Addressing the “Border Crisis” Narrative with Al Otro Lado

which is based in Tijuana, Mexico. Great, okay, So I think perhaps to start off with, you could clue people in on a little bit of what you guys do, because you do some incredible work and it's very very valuable to boarder communities, and I think a lot of people, if they don't live in along the boarder, might not be familiar with it. At LAVO, we provide legal orientation to migrants that are considered during seeking asylum in the US.

We started off as a project that focused locally on migrants in Tijuana, and over the years we have expanded to serve migrants in Mexicali and then remotely in other cities along the US Mexico border, including Grenosa, Matamoro, Squads, piege Uh and in this legal orientation, we're providing information about what are the current policies at the moment that will impact their ability to seek asylum in the US or prevent them from doing so, or how these policies

might be impacting their family composition, so policies that are related to detention or family separation. After we provide legal orientation, we are then identifying asylum seekers that fall into several

vulnerability categories to provide additional accompaniment through this process. Because the policies are shifting and changing and becoming more restrictive over time, it's very confusing and cumbersome to we throw all of the fuzz and figure out what you need to do in order to seek asylum in the US. So that's where we come in and we provide the orientation in multiple languages. The border is a very diverse place.

It's not just Spanish speakers that are coming, but people that Speakation, Creole, French, Farsi, indigenous languages, Russian, Ukrainian, Turkish, um and all of these people need access to information. That's one of the pillars of our program is that migrants have the absolute right to accurate legal information about the process that they will be entering. Among the asylum teachers that we work with, we also identify those that our need of shelter and make referrals and proprilated shelters

for medical care. In some instances we assist with obtaining medications or obtaining a needed surgery if the migrant is not have access to those resources, helping them obtain access to HIV medication or hormone treatment, and of those migrants, we are also connecting them with other supportive services from our partners UM that have shelters, that have programs where they're giving them basic dispenses of food because they are

struggling with food and security. Trying to create as much of a social safety net as possible because UH folks are waiting at the border for longer and longer periods of time. The border used to be a place that people passed through, maybe they were here for a few days before ultimately they were able to present them at a present themselves at a US port of entry um

to a US official and enter the asylum process. However, now we have individuals that have been waiting at the border for years, UM, who may not have work status in Mexico, may not be Spanish speakers, and are really struggling to meet their basic needs. And so we've had to expand our services from not just legal service provider, provider of legal information, but also providing humanitarian aids so that people can be healthy and as well as possible

um while they're waiting. Yeah, and it's it's incredibly valuable, and it's it's amazing how you guys can continue to step up and scale up as federal government has continue to fail people. UM. And I think if people haven't come to the border, they probably won't be aware of, like you say that diversity of people who come to

the US Mexico boarder. Like I remember a couple of years ago, I was working within a Romo translator and with speaking to people who would come from Ethiopia, people come from Eritrea into it's a very of course, people coming from Ukraine. Now it's very diverse space, which is something that kind of gets collapsed pretty often in border reporting. I think like all that diversity gets collapsed into like like just people are lumped together as migrants or people

seeking asylum. And that's a shame because it's what makes part of what makes us so complicated, but also what makes these border places such kind of interesting and special places. And and I like what you said about all the

sort of services that are provided as well. It's incredible to look at how these services are provided by huge broad network of like volunteers, of nonprofit of of NGOs, as well as some government agencies, and how people have stepped up consistently, especially in the last I guess six seven it did such a long time, it's like, and how people have stepped up to help each other along the border. So perhaps if we go back you and

I we're just talking before we started. If we go back to eighteen, which people may or may not remember, was the mid term, in the middle of Donald Trump's presidency, and a large caravan of people, a group of people that particularly larger remarkability, a group of people arrived at the border and became kind of the center of something of like a and they became I think their their arrival was used by both political parties as part of

the sort of midterm messaging. And and I think that was maybe for some people, especially if if they're younger and had been watching their news the sort of first introduction to the asylum process. So can you explain kind of how asylum is supposed to happen, and then maybe we can get into some of the weird and bizarre things that have been happening to it in the past

three or four years. Asylum is supposed to be a system that's managed first by by government authorities UM under Title eight, section twelve five of the United States Code, US immigration officer at a port of entry UM or at any point in between ports of entries such as border patrol, when they are presented with a person that expresses that they have a fear of return to their home country, that they fear of persecution, to refer them

along the track to be processed as an asylum seeker. Now, that can mean that that person is still detained for the entirety of their asylum case and sent to an immigration detention center. That could also mean that that person is given court paperwork to show up an immigration court at a later date to begin the process of explaining

their case to the immigration court and getting a final decision. UM. Over the years beginning at the end of the Obama administration, continuing through the Trump administration, and also continuing even now into the Biden administration, we have seen policies issued by CDP which restrict access to the port of entry for

a silent seekers. Initially, it started out in two thousand sixteen, where the Obama administration came up with a policy called the Metering Policy, which was known as the waitlist, which required at first only Haitian asylum seekers to put their name on a wait list with Mexican immigration authorities and then they would be called in groups um to enter the US. And that was in response to the exodus of immigrants that we saw coming from Haiti and through

Brazil in two thousand and sixteen. The metering list was later expanded to apply to all nationalities, including Mexican migrants that were trying to flee their own country, including those that had legitimate claims for protection being persecuted by members of their own government. Everyone had to still get on

this list. That policy was extended in an ideological framework when the Trump administration came up with a program known as rem in Mexico and just building upon that idea that it is okay to make asylum seekers wait in territory in which they fear persecution because a lot of people here persecution in Mexico UM and under the Remain in Mexico policy also known as the Migrant Protection Protocols m p P. They we always refer to it as

the Migrant Persecution Protocols because it feels it's extremely all WELLI in right, like people like to use a welly and wrong. But that that one that one pret Yeah, this program required asylum seekers that were entered. They were placed into a program called MPP. They were given court date and people were to appear at court in their nearest border city where there was an immigration court at some date in the future. It could be a few weeks, it could be several months, it could be a year.

And in between their court hearings, they would be required to remain in Mexico. They could only go to the court of Entry you on the date of their court they would be transported to court and then transported back to Mexico after their court, leaving Mexico people in Mexico in limbo for years. And then when the pandemic came,

we saw the border closed entirely. Under Title fort you two, the Trump administration build it as necessary to protect the American public from migrants that could be carriers of COVID nineteen. But this is really, you know, no different than other immigration legislation that we've seen throughout history, which tends to paint immigrants as vectors of disease UM, and we need to just keep them out at all costs, and under Title for you too, it's just a wall of policy.

People tried to present themselves at the port of entry and they're turned away. People enter the US UH at different points that are not ports of entry without inspection UM and get caught and they're expelled immediately back to Mexico, or if it's not a country that Mexico will accept an expulsion, they could be detained in US custody and then expelled back to their country of origin without any

opportunity to speak with an asylum officer UM. Right now, we have been dealing with Title for you two in a process where certain number of people are exempted from this blanket denial every day UH and different ports of entry along the border participate. Each port of entry has its own cap numerical cap UM and initially, when this program started in May the names of people that were being submitted as exemptions. The asylum seekers names were submitted

by civil society organizations such as A Lallo LAO. Just this year alone, we've submitted around a seven thousand, five hundred I'm sorry exemption requests UM, and that was from individuals from twenty nine different countries speaking just over thirty

different languages. So now though, the system has recently changed to a smartphone application known as c d P one, which requires migrants to download this application to their smartphone, assuming that they have a smartphone, and then complete this lengthy application UM that requires them to upload a photo UM for facial recognition software and wait for an appointment

date to be made available. And they have to keep entering the fifth multiple times and until an appointment date becomes available, waking up every morning at five thirty for when the new slots are made available at six am. And the problem, among many problems with this application you just said right now, it's only available in Spanish and English, so if you speak any other language, you are not able to access it UM, and we have to give you an example. UM. We have an online survey where

people register or try to seek help from US. We have over since April one, over fifteen thousand unique fifty unique responses. Around half of those are from Haitian creole speakers. Cannot access this app to get an appointment. The other issue is is that the facial recognition software that's integrated

into the cd P one app. You know, there's a lot of studies throughout the years about how this software will lead to false positives or failure to recognize for individuals that have um Afro descendant features or individuals that have more indigenous features, and we have seen this firsthand. So many of our Haitian clients are unable to even complete the profile, and they are taking photos with cameras that have a decent you know, lens capacity, and they

still can't get past the facial recognition software. Yeah, it's just like a layers on layers of sort of you know, sometimes it's just them being like ineffective. Sometimes it just seems cruel. Let's go back a little bit to title forty two, because that word has been thrown around a lot, right, Title thirty two isn't in It's not immigration law, is it. It's it's public health law? Is that right? I guess it's it's public it's a public health policy that's part

of immigration law. Yes, it's public health policy that's being applied in the immigration contact to close the border. Yeah. And then one thing that I think we've seen a lot recently is like one of the worst accounts on Twitter, which is the Border Patrol Union likes to they do occasionally like tweet they around lossuits, which is kind of funny. Um, But they like to throw out these statistics right constantly about encounters at the border. Can you explain how under

Title forty two, each encounter might not be a unique individual? Yeah. Absolutely, those individuals are over accounted because people will make multiple attempts to try to enter the US because they're so desperate. It's a dystopian healthscape on this side of the border, with people being trafficked, kidnapped for extortion, tortured, raped, murdered, sold ah. And so if that were any reasonable person, you would try tan fifteen times whatever it took to

get across to safe. And the Border Patrol Union is disingenuous because it knows this, and instead it pulls out a figure that is much larger than what it represents in actual people and they're disingenuous and how they describe it. Yeah, yeah, I think it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see

through it. And of course when we combine this with the the wall or the fence or whatever you want to call it, people are crossing in more and more dangerous areas, which makes the crossing more risky, right, and results in hiring into people dying or hurting themselves trying to cross, which, as you say, it's it's not a reasonable thing to do when you're faced with these terrible circumstances. Yeah.

There's a beautiful poem called Home by Warsha and Sire, who's a Somali British poet, and one of the lines is you don't put your child in a in a boat unless it's safer than the land. No one would attempt to cross a thirty football or wade the Rio grand A across the Arizona desert in the middle of summer unless what was behind them they were so sure

was going to kill them. And the way that we've structured the wall and raising the height of the wall to make it harder to cross, and to build as much wall along the places where it would be a little bit easier to cross from people making it so the only way to cross is through the most dangerous parts. That's and that's intentional. That is, you know, designed for people to die because the government mistakenly believes that if it kills more people that folks will be deterred. But

that's um, not actually what we see on the ground. No, and like it's not a vacuum, right, people are coming from bad things like making just making the boarder difficult one will do nothing more than kill more people, which is what they've succeeded in doing, sadly, and so and then another thing, I wanted to get it as Title forty two with this this crazy series of court cases around Title forty two, Right, so can you explain, like why titled forty two hasn't been repealed when we've done

away with almost every other protection for people in kind of an ongoing pandemic. Title forty two could be repealed if the government was so not so intent on fighting the repeal of Title forty two. The a c l U has been in port for the last few years around Title for you two. UM in a case called we shaw we Sha be my works, and the judge in that case issued a decision in December ruling that turning away asylum seekers using Title for You two as

a pretext um to turn asylum seekers away was unlawful. However, that decision was stayed. The government requested that the decision be uh temporarily stayed to give it time to make operational plans. The A C. L. You did not oppose that stay, and as a result, during that time, a group of conservative states filed intervening litigation UM to make their arguments about how their interests were harmed by the decision.

So now that cases before the Supreme Court and they will not hear the case until February, and we could be waiting as long as June for a decision. Yeah, many of those lots of those states weren't even along the border, right, there's some of the ones who sued. Yeah, that's still a mystery to all of us along the border. How interior states that sure might be receiving people coming from the border, but um don't have that close nexus.

Is in there are border community and they're being immediately impacted. Yeah yeah, pretty pretty female stuff. And the other issue I want to raise for people is the narrative is that we're in a crisis the borders and a crisis. Uh, there's so many people we can't possibly help them all. We close the border for over two years, so of course there's going to be more people because we've made it impossible for people to access. However, the ports of

entry have contingency plans for mass migration events. This is something that UM was learned during the context of our litigation UM against c VP around access to the board of Entry, and we see that the government is capable of responding rapidly in a manner that is consistent with human dignity, and how it responded to thirty thousand Ukrainians

showing up in Tijuana this spring. In some days, c d P accepted as many as a thousand Ukrainians in a given day, where as both on those days they were accepting zero of other nationality, and they were able to get up to speed so quickly because every port of entry has a contingency plan. We are the United States government. We are arguably one of the most powerful,

well resourced governments on Earth. If you buy the line that this is a crisis and we don't have a contingency plan, then we've got a lot of work to do here. Um, And so it's not it's a it's a manufactured crisis. Uh. We have the resources, we have the personnel. C VP has the largest law enforcement budget of all the law enforcement agencies in the federal government,

and they have hands of thousands of personnel. It's what we lack is the political will and the emotional capital to do what we've already agreed to under US federal law, as well as the Refugee Convention which we signed uh following World War Two, which was designed to prevent further

genocide for their persecution of large groups of people. Um, but we continue to renag on on those obligations to which were to Yeah, yeah, like when we talk about genocide and persecution, Like I personally know people from me and mar who are really struggling with the United States asylum system right now, and yeah, it's really deeply just infuriating to see them continue to pursue this kind of like waving my hands in the air, I don't know

what to do kind of things. Let's talk a little bit about Joe Biden and his policies, because like they've been blackluster or just completely like in some cases. You know, he he's issued executive orders which basically have gone on

fulfilled right regarding asylum. And so they made a statement a few weeks ago now and Biden visited the border, and can you explain what he said in that statement and then sort of what the Biden administration hasn't done to clear up the asylum system that it promised it would do. The Buiding administration made a lot of promises on the campaign trail. UM made an effort to put advocates in places in DHS other key positions to give the appearance that it was serious about reform and treating

immigrants in a way that is dignified and humane. UM. But what we've seen is a continuation of Trump policies which restrict access to the border. For example, UM, the new asylum band that they are proposing through regulation where individuals that have translated through another country UM and did not seek asylum in that country, even if that country was not a safe country for them, UM, that they

would be precluded from applying for asylum. A lot of people are have been enthusiastic about these new parole programs for specific nationalities like Paraguans and a Swillans, um Haitians, Cubans. However, those programs are really just scraps um. They have a thirty thousand person cap um. The Ukrainian parole program had a hundred thousand person cap which has already been surpassed,

surpassed um. Ukrainian sponsors well as of the Ukrainian asylum seekers that were presenting through that pel program, had much less by way of requirements um. And so they've made a separate and not equal program for other nationalities which just happened to be nationalities that aren't white. Yeah. Yeah, it's hard not to see a kind of white people first approach to asylum here. Yeah. I it certainly challenges to your ability not to believe it's our right racist.

So I wonder like going forward, obviously people listening will probably be sort of upset and concerned the continuing failures of our government. You don't think about it? Can you

outline like how people can help? I know there's there's lots of people who will do direct mutual aid right, like people like food not bombs of feeding people in Tijuana, But how can folks maybe who are at the border, and then who aren't near the border how can how can they help well organizations that are at the border, including ourselves, who work with volunteers that are remote, UM, particularly if they have a foreign language skill, because we

can't serve tons of thousands of people each year with just the staff that we have UM, and so we have a really robust remote volunteer network. UM. I would also encourage people, as you pointed out, to look for organizations in their own community that are serving immigrants. It is incredibly humbling to move to another country and realize you don't know how to read the light bill, UM, you don't know how to register your kids for school? Can your kids go to school? Where can I go

to the doctor? What you know? What is an ambulance? What that you know that I might not have to pay for that? All of these things that might be different from them, And a real lack of volunteers to assist people with those daily integration activities that are so

important to figuring out how your new community works. UM. I also encourage people too, when there's an opportunity to have conversations with your elected official, to have those conversations, write emails, go in person if that's an opportunity different officials will have open days for their offices where you might be able to get maybe not face time with that official, but with their point person who is overseeing

that issue. Right now, are elected officials, they don't care about immigration because a lot of their constituents are not making it known to them what it is that they care about, and that they're willing to go to drastic measures such as shutting down their office. Um, if they don't take action on immigration. We're all just thinking about it as Okay, well, this is happening to immigrants, This

is not me. I am a citizen. But all of the worst fascist policies are tried out first on groups and in society that have less political power, UM, on people that have criminal convictions, on the people who have disabilities that make it impossible for them to communicate, um

on immigrants. And so I would really encourage you're, if you're concerned about fascism, if you're concerned about how your rights may be trampled in the future, that focus on immigrants, because they are the testing ground for a lot of fascist government's worst intentions. Yeah, and that we've already seen that, right if people aren't familiar it was Bortech among others who were out there running around Portland chucking people into

unmarked vans. It was DHS drones surveiling people in Minneapolis.

It was indeed DHS surveiling I think people from Malatlado and other organizations in eighteen when lots of US acrossing the boarder very often to help people who were part of what's called the migrant caravan then, and so like this this is happening to us, right There's a thing that crime think have on some of their posters which I always like, which is the border doesn't protect you, it controls you, which I think is it's more true than ever now, Like it's just sort of, yeah, it's

a place where we experiment with these policies and they seem to they seem to get away with them, right Like, it doesn't seem to be something that people care about that they did even to a three years ago under the Trump administration. I wonder they call it, how can people another thing that I think people black it's like a direct connection to people seeking asylum or to the

situation at the border. Right Like every time something happens, I'm sure you've seen this more often than I have, and someone from l A or d C or New York or whatever kind of parachutes into border communities does it. I can see that this is the frustration that you share. Does a story which misses masses of context and then bug us off back to the place where they came from, And so like, where where can people find better connections

to the situation for people seeking asylum? I really like a blog and it's also a podcast every week quarter Chronicles Todd Miller's Border Chronicles. I also would recommend reading all of Todd Miller's books. He is an incredible investigative journalist that does deep dive on how we got to this militarized state of your border. Um. So I would recommend starting with Border Patrol Nation and just going straight through there. Um. I also think Pro Publica also does

really great investigative long dive reporting the intersect. I would look at those places. Yeah, yeah, And I think if you're in a border community, like it's really know that hard to cross and see what's going on for yourself and and do a little something to help you make some of your your money that you set aside. Veloping other people can go a long way. If you choose

to use it that way. And Nicole, how can people support your work directly because there a website or a Twitter account they can follow to find more about a lot. Now we do have our own website. We're also on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn. We regularly post opportunities to volunteer remotely, volunteer in person UM and campaigns that people want to

donate to UM. There's that opportunity as well. Great and there any girls you want to share about that you feel that our listeners should know maybe if they haven't

been following border situation closely. The border situation is part of a larger historical context and briefly I talked about earlier the US as a signatory to the Refugee Convention, which is an outgrowth of the horror that the world collectively felt um when we came to grips with what happened during the Holocaust, and you know, we collectively said

never again, never again. Part of our part in the Holocaust was we rejected the m S. St. Louis from the coast of Florida, and there was over nine Jewish refugees that were on that boat. No other country accepted them Cuba, Canada rejected and ultimately had to go back to Europe. And some of those people ultimately died in

the Holocaust, and and those deaths are are on our conscience. Uh. And any time the asylum seekers are being turned away a lot on the border when they have the legal right to present themselves under existing US law and international law, it's a it's a repetition of the m St. Louis, except it's happening all across the border every single day. Yeah,

that's very well put, and it is. It does matter if it's one person or a hundred people, Like, it's a tragedy every time we can't give some We have a plenty of safe places for people to go, but when I'm deciding not to not to welcome them, and yeah, it's very very sad. Well, thank you so much for giving us some of your afternoon, Nicole Um. Yeah, if people want to find you personally, do you have a personal social media Yeah, you can find me on Twitter.

Um and I'm loosen on Twitter. Okay, great, and at a laddo is it just a laddo on Twitter? Yes? Level sometimes we have a love level dot work. Yeah, so there's a l O t R O l A d O. If people are need to spend out right, thank you wonderful, thank you so much. It could happen here as a production of cool Zone Media. Well more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

You can find sources for It could Happen here, updated monthly at cool zone media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening,