It Could Happen Here Weekly 112

things back together project, which is Miltant Kindergarten. And I guess I guess we should start with talking about what Billetant Kindergarten is and what it isn't in terms of, like, it's not we're teaching we're teaching small children how to take apart buildings.

We're you know, distinctly trying to spread the word about the importance and necessity of militancy in our movements, but also teach people about a specifismo, which is an anarchist current that comes out of Latin America. But it's also like you know, in in the socialist movement, anarchists can often be characterized by stereotypes that come from Marxists, and that in the libertarian and anarchist movement, any kind of mass anarchism, any kind of class struggle anarchism can also

be characterized by you know, individualists and insurrectionists. And so we mean to you know, not convert people to a certain current of anarchism. We see this as a kind of grouping of tendency. So all the participants come from different ideologies. This is just a reading group, so you've got to apply this stuff, you know, outside of this. This isn't some kind of be all and dull solution.

We're not, you know, educationalists thinking that this is going to be the first step in some like process that we're just already on. But at the same time, we think that educational space needs to be defended. That's why this is the third militant kindergarten. So, yeah, maybe i'll let read talk about some of the ones and how we've gotten here and yeah, kindergarten up to now.

maybe an outsized hundreds above its weight. In terms of like activism and anarchism, there's probably more anarchist tendencies here than there are anarchists, And something that we saw in the wake of the height of the uprising was one a huge amount of burnout that people weren't really addressing.

The solution to burnout that we saw being proposed was just do it again, more harder, And we also saw the burnout as kind of coming from a lack of strategy and organization on the ground, people sort of repeating tactics because that's what you do, and that's what we were doing, so we're just going to try to keep

doing it. And both of us were unable to participate in the more aggressive street actions that were going on at the time, so we decided we individually needed to study and get better at our understanding of strategy an organization and try to rethink like some of the problems that had occurred and how to move on from there, and also to provide a space for people who were more active in different places, the chance to meet together and reflect in a non non urgent space where you

could just like pause and learn and discuss the topic. So we were, yeah, we hit upon We were both kind of simultaneously interested in the spess of seasonal current from Latin America, so we both just kind of decided, yeah, we want to read some of these texts, and we quickly came upon social anarchism an organization. We thought, like, wow, this is a really comprehensive introduction not only to this

tendency but also to anarchism and social anarchism broadly. Like it really covers just the basics, principles and theory up to history and organizational theory, strategy, tactics, ideology in a much higher, more sophisticated and like i guess, like modernized way than many other previous documents we'd read. It's like, if you took the platform, you know, the Maximvist platform.

They wrote this platform saying anarchists should maybe be somewhat organized and unified in their tactics and their strategies, and received a whole bunch of pushback from it, but founded The sort of the platform is current of anarchism. But really, when you go back to the platform, there's not a

ton there. It's more of a document for organizing a like a military force in a already ongoing revolution, Whereas what we found in Social Anarchism and Organization is a much more road kind of introduction to social anarchist organization that is more widely applicable to a variety of situations.

I don't. I don't think it's as famous as a lot of other tendencies here.

has been developed in Spanish. Espacifismo originally comes from the Anarchist Federation of Uruguay. In the nineteen sixties. They began to articulate a kind of organizational strategy that imagined what the way we've described it is kind of two rails for a train, and this train is bringing this revolutionary rupture. So these two rails are the social level, which includes all kinds of class struggle. This is class struggle against domination, exploitation, and a press.

to keep them theoretically distinct. And so a lot of what we've done at the Center forres Becifismo Studies is try to articulate these ideas in English so that we can start to develop what that means here and not just sort of translate or take a translation and sort of try to input an idea into our own context. So, like you said, like I think at some of the we could we could take for example, the Black Rose Rosa Negra anarchist federation in the US that's the largest

organization of a specificst anarchists in North America. They are distinctly influenced by this current. They have sister organizations in Latin America and but but they're they're just one kind of organization that's that's kind of known on a national level. And as far as planting its, you know, ideas in North America, we're definitely still doing that work. So a lot of what we've done is also developed second secondary resources.

This includes like audio versions of this text, but also like things we've produced through our study and through these discussions that come out of kindergarten. So last year, for example, we made a a minizine. There was like a kind of working group that worked on a minizine to define some basic terms and make something really really really basic in introductory to a specifismo. We also I've written a few pamphlets, one of which is how do you say

a specifismo in English? And so that is yeah, exactly trying to address this this idea. And you know, some people they hear a specifismo and they're like, oh, that's you know, exotic and cool and like new, and that's a reason to be attracted to it. But then you know, other people might hear that, and they have kind of other reactions where they sort of try to put it

into a really specific box. I mean, what our understanding is is that it's important to be able to acknowledge what current you're kind of plugging into where your ideas are coming from. It takes a lot of pressure off of us to not feel like we're inventing everything and we're supposed to be coming up with like the most perfect,

cool ideas. But it's also a humbling experience of like, yeah, we know about this because other people have done this militancy before us to make these things available for us

to have preserved these ideas. That's the political level of the two rails, right, So that's that is preserving this so that it is possible to say I have this opinion about a specifismo and it relates to my context in this way or likewise that it doesn't you know, if we don't have anyone doing that militancy to preserve those ideas, then it's actually not even up to people to be able to pick them up and use them the way that they see fit.

strategy of social insertion. Yeah, and I was wondering if you could talk a bit about social insertion and how you see that working in the US and how sort of like, how do we think about this sort of in the wake of twenty twenty and the kind of restructuring of what is what is sort of happening is out of social movements in the US.

It's just the practice of anarchists who are organized in the same organization being present in social movements within them, supporting them, trying to help them achieve their own goals rather than take them over, or something like you would see in maybe a entryism from trapeists or something but yeah, I think one of the major problems that we ran into when we started reading this stuff is like social insertion requires there to even be social movements.

we really have to start. I think what is useful about that problem is that it forces us to start really trying to theorize what actually is happening here, what social movement actually is there, And that leads us to start thinking about things more literally, like movement, what does it mean to be moving? What is the role of

anarchists in movement? So we can think of the idea that we've developed is the idea of anarchists who are organized as anarchists, the role of them in movement is to actually literally be moving between different kinds of spaces, different movements, and starting through their movement to generate a kind of flow of people and of ideas and energy and momentum, acting as a small motor within a big, a big system, if you will, not driving it, but

getting things going. And so I think that's kind of more the level that we're here in the US is we still need to just theorize what is out there and how can we help it, how can we plug into it, How can we start getting things moving in a direction that is actually going to meet the needs

of these movements, For these movements that aren't yet articulated. Well, you know, you see this with like the rise of tenant unions and tenant organizing still in a very like nascent stage, but people are seeing that need and they're starting to get that moving from a variety of socialist tendencies.

And I think, yeah, the idea is important in this context because we have to we have to be finding these spaces, we have to be moving to them, and we have to be returning to our own spaces to be able to actually understand what we're encountering out there and figure out how to such a course or move to something else or adapt to a new situation.

parts across the US and North America. So the idea that you know, we would be able to just simply take one thing and apply it across the board would also like, uh, yeah, be really limited here. And so I think a lot of what we're we're well, a lot of what we've seen in terms of the utility of a specifismo as a as an influential current in

the politics in leftist politics in North America. Is this theoretical aspect and how we can see both like we learn more about social movements more about the necessity of them being popular, more about popular power, and at the same time as in doing that, that shows us more about what is political unity, what is uh you know, unity of strategy, what is unity of theory, what is a unity of commitment? And that those things we want

to as we keep learning about them individually. That goes back to this trained idea of their being too rails

is we need them to be on independent cycles. You know, we know that social movements don't last forever, that mobilizations and you know, insurrections will fade away, that there are ebbs and flows of the engagement, and that when we're talking about a massive popular level, we should expect that even more right, plenty of people will only even if they're engaging militantly, only be engaging militantly with social movements,

not with political ideas, not with political organization. And so the idea that something needs to endure someone even needs to be able to tell the story from the last time that things got spicy, so that we understand even what happened without even necessarily having the the critique or the analysis, even just simply the retelling is something that is grossly missing from our struggles in North America, and so that's where we see like there being a complete

absence of of political organizing, and especially when we think about being on an entirely different cycle. So that kind

of goes back to kindergarten being an annual thing. And you know, where we live, like in the winter, there's not a lot you can do, and so it kind of made sense to develop a seasonal pattern of this, right where like exactly as things are dying down, it's kind of like, well, the people who do still have capacity, the people who are still attempting to be active, how can we keep that little bit of movement moving and going.

The idea of the metaphor of a small engine a small motor is often used in aspecifismo, and that's what the political level is trying to be. Is a small motor just assisting in something larger that's happening, but it needs to be connected to something larger that's happening.

to find the way into one or the other. And what we discovered is that like this kind of educational tendency of really open, really educational, really discussion based learning kind of starts to generate that movement between the two. Like by having this space open to beginners and experts, so to speak, you're able to actually get more movements opened between the two. So it opens up political organizations people who have not participated in that before don't have

a way into it. And it opens up social movements to people who maybe politicized but are not organized in some sort of social and it starts to mix everything together in this learning space where we can build trust as a learning community and assisting each other in connecting these kind of two necessary levels of organization.

for people and you can't like you can't say their names because like you know, and I mean this has always sort of been a problem with parts of social movements because I mean there's somef a necessssarily has to be cleandestine, like you know, and there's reasons for operacial security, but also just means the stuff gets lost. And yeah, I think having having a like having a thing that

goes as a way to transmit got thing that goes. Wow, incredibly technical language, you know, but having having an organization that can act as a bridge between these sort of moments and also is able to sort of you know, allow people's spaces for discussions, for reflection, for learning. That's also sort of a bridge between like a like I don't know, I guess like capital p political organization and the social stuff. Is it's a it's a it's a really interesting idea, and yeah, I don't know, I think

I don't know. I think I think this is like this is a very cool project, and yeah, I'm looking forward to seeing what else comes out of it as the new session sort of approaches.

a real problem that we've thought about. Like, I think a big thing for us that we've found is a role that we can play, is that there is a need out there for there to be some sort of we call it mask off anarchism, like there needs to be a public facing, approachable space where you can actually just learn about stuff. And yeah, there is definitely a need for operational security culture or for clandestine things, but that those things don't need to be everything for those

who even exist. You need levels that are more open to people. Otherwise those things just become increased we lost, they go down the memory hole, as they say, or the Latin American groups like to talk about anarchism becoming ghetto wise further and further, like separated from mainstream society, and there's no ways in unless you, like, you know,

a guy. So that was something that was a problem we were encountering and something that like from our particular circumstances, we felt like we could provide and maybe start and modeling for people as a group.

like without without really needing a lot of work. And so I think in that sense, like we could also think of there being two kinds of struggles going on, where Like on the social level, the struggle is the class struggle and the antagonists are the dominant people in society. It is the ruling class, it is the status quo, it is the capitalist system. But on the political level, there's also struggle because it's not about everybody, you know,

just being one uniform block. It is about that struggle though, not being trying to topple each other but instead trying to develop and create unity. It's not find unity, it's not look for the people you have the most consensus with, because that in itself is even really limiting that we need to be able to form new agreement. We need to be able to find and struggle for that unity with people who aren't trying to just aim for a

divisive end. That there needs to be an antagonist on the social level, but on the political level, the goal is unity. It's not it's not struggle for the sake of taking down the opponent. And so in that sense, like something else that we do in Militant Kindergarten and in the Center for Us BECIFIESMO studies is not just try to do a reading, but try to produce a reading. Try to leave behind some kind of trace of our reading.

That that's an important aspect of this. So all of our sessions we take thorough notes, and those notes are available to all the participants. People can go back through it later to look at what was said if they missed a session, or if they'd like to follow along with those as they as the conversation goes to help

add you know, other aspects of support. Then what we do is we have a whole other team that goes through those notes afterward and produces a kind of internal journalistic writeup of what happened in that meeting, and so we will also be releasing those this year as part of our kind of monthly publishing that we'll be.

to just send us an email. We have the email specifies most studies at gmail dot com, and that's the way to sort of start the enrolling process needs to take the one step send us an email, and we'll get you signed up and all the materials and zoom link and all that stuff.

worry about that either. That's part of why we do this every year is that we expect that, you know, working people without a lot of time will need more than one year to you know, get all this information. So we expect people to need to kind of be cobbling together a few sessions here and there for several times, and yeah, you're definitely welcome to do that and shouldn't feel as if it's like a kind of start and then you're stuck and afraid to start.

things fall apart. I'm your host, Nea Wong. This is this is another episode about Chicago police departments who occupy a city groaning under its tyranny, and with you to talk about some absolutely bad shit Chicago police stuff and also how Randon Johnson our mayor is also shit? Is Raven the Chicago journalist from Jingspress.

it is actually a thing in other cities too. I wanted to talk about shot Spotter, So I guess to start with, can you explain what shot spotter is for people who don't have it in their city or don't know.

You know, they're specifically in Chicago. There's actually a lawsuit currently up and coming filed by the MacArthur Justice Center over the fact that they are primarily installed in black and brown neighborhoods and not on like the North Side. And yeah, it's just a bunch of fancy little stuff that detects noises that are supposed to be gunshots, right, so any loud popping or bringing sound, you know, could could potentially set them off.

a gunshot, like who fired a gun? You know, all it's telling you is in this area. You know this was determined. So you can imagine like all of these you know, police encounters happening in response to these alerts, like all the shit that could go wrong.

and killed out in Toledo. I don't remember if it was like months before, I don't know the timeline, but it was fairly close to that where he like pulled someone over at a traffic stop and was just acting really jumpy and strange. H And it was kind of investigated as like, you know, an undostified traffic stop and and nothing happened with that. But it's just an example of like how there were potentially warning signs because this guy was also like a war veteran, you know, and

jumpy to begin with. And so yeah, you're sending these guys into these areas who are already ready to go off at a trigger, right.

package a report about what happened. And so unless a police complain and are like, oh, you know, this one was false, or this was a this one was wrong, this was a firework, this is a car back firing, and of course like CPD is not doing.

You know you need to give us more funding. This is incredibly useful for them if your ShotSpotter. You don't want everyone to know that your system detects like a bird dropping an acorn out of a tree next to your sensor or whatever. Like, you don't actually want people to know that your your system brings up false positives all the time, and it's actually basically completely useless, right, Yeah, and so the incentive structure is just bad. It's just it's only going to produce bad results.

that's just like out there that they're just using. It's like Shotswater has this vested interest in, uh, strengthening the police and vice versa.

want more power. These guys want more money, and the more money you give them, the more money they have to then turn around again and put back into the political system so you can you buy more power, which they can again turn into more money every single time another contract.

who don't live in like cop neighborhoods. Basically like it's pretty popular to cancel this contract because it's it's millions of dollars a year going to nonsense that just throws cops everywhere. And then he got into office and his budget still has the ShotSpotter shit in it. So huh, electoralism win.

two months left, and since he's been elected. So like the other thing, I mean, this is like the shady part too, is like since he's been elected, he's been asked whether he'll extend the contract and he's just like refused to answer.

think a lot of people get that. But there's a pretty big departure kind of between how he's approaching policing and what Yeah, a lot of movement people or leftists or abolitionists want you know, every encounter with a cop is a potential for violence, right, And he's coming at it more from the side of like, well, we just need to rebuild trust in the police, and the community just needs to you know, like we're just going to rebuild trust and we're going to get these bad cops out.

We're going to have only good cops left and then everything. I don't know what the logic there is personally, but the you know, the logic is that we'll just have good police encounters then. And it's just like this refusal to acknowledge that like policing itself is a problem.

CPD gang. I mean everybody's heard of, like the LATD gangs were not everybody, but I'm sure a lot of listeners have followed the story out of out of la with like the Sheriff's deputies gangs just roaming around and committing horrible acts against people, and you know, in these sort of like cruise of bad cops and and this is definitely not the first instance of something like that happening in Chicago, but you know, there were just there was a lot of video evidence against these guys. One

of them has been indicted. I don't know if the other three have, but yeah, they were just driving around basically terrorizing this community. You know, a lot of just unlawful stops, stopping people on the street, shaking them down

for cash, drugs, and a lot of guns. And they were filing false reports about found guns, so like they would stop somebody take a gun and then log it as like a gun that was found And you know, in one instance, they said that they were a mile away from where a shot spotter alert had gone off and claimed that they looked around and just happened to find a gun on the ground. They had taken the gun from a woman.

of these scandals about once. It like once a decade there's like a big one of these, and we're kind of due for one. We haven't had a really big one of these. Specifically, there's an entire section of the CPD that's just a burglar or a drug ring. So I suspect we're gonna find out more about this stuff because it's it's about time that another one of these

turns up. But yeah, I mean, they were just like just rolling up on people, just going give me your gun and then driving away and saying don't tell anyone, which is really.

do something else? You know, they were like a tactical team, So I presume, I mean, I think it's the case that like there are certain gun retrieval statistics that CPD wants to mate, but you know, the other stuff like obviously taking cash from people, you know, like like there's other things they were doing, you know, and and they've always been look there, I'm not going to allege anything that isn't proven in the specific instance, but I will

say that there have always been rumors about Chicago police officers specifically taking things like guns to like sell back, you know, to gangs basically, and same with drugs. Right, you know, these guys were we're logging some of them at least, but what if there were ones that they weren't logging, Like we don't know. I mean, this is just what we know happened and what was caught. And I mean they were dumb enough to like have some

of this caught on their body camps. It's like they were turning their cameras off for like some parts of these stuffs, but like not others, or like the camera would be on and there's like you know, cash and drugs and then like oh, the camera goes off, and it's like, well, any logical person can deduce what may have happened here, like why turning your camera off? Right?

And so yeah, they've always been rumors about kind of like what these crews driving around are like ultimately doing with this kind of stuff, and I think it just it varies depending on them. But I would also add, you know, the what you mentioned the special operations section. You know, we only recently learned there's like a Sun Times investigation into all the Chicago cops who were on

the Hoast Keepers membership role. Oh and a number of those guys were in soos actually, so that's a fun little fact.

One of one of the one of the points that he makes in this essay on Batman and the problem of constituent power, which is a wild thing to be citing in a police thing, but you know, one of the points that he makes is one of the one of the sort of key like fascist convergences. Is this cooperation between the police, the far right and organized crime and the CPD. Is this incredible nexus of it, right, I mean you it's literally the same person is all

three of these things at the same time. It is a cup who is in a fart right militia who is also like literally just doing organized crime at the same time. It's really Yeah, you used to have to sort of like make metaphors, and you no longer have to do that. The metaphor just is real. You're just physically describing the event. It's really something.

about the world. And then it's also just like a lot of these guys are like especially the ones on like taskal teams, they're all like fucking like traumatized war vetter, you know, they all have kind of these long backstories of like military service and just like to get onto like special ops or like the tactle reading, you know, et cetera, they kind of look for people with military experience,

not always, but like frequently. And so there's also that intersection there two of like militarism and abroad and then like policing at home.

like are these special operations units there. There was like in twenty twenty, they were these huge protests and like anti police protests in Nigeria that were specifically about trying to get one of these special operations like police special operation things, I like abolished because special operations guys just kept shooting everyone and this, you know, like every single like this happens just everywhere in the world that these it is like, you know, I mean, obviously normal cops

also do crime. And we talked also another episode about some kind of normal cops. You did a cartel and like the the twenty tens, but the special operations groups go off the rails at a rate that is staggering, which you would think, you would think someone in government would look at this, like even if you're a pro police person, you would look at this and go, wait, maybe it's a bad idea to have specifically formed these

units that every single time turned into a cartel. But no, no, they ever do this because the point of cops is not to not form cartels.

them more money. But so there's like you know, skills and sort of technology, and like I think as we're dealing with i don't know, like mass shootings and like all this really horrible stuff just like going on around us at all times too. Now, it's like it's a really I think easy way to justify policing to people is like honor the guise of these like tactical units or units with like a lot of firepower to deal

with like really really bad guys. Quote right, Like you know, maybe those people might be like, oh, we've like fewer cops thetrolling our neighborhoods. You know, we're kind of we get like, you know, black lives matter or whatever, but they're like, but we really need to, you know, have the big guns ready for when something bad comes to our neighborhood. And so I think that's also like a sticking point for a lot of people on the on

the way to like actually thinking about it. Polishing the police too is like what would we do without these units the guys with like all these skills and all these crazy weapons to like help us if if if a bad guy comes and of course the guys, like the bad guys are those guys like Guy Well.

to start shooting those guys. So yeah, so I want to go back to talk a bit more about the like shot spatter and the budget stuff that's been happening, because so the current the current budget has what is it, I think it like doubles the the any raises that that cops were getting. Is that the right number?

Uh the hat of fop John Cavanzara, who is just like a racist, misogynistic, horrible, just like garbage dump of a person, you know, was thrilled with with this contract. Was thrilled with this being passed, you know. And that's like number one sign that your mayor sucks is when like the cops are thrilled about something he did like this. Uh so so yeah, I mean it's it's a huge

amount of money. There's a bunch of other stuff in it, like you know, salary grade changes and like stipends for stuff and bonuses and uh there's some changes to like the bodyborn camera policy too, which are kind of concerning. But but ultimately it's like, yeah, Brendon Johnson is now the funds the police mayor. Like I don't know how you can say that he's not when you when you look at this, like this is just handing the cops more money.

Like it almost like I was like, I'm giving you this thing that you really want in the in the hopes of like I don't know, I don't know what he's trying to get out of it. I mean, I don't know what what the motivation is. But it's like you could have done you could have done less, and you're going for like a lot, So what's what's the deal there? And you know the new superintendent too, is

like hugely concerning. He picked a guy who's uh like an expert in surveilling communities ahead of like the DNC coming next summer, the former head of the counter Terrorism Bureau. You know, like it's just it's a lot of really disappointing moves, and I think a lot of people were really hoping to see I guess a more abolitionist kind

of streak. But the ultimately he's like he ran as a liberal, like we knew this was coming, but there was like almost like taking advantage I guess of like movement groups to sort of get get the power behind him during the campaign. But look, our alternative was also like an evil, like lying, maniacal Paul Vallas. So it's just like a shit sandwich. It's like bad choices all around, right.

many people are opposing it. But this is also an administration that like didn't care about the bad press that came with like saying, we're building a detention camp on polluted land.

Then the first time they got their mayor elected, the first thing that that fucking mayor did, like a weekend of office, was she knew where all the squats were in Barcelona, And the first thing she fucking did was she knew which immigrant squat didn't have enough community support behind them to stop them from getting evicted, and she had them evicted. So you know, this is what happens when you put activists in charge. They they do a more efficient job of uh being the kind of insurgency.

So oh my god, yeah, this is this is this is what you're getting into.

we're doing this for the for the right reasons. It might look bad, but because I'm your guy, you know, it's okay. I mean, it's the same thing with like like a uh Biden and the and the border wall.

lasted like twenty four hours, seventy two hours. I don't know when, but at some point then they like very quickly reversed the decision when they realized like how bad that would look as we have like like at that time, there were thousands of people in police like thousands of migrants to it who had traveled here and staying on police station floors, and there was like they were gonna have this publicity stone want went to a while, and

then they changed their minds about it, and we're like, oh, yeah, this is probably a bad idea. But it's become this this like Pilgrimage site. I mean, like I know, AOC went there. It's like liberal politicians like go there to be like, oh, this is so terrible and then they like, you know, just kind of let Biden make it worse.

getting worse and worse. But we're able to connect with Amos, who is one of the migrants who has spent time in outdoor detention sadly, and then in indoor detentions you'll hear and I really wanted to sort of refocus this episode on sharing Amos's story because I think, as I've said countless times right that if we don't spent the migrants in our reporting about migration, then we're doing it wrong.

And so you will hear introductions from Dave, and you will hear introductions from Emmett, and you'll heard a little bit from them next episode about how we're bullying they, but we'll bring you that episode another time, because I wanted this episode to be mostly about Amos's migration journey. Hello everybody, it's me James. I am hosting it could happen here today again and I'm joined by my friends

Amos and Emmett and potentially later our friend David. We're going to talk today again about the situation in hit the Komba. Amos is one of the people who we've detained in the outdoor detention sites, and it's going to explain some of his experience. And then Emmett is someone who has been working with a group of people, including myself, to build shelters for migrants to build slightly more permanent,

slightly more improved shelters. Unfortunately, border patrol has taken upon themselves to instruct migrants to destroy those shelters, and so we're going to talk about how we build them, what we learn when we're building them, and unfortunately the fact that they have been destroyed. So I'm going to ask my three guests to introduce themselves. David is here now, so we'll start with you, Amos, and then and then David, just tell us who you are and anything you think is relevant about yourself.

the border with the United States. So that's me, and uh, you know, I mean, I would I would love nothing more but to add to this conversation.

your journey from North Africa to the United States. And I think we've been particularly interested in, like how people are finding out about these obviously these big gaps in the war that that are in Cucumber, and how people are ending up there from all over the world.

visa was denied. I've lived in the United States for the sixteen years. I've had a Clington record with one arrest and release and it was part of a protest that really that happened in Los Angeles and were released right away. And basically I left in twenty fifteen. I'd got to think the clean hands, no issues and then going back to Tunisia where I was with my new family anyhow. So so basically I was denied visa I really wanted to do. I've never done anything illegal in

my life. I wanted to do the legal route, following what's what's been always told that you know, follow their legal route, don't don't come ilegally. So so that was not even a question in my mind. You know, you know, the wife is American, the kids are American. I mean, I just it shouldn't be an issue. But I really was confronted with I mean, I can safely say bye by now it's a bias.

there is no other way of putting it. So and again, I just the discussion was with my friends in America has been very difficult because they have no understanding or concept of what, you know, the diplomatic core is doing. And what is the these embassies are doing because there is no there is no access to them by Americans. It's just usually foreigners who do. And that really creates like this black hole of tax money going to these embassies.

And then what they're doing is just just with a stroke of a pen, yes, yes or no, no explanation. You can't sue, you can't appeal, you can't do. It's absolute power. And then you know, I'm I'm mentioning this that the embassy is because through my journey, through this long and painful journey, I've met time and time again other fellow immigrants who again tried to go through the League route were denied with no reason, with no like

no written reason, no no valid reason. So again you know this this discussion on and off again, and you know among American citizens as to why people are showing up in the border, well, I mean, at least in part, what I see is no accountability whatsoever to the embassies. Like time and time again, you have these embassies denying people who are trying to do it the right way, trying to do it. They either have family or work

or whatever, and they're denied time and time again. And then you have, you know, and the hundreds of thousands going through process, and of course they try, they try, and then eventually they have no choice. So I'm not saying this is the only explanation, but it's a big part of it. I've spoken for people who are crossing and who are on the way from anywhere from Brazil to Colombia to Ecuador, to Panama, to Nicaragua, to Guatemala

to Belize, in Mexico, all across. I've come across so many people and they, you know, at least I mean, my little humble mass I would say fifty to sixty percent have tried through embassies, but unfortunately you know that, you know, they just turned down. So this is an issue that is not talked about. This is an issue they really get away with Scott Free. I mean they really don't. There's zero can I mean, there are gods.

I mean the ambassador have zero accountability now, I mean he he is absolutely he has all the power and no cannability. I mean, rarely you see ambassador being recalled by Congress. Rarely you see an ambassador being questioned, hey, why are these these are demands being the client, why what are you doing about it all that stuff, you know. So this is this is some of the stuff I want to add to the conversation because nobody has ever mentioned this.

already baked. It's already And this is me. I've had a visa from the US for sixteen years. I mean, it should be a slam dunk. You know. So my two kids are American, my wife, my wife is American. We are and til today are all confused as to why the denials happened. I mean, I've called Congress members that David was with me today when I was at the Congress Membership Shift Adam Shift in Bourbon, California, and we you know, even they don't have an answer as to why the denial happened.

heartbreaking stories. My journey really, you know, I'm I'm somewhat to have a somewhat of a sophisticated life in the sense that you know, I spent a lot of time again we wasted. Most of the time that we wasted was waiting on the embassy because they kept on dragging and dragging their feet, six seven months waiting while my kids are crying on the phone, and you know, we don't have the income to to be able to able to have them come back to to to to Nisia

where I was. So anyhow so, yeah, it started by researching, researching, reading a lot of articles, researching as far as North Africa. The route that is being used right now by mostly by a lot of Mauritanians and West Africans. This goes through Turkey and then from Turkey they're going to Nicaragua.

Because Nicaragua Managua the capital of Nicaragua, they have allowed for visa and arrival, and then from and then from Managua there is literally almost like travel companies doing packaging packages for upwards to six seven thousand dollars from there to and then six seven thousand dollars from Nicarago. But before Nicaragua there's at least three four.

to Nicaragua. Managua has been on arrival for thirty days for North Africans, and then from there you got literally their journey through I don't know, coyotes, whatever you want to call them, facilitators whatever, well established with buses through El Salvador, through what Honduras, Honduras and Salvador, Guatemala, and

then through Mexico. So that's the route that's been you know, upwards of six seven thousand Mauritanians and West Africans as far as the last articles that I've read, have taken their route. So I looked into it. I couldn't afford it, to be honest with you, this is just you know, I was sending money to my kids and wife because she I had to be on welfare. She just arrived there and she had to keep the kids at school and there's a lot of struggle, so I had to

kind of try to help with that. On the same time, I was waiting on the embassy and we you know, and the WAF was calling them to see if can we expedite, can we do this, can we do this? But they were literally rude and and you know, treated her like a second class citizen. I don't know why. We still can't figure that out anyhow. So another route right now, which is a difficult route, is through Brazil because Brazil has a I don't know if you guys know,

and I think they do that for Americans too. Yeah, so Brazil has sort of I don't know the word, but the equivalent to them is if you impose a visa on Brazil. Brazilians were imposed vision news. They do that to Americans too, So so you know where I'm from, they don't have a visa to as far as for Brazils, so we don't. So a lot of Africans can go to Brazil and from Brazil take the route all the way.

So David mentioned the Amazon Strait where they crossed the jungle from Colombia to Panama and so on and so forth. That is I mean, I'm yes, the Darian, the famous Darian that is to me personally. Man, it gives me chills because the two or three guys that one of them did it on his own with Google Maps. Man, I don't know how the hell he did it. I have no clue how he did it. I am. I was listening and trying to understand them. Oh, it was

just heartbreaking, you know, the suffering. So but yeah, through Brazil and then Colombia and and keep on going that way. That's another route for me.

know is new. For me. I was able to get a visa to Colombia, and I'm very grateful for to choose Columbia because it's a it's affordable. It's been a good experience for myself to get out of UH me get closer and on the same time figure out the lay of the land and understand where I'm going. So those I'm grateful for that. And from there my goal was to get a visa to Mexico, and a lot of and most of my American friends get are still confused. That's why I would need a Mexican visa. That's a

whole other discussion. And then the Mexican visa has become extremely difficult, almost as difficult as the American visa because of pressure from the United States to stop the flow. So UH again we end up making it very difficult for people who want to legitimately do this. So finding an appointment for a Mexican UH embassy, then you find out which embassy of Mexico has the available. Some of them don't have ever, some of them have them two years from now. Some of them have them, you know,

UH for a particular visa but not the other. And you know, so for me, it was Colombia, and then UH I found an appointment in in for for Mexican visa and belize UH but unfortunately I ended up in you know, going from Colombia to Panama to UH, Nicaragua to Guatemala, and then Belize because Belize has not a

lot of UH flights UH from Latin America. And then when I got to Guatemala, all the previous countries allowed me to transit without a problem, but Guatemala decided to put me in a detention for almost forty hours and then wanted to return me back to original country because they yeah, So I'm like, I'm my plane departs a few hours of going to Belize. Why are you doing this please? I'm not on need the visit to Guatemala.

I'm not going to Guatemala. Nothing, no discussion. They threw me in there, cockroaches, you name it, the whole Enchilada. I mean, no food, no water, no nothing. I mean, you know, it's just sad, very sad, very sad, very sad. That was a really very sad And then so I was sent back to Panama, then from Panama to Colombia, and then Colombia that was going to send me back to North Africa. So it was going to be a

really mess. So I had to use some of my customer service skills that have run through the years to wiggle myself where I this minute was able to help some friends buy a ticket to like, you know, in the midnight hour. Really they were going to send me. So I bought a ticket to Ecuador, where I had a visa for ninety days. So I was able to get out of that mess, stay in Guador for a couple of weeks, and then try to get to Belize again.

And the next time I was successful in going to Belize through Panama and then Nicaragua, then straight to Belize, avoiding Guatemala, and then Believe. I was there for a couple of weeks, and then I was able to get a visa to Mexico, thank God. And there was a lot of Russians, there was a lot of Turks, there was a lot of no no, no Turks, no Russians, and a lot of East Europeans trying to get a

visa there too for Mexico. And basically from there it was the journey of taking a bus from Belize to Cancun, can Coon to Monterey Monterrey to Cabo. I found a job, a volunteering job in Fortois, Condido. I'm a yoga practitioner, and I found a yoga to treat there to try to help me with my mental health and all that stuff.

There's like a lottery system that randomly selects people. So but again, you know, out of a close to one hundred people in my detention cell, you know room, everybody's saying, we all tried, and none of them, you know, got an appointment. I mean everybody wants an appointment. I mean, who's in the reds, who's in the right in his right mind would choose to forego an appointment and go

do throughout that trouble. So and if we can do a little bit of math, eventually, at some point I spoke to the supervisor of the Border Patrol detention center and he told me there's eighteen hundred people at any

given point in that place. So out of eighteen hundred people, and if my cell there was about six cells or something or more than that much more, much more the six seals and then four blocks, I think, sonya, So uh yeah, I mean if about out of one hundred, then you have nobody was able to use the app.

So I literally I was the last one to get in, and literally I'm sitting there and I'm standing there at the border itself, at the wall, and I'm like, what's going on? Where is the border patrol? Where is the port of entry? Where is this? I'm not confused.

have been committed. And it is course legal to cross the border and present yourself for assylum immediately upon doing so, even to cross between ports of entry. It's the discretion of the administration or the prosecutors to charge for that crossing. But that is a legal means to claim asylum. And so we'll let they must pick up again here as he takes his first step into United States.

of neutral or anything. They were just you know, anyhow, So I'm looking for a border patrol. I'm trying to say, hey, I'm finding for asylum. Where are you?

So and then I moved closer, closer to the crowd, and uh, I don't know if that's when I saw David, but it was almost almost almost yeah, And even when I saw David initially, but then I kept going to do to have an idea of the whole camp, camp and the whole like understand what the dynamics. I saw some National guardsmen, I saw some DHS police, and I saw some Border patrolmen. It's like a whole mix of people. And I think I think there was uh Park rangers.

If I'm not, I'm not second Yeah, yeah, so ber lam Rangers. Yeah. So so it's a huge mix of people. And right away my my survivor instincts kind of you know, I I saw David and I saw tools, and my eyes opened up because you know, I worked and I built my farm from scratch in North Africa, and I have my tools are everything to me. So anyhow so, I'm glad I did see that that that familiar site, and I appreciate that. But you but you, David and Caissar,

you guys were terrific. And yeah, I mean nobody spoke English. Nobody spoke English, nobody, and everybody's being treated like.

tents up and running. And uh, I mean they did most of the work really, I was just there helping, so uh and it was it was it was, dude, My heart was really pain giving me a lot of pain because in my mind I had my my my boy and my girl on my mind and I'm just trying to get to to them.

few things. But then another one originally from San Diego. Cool guy, really cool guy. He gave me the picture. I mean, look, listen, I mean, you know, we're here to work and the stress is a lot where we try and do the best we can. It's not our fault, and it's not you know what I mean, you know, you know, And he told me, listen, you can go back to Tijuana, or you can go in the United States or do whatever you want. But if I pick you up outside of this area, you go straight to deportation,

that's the bottom line. But if you stay here, you get to be picked up and processed and you'll have a chance to fight for your asylum. So again, excellent information. With the exception of even they don't know the process because you don't get to fight for asylum and detention and detention they release you on your recognizance and then later on you fight for asylum.

what do you expect. You know, they're doing their job and they're human beings doing what humans beings do. So I mean, I can absolutely sympathize and understand, you know, these guys' jobs. My only beef is like, do you have to be the I mean, yes, you're pissed. Yes, it's a lot of work. Yes it's frustrating, Yes it feels like your country is invaded. Blah bah blah, we get all that, but is you being mean, rude or downright evil? Is that going to change anything? It's not.

with the positions they're put in. Okay, I absolutely sympathize. You cannot go wrong with that. I mean, I mean it's you have every right to to to to to be that way. Again, my beef is, why do you like good morning? A few, good afternoon, a few, good night, a few like like what it becomes so sad. It's just like, you know, loses it's importance. Even the war is no longer important, you know what I mean. So yeah, it's just too much, so much.

Right there. You have volunteers saying a few to the system, and you have borders men saying a few to the system, you know what I mean, Like you know, it's it's just a huge contrast, and that's what really gives hope for anything going forward. So I appreciate it. I don't think David and Caesar really understand how important what they're doing. It's extremely important it's very valuable. So to me personally,

it's just the shaka, all the initial shock. I just went away really quickly because I saw tools and I saw David, and I knew what's going on because I volunteered in shelters in LA. In Los Angeles, I volunteered at the mission down at uh you know, downtown LA. You know on schied Row. If you hear of skid Row, I've volunteered there. And I mean, I know very well what homelessness looks like. So I've done Christmas service, I've

done food service. Automatically, when I saw David, I just completely kicked in and I it was a natural thing for me to jump aboard and help. Uh. And then again I couldn't sleep. Early in the morning, like four or five, I started seeing some border patrolment coming in and right away the huffing and pufflin starts. You know

what I mean, the traveling and all that business. Okay, and Uh initially I mean, I again I hate to use the word I, but I helped organize the crowd a little bit because the were fighting because they were the PP was VP was picking up UH people that have been there that they're just arrived, they're leaving the people that were there longer.

And then another border patrolment tells me, hey, listen, listen, listen, I needed to do forty seven on the side.

are been there for a long time. You had families that did not want to be separated, you had families that have been there longer, and you had you know, so it's just a huge miss missmash of situations and you know so, uh yeah, I mean eventually, on on on on the next day, early in the morning, we did some organizing and it seemed to me that we were much more fluid and and and the border patrolman filled up the bus and it happened to be one

of them, one of the people that were picked up. Yeah, anyhow, so.

three in different locations. Some of them are even colder than the one that you've stayed in, and volunteers including myself included Emmett, had built shelters. Emmett, perhaps you could describe like how you sort of decided to do that and came up with the shelter design that you came up with.

we could. Uh, We're bringing up blankets and tents and tarps things keep people off the ground, you know, basically looking in our basements and asking all of our friends, like, hey, we're looking behind every gas station for for for boxes of cardboard or whatever it is. But that just didn't seem enough.

So the idea of building shelters was was to try to basically do do something more than just bringing out supplies and letting people you know, vent for themselves, but creating something that might actually create more of a long term safety. And then again, I mean this is this is these are detention sites. We are we are working as volunteers inside of a basically informal detention site that

CBP is operating. So it's a very confusing for us to know, you know, we're here trying to be with people directly, trying to see what people are wanting and needing and what is their their needs, but we're also kind of navigating around this very erratic system that is sometimes denying us entry to these sites, sometimes trying to have us do things for them, and other times kind of allowing us to be there and you know, you know, bringing food because it serves them, serves VP for us

to keep people alive. But that's a really confusing process. So anyways, there was a lot of talk going on about making shelters that people have been assembling palts, and one day I was just talking with some of the other organizers and we're thinking, well, 't's do this. I'll come back tomorrow and we will start. And so with with some volunteers from the Dollar Lunch Club from UC San Diego, we set out and to the campsite we

call Tower one seven seven and started building this. And immediately kind of as you're saying, also, Amos, we had about a team of ten people from Columbia and Kyrghistan helping us build this.

I mean, this might work, might be, this might be a nice way of using these palettes, trying to find something that'll be stable to uh, you know withstand wind conditions, it being kind of you know, resource smart, making sure we're not over using whatever would we have, and some sort of super intricate design and also something that we could we could assemble quite quickly and would be versatile,

so something we could do in different different settings. And also building something and building a design that wouldn't wouldn't be super hard for people to use. So yeah, so it just felt like we were kind of just like

kind of putting putting our herds together. And that's what we came up with was basically this super shelter that was has basically a backbone of six palettes and maybe I don't know, James, it's possible to like some some photos or what whatnot, but putting together basically great, right, Yeah, some sort of ur like structure that can be kind of designed or can be changed as it wouldn't be and especially something that anybody who's using it gets to

actually have mimic their own their own home, their own setup, So it's not something that we're kind of dictating how it needs to be used. But yeah, we've got to had a really positive experience and a lot of expertise from folks from from Kyrgyzstan to kind of lead the way. So we brought tools and other folks who were you going to use it? Basically creditd them created shelter themselves. Yeah, so that that was that was that, that was our first experience and yeah, and.

you want to connect? You want to be like what's happening to you is it's it's disgusting and disgraceful and it's not me. I'm not I don't want it to happen, and it shouldn't be. And I want to be in community with you as much as I can. And so when we don't have that language, the way that we can connect. One of the ways that we can connect is to grab a hammer or its screwdriver or something and stop building.

sort of language. Like as men and as women and as people, we want to build, we want to protect, we want we want to I mean, I'm taking this journey to come to my kids and show them support and safety and protect. And it's happening, you know right now, I'm talking. I was talking to them earlier, and you know, they're excited to see their dad soon and you know, just that that feeling of warmth, and I mean, this

is what we do. This is what we do. And then if you want to narrow it down and break it down to the basics, it's just what it is. It's the human level, it's the human condition. I mean really, so these guys are going to go through this pain for what I mean, clearly they're going through you know, worse, worser things. And then that's the whole point, that's what they're trying to do. So and then, uh, before I forget, and then I don't hope, I hope my phone doesn't

you know, die on me. Let me just give you the detention. If you guys haven't, let me give you Yeah, yeah, before I you know, so basically on I think it was Monday.

well because it's just, you know, it's important. I guess San Diego, Uh, the San Diego Sorting Facility, san Diego District Sorting Facility a k A. M c U, that's what we call it. And basically, uh, you know, your your stuff is sorted and anything that needs to be thrown with a thrown away and you're given you become a let me be clear, you become a subject. You're a subject. Now you're not an alien. You're a subject. James, make sure you understand this. You're a subject, sir. Let's

be clear about the naming structure. You are a subject, all right. So I'm given a subject number and yeah, exactly. I mean, I can't believe in this day and age, I got used to the whole alien thing, you know, alien number, but now it's a subject number. So anyhow, so we're done. We're going through that. And then you you know, you just look at people and the daisiness and the confusion and confusion elders, women, babies. It's just

heart taking. And again you had a couple of military order performance all and acting like they're in the Marine Corps. They're just shouting up the right and they're like, you know, treating people that they were disposable. So that's right there. Uh anyhow so that's the they call it the intake. So you're you're doing the intake and you're lined up and you're being stripped, not striptured, searched. You're searched, and

then your your backpack is taking away. You open it up in front of them as if you were at the airport, and then they throw away stuff.

I don't know what you think of this. So so they don't put handcuffs on us, but they tell you to put your hands behind your back as you're walking.

was two A right, two A yeah. Pod. I'm sorry, it's called they called pods.

AC freezing. I see, we're only allowed the shirt one shirt, one shirt. And then I'm talking about probably they have it on fifty five sixty sixty sixty no more than sixty degrees for sure, all right. And then you have people cold and getting sick. And then they cleaned three times a day to their credits where we all have to get out so the cleaning crew could come in. But here's the key. They clean at eight in the morning, at the at five in the afternoon, and at midnight.

And then some people are just don't understand when their name is called for it because it's misspelled. So I'll help for that, you know. In general, like you know, I literally would walk around and ask for extra blankets and things like that. It's all of being doing. I hope the video will come out and we're doing a few Freedom of Information Act requests. Hopefully we can get that. Yeah, yeah, hopefully we'll share that with you. I mean it takes.

I mean they're gonna fight at tooth and nay, they're gonna fight at tooth and nail. Oh yeah, exactly, thank you, thank you exactly. Sonyhow so uh yeah. After the second day again they give you for I mean food, I guess food. Yeah, they give you food. The second day, I started asking the question, Okay, when am I going to get my phone call? The first person said, oh, I'll cast on to your request. By the end of the day, I've asked like three.

a prisoner there. So that's been difficult. So you would want to ask to go to the or something, so on the way you can try to pass on then sony know, so I kind of located the situation. And then on the second day, I asked three times I need my phone call. They came out and told me, you're crazy. We don't do phone calls. Stop asking. So you're telling me I'm a us soil. I you know, I don't get to see the outdoor twenty four to seven, and you don't let me make a call to my

lawyer or family. And that's when I just lost my my ship. So that by the end of the second day, I entered into a hunger strike. Wow, my body shut yeah, my body shut down completely. My body shut down completely. People were that that known me to be constantly active. I do I do yoga. I do I did yoga. Did you know? People will started following me doing activities and trying to be sharp, you know, stay sharp. They saw me shut down completely. I didn't I didn't eat

or drink anything. I mean completely, I shut down everything, all systems of board. That's it. So right away my eyes are closed. The next day they start freaking out. They bringing the wheelchair, but before they you know, just to let you know, before they put me on the wheelchair with the baton. They're just hammering me to make sure I'm this is real their hammer. I still have bruises. I still have like a red dot on my chest, you know what I mean.

or anti depressants or anti anxiety medicine. Listen, lady, I've never had the time depressant or medication. I rarely take medication. I would not have medication. That is not an option. I don't want the ivy. I don't want you to touch my body. Period. I am this is me fully where what the consequences are and unless I get a hold of my Laura, or call my family and tell them that I'm alive or where I'm at. This is gonna go. Last time I did this, I did it

for four or five days, no problem. So they started freaking out. James there really they called the big guns. I think he was a lieutenant or whatever the ranking is. He came in, listen, what's going on? What are you doing? Man? They can't be doing this in my house again, my house. The guy owns the place, all right. So I'm like, listen, yeah, I'm done. If you don't give me my call, expect me to do this for the I'll go to the end.

I've done this against corrupt governments and when I was arrested in Tunisia or whatever.

live her a voicemail. I later found out that she did get the voicemail, thank god, and then she felt really good when she heard my voice and she knew you yeah, yeah, So I don't know, tell you man, you know, it's just a no man's land and it's just dude. When I got to talk to the supervisor, when I escalated because they took my DNA, like what I told him, Look, what's going on? Why are you taking people's DNA? Like, what's going on? I told him,

what are you accusing us for? What is the accusation exactly? He said, you're not accused of anything, and what am I guilty of? You're not guilty of anything? So why are you taking my DNA? And then when he's just because this is the guy, the main guy. This is the guy that I saw coming in an intake and then laid on an outcake. He's got like twenty screens in front of him, he's manning the border. He's like, you know, it's the main guy. Like I say, it's him.

So I told him, do you have your DNA your own DNA taking? He said yes, I did okay. I told him if your DNA was taken and you can take mine, that's fine. So they're taking people's DNA to put it in the database. And if you don't sign, they don't let you. They don't let you out. So you can stay there indefinitely until you do your DNA. How is this okay? Yeah?

as she talks to me, she pauses. She looks at her colleagues and she's smiling to them, and she's talking to them so nice. I simply told her, why are you talking nicely to your friends and you're so mean to us that? Why why are you doing this? Like?

to tell you, man. I feel bad for the people in that attention because you know, I'm not saying they're being tortured, but it's just a you know, the little drops of water on your head, Yeah, you know, the little you know, after a while you can turns up. So there's one guy from Russia that was there for three weeks, wow, three weeks. There's one guy from Brazil that was there for a week. Come on, man, I mean seriously, like that's too much.

your life. And then that's pretty much what happened to me before when I was in the United States. And then you know, they don't care always to take it up with the with the US postal postal service. Are you serious, Like you know you're going to put someone in jail and because he sent them the wrong address. Anyhow so, anyhow so I came back from the bus. The bus is loaded, we're leaving. I came back to the.

David do. But I don't think anyone in their right mind would really justify the way you've been treated. And you can multiply that by thousands, right, and you're fortunate enough to be in relatively good health and not too young or not too old or to sick for this to be a deadly trip or right. And still it's obviously had a massive effect on you. And I can understand why, I mean, I'm.

of problems. And it cost me, I mean, being in a blacklist in a government that's ever going negatively.

Uh And then here I am to find myself and you know, like with a Dijah who kind of feeling well with these gratuities themselves for nothing, so that that kind of triggered me a lot, big time, James, and uh uh. And then I felt like, you know, what

is life worth? I mean, I know I'm coming from my kids there, the love of my life, and and then my wife as well, but you know, I want them to remember their dad as someone who sticks up for fathers and you know, the you know, James, the the most difficult part were was David mentioned the Persian guys running guys. You know, I got annoyed a little bit, James, because they were really lining up behind me and holding my hand, begging me to help them get out. Yeah, and because I'm.

you know it was it was. It was really hard warming. It really was really hard warman. And I appreciate that the that they recognized what we did. We tried to do a bunch of more Italians, Colombians, Mexicans, Ecuadorians, uh, I mean, you name it. It was just a Turkish, uh An, older gentleman, Iranian, the Iranians, the same Iranians that that that that I helped get onto the bus from from

Willow the same guys. Eventually all I found them central and it was really nice to see them and for them to just literally jump on me almost and tell me thank you in so many languages.

My wife was sheltering in but the house is overcrowded and there's no way I can stay there, so I'll be That's something that I'm trying to figure out and where to stay. And I don't have friends up there and don't have anything. Uh, so that's it's a problem that I'm having to deal with. And at the same time, I was given April twelve as a court date and nice and I have to deal with a lawyer and

the contact the lawyers, and they're expensive. The Progonal lawyers that we called h they don't take they're not taking new cases.

They're the only congress office that at least interacted with us, me and my wife. But you know, she looked at me from from behind the glass door and she said good luck. She sent me the county Immigrant Affairs office, uh, you know, linked and she told me good luck, and then uh and said bye bye. And that's all that she did. So it's uh, it's tiring and not giving up, of course, but it's just it's very difficult change.

when the state doesn't care about you. But I want to thank you so much for giving us your story and your time and being so open with us, because I think that's the only way that this stuff changes, is that people here Like number numbers are great and and your story is one of tens of thousands, but I think sometimes we need to hear individual stories to understand the human impact of this true, true, true, and

like we'll stay in You have my friend number. Anything you need, anything we can do for you.

core of that. Like my own frustration with our response is it's not getting to the point that like what he was what he was saying any other words right now to say that my mind is now totally much.