From sports Media. I'm Daniel James. This is seven am in a ralli at Madison Square gard in New York. Just over a week from the election, Donald Trump took to the stage with a vision for the first day of his presidency.
On day one, I will launch the largest deportation program in American history.
But he got the criminals out.
Trump is promising to deport more than eleven million people if he wins the election.
But the day I take the oath of office, the migrant invasion of our country ends and the restoration of our country begins.
Immigration has been one of the most pressing and divisive issues of the race, with fears of bordered chaos and misinformation about immigrants eating pets dominating. But the facts about immigration tell a different story. Today, investigative reporter for Pro Republica Marca Rosenberg on the Real Waves immigrations affecting America. It's Wednesday, October thirty. Your investigation starts in a town called Whitewater, Wisconsin. Can you tell me about the town and what happened there?
So this is a story that actually my colleagues at Pro Publica poured out for months. They went to Whitewater, Wisconsin, and found that there had been a big increase in the number of Nicaraguan migrants arriving in the town in the past couple of years. And this is a relatively small town, sort of a college town, but a lot of the Nicaraguans were coming to work in factories there.
Since twenty twenty two, around eight hundred to one thousand migrants from Central and South America have come to Whitewater, Wisconsin.
The local police chief was really getting bogged down because a lot of the new immigrants were driving without licenses, and the small police department was overwhelmed with more traffic stops and lack of Spanish speaking staff. And so in late twenty twenty three, he actually wrote to President Biden asking for some federal funds to help hire more people. But the letter came to the attention of former President Donald Trump.
Not far from where we are today, in a small, very beautiful town of fifteen thousand, Whitewater, do you know, Whitewater.
Kamala has flooded the town with an estimated two thousand migrants from Venezuela and Niko. Robert diseases are spreading like wildfire. The police say they cannot handle the surgeon crime. The town's in big trouble.
And he promised voters that he would conduct the largest deportation operation in American history. We have not.
I have no choice, but I have no choice.
It was not the intention of the chief to sort of become the center of this national talking point, and he really had just wanted to get a little more more help to deal with the problems that he was seeing on the ground.
Are the stories lot that every way across small town America? Or is that just an outlaw?
There have been cases, other cases like Whitewater. Another one that spilled into the news was in Springfield, Ohio, was a place where many Haitian migrants were arriving, and you know they were working in factories there. But you know, Trump also seized on that place in Springfield.
They're eating the dogs, the people that came in, they're eating the cats.
So you know, that's what we were hoping to do with this reporting, is to look into many of these different places, you know, not just Whitewater, but we have stories from Denver, Colorado, which is another place that has been a flashpoint about migrants.
Less than twenty four hours, sixteen buses packed with migrants arrived in Denver.
The city of Denver confirms nine bus loads arrived last night.
And from Del Rio, Texas, which is on the.
Border, and the number of migrants waiting under the bridge there continues to rise. Del Real Mayor Bruto Lozato says the tally stands at ten thy five hundred and three migrants, many of them Haitian.
You think from Trump's rhetoric that America is in the midst of an unprecedented immigration crossis so how does the rhetoric match up to the data.
What we found is that there's definitely been, you know, clearly a big spike in the number of people that are coming to the US border in recent years, but it's not exactly unprecedented, in part because in the past there was a much larger number of people who were sort of uncounted, unapprehended, and the majority of them were
coming from Mexico. But something that is distinct about what is happening now is that with more Central Americans coming and more recently people from South America and from either even further afield, you know, sometimes as far away as China, India, West Africa coming to the border, many of them don't try to escape. People now are turning themselves in and
asking for asylum. And you know that, in combination with a change in the demographics of people that are coming from new countries that hadn't come before, has created a really different dynamic around the country.
Coming up after the break, Why more people than ever are turning themselves in at the US border and the political maelstream that's followed Marcott, you said that America is not in the midst of an unprecedented immigration crisis. It's just that more people are turning themselves into authorities rather than trying to escape from them. Why is that so?
Starting as far back as in the Obama administration, there was a trend of more children who were coming by themselves or families. And under US law and international law, there are certain protections that asylum seekers and children and families can seek protection, and there's legal restrictions on how long they can be detained, and you know how they can't be returned to some place where they could face
persecution or danger. And so, you know, many of those people, because there wasn't kind of space or appetite to you know, detain children and families, ended up being released into the United States, and so over time word got out that you know, if you turn yourself you might be able to be released into the United States.
The girls, like everyone here, are now just waiting to turn themselves into border patrol. Virtually all will seek asylum in the US, a legal protection that takes years to formally determine.
And that process can get you into, you know, a very backlogged court system where you can live in the country while you're waiting for your case to be decided, and in some cases you can you know, apply for work permits, apply you know, for some benefits, and so that you know, that's a phenomenon that has sort of grown over the years. But you know that is something that Trump has latched onto.
The United States will not be a migrants camp and it will not be a refugee holding facility. Won't be you look at what's happening in Europe, you look at what's happening in other places. We can't allow that to happen to the United States. Not on my watch.
When he took office after Obama, he said that this asylum process, you know, they viewed it as a loophole, you know, as migrants sort of taking advantage of the system and did a lot to kind of crack down on the process, which was you know, a lot of immigration advocates said that there were people who were facing legitimate harm, you know, who suffered because of them.
A new directive by the Trump administration, zero tolerance, is to prosecute all such migrants criminally, which means by law, parents and children must be separated.
Tearing children from the arms of their mother and their father is not the right decision.
It has got to stop.
La Some call the place Ursula after its street address. Others label it in Spanish la pereira the dog kennel.
And he's now just ratcheting up some of that rhetoric but calling out some of these you know, different communities.
Trump has excited in making this an election a vandim mcgration above almost anything else. So how has Harris responded to that?
Well, I think one really surprising thing about this election is how, you know, the Harris campaign has taken a much harder stance on border security. Earlier this year they put a more restrictive ban on seeking asylum at the border and made it more difficult, and they said as a result of that you know, illegal crossings have dropped, and you know, more people are being processed and quicker
through the system, and more people are being deported. The Trump campaign has really tried to paint her, you know, with this label of borders are, which she and the Biden administration says is a role she never actually had. She was given a mandate to address the root causes of migration from you know, a very specific reason in Central America, and obviously that's a very difficult and long term task and it's hard to see results from something
like that in a short term. And so it was something that her allies say that she made progress on, but you know, it was kind of a difficult political situation for her to be and so I think, you know, from those early days she somewhat distanced herself from the issue, and now on the campaign trail as she's running for president, she's really focused on the border enforcement side of things, as well as really trying to pin the blame on Trump for not backing a bipartisan border deal that would
have addressed some of these issues. There's a lot more nuanced and complexity in historical context around these issues that don't really lend themselves to sound bites or campaign ads, and that's kind of lest people who are in the middle of these debates out of the conversation. And there's a gap now between the rhetoric on the campaign trail and how people are feeling about the issue, and then you know the sort of real facts are on the ground.
Well, thank you for bringing data and new ones to this discussion, micro and thank you for joining us.
Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.
Also in the US, Australia is calling on Israel to abandon two bills that restrict operations of the UN Relief Workers Agency for Palestine Refugees. Foreign Minister Penny Wong stated the UNRWA does life safe and work and called on Israel to comply with the ICJ order to provide humanitarian
assistance to Gaza. The new laws take effect in ninety days, with the body's Commission General saying these bills were only deep in the ciphering of Palestinians and the Prime Minister has dismissed questions about his relationship with former Quantus boss Alan Joyce. A new book about the exclusive Quantus Chairman's Lounge claims that while he was Transport Minister, Albaneze had a direct line to Joyce which he used to score
flight upgrades. It alleges he received more than twenty upgrades declared on his Register of interests, and upgrades for his former wife that were not declared. In response, the Prime Minister said he has been completely transparent and the claim was attempt to quote sell a book. I'm Daniel James. This is seven am. We'll be back tomorrow