuff at iHeart media dot com. You can find
us on Twitter, app, Mom Stuff Podcast, or on Instagram
at Stuff I've Never Told You. Thanks as always to you,
our super producer, Andrew Howard, thank you. Thanks to our
interviewee Fillen Perry, thank you, and thanks to you for
listening Stuff I've Never Told Your protection of i heart
(58:18):
Radio for more podcast from my I heart Radio is
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