It Could Happen Here Weekly 204

of these terrible atrocities. And so rather than celebrating somebody like that, Indigenous People's Day has been implemented in order to recognize the people who are actually here first and Indigenous peoples across the America's their histories, cultures, and contributions.

And you know, this is an incredibly broad it's an incredibly broad area spanning like three hundred years, So we're not gonna be able to go into like an enormous amount of depth in it, but I think it's important that people have an understanding of, i mean, a just what the US did and how everyone else has had this sort of deal with it, and then also the fact that this is something that changes over time and has has looked different. It's it's been bad in different ways.

Christopher Columbus to where we are currently? And this is the history of federal Indian policy and Western legal discourse and how European powers throughout history have defined what it means to be an Indian person and relationship to indigenous people's rights to their own land and to self governance. So when we're looking at the different periods of federal Indian policy prior to their being a United States government, we have the colonial period, which is fourteen ninety two

to seventeen seventy six. This is how federal Indian policy legal scholars divide that, and it's really important to kind of give the difference between what is a colonial state versus a settler colonial state when you're talking about not just the United States government, but also the Canadian government and different governments globally. But I want to talk just a little bit about what I mean by the difference between a colonial government and a settler colonial government, because

they're tied together. So by a sutler colonial government, I mean what I mean is that it is defined by the de territorialization of indigenous population populations. And so rather than in a colonial government as you had with Christopher Columbus and the Spanish and with the English, et cetera, is rather than a state and sovereignty being conceived as all these resources are going back to the metropoal, all these resources are going back to England or to Spain,

et cetera. And colonial occupation is in is conceptualized within this way in set the colonial governments. The colonists come to these lands and stay and they're what they define as sovereignty is within this land that they define now as their own. So and in order for that process to happen, there needs to be different forms of genocide of the indigenous populations. And so that's what we saw with Christopher Columbus and throughout history was just the depletion

of a lot of our indigenous populace. And so when I mean about the United States being a setlar colonial state. I mean that this is current and ongoing, and so when we talk about federal Indian policy, federal Indian policy is always in this conversation with what started with Christopher Columbus as the doctrine of discovery. And so that's how we define the colonial period. And feel free to like stop me and ask me questions. Also, I'm just going to try to move quickly because there's a lot.

So when Christopher Columbus and all of these other colonizers conkystic doors came to the quote unquote New Land. They saw all of this rich, plentiful resource and thought to themselves, well, obviously these people don't know what they're doing because there's just so much they have not done anything with it, and we're going to take this back to to ours because obviously their inferior beings and don't know what property is.

So legally, the adoption of discovery conveyed legal title to an ownership of American soil to European nations, a title that devolved to the United States, and so this definition is expansive and expansive discovery implies that Native nations have a right to lands as occupants or possessors, but they are incompetent to manage those lands and need a quote unquote benevolent guardian such as a federal government who holds

legal title. And so when we're talking about this legal title, it to the United States later on in history after the American Revolution, and so rather than being colonial states as the United States like thirteen original colonies, given the American Revolution and its own constitution and its creation of itself as a nation state, then that turns into a settler colonial government.

land secessions, and enter into treaties with tribes. So this is a treaty making era with the tribes that only the United States federal government is able to and there's a distinction there because there had been a lot of contestation between states and the federal government as to who is going to now deal with these these nations that are within our own settler colonial borders. Whose job is

that to solve this issue? So within the United States Constitution, there are three clauses that define the United States' legal relationship to American Indians, and so these are the treaty making clause, the commerce clause, and the property clause. And so this movement from just relying on the doctrine of discovery and treaty making processes between different European powers now

is between the United States federal government and tribes. And so what this does is now tribes are located within the United States territory, and this places Indians within the boundaries and jurisdiction of the United States, and now they're a matter of domestic interest.

in order to legalize these land cessations and movements. And pattern that we do see here throughout history and throughout time is that the United States federal government, as a settler state, is over the rights of over the rights to land and rights of indigenous peoples themselves. You have a priority of the settler state in order to acquire land.

So a lot of the reason why later these treaties will be broken, et cetera, is because settlers are moving into these lands and the United States is then breaking these treaties in order to have more more land, more land successions.

Indian Territory. And what brought about this federal Act was a series of three foundational statutes within federal Indian policy, dictated by Chief Justice John Marshall. So first we have Johnson B. McIntosh, Cherokee Nation v. Georgia and Worcester v. Georgia. And I won't go into two to detail, but what this these essentially did and legally defined tribes as being

domestic dependent nations. And so it clarified more that again tribal nations are underneath the federal government's overview, not the states. So yeah, it placed tribes above state jurisdiction, and what this was trying to do was solve some issues that tribes such as the Cherokee Nation had with different states when it came to land and jurisdiction over said land. But that is kind of the basis of a lot

of federal Indian policy and still remained truth day. And what is notable in each one of these statutes, I believe, particularly in Worcester the Georgia, although it seems that it was supporting tribal sovereignty in them and that they were above state jurisdiction, a lot of these statute cited racist

president and the doctrine of Discovery. So what you see for federal Indian policy is that a lot of the founder, well all the foundation for a federal Indian policy based on President is the Doctrine of Discovery, which is reliant on the idea that American Indians were savages and needed federal benevolence and paternalism in order to regulate their own affairs.

Indian Removal Act, Trail of Tears territory. And yeah, one thing that you know, I think one of the sort of running themes of this is that, you know, the the law in this context is just sort of it becomes a sort of retroactive excuse to do whatever needs to be done from the perspective quote unquote of the sort of of the settler state to just take all of this land.

for said removal despite the statutes that are there. So although that like Marshall in Worchester feed Georgia determined that the State of Georgia did not have jurisdiction over Cherokee Territory all this although this territory was in the state's borders. Later on, you see with the Removal Act that although these statutes are still president in federal Undian policy, those were null in order for there to be more expansion

of settlers within these areas. So when it was decided that, oh, wait, we do need this land and we don't actually want these Indians here, let's put them to the side overpast the Mississippi so that they're out of sight, out of mind, right, So we see more of this justification for settler expansion. And so again we bring back to these themes of like settler colonialism in order to and kind of gain more of this land.

them and like take their land again. So I don't know if you want me to go too much into the trail of tears, but you're seeing a lot of patterns here, I think, different forms of genocide, different forms of taking the land.

And if you look at what they did it to do, the thing they did it to do was genocide, and it's I think it's it's just I think this is very sort of I don't know, this incredibly grim, like you know, encapsulation of like what this state actually is, which is this sort of genocide machine and whatever sort of you know, this is what sovereignty is, right, the ability to break your own rules to sort of art

to maintain the system. So you you know, you break your own laws and you know, as we're going to get to in a second, like you break your own treaties continuously, and you do this because you know, the gene slide machine has to keep moving, right.

and then you also have executive action. But it wasn't really delineated that well within especially when it comes to this period as to who is going to be dealing with the Indians kind of thing, and so this kind of confusion and not really completely defining what it means to be a domestic dependent nation. I think really just goes to show how much of a fragile edifice like settler colonial policy is for it is within the system. But again moving on, it comes back again to land.

So the reservation area era in eighteen sixty one to eighteen eighty sevens you have a lot of westward expansion of non Indians settlers, specifically to California. You also have the creation of Indian reservations and resulting Indian wars. So during this era, what you see a lot of are different types of the times that assimulation and a lot of warfare. So you have a lot of the planes tribes my tribe for instance, that are going through all

of these battles fighting forced removal onto reservations. One of the most famous ones was the Battle of Greece Grass. There was a little Big Horn where General Custer was killed by Sioux, Cheyennes and Arapahos, and different instances of battles such as those, and also where a lot of tribes were forcibly removed to era areas that they were weren't originally from, so like how the rapes were moved

to Oklahoma. There was attempts of my tribe, for instance, Northern Cheyenne, to be moved down to Oklahoma as well, and that's why there's some Southern Cheyennes in Oklahoma and then my tribe, the Northern Chan's in Montana. Another another thing that is happening during this period are boarding schools, the boarding school era. So this attempt at assimilation through education and assimilation is also within within the settler colonial

kind of structure. It's it's defined the process where indigenous people end up conforming to different constructed notions of setular norms. So if they're not absorbed within the state completely, then their attempted attempt to be assimilated culturally through education, through languages, in terms of economics. So now you have a bunch of different sort of bureaucratic structures on these reservations trying to make tribal governments appear to be or constructed as

as setular colonial governments are. So maybe it's the three branches in ways that aren't just compatible with different tribes culturally, and you also have the attempted eradication of different kind of spiritual and cultural practices and a lot of Christianity being forced on to different people and just kind of terrible things that I think more and more people are becoming aware of due to current movements. But we'll get into that moment later.

And so what this was was an attempt to further shrink the reservation lands that tribes were already guaranteed within treaties. So during this period, I think that somewhere like nine million acres were taken from tribal reservations during the allotment process. So what the allotment process did was it counted each in every individual Indian that was eligible. I think there were adults. Yeah, adults that were eligible, and each one of them were given a certain parcel of land a

certain number eight bridge. And once all of this land was calculated, what you had was an excess of land quote unquote excess of land that the tribes obviously didn't need because they had still to too many people. And so what the excess of land was utilized for us, for pioneers and for settlers if it didn't go to the federal government, it was to incentivize settlers to colonize the secil on Indian lands, so trying its hardest to not stay true to its treemaking practices.

like true American fintiersmen or whatever. And it's just like it just doesn't work because economically it doesn't make any sense, Like breaking up all these like lens is like it doesn't you can't just give someone like a small patch of like shitty land and have them farm like this doesn't like this, it doesn't it doesn't.

it gets, it gets, it gets super, it gets super like dark and horrible. Once you like look at like the letters that were being written by like the heads of these programs, like you know, instructing like these agents were stationed at these like reservations to like force people to be doing this horrible farming for like all day every day.

them just templates. So regardless of whether or not they were I think compatible with tribal different tribes way of life, they were like, you have these constitutions. Now now you're you're a tribe, and this is what each tribe has to look like in order for us, the federal government to recognize you as a legitimate entity. And then so you have the establishment of these tribal governments that consist

of tribal councils and big business committees, et cetera. However, this period is fleeting, very fleeting, and next you have

the termination era. So this is the period of time where the federal government essentially even more so, wants to just get rid of the quote unquote Indian problem, which is the existence of indigenous peoples that are reminders to the government essentially that they are a setlar colonial force and they don't know what to do with us because they tried to commit genocide, they tried to remove us,

et cetera, et cetera. It's still not working. They decided that our Chibel governments are aren't legitimate, and they just decide, well, it's too much to try to keep up with our treaties and what we promised them when it comes to health care, education, housing, et cetera, et cetera. How about we terminate our federal responsibility, our trust responsibility that are delineated in federal Unian policy and in our treaties and give them off to this to the states to decide

what to do with. And so during this period you see sort of the federal dissolution of some tribes such as the monogamy and other ones as well. So this is another dark time there. The dark times just keep on coming. And but Federalumbian policy scholars have characterized federal

run new policy as a pendulum. So swing swinging from side to side between this termin this termination of tribes, So the federal Indian government as trying to get rid of tribes, especially as you can see in this era, and then the pendulum of the other side of self determination. But both of these are held within the context of goals of assimilation. So this is just another phase of terribleness.

et cetera. And that's why the federal Indian the federal government, not federal Indian government, the federal government has not been able to eradicate us, much to their dismay. Yeah, and so now I'm going to switch into the era that we are considered to be in, which I had mentioned when I talked about the pendulum of federal Indian policy. So now we are in the self determination era, which began in nineteen sixty two, and we have the right

it's characterized with the revitalization of tribal entities. So going kind of back to when there was the Indian Reorganization Act, that we have our tribal councils. There's restoration of some tribes under federal recognition who were terminated, again not all of them. We also have the Indian Civil Rights Act, so this kind of guaranteed individual Indians some rights, not

just characterized by their tribes. Also the self determination policy, so this is when Nixon condemned the termination policy and gave more control to Indians rather than the Bureau of Indian ferris which just a federal bureau and just kind of like other policies that have given the tribes more rights to determine for themselves and their own trust, their own people to a certain degree, underneath the federal government

as semess of dependent nations. And again I think that we have seen a lot more movement, but within the context of being within a settler colonial state, it's always I think a possibility that the federal unding government, or the federal government I keep saying Indian, the federal government will try to take more and more. And I think, for instance, when it comes to issues of fishing rights, issues of hunting rights with states, not even just with

the federal government. So you have a lot of states throughout throughout history but still ongoing that attempt to encroach on tribal treaties. And again, treaties are the basis of federal Indian policy. Without these treaties, the lands would have

never been seceeded to the United States. And so there's this sort of like legal legal conundrum I would say, of where all these all treaties in the history of the United States with Indian with Indian tribes have been broken in some way, shape or form.

the monolith of beliefs. But by just by saying land back, that's like recognition that this is our this was our land first, and you're not keeping your side of the deal and never have been.

Of course, on like the more like reactionary side, it's like people be like, what you're gonna like kick white people out of these areas, Like that's kind of that's what a lot of like the reactionary takes on land Back is and I'm sure most people are listening to this podcast that's not what they think, but they may not really know exactly what it means either. They may think it sounds a good idea, but they're not quite

sure what it is. Do you mind kind of talking about how land back has like developed as an idea and what like you mean by it personally?

activism that we've seen in their recent years. So for instance, you know, Dapple the Dakota Access Pipeline in twenty sixteen, and kind of I think that's one of the more recent events that have really illustrated on a wide scale, like globally about indigenous movements, sovereign movements, and then especially when it comes to environmental justice. But what you saw there was encroachment on tribal treaty land within what it

had to do with the Dakota Access pipeline. So although it didn't cross some of the current reservation borders, it was in treaty land, you know that kind of thing.

in different forms by settler and colonial governments. And I think that the day and age that we live in now has allowed for sort of more widespread solidarity, especially over social media. And so when we say land back, for me, how I interpret it as what people mean when they're saying it is recognition of our tribal sovereignty, of our right to this land that has not been respected.

And then I also think that it means, well, if these treaties aren't being respected, then how is this treaty still valid?

And I think in practice a lot of people are seeing it with reparations or people buying land back for tribes and giving it back to tribes, and we have seen some of that, or also just people interrupting the narrative in their own mind of their euro American identity, so not non American Indians and primarily European settlers and their history of their own families taking part of the setler colonial process, and how has that what about their lands.

There's everyone who descends, I guess, from these these settlers, and I want to be specific when I'm talking about Euro American settlers and how they currently benefit from these systems.

And I think by saying land back, it's we're able to highlight this movement for tribal sovereignty and recognition on a global scale instead of searching for justice within the quote unquote like searching for justice within the courts of the conqueror, How how do we expect for the conqueror to be held accountable for all of these atrocities attempts

of genocide is simile, et cetera. By taking it more towards a global scale, such as no adaptle highlighting these to other people as these are injustices, this is this is ongoing genocide. I think that land back has many, like a plethora of meanings in that sense. Yeah, yeah, I hope that answers your question. I myself might use it in in some some different ways because land as

we conceive it to be property kind of grew. That concept grew in conversation with Euro American conceptions of property. So I think that moving forward, when we talk about decolonization as a process and not like a metaphor, that thinking of land back not within that whole idea of your American profit video as well. That's that's kind of another thing to consider.

people that are uh, not me, Robert and Chris. Let's see, is there any kind of resources, either books or stuff online that you would recommend for people wanting to learn more about this history and then any kind of ways to I don't know, I guess show support in these and these kind of like efforts that are going on.

illuminatives and getting more involved in those as well. I think that they have some tips, but I would recommend everyone getting more familiar with the land that they are on currently, the tribes within their state, and what they can do not just on the local level, but on the state level to support tribal sovereignty because a lot

of issues. For instance, I worked on the state policy level in Washington and in Montana, and both of those have a significant amount of tribes, but you have a lot of legislation that's trying to happen that infringes on tribal treaty rights. And the thing is is as ugly as it may be to say, but sometimes voices of non indigenous peoples are listening to more within those contexts, So you need to get more involved on those levels.

What sort of like at nonprofit organizations work with your tribes or and what sort of issues are impacting tribes and again, these are all going to probably be surrounding tribal sovereignty, so maybe it's fishing access, hunting rights, et cetera. I think that's a really good way to make some more tangible change, to feel like you're doing something to support tribal sovereignty while you're also educating yourself and making

sure that their voices are at the forefront. And that's also applicable to the federal level, especially with as you already said, like stop line three in Minnesota, contacting your legislators,

et cetera, et cetera. And I think also with when it comes to one of one of the larger issues besides environmental justice for Indigenous peoples such as pipelines, you have right now missing a murdered Indigenous women, So looking and looking into that a little bit more and who you can support who's addressing those issues along with there is another movement with boarding schools right now, because there's been a lot of bodies of young children that have

been uncovered. And this is not an issue that happened a long long time ago, like for instance, my grandmother went to a boarding school. There's still schools that, although they're not called boarding schools right now that we're boarding schools but are still in operation under different names, et cetera.

So kind of familiarizing yourself with those histories. And then also there's a national I think it's called the National Boarding School Healing Coalition based out of Minnesota, and looking into them and supporting their efforts with this issue is also a good place to start.

public health. The Surgeon General, in accordance with regulations approved by the President, shall have the power to prohibit in a whole or in part, the introduction of persons and property from such countries or places as he shall designate, in order to avert such danger, and for such period of time as he may deem necessary for such purpose.

a novel coronavirus. The Trump administration cited this public health law in instructions to the Department of Homeland Security on

restrictions for migrants entering the United States. That very same day, Center for Disease Control Direct Robert R. Redfield relied on this regulation to issue an order suspending the introduction into the United States of certain individuals who had been in quote unquote coronavirus impacted areas and quote who would be introduced into a congregate setting at the port of entry

or a border station. This includes individuals coming from Canada or Mexico who would normally be detained by CBP after arriving at the border, people including asylum seekers and accompanied children, and people attending to enter the United States between ports of entry. Citing the new CDC order, that same day, the Border patrol began expelling individuals who arrived at the US Mexico border without giving them the opportunity to seek asylum.

Reports indicate the CDC scientist expressed opposition to the invocation of Title forty two, arguing that there was really no public health rationale to support it. Ever since then, public health experts outside the CDC have gones continue to agree, arguing that while international borders largely remain open to other travelers, there is no need to turn away refugees and expel them to their home countries or send them to Mexico.

Despite this, DHS has been applying Title forty two to migrants for three years since then, and people have been turned away without getting a chance to plead their case for asylum three million times.

forty five kilometers. That's nine hundred and fifty four miles for the Americans listening at a time when climate change, economic decline, and state and nonstate violence are driving more and more people towards the USA's southern border in the hope of better life. We're talking about the title forty two this week because it ended on Mail eleventh. In a sense, this marks an important change in immigration law,

but in a sense it doesn't. Immigration was complicated and cruel for migrants and profitable for people on both sides of the border before March of twenty twenty, and it's

the same after Title forty two has gone. But nonetheless, Title forty two represented a distinct change in how asylum works in the US, and, especially when combined with other Trump policies that Biden has continued, a distinct change in how many people die when coming to this country to try and have a better chance at a save future.

By April of twenty twenty, Title forty two expulsions at the border overtook the previous record for expulsions under the so called Migrant Protection Protocol, which is better known as Remain in Mexico, that was set in August of twenty

nineteen under an agreement reached with the Mexican government. In late March of twenty twenty, the Border Patrol began sending quote unquot quote back to Mexico most Mexican, but also Guatemala and Honduran and Saldarrean families and seeingle adults encountered

at the border. This group of nationalities remained unchanged until May of twenty twenty two, when the Biden administration came to an agreement with Mexico to accept quote unquote thousands of Cubans and Nicaraguans sent from the United States to Mexico. But this doesn't really matter. You'll see that alone these episodes. Immigration law on the ground and immigration law in Washington,

DC are two very different things. There has been extensive documentation of individuals expelled to Mexico who do not fit within these nationalities, including Haitian asylum seekers, some of whom I've spoken to myself. People who are expelled are often driven by bus to the nearest port of entry that's a land border crossing, and told to walk back to Mexico,

often without their luggage and other belongings. I've found that luggage and belong including ID cards, clothing and even little stuffed animals all along the border in the three years since Title forty two has been in place. I asked my friend Paul to describe what we found in Texas, and we've been for a walk along the border wall during our time reporting on the National Butterfly Center.

a giant pile of people's stuff. And some of it was obviously trash, you know, they were abandoning clothes after they changed from crossing and stuff like that, but a lot of it was full backpacks, a lot of ID documents just in piles, just piles of them. Yeah, yeah, just big piles of documents that proved who you were.

you didn't actually have something to set it against. But once you put that on there, you could just lean the ladder up against it. It's like self defeating.

these are people I've met. It won't have escaped the listeners' attention that those planes and buses and other means of detention and transport are indeed congregate settings, But that doesn't seem to matter here. Title forty two didn't stop people trying to come, but it made the journey more difficult. Instead of crossing and trying to turn themselves in for asylum or approaching a port of entry, people began crossing in more remote places, places without border walls or barriers,

with less frequent border patrols. In twenty twenty, the Border Patrol found two hundred and forty seven dead bodies along the border. This is unlikely to represent the full human toll of border enforcement. Many deaths in the desert go unreported and undiscovered, but it gives some kind of point of comparison for the twenty twenty one number. After a year of Title forty two, five hundred and forty six

people died that year. In twenty twenty two, third year of Title forty two, eight one hundred and fifty seven people died. None of those people were guilty of any crime other than wanting a better life, but under Title forty two, they lost their lives because the US didn't give them a safe way to exercise the human right

to claim asylum. One local advocate, Hamaira Yusefi from a group called PANA, the Partnership for the Advance with of New Americans, explain what Title forty two have been like for her as an advocate for asylum seekers.

And so we have had hundreds of cases of individuals who have gotten themselves injured, who the hospitals are calling us because they've tried to cross and got injured, and where we're trying to help them with getting some basic legal services and immediate shelter and those types of things.

or perhaps we're just using someone's first name. It's also for that reason they're not everyone at the Border always wants to talk. But we do have some interviews coming up for you tomorrow. Here's a clip from a discussion about this which I recorded the border last week.

in the country to which they will be expelled. However, in order to receive an official screening by an asylum officer for exemption under that provision, the CBP officer must first determine that the claim is reasonably believable. From March twenty twenty through September twenty twenty one, just two hundred and seventy two people were granted the right to seek

asylum under this exception. The use of Title forty two has been despite the relative lack of outrage sin sur Bide the administration took office bipartisan in twenty twenty one. A few weeks before Bileen's inauguration, I spent some time talking to migrants at the southern border for Slate. Many of them had come to a small, tense city that popped up just feet from the pedestrian border crossing and the country that they had traveled thousands of miles to

get to but that they couldn't reach. You can see America through the fence there, but you can't get there. The camp was diverse in its composition. On one trip, I interviewed folks from Haiti, Honduras, Ol Salvador, Gatemana, and Ethiopia. Here's what one of them said to me when he asked his message to President Biden. You recognize the voices Daniel's. That's because I don't have his permission to use his voice.

her son. That's why she's sent him alone from Honduras. So, Sir, you blamed the last administration, But is your messaging and saying that these children are and will be allowed to stay in this country and work their way through this process, encouraging families like Jo says to come.

March twenty second, twenty twenty one. While making declarations about showing compassion to migrants, the Biden administration packed Haitians onto crowded planes and buses and sent them back to Haiti in the middle of the pandemic. In March, the US sent another pointed invitation to Haitians. The US Embassy in Haiti tweeted a picture President Joe Biden looking off into the distance with a caption in both English and Haitian Creole.

In Creole, it read wing kadi sa bienkie pavini. The translation above it was.

devastating earthquake in twenty ten. Following these announcements, the US diverted resources that it could have used to help people from suffering in a country which have been destroyed by a natural disaster to stop them coming to this country. He was also overlooking that under both international and domestic law, asylum seekersts are entitled to make claims no matter how they enter the country. Here's what Mayoka said at his press conference.

Local media they're reporting it was potentially up to two thousand people and that it was possibly the biggest mass crossing in the city's history. Now, as you look at the video, you'll see just wave after wave after wave of these people walking across the river and then gathering on the US side of the river where they kind of form a single file line.

the Border Patrol had previously been apprehended. The reapprehension rate grew to twenty seven percent in fiscal year twenty twenty two. This is because we're expelling people to places where they have no hope of a better future and not leaving them with many options other than to try again in

more remote and risky settings. Meanwhile, there's much less concern from the right and from Democrats at the fact that Ukrainians are exempted from Title forty two, and Russians and Ukrainians generally experience expedited processing of the sort which one would hope this country could offer to other people escaping

conflicts around the world, including many that we started. I asked my friend Gustavo Solis, a border investigative reporter at KPBS in San Diego, to summarize the Biden administration to take on Title forty two.

to stop this type of migration. We know that Vice President Mike Pence pressured the top doctors at the CDC into doing this, basically saying, if you don't do this, you might lose your job. Because even then in March twenty twenty, doctors at the CDC knew that there was no real public health rationale for this. I mean, if you look at the order, it's supposed to stop COVID, but there weren't any exceptions for migrants who were vaccinated or there was no testing component to it. So that's

kind of the beginning of Title forty two. By the time Biden came in office, Biden had promised to end it along with Roman in Mexico and restore the humane asylum system. But he kept Title forty two in place. And he didn't just keep it in place, he expanded it to include nationalities that weren't included when Trump first rolled it out.

of people at the border. The CBP one app aims to address that by telling micros, hey, instead of coming all the way to Mexico and showing up the border, just download this app and schedule an appointment to come here, and we'll let you to see if you're eligible for asylum or not. Another example of a policy in Washington, DC that has no reality in what's going on the border because migrants live in shelters with really bad Wi

Fi access, and they have crappy phones. So what I've found in the reporting is that CBP one rewards people with the best phones, not necessarily people who are most vulnerable.

And the story I came out with last week was about how data from the Mexican government shows that at least in Tijuana, about forty four percent of every migrant who has gotten a CBP one application to enter the country is a Russian national, and Russian nationals makeup at most ten percent of the overall migrant population in Tijuana.

So you have this situation where a relatively affluent ten percent of the population is getting almost half of these humanitarian protection appointments that are designed for the world's most vulnerable people. And that's what if you one does like it they call it the Ticketmaster of asylum, and that's not a compliment. That is like ticketmaster fucking sucks. Nobody likes it.

documented issue for more than a decade. And anyone that could tell you by building a facial recognition or some kind of a camera app that does image processing and and I'm only training it on my face, is it like that this is a This is not something that I think any competent, separate development house would have done

and not expected. So I have a hard time believing that the whole chain of everyone's had to go through from the developers on up to you know, anyone who does it or you know has authority of these things at CBP or Homland Security. This is just it's it's it's like, I don't know, it's it's, it's, it's it's hard to believe that this was enough.

fucking suck, he's an advertising break. You might be wondering why Title forty two is ending now and how we got here, given there seems to be a consensus in DC that the border is in crisis, and that that crisis is not that people were leaving to die on the streets the other side or in the deserts of California and Arizona, but the people were allowing to come to the richest country that's ever existed from countries that we've destabilized for decades to have a chance of a

decent life. Well, the answer is complicated. Some of it's a bit too complicated for me to really spend the time explaining, and you don't really need to know the ins and outs of court cases to understand that. Essentially, the Biden administration had planned to end Title forty two

in late twenty twenty two, right after the midterms. Title forty two actually became theoretically unenforceable in November of that year thanks to a court ruling, but the Supreme Court in December prevented the Biden administration from ending Title forty two, while the Justice is considered a request by a group of Republican led states that want to continue the expulsions,

which had previously been decaarred unlawful by lower court. Biden's Department of Justice had previously defended Title forty two as necessary to public health, but by the end of twenty twenty two, they were ready to end enforcement a Title forty two politically, even if there were no way when near prepared on the ground. A coalition of Republican led states, however, managed to get a federal judge in Louisiana to prevent officials fremending Title forty two, saying the Biden administration and

had not taken adequate steps required to terminate the policy. Then, on November fifteenth, another federal judge declared Title forty two are lawful, saying the CDC had not properly explained the policy's public health ration art or considered its impact on

asylum seekers. At the request of the Biden administration, the judge gave border officials five weeks until December the twenty first to end Title forty two nineteen, Republican led States asked several courts to delay Title forty two's resision indefinitely, warning that chaos would otherwise ensue. After their request was denied by lower courts, the States asked a Supreme Court

to intervene. On December twenty seventh, the Supreme Court said it would suspend the lower court order that found Title forty two to be illegal until it decided whether the Republican led States should be allowed to intervene in the case. That's some Christmas spirit for you. Eventually, with the end of the federal emergency over COVID nineteen, Title forty two

just kind of went away. Customs and Border Protection, the federal agency which put up the most staunch resistance to vaccine mandates, would begin processing migrants under Title eight of US immigration law on the eleventh of May twenty twenty three. I'll let them summarize what they see this to mean. According to the USCIS website, individuals who unlawfully cross the Southwest border will generally be processed under Title eight expedited

removal authorities. In a matter of days, they will be barred from re entry to the United States for at least five years if ordered removed, and they will be presumed ineligible for asylum under the proposed Circumvention of Lawful Pathways regulation absent and applicable exception. What this means is, if you cross into the United States not of the pordamentry, you will be assumed ineligible for asylum and the process to remove you from the United States will begin immediately.

You have a chance to file a de into asylum claim against that, but the process could be rushed and more difficult. Despite this and having almost three years to repair, they were by no means. Ready, let's hear from Gustavo again. Gustavo, can you explain to us a little bit about what you found that by the administration has been planning for the end of Title forty two.

the border being involved or told what's going on. So, like, I think it was last week the HS Secretary Majorca did this press release about what they're doing in terms of processing centers in Guatemala and Colombia so people can just go there instead of coming all the way to the border, which actually there have been timelines of when

those will open. But they had asked all these things for like big picture things, right, to stop people from coming in the first place, expanding some legal pathways, like making it easier for people with families already here to get sponsors, fixing some of the little things with CVP one,

but they don't talk about like on the ground logistics right. So, for example, I went to Tijuana to talk to the head of the Department of Migrant Affairs there who told me this, and I checked with him yesterday morning, who said, still to this day, less than forty eight hours before Title forty two ends, he doesn't know how many migrants CBP will allow to cross through the ports of entry

in Sandy Seerro. His guess is that maybe two hundred, because that's kind of the number that they floated around in December when they originally wanted to get rid of Title forty two before their lawsuit. And if it's two hundred, he basically said, Tijuana is going to be screwed because two hundred doesn't even cover the number of new migrants

coming in and deporties being sent to Tijuana. So it's gonna like we have this bottleneck of migration in Tijuana and all over the border because of Title forty two. For the last three years, no one's been able to move. And if they just open it up to two hundred people, that's not really going to address any of the bottleneck.

moment for almost two years. So why is part of that plan and honor system.

On the tenth, Majorcas announced the Title forty two would be enforced up until eleven fifty nine pm Eastern time, and in San Diego, Border Patrol offices closed down the port of entry at Sandy Sedra, the border town just south of San Diego, for a training exercise in which they lined up in front of the cars waiting to

cross the border with plexiglass shields and riotgear. Meanwhile, in between the two thirty football offenses that divide San Asidra from Tijuana, Board of Patrol began corraling migrants Afghans, Colombians, Vietnamese, Koreans and Golan Sudanese Tagiks and Congolese people all shared little more than a few tarps and cardboard boxes for

shelter as they waited for something to happen. Despite having months to repair in years to plan, it appears at Department of Home Land Security totally failed to create so much as a scrap of shade or shelter, and instead chose to house people detain pending processing in the open air. In tomorrow's episode, We'll hear from some.

five hundred troops already deployed to the border. According to a press release from the Apartment of Homeland Security.

prepare for a potential increase in unaccompanied children. DHS also launched targeted enforcement operations and high priority regions along the border, including El Paso, to quickly process migrants and place them in removal proceedings. DHS last week also announced over two hundred and fifty million dollars in additional assistance for communities receiving migrants.

I'm just for people familiar with said, you've got like in the Tijuana River Valley park by International Hill, where border patrol are holding people in between the two border fences. For those who thought we didn't have a border wall or weren't having a border wall, we have at least two, sometimes three, but right here we have two. People are

being put in between these fences by border patrol. So I just spoke to some young Colombian women who had crossed about fifteen miles east of here and then being relocated here and there in between these border walls. They don't have running water. What food and water they have appear to be in surpied by volunteers on the northern side. They've just been given space blankets, but a lot of people are literally sleeping under bin bags right now. Blankets.

It's pretty brief. There's one portal toilet sort of thing that we can see about five hundred people, So I kind of give you an idea of the conditions. Obviously those don't live up to the detention conditions at border patrol are supposed to hold people under. But here we are, I guess have just said that they're calling an ambulance.

There have been a number of medical emergencies that nearly always are in these situations because you're holding people, you know, old people, young people, sick people, and they're in the sun all day, they're in the cold all night. If it rains, they get wet. If it's hot, they get hot, if it's cold, they get cold. Their little children were just asking me for a blanket a minute ago. She's always a pretty bleak thing. If you've not been here,

you'd be forgiven for not knowing that. We have a double layer of wall separating us from our neighbors in Tijuana. Both sections are now the Trump period design. But we're standing in a place we're not so very long ago, Nancy Reagan stood and said she hoped that they wouldn't be a fence here for very long. Now there are two towering walls and their little children stuck sleeping in

the dust between them. Or the aid to these people had to go through the wall, too, and that meant no hot meals because the gaps are smaller than a plate. Someone tried to bring tents, but they wouldn't fit. Everything from food to clothes to medical supplies had to go through the gaps in the wall. Hamara you Sephi, a volunteer from the Partnership for the Advancement of New Americans, described to me what she saw that night.

What is going on? I see, you know, people who don't even have many kids, don't have shoes, they don't have I talked to individuals who lost everything on them. They don't have jackets. They're trying to cover themselves with any kind of covering that they have, some of them using trash bags, others using scarves and other types of things to cover themselves from the sun. We are in San Diego, so it's quite sunny here.

journey and that they're now technically inside the USA. Here's the advert a CBP broadcast in Spanish to encourage asylum seekers to download the app before they put them in a place they couldn't charge their phones.

comply with the strict requirements of the asylum process. In the majority of cases, it is assumed that migrants do not comply with the requirements for asylum, and you won't have the right to work unless you comply with the strict requirements. Again, if you are now in Mexico City or further north, download CBP one.

It's not clear of making them would have helped, as it seems that they were already being detained and thus they would have to file defensive asylum claims, effectively stopping the repatriation process by claiming that they couldn't safely be sent back to their country of origin. This is opposed to making an affirmative asylum claim that people should have been able to make at the border. With a CBP one appointment, these would not have to be argued with

the threat of repatriation hanging over the person making the claim. Volunteers, local people, a mosque group, and a church group all showed up soon after CBP began dumping more people in between the fences. An hour after my own arrival. I'd given away all the charge cables that I had in my truck, which is a lot more charge cables than I thought I had in my truck, and all my charge bricks acrued over six years of getting free shared

at the consumer electronics show in Las Vegas. Later, I came back with a massive solar generator that I'd like to use when I'm living off grid, But I still need to write stuff. Even all my home electronics ephemera and the combined efforts of nonprofits, religious and mutual aid groups couldn't really make much difference to five hundred people from around the world, mostly families with children being held between the two fences. When it got hot, they got hot.

When it got cold, they got cold. When the wind blew, they got dust in their eyes, and everything was constantly dirty. The only hot food volunteers could get to them was pizza. Some of the detained people had cash, and they were able to order door dash on the Tijuana side, but again the meals had to fit through a hole barely wider than my arm. The only way to get clean was with wet wipes, and there was only one bathroom.

There was no shade or shelter either, and the only way people could construct shelters were through tying tops to the border wall itself. I like Kaber, one of the volunteers who came to help, describe what they saw when participating in mutual aid a couple of days after, but.

strong on the border to their colleagues in DC. They didn't place as much emphasis on the right to present and claim asylum at a port of entry. But as we saw yesterday, it's virtually impossible to actually do that, and Tijuana is already full of thousands of people trying to do that exact thing. Given a set of circumstances, it makes sense that many people took the days before the end of Title forty two and the final chance

to cross before Title forty two ended. I spoke to Diana Rodriguez from Colombia about her understanding of what was going to happen.

And what Article eight does is that they deport you. They put you in the registered database saying that you broke the law, and they punish you for five years and you lose the right to request your asylum through legal channels.

under the deasert son from Colombia. Of course, in recent years, there has been instability and violence there, which also drives migration. One of my sources also mentioned a lot of Colombian people had seen misleading information about immigration law on TikTok. Two days had passed since Janna arrived. She came with one of the girls she was now sharing a tarp with. I met another when they were all dumped in the

camp together. In the days before they were detained here, they crossed three countries on their way to what they it was a better life for young women like them. I asked them to describe that journey for me.

I asked Deana what you'd want to say to folks who might have had their perspective influence by the contentt demonization of migrants by right wing media.

sees what he does not know. So it's hard when you're born in a golden cradle and you don't see beyond what you have. So there are people that in our case, in my case, I lived a very hard life where you see the war between armed groups. They exist outside the law and they can control an area,

and you see the kidnapping, you see the rape of girls, recruitment, extortion, death. Yes, so it's hard when we experience that and people say things like these migrants are coming to invade our country, we also ask them to treat us as people, because if we are here, it is not because we want to invade a territory. It is because we want to come to fight for a better future for our children without stepping on anyone. Nobody wants this. But where we

come from, we receive travelers with open arms. And it's hard when one is a migrant, when one lives the experience of being a migrant, it is a very hard thing to be a migrant, having to endure cold, hunger, rain, sun, that is all these things, and then arriving here and seeing of contempt. It's hard. It is very hard. So yes, the important thing is that people must know that being an immigrant is not easy. Being an immigrant is not easy.

himself a migrant from Africa. He said that if migrants don't to be English or Spanish, it can be very hard for them to get information, and there aren't as many nonprofits set up to serve them as there are for Spanish speaking people, for example. They can often end up isolated and alone. I did get a better chance to talk to a Jamaican man called Joseph. It's his

singing you've heard at the start of this episode. Mostly we talked about things in America, about how he lost his phone on his journey we got him another one at Walmart and about things like football and music. I didn't record all of that because sometimes it's nice to just talk to people. Hopefully it makes their dair a bit brighter and gives them some information maybe they could help. He did let me record a bit of an interview

and some of him singing. He was pretty guarded on the recording, but as you can hear in this clip, we had a good time when we weren't recording.

look like me should have that same right as well. Sadly, coming to the USA is also scary and confusing, even for me with three university degrees and all the intersectional privilege I have and fifteen years living here, and I've recently minted US passport. Now, I worried for years that maybe I'd made a mistake on a form or missed some kind of deadline. Speaking of deadlines, what none of the migrants could tell us, what they all wanted to ask about, was exactly what was happening to them as

Title forty two expired. A Congolese lady asked me if her passport would be confiscated. A lady from Senegal asked if she needed to pay a bribe like the one she'd paid in Mexico. It wasn't really clear at first if these people were being detained and under what process

they were being received. Would they be sent back to Mexico and a Title forty two repatriated under Biden's interpretation of Title eight, or given the right to plead their case with international and US law suggests it should be able to CBP made people sit in lines all day with no indication of when they would be taken to the porta Entry for processing. Sometimes I heard people saying if everyone didn't sit down, there will be nobody process

that day. But the only food, water, and medical attention available to the migrants was that which could be passed through the wall, and they had to get out of their lines to receive this aid. I'll let Kaber describe what this looked like.

us that they were going to choused to take. We assume we didn't know exactly we were taking them, but we assume they were taking the point of entry in Senna Secret, which is beout a mile away, and so moment always happened when they come and get a group is like three or four people from that group would sprint over to the world because we still had their phones and side people wasn't going to wait for us to get the funds.

Jamaican twins. Both young men told me they had walked up there and that things were very bad. People were only given one small water bottom the granola bar every day, they said. One person told me they'd heard people eating grass. I asked CBP's press office for information on this, but they didn't respond. Here's one clip of a man trying to explain how bad things were there. It's hard to communicate across language barriers, and with a war between you,

it's even harder. But I could tell he was very concerned for the folks that we couldn't get to. Despite myself and others trying, and me addressing this issue directly and emails to CBP, I never got any response on why people were not allowed to help the single men in the other camp.

for her children. Other folks took it upon themselves to try and walk to the camp for single men with water, and people constantly helped us find the owners of phone by wandering through the rows of people sheltering under taps and space blankets to look for people who had left us their devices to charge. In Nucumber, a town an hour or so east of San Diego, things were worse. Cumber's home to a cute hotel, a lovely lake, a

hot spring, and an awful lot of big rugs. When the border war was being built in Earnest before the twenty twenty election, they skipped some of the harder areas. Perhaps they figured it would be too hard to cross there, it's not perhaps they wanted to maximize the mileage before election day. Well it didn't help much, but either way, for some reason, the wall just takes a little break

in her Cumber and this makes crossing marginally easier there. However, the boulder fields, scorching hot days and cold nights make it anything but easy. On Thursday night, the eleventh of May, locals in a Cumber became aware that CBP were holding people on a dirt road in the open desert, just a few miles east of town and a few hundred feet from the wall. The people held they didn't have access to toilets, running water, or shelter. With every hour

that went past, the number of people grew. The biggest camp soon held over a thousand people desperately trying to scratch out a little shade in the desert. Other smaller camps popped up. One was apparently in someone's yard, and the people of this tiny desert town sod about helping as best they could. Soon they were joined by volunteers from all over the county. Katie was one of those volunteers. She doesn't live in a cumber but her friends do

and her family sometimes spends time there. Once she heard about what was happening, she knew she had to help. I let her describe her feelings after she saw the posts on, and then drove out to Kumba to see what she could do to help.

for you here. So when I first arrived, I thought it was kind of odd that everything was organized around a random road that has a gate, and there were five only five border patrol at the time, and about that was a larger camp. So I want to say at least eight hundred people, maybe a thousand. I didn't see them all because many of them were received their donations and the assistance and went back to their shelters.

their families from the elements. They slept on the dirt or in cardboard boxes left over from the foodolunteers fed them and under whatever folks and tiny desert count could find to give them. By the time I arrived, the migrants were gone and volunteers were cleaning up. The landscape was dotted with impressively constructed brush shelters. Volunteers from her Cumba set up tables to distribute food, blankets, water, and clothing.

Other volunteers stayed away from the camp itself and spent time packing things into individual sizes, perhaps combining hats and socks and maybe a toy for child in one bag, or breaking down costco packages of snacks into individual portions. It's not necessarily the most rewarding task, but it's an

important one. I asked Marissa, another volunteer who had previously worked in San Diego for the Forest Service, what she felt when we were cleaning out some of those shelters together a couple of days later.

out there. What do you use when you don't have those supplies?

position or another. I went out there purely for my love of humanity, and I think being able to support in whatever way I can that was the way that I felt like I could serve and be a support.

as much as the volunteers were. And unfortunately there was language barriers, you know, and so those that could speak multiple languages, whether they were border crossers or volunteers, were together in it and or and that was part of that organization that I'm talking about, you know. And it was actually a very calm scene when we first came up I saw my son's hat that I donated and a little boy hugging this jaguar stuffed animal, and the jaguar was really significant to my friend and I when

we found it. So it was really touching just to like see the things that we were bringing being literally being distributed, like sometimes when you think you're helping. I worked for a door to door campaign when I was in my teens and I got fifty percent of what I raised, and it was like disheartening, and you're like, oh, this is how it works. And in this case, money that I directly you spent on resources that were needed was going directly to the people.

which we diligently picked up. But none of the more than one thousand people who the Boarder Patrol held in this camp had planned for what they got, which was several days being detained in the desert by CBP with intefficient water, no shelter, and very little food, and no information on what was happening or how long they could expect to be there. Sadly didn't get there in time

to speak to any of them. I was in Arizona looking for border vigilantes and wondering what CBP had been doing to migrants there where they have the full support of local law enforcement and a large percentage of the aging population. To my surprise, he didn't find much. It seems like most people had crossed in the San Diego County area. Many had flown or walked to Tijuana. Of course, migrants, just like us, have accessed the news and to weather

forecast and maps. Crossing in Arizona, a place known for cruelty and very hot weather, doesn't make any sense when California offers a better political and weather climate, and with the mixed messages coming out of immigration law, these folks may not have been intending to evade border patrol, but to come to the USA and take their legal right to claim asylum. I spoke to Sam, a volunteer with extensive on the ground experience in humanitarian crises about what he'd seen at the camp.

Surveillance towers that dot the desert, including one which provided a tiny scrap of shade to migrants to restic under its solar panels, can cost a million dollars apiece, but people in the Cumba received only one small water bottle each day despite the punishing weather. Although Customs and Border Protection did not seem to make any plan to shelter migrants in a cumber, they did plan to have contractors

paid forty dollars an hour to take them away. I found a job advert for a Southwest Border Transportation and security officer at ISS Action Security. The agency photograph transporting migrants in Hakumba. The job posting, which was posted two weeks before the end of Title forty two, has a description that includes patting down all detainees and applying appropriate

restraints prior to boarding vehicles. The process through its migrants become detainees normally involves processing which had not been done in Nucumber, But it seems that presumption of ineligibility announced on the day Title forty two ended came into effect here. This might seem a minor distinction, but it's important It means that people have to file a defensive asylum claim and not an affirmative one. They have to plead why they shouldn't be deported rather than why they have a

right to stay. Many of the people who have been trying to cross before the end of Title forty two, like Diana, because they felt they would face a less serious penalty. Many of them flew to Twinea. I walked from further south in Mexico or even in Central America. I likely spent their entire savings on a trip to the gap in the wall near Heucumber that ended with them being held by border patrol in the open desert. Was next to nothing in the way of shelter, sanitation,

or sustenance. As a way to quantify this, I want a reference to UCSD US Immigration Policy Center report apparently had some pretty problematic practices, but anyway, these are results from its survey. When asked whether border patrol gave them enough water for the day, over half of the asylum seekers that we interviewed, approximately fifty three percent said no. Border patrol distributed one water bottle to each migrant in

the morning. When asked whether border patrol gave them enough food for the day, All of the asylum seekers said no. Border patrol did not distribute any food. When asked whether border patrol provided adequate sanitation such as toilets, all of the asylum seekers that we interviewed, meaning one hundred percent, said no. Bordert troll provided one porter body for the

entire encampment. When asked where the border patrol provided adepriate shelter, such as shade to protect them from the sun, all of the asylum seekers that we interviewed said no. Border patrol did not provide any shelter. When asked whether border patrol provided blankets to keep them warm at night, all but one of the asylum seekers we interviewed said no. Border patrol provided blankets some migrants, but the overwhelming majority,

did not receive blankets. Altogether, two thirds of the asylum seekers we interviewed said that they agree or strongly agree with the statement. If I did not receive food and water from volunteers, I would not get enough food and water from border patrol to survive. These aren't exaggerations, as we'll see, several migrants did come very close to losing their lives in the five or more days that CBP

detained people out in the open along the border. Medical incidents in this kind of attention are far from uncommon. A lawsuit filed against Customs of Border Protection by the Southern Border Communities Coalition regarding their actions this week, stated that quote, many migrants have fallen into medical distress because of the conditions, and CVP has been slow to provide access to medical attention, often only responding at the insistence

of advocates. As a result, one woman suffered life threatening allergies, a child suffered an epileptic seizure, and a man suffered an unattended infection on his leg. Medical attention was slow to arrive, and when it did arrive, it was often insufficient. Kay, but describe the conditions they saw a couple of days after the end of Title forty two.

four hundred people there. I heard a couple of different citations of how often this toilet is serviced and cleaned and the waste removed anywhere from once or twice a week to once every week or two weeks. Either way, that's not remotely sufficient for four hundred people using the bathroom multiple times a day in this single portable like just a construction site toilet. It was right next to the phone charging station on the other side of the wall, and I would just feel sick if I got if

I sit too close to it. It was really vile. It was not safe. It is not a way for people to be helping. And I do know, I think a lot of thankfully people stop using it, but then they don't have any you know, a privacy or that that's still not you know, a sanitary situation to be in since I mean, they don't have a future space anywhere. So that's definitely one of the way is that people intention to help safe.

try to seek asylum. And she was just sleeping right here. And she has burns all over her body, has an infection. I read the the seven medications that they gave her, and she speaks daddy. She's from avon Astan. Her husband got taken by the Taliban, and she escaped, running for her life. And she's here and she has sunburns all over her face and she has nowhere to go. She thought she was still detained. She actually thought she was still detained. She was just trying to get back to

the other side of the border. She thought she was still in Mexico. No one explained anything to her. They brought her back here in the middle of the night, and she was freezing, and so we brought That's why I came out here. I talked to her. The other folks who were out here didn't know why she was just sleeping here, and I came out and tried to translate it, and now we have her at a hotel.

first aid for the most part. There was a situation where someone was having an ellergic reaction, a fairly severe one, and and I happen to carry an EpiPen, so I have simply give that to the one of one of the stegematics, and then they eventually did call this person. The reaction got severe enough that it was an an hour or so later at that nine one was called, I assumed by one of the volunteers, and uh Amber Villaince and Border Patrol came to open the gate and

and bring this person in the country. They did eventually treat her, but it was a very it was a long time. I connunced it acceptance, which is someone as someone who has anaphlexis reactions food and it's had that happened many times in their life. That is absolutely terrifying.

I cannot imagine how terrifying it would be to be experiencing uh A her wife priding situation, and when you worked for APPS and you know there's no authority about many parents that you're there, and I don't know if she would have been able to get help if there have been volunteers in the s while especially once.

she had contracted the flu. Alvarez, her mother said she spoke to both detentional authorities and medical personnel at the station multiple times to explain her daughter was complaining of pain and shortness of breath and that she was getting worse. I'll quite the next part directly from the NBC story. They never listened to me, she said. Veas said his daughter was in a lot of pain, a lot of pain.

I begged them to call an ambulance, Alvarez said, adding the authorities told her the girl's condition wasn't serious enough to warrant calling an ambulance. Alvarez said her daughter begged authorities as well, telling them she could not breathe from her nose or mouth. Alvarez says that eventually her daughter lost consciousness and died in my arms. She said, authorities took the girl from her arms and put her on the floor trying to revive her. My daughter died there

in the station, she said. Avare said she feels authorities did not do enough to help her little girl. My daughter is a human being. They had to take care of her, she said. Despite what you might have heard on the network news, the asylum process is anything but easy. I've had several visas, a green card and a US passport, and I can completly tell you the only easy way I've ever seen to come here is to be very rich.

But even among the convoluted bureaucratic mess that is US immigration, the asylum process stands out as both rigorous and complicated. Asylum is a process by which people unable or unwilling to return to their country because of persecution or a well founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, politics, or membership of a particular social group may remain in a safe country. From the eleventh of May onwards, migrants

at the border were assumed ineligible for asylum. If they cross between points of entry, they must enter the defensive asylum process to prevent themselves from being deported. What this means for people we heard from earlier is that they are now taken for whatever God forsake and holding area they'rein, and bust to a processing facility where they are interviewed by an asylum officer to determine if they have a

credible fear of persecution. They may need to provide a translator if there is an interviewing agent who speaks their language, and if they're determined to have a credible fear they're told to check in with the US Customs and Immigration Office and sometimes given a notice which may or may not be dated to appear in court. My colleague Joe tried to get into one of these hotels to talk to one of the people we'd spoken to at the border, but he was pretty quickly shut down.

for example. Once they get to where they're going to be, they check in with US Customs and Immigration Services in their new location, and they're given a special phone which also tracks their movements. They may have a DNA sample take and in addition to fingerprints. Later, sometimes years later, they attend a court hearing or two to determine their eligibility to stay. I've heard of lawyers charging from five thousand dollars to twelve thousand dollars for these hearings, and

nonprofit legalists and services are totally overwhelmed. At the moment, the system's massively backed up, and court dates are being given as far out as twenty twenty seven already. They may or may not be able to work during that period, and under the table work is getting harder and harder to find. Even if they do find work on less than minut wage, it can be very hard to say

about five thousand dollars for a lawyer. A Migrants who can't find nonprofit help are at a significant disadvantage when it comes to their asylum hearings again private security contractors, this time from Allied. We're transporting migrants to the hotel and guarding it. Like CBP, the private contractors you guard, transport and incarce rate migrants or rely on the broken in immigration system to make money. Unlike CBP, the agents

themselves aren't well paid. Nineteen dollars an hours are going rate for Allied, not much higher than San Diego's sixteen dollars and thirty cents minimum wage. But the company itself is huge. It's the third last year as private employer in North America after Walmart and Amazon. Allied guards are at prisons, airports, and shopping malls across America, and it's alleged that some are underpaid, in sufficiently trained, and improperly vetted.

The company grosses over twenty billion dollars, and it's affiliates of frequent political donors. All across this story, you'll see this Allied Security iss action, security people, smugglers, customs and border protection contractors who build the wall pieces, and contractors who install the wall pieces, General Atomics, who sell CBP drones, and the Israelian American companies who sell the surveillance technology.

kind of thing. There's a lovely lake fed by the spring, and on this sunbake morning, there are about fifty people outside an old petrol station nervously pounding bottles of water, applying sunscreen, and getting ready to head out to the desert to clear up the ad hoc migrant camp that has held as many as fifteen hundred people out in the open when Title forty two ended and Border Patrol made no plans to keep them anywhere. It was a

diverse bunch of people hidden beneath sun hats. There's an Australian film producer who was at a conference in Orlando and booked a fly over, a grad student painter. The folks who were in the Hookumber Hotel who organize this whole thing, they're friends from the hospitality industry in San Diego. There were students and mums and dads and about the

entire population of this tiny desert town. There were also two form international aid workers who are in a tower where you can look at the desert, which is actually a much cooler thing than it sounds. And there's also a museum of boulders right next to it. You should probably check them out during the area. I spent the day helping out in Acumber after the refugees, some of them in handcuffs, have been taken by private contractors to be processed by CBP's Office of Field Operations. We met

at a petrol station in the middle of town. The space where the pumps should be was filled with tons, and I do mean tons of bottled water, masks, hand sanitized or and other necessary supplies. When I'd arrived the night before around ten pm, the eerie green and yellow lights reflecting from the roof had lit up the palace of water like some kind of giant lava lamp, and driving across the desert, the town looked like it was glowing. The town certainly has had a bit of a glow

up in the last few years. Three business partners purchased their cumber hot Springs Hotel, a down in the mouth property that had once been a glamorous desert resort, and they've been restoring the place for nearly two years. Inadvertently, they also purchased a lot of land and a few other rundown buildings in a town that were sold as a lot with the hotel. It was in one of these buildings, the old gas station, that they set up

a de facto mutual aid hubbo almost overnight. The hotel's not finished yet, and they probably didn't make much progress on it during the week when they were feeding more than a thousand people in the desert. The town's lake, fed by a natural spring, an old bath house used to be attractions. Today the bathhouse of roof has fallen off, but it still makes a pretty cool coincert venue, and the whole town offers commanding views of the border wall, which sadly is only a couple of hundred yards from

the main street. When I arrived in Cucumber, everything was close. The mini mark was sold out, the hotel was still being worked on, and the hotel kitchen was churning out food for volunteers at the clean up effort. I asked Marissa, one of the volunteers I met that day, about her first impressions on arriving at the meeting point.

police once a month. But that night I was cold, even underneath my down blanket, and I couldn't help but think of how desperate it must have been to spend nearly a week out there with nothing but in my last base blanket and some thorny bushes to keep you warm. It's certainly not the welcome that one would expect from their richest nation on Earth, which had three years to repair. For the day, Title forty two ended to get a bit of background, or I spoke to Natalie.

I spoke to Sam, another volunteer, to get a sense of response. Now, Sam is a kind of guy who just looks like he's a home in the desert, his wire brim hat, boots, and long cleaved shirt and pants. Told me he spent plenty of days under the baking sun out here, and his redness with an isoprople alcohol spray to disinfect people's boots after walking in an area that was likely covered in human shit, told me he'd been around one or two situations like this in the past.

saw the post and decided to help. At first, she wanted to leave right then at one am as soon as she'd seen the post, but often consulting her family, she decided to make her own post, asking for people to bring supplies that were needed. Soon she was overwhelmed by the response.

send from my family members. And so by the time my friend arrived, we were like, let's go, and we filled our car with Amazingly, we found like organic, there's grocery outlet, right, So we found organic soup for you know, dollars something a can, and we spent a few hundred dollars.

And the next morning we met early and we stopped in El Cone on the way and we spent all the rest on We went to three or four thrift stores and bought every blanket and hat and baby carrier because we have both focused on motherhood in our careers.

lady who worked for California Senator Steve Pidea. I won't name her as I don't have her permission, but hopefully one day soon we'll be able to interview her. I'll let Katie describe the role this woman played.

Weren't paying attention to that. We were paying attention to the people that we were, you know, around and no one that was out there didn't believe that we should be out there and that more help should be out there.

people are being tended to? And I literally heard her on the phone getting as many bodies on the ground to start going to those centers where they're being taken to make sure that they were, that we would follow them through the entire process as best possible, monitoring their well cared for that they were well cared for as well cared for as possible in a system and a process like that.

my house. She was just down at her local bar and just chatting with them and like, oh, what did you do today, And so she told them, oh, I collected money and I bought supplies, and then the people She ended up collecting about two hundred more dollars at the bar from people hearing her story. And so then the next day she went and bought more supplies and she actually ended up driving them out herself. She ended up doing like three drips just from her own talking

to people and collecting. So just like the little impact that you know, everyone just kind of coming together and making a difference.

was needed and they decided to plan a response. He's Caba describing how they prepared for that.

do things as people needing them. I know that I helped them out some prints and pads of paper and those where those tons of kids all came running over from the whole all the parts of the camp when they heard that there was there were twys being given out. So that was it was it was heartbreaking, but it was also you know, it made me smile.

was chaos. I let Kaber, who spent a whole day charging phones, described the system that volunteers came up with to mitigate that also a little bit.

So we had a system where they would pass the phone through, and we had we would we would put a piece of tape on it with their name and give them a piece of tape with their name, the same name, and then they would give us that if they came back a couple hours later and give us the tape back, and we would match their names and in the phone, and and that was It worked well.

some people didn't. Some people had Android or Samsung or or the iPhones, and some people had wall adaptors, and some people didn't have the wallet says, So we kind of had to every phone that came through was we had to find a way to get it, you know, basically chained into the set of generators that we had, which was do we have our power strips and we have to write cables and and we have space on those cables, and and I think it was it was

a bit of a puzzle the whole time. The only part of it that really overwhelmed me was we did overload. Someone brought a bunch of USBC power strips and we blew out one of them, and so there was now eight phones attached to it that I had to find new spaces for. And I was just like that was the really point where I was just I was just

frustrated by the you know, this whole situation. And in addition to the fact that I'm just the phones were plug that plug in the net strip had been charging for who knows how long since that been is I think short, sparticular or whatever happened to it.

increasing numbers. The American Friends Service Committee helped organize volunteers into groups to distribute food, package up wet white snacks, medicines, give out tops, and do just about anything else that they could, or anything else that they could fit into ziploc bags. It could be passed through gaps in the wall. At least people who had been immigrants themselves or who were the children of immigrants were not to be numerous among the volunteers. I spoke to one of them.

whole thing. I mean, I mean, everybody should should should feel the same way. Because somewhere down the line, our families went through similar situations. If you're not an indigenous, then then then your family somewhere down down to history went through the same thing.

but it was a very sweet moment. The father of the family had worked in the Army Corps of Engineers. He'd been to the border before to build this section of the wall. I didn't really need to ask him how it felt to see folks stuck behind it, but it said a lot that he and his family had taken the time to drive down, buy bags and supplies, and then come face to face with the people who

needed them and hand them out. Like dozens of other folks, they tried to pass whatever they could through little gaps in the wall to make someone's day a little bit brighter. Another volunteer who we heard from yesterday came from a local group called Partner Hermira had been at the wall since five in the morning, and it was getting on

for five pm. When we spoke. I normally asked people what they ate for breakfast, just to tune in the volume levels on the recorder a bit, but I'm going to include it this time, just so you can see how long her day had been and how hot she've been working.

that they need to survive. And so that's why the community is out here today to do that.

supplies for the asylum seekers. And then I you know, like, if you're from here, you kind of if you're in Hookumba, you kind of already knew what was going on, and so him asking me that, I was kind of like, m and then he just started laying into I've had illegals, you know, have broken into my house a few times. Why are you supporting illegals? And I'm like, we're trying to let like make sure that people don't die, and he just kept going off on me, and so he, you know, his the whole.

do have the food. So where's the breakdown? Like, is it our system that just doesn't allow for that happened? I don't know, And that that's where I don't understand it enough.

either because their arguments or they're a defense. And what they tried to share on the opposite side of me going out there and supporting just felt like it was just something to say, you know, and like what they what they hear from the general media out there, and they also don't really they can't quite grasp it, so they're just kind of throwing something out there, I guess, is what what it felt like.

but with kind of a local news sort of aesthetic to it, and they were, as far as I could tell, they were really the only identify the media that were there throughout the day. I read articles eventually made me realize there were other reporters there, but they were identifying

themselves the way that has I was. But they sign was one cameraman just shooting b rule, I guess, and he was walking to all the different parts of the wall and like all the different sort of stations for aid and like trying to really trying to get as many faces as possible. You could kind of tell that that's like what he was doing. Everyone who I was around I was. I was kind of you know, oriented mostly with kind of like sort of like anapist mutual

aid people. And and you know, when they saw the Kaside truck, they were like, okay, I'm wanted to their mask on, you know. And I'm still in in ninety five with me, so I'm more of that. And I I had a you know, slightly identifying logo on my sweatshirt which I take over so that you know, that image wouldn't show up.

Kaba thinks that some of the people who saw footage on k Usi, or perhaps found the location posted on Ogden's blog, came down to the border.

and then they drive away. But the people who are doing who are like here where I think you know, kind of some kind of intimidation where you know, the approach directly they would just kind of get out of their exceptionally large entivies and and just kind of just kind of watch and they would kind of, you know, get a little bit closer at a time and then you know, a little bit closer and kind of whispered to each other and you know, point at things, and

you know, it's just kind of they were just watching, and you know, they got close enough that I could read their shirts, and and the shirts had a slogan that's associated with a Christian nationalism slogan, so as this whole family is kind of kind of sad that the kids wore wearing shirts too, and and so I kind of, yeah, I figured out that that's what was going on. And

I never talked to them. I didn't approach them, but I stood when I was something to get closer closer, I kind of positioned myself in between the rest of volunteers and and this group and and just kind of, you know, didn't really stare at them, just kind of looked at them and just made it clear with my body language that I, like I knew what they were doing, Like they weren't you know, they weren't doing any kind of secret agent thing or whatever, Like they were being

really really obvious. And I would just you know, stood and position myself in a way that indicated that you know, I know what you're doing, and you're not going to get close. You're not going to interfere with you know what we're doing here. You're not going to contact any wine or you thrill anyone or like what everyone do. And eventually one of the people who is either volunteer or work for like one of the m gas contestently

tell there was something going on. So she went over and had a conversation with them that I couldn't hear, and eventually they decided to leave. And I think she was just kind of trying to be diplomatic, but just sort of like ask them if they wanted to help, and if they don't want to help, and you know,

you go be somewhere else, I suppose. And and it was, I mean, the sort of one amusing part, if you call it, that was that they apparently in the complaint to this person about me, because they said that I had been watching them and I was I'm traditionally profiling them because they were white, and I realized that this interview, but just for the listeners, I am very very white myself.

no one should be doing that. But also it's like kind of like the humanity in a way like that, you know, even a child's going to play wherever child's going to play, and like that little toy of little hopefully it brought that kid some joy in that moment, you know, if it was there a little piece of home or someone gave it to him or what, you know, it was Yeah, the reality, it was like it was like a person, you know, like a little artifact of someone who was actually there, you know, like it was

a little more tangible than you know.

just just just how how privileged we are. You know, like no one leaves their country because they want to. They leave because they have to, but they feel like they have to. And you know, it's I mean, it's respecting and honoring and understanding the privilege that you're in and not taking it for granted because it's very easy.

Sometimes often politics can become a complicated game of numbers and statistics, but it's important to remember that what this is really about is organizing in such a way that we can take care of one another, and that the most important politics of war is the politics of feeding how many people and maybe bringing a sad child of stuffed animal's Katie talking about the community response.

and fix it, because then people will die. Yeah, you know, I mean that's the reality is if that community didn't activate, there would have been a lot of dead people in the desert.

fruit snacks for other little kids. They didn't see those kids, but when the adult said they're gonna be so happy to get that package, they felt like they made a difference. And those little girls are gonna grow up and not be afraid to step up and make a difference. I think a lot of people think like they can't do enough, so they don't do anything. And if we all just do a little bit or what you can, then I

think we would see a very large impact. Kumba is a town of five hundred and they just fed thousands, house thousands, clothed, thousands, hugged and welcomed thousands of human beings. And those people in that town don't have much excess, and they made a difference. And I was proud to be a part of that community in a way that I'm on the fringe of it, and it made me

want to be even more a part of it. My feelings and intuition about that town were confirmed by watching the simplest action make an incredible impact on real lives and real people, and that this isn't demographics. It's real bodies that have beating hearts and breathe and we all share the same air in the same water, and we're all connected. And when you make one little drip in

the bucket, it actually does make a difference. And I think that stops us sometimes when we think what we have isn't enough to give, but when someone has nothing, what you have is more than what they can imagine.

non white people from moving to the USA. From there, it weaves its way through the Mexican Revolution and the firm World Wars German proposal to ally with Mexico to reclaim those territories it had lost in the decades before then. The Border Patrol story itself begins in May nineteen twenty four, and in the ninety nine years since it has encompassed everything from David Duke to nine to eleven in its journey to becoming the biggest and least accountable law enforcement

agency in the federal government. People from the colonial periphery have always migrated to the metropol. It's why a man called fat Led singing a song about Vindulu is basically in my country's second national anthem, and why every four years France accepts black Frenchmen onto its football team before it returns to vilifying them in other forms of discourse.

Migration to the United States is no different. Climate change in US imperialism have destabilized and impoverished nations from the Americas to Afghanistan, and driven people to the US border looking for a better life. What's distinct about the US is how obsessed it has become with keeping these people out and enforcing the longest land borders in the world. But the US border is much bigger than the land boundary between the USA and Mexico to the south, Canada

to the north. If you're listening to this in the United States, the chances are that you live in the Border Enforcement Zone. This swath of territory outside the Constitution has been established since the Immigration and Nationality Act of nineteen fifty two. Established at a reasonable distance of the border would extend one hundred air miles around the outline of the country. Two thirds of the US's population live

within this zone. Washington, d C. San Francisco, Chicago, New Orleans, and Boston are all within it, and that means that cbpagents can search vehicles and vessels to look for property that's in the country without the right documents. They can board public transportation or set up interior checkpoints and stop, interrogate and search citizens and non citizens without the need for a warrant. Within twenty five miles of the border, they can enter your property provide it's not a domicile.

The Fourth Amendment, part of a foundational bill of rights. At US likes to tout that's what makes it different from the rest of the world. Doesn't apply when you're near the border. An all encompassing history of the border and its enforcement is beyond the skill this podcast. Even a history of the Southwest border could take up a whole bookshelf, but we will try and skim the high

points here. Let's start with a Gadsden purchase, when a party of military surveyors first bumped into the Horn Autum elders as they attempted to draw a line dividing to Horn Autumn people from to Horn Autumn people. The southern border is no more obvious today than it was then, and of course, to the Autumn it was and remains an aberration that divides them from much of their ancestral

and current homelands. It has over the years seen violent enforcement on members of the nation and a growing encroachment of the border patrol into today's to Horn Autumn Reservation, which is the second largest in the USA, only represents a fraction of the tribe's historical homeland. These surveyors were in the process of finalizing most of the California and Arizona border, a border I drove most of in the

days after Title forty two. The southern border as it looks now was largely shaped by the Treaty of Guadalupihidalgo, which Mexico lost fifty five percent of its territory include all of what is today California, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and Nevada, and parts of what is today Colorado, Wyoming, Kansas, and Oklahoma. The Gaston Purchase of eighteen fifty three added more of southern Arizona. In New Mexico, the specific border in Santa Cidro withdrawn so that San Diego Bay would

fall to the north of the line. The border in a cumba seems more arbitrary, a straight line in the desert that runs into a pile of rocks. Of course, long before the border divided San Asidra from Tijuana, this was Cumia Land, and despite the border, it still is. The name Tijuana derives from Tijuan, which means by the sea in Cumiai. Despite this, the Cumii and many other indigenous peoples were ignored when the border crossed them, and it's

becoming harder and harder for them to cross it. In parts of desert, it can be pretty hard to see the border at all. In twenty twenty, while out with a group of Cumi people who are in ceremony to honor their ancestors whose burial sites have been and continue to be desecrated by border walk construction, it had to be worried of steppe over it to better frame my shots.

The emerging Declaration Donald Trump made allowed war construction to sidestep legislation in place to protect archaeological and sacred sites, but it didn't allow me to sidestep into Mexico to get a better shot. Luckily, Bortac, a team of armed Border patrol agents who you might remember from Portland in twenty twenty, provided a guy ad dressed like he was

in the Battle of Falluja to help me. I would say the border is a line in the sand, but at the time there wasn't a line that was visible at all in Valley the Moon, a few miles east to where that Bortec patrol guide shouted at people stepping

too close in twenty twenty. The border wall is about waist high, rusty, and essentially comprised of a single strand of barbed wire in Hoocumber, the thirty foot trump wall pushes right up to a boulder pile and then stops the logic as much as there can be any logic, and spending twenty five million dollars a mile to desecrate sacred spaces and defile the landscape is that people will be deterred from crossing by the harsh landscape brutally hot

days and brutally cold nights. This logic, of course, fails to consider not just where people are going, why they're leaving, the places they've come from. Risking one's life crossing the border makes sense only when one considers the danger that many people in places around the world face every day. It hasn't always been this way. Fear reference here in Reagan and Bush talking about migration in nineteen eighty, heait.

Now this cannot continue without the possibility arising with regard to that other country that we talked about of Cuba and what it is stirring up of the possibility of trouble below the border, and we could have a very hostile and strange neighbor on our border. Rather than making them or talking about putting up a fence, why don't

we work out some recognition of our mutual problems. Make it possible for them to come here legally with the work permit, and then while they're working and earning here, they pay taxes here, and when they go on to go back, they can go back and they can cross and open the border both ways by understanding their problem.

of the El Paso sector and a Democratic Congressman. He lost his seat to be to A. Rourke in twenty thirteen, but this strategy would long outlive his career with border patrol. The following year, on September seventeenth, nineteen ninety four, US Attorney General Janet Reno announced the start of Operation Gatekeeper. The first phase of the operation focus on the first five miles of the western border, including the place where I recorded all those interviews you heard earlier this week.

According to a piece written a quarter of a century later in the La Times, the strategy was to deter migrants from illegally crossing in the first place, and for the who remained undeterred to encourage them to cross in more isolated wilderness areas to the east where they could

be more easily captured. There were already fences in nineteen ninety four, first a chain link fence and then one made of helicopter landing mats left over from Vietnam that had horizontal struts that closely resembled and were used as a ladder. Anti migrant rhetoric was already there too. California Governor Pete Wilson became an outspoken advocate for Prop One to eighty seven, a ballot measure that cut off state

services like health care and education to undocumented people. Here's a clip of Wilson's reelection ad.

of lower wages in Mexico. To learn a little bit more about Operation Gatekeeper, I spoke to one of the agents who was tasked with executing it.

people graduate or something. Most of them went down to Imperial Beach and they had a wall there, and so that was the idea, is to fill the San Diego City area with as many agents and weapons and all this, and then that would push the traffic for that to the mountains, making it more difficult for them to cross, and some of them would get injured, and we knew some of them would die. So it was intentional. The death and the injuries, according to management, would deter future crossings.

But of course that that's.

increase in the number of migrant deaths each year. On average, two hundred migrants died each year in the early nineteen nineties, compared with four hundred and seventy two migrant deaths in two thousand and five. Many of those deaths are now in a sector that encompasses the Autumn Reservation. The desert there is particularly hard to cross, and the enforcement that began with Operation Gatekeeper pushes more and more people onto

the reservation. Dahn Autumn people to travel between the United States and Mexico fairly easily a roads without checkpoints, to visit family, go to school, visit a doctor, or perform their traditional ceremonial practices. But after nine to eleven, the United States and its border patrol began a more visible

and violent occupation of the reservation. It started with a vehicle barrier in two thousand and seven, and it continued with CBP's quote unquote virtual wall of surveillance technology, cameras and drones. The Israeli company Elbit Systems has built fixed surveillance towers which they pioneered in the West Bank on

tribal land with the permission of tribal council. Meanwhile, other members of the nation strongly oppose the militarization of their homeland in the name of security of whatever homeland the Department of Homeland Security is securing. I'll quote hear from Todd Miller, whose excellent work on the border has required reading for anyone interested in the subject. Amy Juan and Nellie Joe David, members of the Horn Autumn, Hermagicum Writs Network.

Tohrn joined a delegation to the West Bank in October twenty seventeen, convened by the Palestinian Organization stopped the war. It was a relief, one says, to talk with people who understand our fears, who are dealing with militarization and technology. In twenty seventeen, the Horn Autumn vice chairman Verlin Jose said that a war will be built quote over my dead body, and the tribe released a video saying there

is no Autumn word for war. The sixty two miles of the border on their reservation would remain without one, they said. By twenty twenty, the Trump administration had fought through a wall on much of the border using what is known as the Roosevelt Reservation. This is a sixty foot wide strip of land that the federal government owns

along the border in California, Arizona, and New Mexico. Although much of the Autumn Nation remains war free and some has what's called a vehicle barrier or a Normandy barrier, approximately one third of the Roosevelt Reservation is on tribal land.

Since two thousand and five, realized the Act Environmental Survey and laws have been waived for border security, and this gave the Tramp administration a way to justify the destruction of Artum and Kumi burial grounds, swad or cacti that the Autumn Seas relatives, and other sacred sites along the border. Despite efforts by tribal members and allies to stop the construction, members of the Tahana Autumn Nation have been pepper sprayed beaten,

tailed and shot by Border patrol. In two thousand and two, a Border patrol agent ran over and killed an Artam teenager. Last week, the same night I was waiting down by the border for the end of Title forty two, border patrol agent shot and killed Raymond Mattia, an ardum man who had called and asked him for help. He was shot thirty eight times just two feet from his front door,

recording to his family. While mister Mattia's death is still being investigated, the Border Patrol has a long tradition of literally getting away with murder. This is because they investigate themselves using so called critical incident teams. I talked to Jen about what those teams do, and so.

evidence at the scene. They were present in the hospital when Anastasio was being treated, They were present at the autopsy. They fudge reports, they deleted reports, They coached their own agents on what kind of testimony they were to give. They were present at every one of the depositions. They made sure that they were the victims in this case.

And when I say that, what I mean is that Border Patrol agents SIT team agents make sure that Border Patrol agents are looked at as the victims in any sort of an incident, meaning that they are allowed then to use lethal force if a Border Patrol agent has rocks thrown at them or in the case of Anastasio, they alleged that Anastasio was violent and that he was kicking and punching, and he needed to be subdued. If we take a look at the videotape, that's not actually

what happened. He's handcuffed, he's prone on the ground, his face is down, agents are on top of him. But if you read the reports in this case that were prepared by SIT, Anastasio was a violent man and needed to be subdued.

likely the Border Patrol sit teams. So if the Border Patrol agents, a lot of people don't understand it's like a cult, you know, they always say you bleed green, you know, and you don't go back from green, and probably one of the few that ever left, you know, and tells the truth about it.

Clan Border Watch. Duke claimed there were hundreds of clansmen on the border, but local newspapers The Desert Sun reported that there were in reality at least ten are quote directly from the Desert Suns reporting at a time here, Duke said clansmen would refrain from direct contact with illegal aliens if any have found. He said, klansmen would not talk to them or contact them, but if any illegal crossings are scene, they're going to use CBE radios to

relay the information to Border Patrol, Duke said. Duke of Metairie, Louisiana, claimed the clan has the support of the American people and helping the Border patrol stem the influx of illegal aliens into this country. He claimed. The illegal aliens take jobs away from US citizens. We feel this rising tide washing over our border is going to affect our culture, he told reporters at the time, in a statement that

wouldn't sound out of place on Fox News today. In response, more than one thousand, five hundred brown Berries threatened to rally against Duke. A protest fire out numbering his patrols, popped up along the border. In the late nineteen seventies and early nineteen eighties, Texas Knights of the KKK leader Louis Beam, a Vietnam war veteran who had helped to organize and promote Duke's border stunt, established paramilitary camps around Texas and trained children as young as eight in the

deadly guerrilla warfare tactics he learned overseas. He rallied white fishermen against Vietnamese migrants and burned their boats. In twenty nineteen, a Border patrol agent from Logales named Matthew Bowen was accused of knocking down a Guatemala man with his vehicle then lying to a quart about the incident. The prosecutors in the case showed the jury text Bowen sent, including one which called migrants quote disgusting, sub human shit unworthy

of being kindling for a fire. In several text messages, Bowen references quote tonks. This is a derogatory term for border crossing migrants. The urging is determined a little bit unclear, but it seems to be derived from the sound of a flashlight hitting the back of someone's head. In argument, again submitting the texts, defense lawyer Sean Chapman wrote that he would argue certain terms are quote commonplace throughout the

Border Patrols twos on sector. This is part of the agency's culture and therefore it says nothing about mister Bowen's mindset genses. This kind of language and attitude was not uncommon in her time in border patrol from the mid nineties to the early two thousands, but things have got worse.

didn't see much, not that I really wanted to. Interaction with these militias, probably far more often than we have documented evidence for, can be fatal, just like interaction with customs and border protection. Here's just one example culled from

David Newitt's excellent book, and Hell followed with her. On May thirtieth, two thousand and nine, Sean of Ford, Jason Eugene Bush, and Albert Gacxiola, all members of Ford's vigilante group Minuteman American Defense, forced their way into Raoul Flores Junior's home in Aravika, Arizona, by pretending to be border patrol agents. The group planned to steal and sell drugs they thought Flora's had in his house. The FBI knew about this, but did nothing to stop them, Finding no

drugs in the house. Civitilante's murder Flores and his nine year old daughter, Bricennia, Flora's wife and Brisenia's mother, Gina Marie Gonzalez, was shot three times. She played dead, but when attack has returned, she exchanged fire with them, using her husband's handgun. In doing so, she hit Bush. Bush had previously been charged with a September nineteen ninety seven execution of an Aryan Nation associate for the supposed crime of being a race traitor. Both Ford and Bush are

currently on death row in Arizona. The KKAK was not the only group recruiting children for border patrolling. Since the mid nineteen eighties, the Border Patrol's Explorer program has recruited young men and women of high school age. The program is charted through Learning for Life, which is a subsidiary

of the Scouts of America. For kids, often the children of immigrants living in border towns where industry has long since gone in a decent wage is hard to come by, the program offers the chance at a starting salary of sixty two thousand dollars twice a median income. In stide some of these towns, young Explorers will learn tracking, survival, shooting, and how to detain and process on documented migrants, people who in some cases are walking in the footsteps of

their own parents. According to an article by Moraling Music in the Nation, young Explorers have to earn the writer their uniform by participating their sixty hour Basic Explorer Academy, of which they learned CPR drills and the methods of conducting vehicle stops. It also offers courses in radio communications, public speaking, report writing, and ethics and integrity, and introduces the youth to criminal juvenile immigration of Fourth Amendment law.

While I was writing it, so checked out the San Diego sector page, which seems to show young people running, shooting, and one who looks like he's just been mased in the face. The next photo on the Facebook page dedicated to this Border Patrol sector shows a man in handcuffs. Above this is a video of someone dropping a chart

from the top of the border fence. Without figures from the CVP, it's hard to tell of participation in the Explorers has dropped as public awareness of family separation assault now the behavior doesn't exactly fit with the Border Patrol's motto on a first has spread. I asked Jen for her take on the Explorer program.

indoctrinating into. But it's even gone so far now as to they do the dog and pony shows at the elementary school, so they're getting them when they're like six seven years old, and they go there with you a little Border Patrol bulletproof vest and put them on them and take pictures and put it on social media, and they have them sit in their trucks and turn the signs on and all this other stuff.

own money buying supplies. Jen said that this kind of behavior can be pretty common with young agents.

start my life. I oftould say, like, especially with female agents, they cause it ers five percent, because there's never been more than five percent women in the Border Patrol rates. And they say, oh, it's because it's very hard. It's not because it's very hard. I mean, it is very hard to get through, but it's also it's because they're sexually assaulting us all the time in the academy and

halassing us. So I go back and forth in my mind, and I would imagine this young woman, you know, she has days where she arrests some pretty decent criminals every now and then once in a blue moon, but the majority of them, if she's paying attention and not completely self absorbed, she'll realize that they're not criminals, and their families just simply seeking asylum, so she at some point has to decide in her mind, is this what I got into?

the name struck many as problematic. In the two thousand and two article in The New York Times, Elizabeth Becker wrote that the name had worrying similarities to the way the Nazis talked about their fatherland, and it didn't really fit with the way Americans spoke. Nobody in two thousand

and one was talking about the homeland. But two decades and billions of dollars later, it's hard to find much in the way of criticism of the agency in DC, despite the fact that the twenty twenty two budgets of CBP and ICE was sixteen and eight billion, respectively, and every year since two thousand and one, DHS has obtained more guns, more drones, and more surveillance technology that is inevitably used to spy on citizens as well as non citizens.

In nineteen ninety five, there are about four thousand CBP agents. By twenty twenty there were twenty thousand, with seventeen thousand stations on the southern border. This is a slight drop from a peak of just over twenty one thousand under Obama, who is often called the deporter in Chief, is fondness for expelling people from the United States for crimes like having a PieP or financial misconduct, the so called aggravated felonies and crimes of moral turpitude that only exist for

non citizens. These agents today have the ability to operate in what the ACLU calls a constitution free zone and can conduct suspicion free searches of electronic devices, use cell site simulators, and sweep up data about thousands of people never accused of any crime. One of the more notable examples of this happened only a few yards from where

I was recording last week. In Santa Cudro. It's a story worth recounting in detail because it brings together the themes we've spoken about so far, demonization of migrants, government overreach, and a frank disregard for international and national law. In late twenty eighteen, I was enjoying a break from work in a caravan near in Sonata. If you think back to that time, right before the midterms, you might remember some of the rhetoric that's circulated around a large group

of migrants making their way to the southern border. I'll play some of the clips from Fox that MPR cut together in their coverage of the issue.

members and criminals and Middle Easterners are among them. Over on Fox, guests have similarly, without supporting facts, suggested people from Isis and the Taliban be among those migrants. Even so, the network's chief news anchor, Shepherd Smith, tried to put on the brakes yesterday.

was obsessed with the caravan. The victims of the largest anti Semitic mass murder in US history included a beloved county doctor, a great grandmother, and a couple who'd gotten married at the same synagogue more than sixty years earlier. The shooter's last post on hate speech social media site gab, posted just minutes before the synagogue massacre began, spells it out with a reference to the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, the Jewish nonprofit that resettles refugees in the United States.

HIAS liked to bring invaders to kill our people. I can't sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics, I'm going in. The shooter was obsessed with the idea that a caravan of migrants with not a group of people trying to save their own lives, but a coordinated and somehow Jewish led invasion and attempts to demographically restructure the United States. If you're ending where he got that idea from, He's America's favorite job seeker. Tucker Carlson on the caravan.

a foreign nation. That's what you do in triumph when you invade a country.

Once we gave those out, I talked to a few people about what they needed. We coordinated with mutual a groups in Tijuana and offered to support her for we could.

In the next few weeks, my friends and I spent tens of thousands of dollars at a Tijuana costco, received thousands of dollars in donations from people we hadn't seen in years, and in one memorable instance, rigged up and projected as someone had tactically obtained from an office to a DVD player which we'd installed in the roof of a dilapidated nightclub full of little children and their mothers so they could watch Beverly Hills, Chihuahua and forget about

the fact that the country they were traveling to was

portraying these little infants as invaders. I have a lot of very complicated memories of those few weeks, little girls braiding my hair, little boys and girls trying to comprehend exactly how I could be this bad at football, and people from San Diego churches, tijuan anarchist kitchens, and mutual a groups around the region coming together to look after a group of people who'd been so heavily demonized by folks who had never met them or even been here.

His Trump defending calling the CA caravan an invasion and simultaneously explaining why migrants low wage labor it's desirable for people like him.

border with the US. Thank you. And why why did you why did you characterize it as such?

of that caravan was only just starting. In the months have followed journalists who'd covered the caravan, as well as those who offered assistant to caravan members, so they felt they'd become targets of intense inspections of scrutiny by border officials. I got pulled into secondarily once during this time, and that was entering Mexaco. The worst I got was a chance to inspect my nineteen eighty pickup trucks oil pen.

But for others, things weren't so easy. Homeland Security Investigation special agent turned whistleblower Wesley Peternak helped NBC to document that, under the umbrella of what was called Operation Secure Line, the Department of Homeland Security created a database of activists, journalists, and social media influences tied to the migrant cart When they crossed the border. Individuals in that database were often subjected to hours long screenings and in some cases had

flagspaced on their passports. A PowerPoint slideshow which Peternac leaked to NBC seven lists some of the people, some of them have been guests on this show. They include ten journalists, seven of whom are US citizens. A US attorney forty eight people from the US and other countries who are

labeled as organizers, instigators, or having unknown roles. The target lists also includes organizers from groups like Border Angels and Pueblos in Froontella's I asked journalist brook Bin Cowsey to describe her experience of increased border scrutiny in twenty eighteen.

getting pulled into secondary inspection more and more. So they would wave my car over and then take me into this secondary place where it's sort of like this back it's like a Quonsett pet sort of, and in it like all these cars drive in and out, and they'll they'll go through your things, they'll get in your face, you know, they'll do all kinds of stuff. And I don't there have to be cameras in there somewhere, but

I've never seen any. So I just kept getting pulled into secondary more and more, as though I was this suspicious person, as though I was suspected of something, and every time I asked, they'd be like, I don't know, it's just random, ma'am, and ma'am, it's just random. So actually this started about twenty fourteen for me, but it

started to escalate in twenty eighteen. Twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen started to escalate, and I was like, a fucking Trump administration, of course going to escalate right on.

crisis into a visual form. Those dots begin in South America's people die traveling north, but they're sparse and isolated. Where that changes is the places I've been driving all week, Eastern California, southern Arizona. Places I know from years of hiking, climbing,

and cycling. Places when one mistake can be fatal. I know from my friends who spend time resupplying water caches and searching for missing people, that you don't have to make any mistakes to die in the desert, especially if you're young or old, or sick or afraid to ask for help. These are the places we force people to travel through on foot to come here and create a better future for themselves. Dehydration, exposure, and drowning or rank

highly as caused a death along the border. Last year saw a record for border death, and with Biden attempting to take a hard line going into twenty twenty four, and climate change and instability continuing to drive migrants north to the place that causes so much of that climate change and instability, there's no reason to believe things will get better. I want to point to one tragic loss, one of thousands, that happened not far from where I live.

In February of twenty twenty, Juana Margarita and Paula Santosarthe were traveling by foot from Wahaka to their future in the United States along a trail sometimes known as the Shrine Trail. Their family told media back home that they were searching for us. When you are Americano, the American dream. Along their route is a small religious shrine which marks the last point from which you can see in Mexico. It's well inside the US, along a dry creek bed

in the Laguna Mountains. It can be hot in the summer and cold in the winter. Last November I camped out there, and even with thousands of dollars in gear, I was dangerously close to cold injury. I've also rescued hikers with dehydration symptoms near here. The desert and the weather might be part of the story, but the desert doesn't kill people on its own. It's the border that forces people deep into the desert that kills them. The desert is just a tool for a system that uses

death of a torrent. When the girls cross the border camp on the ninth of February, it was raining. As they climbed the Lagoona mountains, it started to snow. They huddled under a bolder for warmth, and the two men smuggling them across struck out to get Star reception and call nine to one one. By the time boor Star Border Patrol Search Trauma and Rescue team arrived, two of the girls had died as they tried to save Juana.

Their request for air support was declined, and she died with one of the agents jack kits wrapped around her and another agent's beanie on her head. For some reason, the girl's remains were not recovered right away, and they were not rewarmed, and so they last their last chance at the American dream and not life. Today, their final resting place is marked by three crosses and a cash of supplies placed there by volunteers at the time I'm recording this, we don't know where all the folks we

met at the border are now. Then we might never know. Not being able to follow stories is a sad part of this reporting. Sometimes you know its people all have my phone number, but they might not. Only more have their phones or the scrap of paper are wrote it on. Often these things can be taken for them in custody.

What we do know is that on May eighteenth, exactly one week after Title forty two ended, Immigration and Customs Enforcement also known as ICE, tweeted a video of Customs Enforcement and Removal Operations agents walking down the corridor of a flight full of mass people. The caption read ICE conducted multiple removal flights, including Ecuador, Guatemala, and Honduras as part of dozens flights conducted each week. On the wall of my office, they write this. There are several propaganda

posters from the Spanish Second Republic. One is as simple as it is heartbreaking. The poster depicts a squadron of fascist bombers and the dead body of a child. The slogan underneath reads, if you tolerate this, then your children will be next. The poster was, of course correct. It was the inspiration for songs for the Clash and the Man Three Preachers, which are what, in turn made me

want to learn about the Spanish Civil War. The slogan, coined in nineteen thirty seven, feels as relevant today as it does then. It was one that folks on the border might as well have been screaming by twenty eighteen, but one that went ignored, just as it did in nineteen thirty seven. In twenty twenty, folks began to realize what it meant when border patrol drones circled the skies around Minneapolis and cell phone signal interceptors tracked citizens all

over the US. When they came together to demand that the police stop murdering people. It became more real in twenty twenty three, when under DeSantis, Florida began the process of legalizing state kidnapping of trans and gender nonperforming kids

from their loving families. But that all began when the state ripped Indigenous children for their families in nineteenth and twentieth centuries, who tried to destroy their culture by punishing them for wearing their clothes, speaking their languages, or using

their names. Wasn't a big leap from there to Trump's family separation policy, which detained kids on their own, away from their families as a means of punishing the deterring migrants, and it's reached its obvious endpoint in Florida because despite all the people I think about kids in courages in twenty twenty, it's almost universal bipartisan agreement on treating people

of our southern border like humans without rights. And because for two decades we've allowed the border surveillance industrial complex to grow to an unprecedented and uncontrollable scale. But what you us all changing things now will be very difficult. DHS aren't numbers many nations armies, and it's considerably better equipped. But unless people show up and take action, things are going to get considerably worse, regardless of who you vote for or what they say in order to get you

to vote for them. As Katie said, little things can make a difference, and if you listen this far, I hope you'll take the time to try and do those little things. Before we go, I want to update you on what's happened in the week we've been publishing this. Although there are no longer people held out in the open in ho Goomba and sant Asedra, there are still many people trying to present themselves at the sant Asedra border to claim asylum. Today I was told they are

about one hundred of them. They're waiting there, often for days. Most of them are getting turned away. They're all frustrated with CVP one which continues to be buggy, offer no appointments and struggle to photograph black faces. I also wanted to mention some of the organizations you can find and

donate to if you'd like to support their efforts. They are the Asian Solidarity Collective, Alo Trolao, the American Friends Service Committee, Border Kindness border Lands Relief Collective, the Haitian Bridge Alliance, the Partnership for the Advancement of New Americans and PREVENKASA pr e v E NCASA. I'd also like to thank Joe Oriana his Twitter is at Joe or Photo for his reporting which very much contributed to this series.