Biden's Border Policies

her schedule. And that's that's just the way my life is now. And that's yeah, that's the attention she deserves. None of this is important. It's okay, but it's a bit of a serious one, sadly. And so I want to talk more again about the border, something we've spoken about a little bit and something I kind of want to keep coming back too, because things haven't really got

any better. In fact, they've potentially got worse. So where I want to start is last month, and we're recording this and what the fourth of April, so still for a week ago, I think a firing attention twenty eighth Okay, Yeah, what's that three? Yeah, a week ago, a week ago today. A fire in a detention center in sued Ad Huaras

killed forty one migrants being detained there. Well then two dozen other people were seriously injured, and every single one of the about one hundred people detained in the migrant detention center was hurt in the fire. The reason that every single person was hurt became clear in a video obtained by Texas Public Radio and later confirmed by the government in Mexico. It shows two people dressed as guards

rush into the camera frame. You can see people in the cells just really pulling and kicking and beating on the bars. The guards sort of run up to the doors, but they don't really appear to make any effort to open them or to let the people out of the cells. Instead, they hurry away as clouds of smoke begin to fill the corners of the cells. Gradually, the smoke fills up the whole screen until you can't see anything else and

the men in the cells are left to die. It's horrifying. Yeah, it's one of the worst deaths that's available to a human being, and the fact that people who are already incredibly desperate and have taken huge risks to get there and died like literally yards from the United States border. Is just it's almost kind of unfathomably cruel. But what is in a way crueler is this statement made by

the US Ambassador to Mexico, Ken Salazar. He said the tragedy illustrated the dangerous grifts in traveling north and he cited the loss of life in two recent smuggling incidents in San Antonio in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas. These cases, he said, are a reminder of the risks of irregular migration. But what we're talking about here isn't a consequence of irregular migration, really right, because these people weren't in the hands of criminals or coyotes or cartels.

That they were in the hands of the Mexican government when they died. And for him to blame this on a regular migration, I think it is very indicative of the way the bid administration has approached migration policy, which is to try and always obfuscate and shirk the responsibility for the cruel things that it's doing, for the consequences of its policies and its actions, which I want to get into more. I don't want to linger on this fire too much because it's unfathomably awful, and like I

don't think it. I don't think we need to spend hours and hours like going over something for people to know that there is no situation in which the government should burn fucking forty people alive, Like, um, it's inexcusable.

We know that, like it was, the shelter was set up in twenty nineteen, and I want to get into why this shelter, which seems to have been a pretty terrible conditions to begin with, was set up in twenty nineteen, Why people who claim to the United States to try and have a better life, to say for life, ended up in a shelter in Mexico, And how we've created a system where people keep dying at our southern border. Right,

some of this will be stuff we've covered before. People have listened to the other stuff I've done on the boarder. If people have listened to the Butterfly Sanctuary episodes, they'll be familiar with some of Biden's border policies. But I wanted to address these. Did you see that they lowered the death toll from forty to thirty eight, I guess after hospital visits. Like that's the one part that I've

read that is nice so far. Yeah, that's good. I've seen thirty eight, thirty nine, and forty one, and it wasn't sure what being exactly, So thirty eight it's in. Yes, right now I'm reading thirty eight after it was it was forty and it was lowered to thirty eight. Okay, Well two people were reanimated. Yeah, I mean it's I mean, it's just like they're probably in terrible condition, like they're probably going they're having like life changing if not like all,

like it's just terrible. Yeah, And like access to care for those people. I mean those people may have access to care, right because of what happened was high profile and within the news, but like generally access to care for people like I have seen I've seen a person die because they don't have access to their medicines that are very cheap and very easily available. Like again, like we are talking feet, like I could throw a tennis ball into the United States and where it was stalling.

And that's because this system treats people like numbers, not people. Yeah, migration center is like a like a big jail, you know what I mean, it doesn't even Yeah, it's like an old timey fucking Western jail with people crammed it too, cells with with you know, like legit bars on the walls, so slow. Conditions in Mexican detention are often very poor, and those conditions have been exacerbated by something called Title forty two. People have probably heard about Title forty two

a lot. There's a lot to say about Title forty two, but very briefly, it's a trump or a public health policy that invokes a public health rule to push asylum seekers out the US and into Mexico, regardless of whether or not they might legally qualify for asylum. This shelter was stood up as a consequence of something called the Migrant Protection Protocol. People call it the Migrant persecution protocol because that's more accurate. But I was going to say, like, wow,

doing a very job with that. Yeah, Like people enjoy being wrong about George orwell, but this ship is perfectly orwelly in yea To call a policy which kills little fucking children the Migrant Protectional policy is dark, they call it. It's often called remain in Mexico as well, which is

what it does. It requires people to remain in Mexico while their asylum claim it's process, despite the fact that this might not be a safe country for them, and that this might violate various international laws and conventions on asylum. But the US doesn't subscribe to all of those. As

we're going to find out now. Title forty two has been through some legal ping pong recently, right with Biden's sort of trying to get rid of it, also defending getting caught a bunch of conservative states suing to keep it. So let's expend a little bit of where we're at with Title forty two right now. It's actually set to

expire on May the eleventh. The Biden administration is rolling out plans that will continue to restrict migrant access after May the eleventh because they're concerned about like a large influx of migrants, which I just want to point out was always going to fucking happen, right when you like pushed people just the other side of your fictional line in the sand, and then at some point you're going to have to start because at some point, Mexico is

already the third most popular country in the world for asylum and you can't force this all on them. So since it was first implemented in twenty twenty, the government has used Title forty two to expel migrants from the US Mexico border nearly two point seven million times. That doesn't mean you will see these statistics quoted constantly, credulously, like people who don't understand what the fuck they're talking about.

And it really makes me angry. That doesn't mean two point seven million people, right, Because Title forty two makes people cross more than once. It creates this kind of loop where DHS right normally CBP or bought a patrol, sorry, picks people up and dumps them back in Mexico without

processing them. And those people are now in a place they don't know, they don't have any family that have any hope, they don't have any money, and all they do is kick their heels until they can find a way to cross again, or someone to cross them again. And sometimes people who are facilitating those crossings will offer them unlimited crossings, so they'll pay someone to smuggle them across, right, and that person will say, well, you get unlimited crossings,

Like I didn't even realize. I didn't know it was so like standard. They're like, Okay, this is gonna happen. You're gonna get elimited cross, you know what I mean. Like there's like they're expecting it to be this like perpetual loop. Yeah, I mean they a few years ago, maybe they wouldn't have done. But another way that this is sometimes termed his catch and release, which they're not fucking fish. Um shouldn't do that to fish either. It's

not really nice to fish. But using Yeah, it's extremely fucking dehumanizing, right, and what it does and what I've seen what I'm not it's not like a unique insight of mine is that it forces people to cross in more and more dangerous areas. Like you combine that with a wall and the fact that like it's very well documented that the Trump administration wanted to maximize the amount of miles of wall that built. If you remember in one of the presidential debates, he made a claim about

a certain number of miles of new wall he built. Yeah, he was just speaking out of his ass. I've foyed it like the next day and they were like, I think they provide a number of different numbers or many of which relied heavily on repairing existing board of vents.

But they just went like hammer and tongs, trying to build new sections of wall to include skipping areas where it was harder to build valleys, mountains, that kind of thing, Right, And so what this wall does is it forces people through the areas where it's hardest to cross, and those are the areas where it's easiest to die. And so these people are now forced to make risky and riskier crossings to try and avoid getting caught, or to wait in Mexico where they're at a very high risk of

abduction or sexual assault, extortion or violence. Right, and will come on too, maybe a couple of those stories later, just from people I've talked to. The result of this policy is that border cities in Mexico are flooded with migrants, and often with soldiers sent there to supposedly keep the peace. Last month, the Mexican National Guard and the immigration authorities

raided a hotel full of Venezuelan migrants in Hualis. Local news outlets reported that the migrants, mostly young men, through stones at the officials and they're broad issued and eventually they call off the raid. In another incident, authority to raided the church and dragged off a number of Venezuelan migrants who have been given to sanctuary there. Some were beaten,

and one advocate said they were essentially tortured. This prompted, yeah, it's this is horrific, right, like a lot of so a lot of the young men in the it was all men in the potential center that caught fire. Most of them were from Venezuela place like I've lived in Venezuela. I have a lot of sympathy for those people. And yeah, she actually I found like a breakdown. I guess there is thirteen Hundurians, twelve Salvadorians, twelve Venezuelans, a Colombian and

an Ecuadorian. So I mean, even that's crazy, like there's so many people from all those countries. It's I don't know. Yeah, we'll see a bit later that there are certain pathways, like for Venezuelan people, there are some pathways that don't exist through other people then insufficient and they're they're how do I say this unfair, but sort of they exist. But yeah, those people from from those countries. We see a lot of Haitian people at the border here too.

But yeah, that's a pretty common kind of like border mix up of folks. Unfortunately, often you won't see Haitian folks. That there are sort of segregations even within the migrant community, and often Haitian folks is kind of segregated out, which is which is unfortunately, Like I thought, the horrors one is kind of that the population breakdown, Like wouldn't the Haitian border crossing be like somewhere else. I don't think to say it's dumb at all. I don't know what

they breakdown. I know there are Haitian people in ware Is. I know the at the Cuban folks in Whuaireas too, and they've kind of some of them have stayed in wires and established kind of their own communities and that's had some sort of some negative results for antimigrant feeling in wire Is. From what I've heard, I know there are a lot of Haitian folks in Tijuana. A lot of the Haitian people come via Brazil, where they've spent time like preparing for the Olympics that were there and

building stadio and stuff. So a lot of them tell me they've come up from Brazil and then obviously with like increased violence in Haiti. Now you'll see more Haitian people again. There's a decent Haitian community that also is established in Tijuana and has it's that it's their home now, right, Like I had no idea to be honest, So now

I know, I'll accept being a little bit dumb. So everyone it's not very well reported on, and I think it's honestly people have stopped reporting on it since twenty twenty as well, like since like Orange man Bad started being like the prevailing like mass media message, no one gives a fuck about microus anymore, Like there's a pronounced drop off when I cross of people, and I don't know. There are some very good reporters, of course, you know, we've spoken to some of them in Tijuana and in

San Diego. But yeah, you just there was a lot of parachute reporting on migration in the tramp Era, and some of it very bad, some of it by people who didn't have the language skills to be working there and didn't understand what was respectful and what wasn't and things like that. So I have strong feelings about how the migrant care abound in twenty eighteen was was reported on for instance. Yeah, but yeah, you'll definitely see a ton of Haitian people and that Biden has gone exceptionally hard.

I'll include a link at the bottom of like a piece I wrote for NBC about bidensti Haitian bullshit but like um exceptionally hard, specifically against the Haitian so that you can find a tweet from the Haitiana of the United States Embassy in Haiti where it's just got a picture of Biden. I think it says, don't come. I'm paraphrasing that special account. Yeah, yeah, no, it's wild, Like you don't see this in other countries either, even you

know they've made like they've made it. There was a ton of special exemptions for people from Ukraine, right, it's hard not to see that it's RACI of course, yeah, of course as Ukraine. Yeah yeah, because then it's yeah, great, but also you have to look at the like why

did that happen? Right, And if we can't like express like Russian bombs killed kids in the m two Russian bombs killed kids all over fucking Africa, and if we can't have solidarity with them, or we can with Ukrainian people, and then it's hard for me not to see that as to do with their skin color. Yeah, and then that is bullshit, and so yeah, Title forty two were end in May when the COVID Public Health Emergency Order expires. Biden said earlier on that he would end Title forty two.

He then faced these lawsuits from conservative states, but at the same time that by the ministration fiercely defended Title forty two and litigation brought by the ACLU and other groups challenging the policy, and even the CDC right the CDC Center for these control was like, now the shit

isn't necessary and it's cool, we should stop. The government has argued that public health concerns for letting migrants into the country due to continued threat of COVID nineteen outweigh the possible harms done to migrants who return to cities like or Tijuana. Like, you don't even need a COVID test to fly into this country, now, I don't think, right,

like my family come visit me. So the end of the emergency kind of makes that a moot point, right, Like, you can't have a public health order to protect us fromidities, which you're saying, isn't the problem anymore. But the damage that this has done will take years to rectify, and the backlog that it's created is already being used as an excuse to do more cruel and inhumane things to

people who are just looking for a fair crack at life. Sure, do you know what won't build a wall around itself and force people to rest their life to get here? You tell me, James, what is it? It is these silver coins that have Ronald Reagan on them, who probably outflanks our current immigration Yep, Uncle ron Okay, we're back, Thank you, Ronald Reagan. Or maybe it was a gold advert. I hope it was a gold vause I know that everyone enjoys so so much. Please don't message Sophie about

the fucking gold things. We know, yeah, we know, we know, trust us, we know. Yeah. It's also it's just funny. It's funny to me that someone's buying gold adverts and presumably none of our listeners are buying gold and get I have healthcare now, I mean it must be working somewhere, like you know what, I mean, why how else would they afford to keep advertising? I don't know, Yeah, someone's

doing something. It's like one guy if you are that steadfast listener who buys everything we advertise, Like, thank you so much for our We salute your dedication. So Biden hasn't really come up with a distinctive immigration policy of his own yet. Mostly he's just kind of failed to

undo the damage Trump has. Don't created a two tia system which white Ukrainians get to slip the line well back and brown migrants wait terrible conditions, And for some reason, he's gone as hard as fuck as he can to stop patients coming here, which the reason might be pretty obvious to some of you. Oh and we're still building the wall, but we're calling it a barrier now of course. So yeah, it's totally different, Brandy. Yeah, it doesn't have

a little plate on the top. It's a slightly different shape. You can, like, if you scroll back far enough on my Twitter, you can find comparison pictures of the Biden barrier and the Trump Wall. But it's like literally just like a glow up, like like like a terrible, horrifying glow up. Yes, yeah, the walls having it's a little it's a freedom wall now or something. But if you don't follow the butterfly sanctuary, it's well high value Twitter

account and sometimes stealing automatic rifles. Not stealing, I should say, but National Guard leaving automatic rifles on her property that she takes care of. But yeah, you can listen to our Batterfly Sanctuary episodes for more on like the Biden barrier.

But we're more than halfway through Biden's term now, and we're beginning to see him take aim at something resembling a border policy on his own at the same time, because we're more than halfway through his term, or perhaps just because he never intended to fulfill his campaign policies about being kind to migrants. He's trying to move towards the center, and the center of US politics is like somewhere to the right of Attila the hun these days.

So he's been hit pretty hard by the Republicans on immigration, and it's worth pointing out that he's been hit pretty hard on largely on just shit that's made up or misunderstandings of this, the number of interactions that border patrol has or willful or unwilful, I don't know, but many of the critiques are in pretty bad faith. But nonetheless, like it's been an area where they've criticized him right, And so he's trying to move towards the quote unquote

center on that with these new policies. So he's proposed of his administration has proposed something called a transit bans, a transit ban, people might remember, and the initial kind of proposal of this was made by Stephen Miller. Dude who looks like a lollipop and also like a white nationalist. That's a great His head is too big for his neck. He's shiny. Yeah, yeah, that's not the only thing that's

wrong with him. So this proposal would render migrants ineligible for US asylum if they crossed the southern border illegally after failing to US for humanitarian refuge in another country they travel through, such as Mexico. Right, So unless you somehow come straight to the US, which you can't do because you can't get on a flight to the US without the correct travel documents, then you'd have to travel through another country, right, And they're saying that you should

apply for asylum there. In practice, this would bar most northern Mexican asylum seekers, unless he took advantage of one of the programs that Biden has proposed to allow people in Nicaragua Cuba, Haiti, and Venezuela with a US sponsor under a humanitarian parole program where they apply from their home country and then get to credentials to travel, so

they'd stay in Cuba or whatever. This might not be safe for some people to do in those countries, but they have a means to get here and it's metered I think at thirty thousand a month. Those people from those same countries enduring the same conditions if they came here on their own and then applied to asylum, as is their right under US law once they entered the country, right. And it's worth noting that like most people coming in that want to apply for asylum, so they wanted to

turn up. That might have changed a little with Title forty two, but previously people were seeking to turn themselves in right and say hey, I'm here to apply for asylum. They can now be expelled under this legislation. Right, So if they don't use this or they don't have a US sponsor, which kind of creates you shouldn't have to know someone in America right to come here and avail

yourself of basic human rights. Yeah, it's just it's it's purposely like getting people out of the group that can go in you know what I mean, Like it's excluding people but yeah, like yeah, right, thousands of people and this legislation now allows them for them to be for expedited processing expulsion. Um. If people do want to apply for asylum at the southern border, they need to use an app which is called CBP one. It's just the

craziest thing I've heard in a while. Yeah, it is like I'm on another point, like what what I don't know? It is incredibly powerful, like lib brain to be like, don't worry, We've made the app. We've got you. Like it assumes that people have the apple. It's not available in all the languages, so people speaking like of course not like last time I was at the border, like I had. I worked with a colleague who spoke a Romo.

I speak French. He's Spocasian, Creole, Spanish, Russian, Ukrainian, right like like those of people I interviewed in an in an afternoon. You know, there are dozens of languages, so the app isn't available in those languages. The app is a giant cluster. Fuck, it doesn't work. It crashes all the time. Like you can find like like little kids, little kids who come up from Tijuana to go to school, who can tell you ten things that are wrong about this app. But you can also find people who make

six figure salaries in Washington. You think is great? Right, regardless, it's a fucking app on a fucking device that is just like like, I don't know, I think it's just so lazy. It's lazy and stupid. I don't like it. Yes, it is both of those things. It assumes people have a cell phone, which is yes, very elitist, Yes exactly. Yeah, like it maybe your phone could get stolen being fucking someone could book all these train game like there's a

million ware. It assumes you got fucking broadband connectivity, you know, WiFi, all these things. It's yeah, it's just insane, Like it's amazing how detached one can be from reality and still be the person in charge. Yeah, what if no people

in charge? So migrants cussing the border without documents can be subjected to expected removal of the said and the proposed regulations indicate the migrants from Kuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela, who generally cannot be deported due to strain relations with the governments there would face deportation to Mexico instead, which fucking just again makes us someone else's problem, right. A dozen Senate Democrats called the proposed asylum restrictions unlawful and counterproductive.

They joined thousands of migrant advocates and organizations, including the United Nations Refugee Agency, in imploring the administration to immediately withdraw the regulation. So there's a period of public comment, which is what's happening at the moment. Right, So he's found a policy which no one likes, both from the right and from the people are allowed to live with dignity.

So that's that's hard to do. Well, you're never he's never gonna have fucking imput like I don't know what they're like trumplicants want, but like it's some version of machine guns on top of a wall killing little children. Yeah, and you could just be a decent person, or you could try and implicate fucking psychopathic Fox News people. So Mexico is already the third most popular destination for people seeking asylum in the world after United States in Germany.

In Mexico, asylum seekers have to stay in the state where they apply, and that's resulted in large numbers of people being concentrated in a place like Tampatula on the southern border with Guatemala, and that creates like an infrastructure issue there, right, which it's also worth lick. I'm sure

people are well aware that. Like, I wonder why all these countries have been fucking destabilized, right, I wonder if there if there was a country which helped do that for deca leaving their home, Like why can't they go back home? Like? Yeah, what I mean there? Yeah, if only the clash had written song about it for us to understand better. So, Mexico granted sixty one percent of asylum requests from January through November last year, compared to

forty six percent in the US. For fiscal year twenty twenty two. There is an increase of allow of twenty seven percent under Trump, but it's still suggested more than half the people get sent back. Right, where the fuck do they get sent back to? If they can't reliably

go back to their home country safely. Mexico abides by something called the Cartagena Declaration, which promises a safe haven to anyone's threatened by generalized violence, foreign aggression, internal conflicts, massive violation of human rights or other circumstances which have seriously disturbed public order. The US currently observes a narrow definition that requires a person to have been individually targeted. That's a distinct thing. Right for limited reasons are spelled

out in the UN Refugee Convention. But it appears that the BIOD administration has plans to retrain DHS agents and they're currently telling them, or they seem to be proposing to tell them. I should say, to let migrants enter the US to pursue protection only if they qualify under the International Convention against Torture, which it's an absurdly high yeah, like against torture. Wow, yeah, I thought you were going to say after all that. Yeah, it's it's a ridiculously

high bar. Like there are very real things you could be afraid of. Like I've spoken to people who've have escaped like forced sex work, right, who've had members of their family killed for it's made to their own lives. Maybe the forced sex worker is torture, but maybe some of those things wouldn't meet that bar. But I think any reasonable human being, right, if you met someone in the street and they said, hey, so you know so and so killed my daughter and my father and my uncle.

And they said they're going to kill me. You'd say, like, come into my house, I'll look after you. But there's a country we're saying, fuck you, You're on your own. Yeah, that's that's not how you be a good neighbor. And I saw also on the inside of the administration. Recently has reported that the bid administration is considering reviving the practice of detaining migrant families called crossing the US Mexico

border illegally. So this is, this is the thing that that all the people were very upset about, the normal kids in cages thing, We're fucking doing that again as well, I guess't. They likely won't do like separation of minders, which which is what they did before they took the kids away from their parents and obtained them separately, which is just fucking like I cannot imagine. Um still just yeah, it's just unspeakable trauma. And like just like for both

for everybody involved. I mean, like same with the wall though, like it's just the same thing where the same thing is happening, it's just like marketed differently. It's just like

packaged in a different way. And it's still fucking terrible. Yeah, Like, I just I don't know what you expect these fucking people to do, Like, and I don't know how you how you expect someone like even if you're purely self interested and you're just concerned about like US security and like you know, making America great again or whatever, um, like if you luck little children up, like they're going to fucking hate you and you can't blame them, like,

it's it's inhumane. It's it's what dictators do. It's it's fucking unfathomable. But it also like drives me, like it's just insane to think about people that are actually there in the flesh like that see people like like children crying or something, and like just there's so much terrible things going on and no one does there's not enough. I don't know. I just I can't imagine doing that at least be like, Okay, my job is this and I'm gonna continue. I don't know. I don't like it.

I don't like it. No, I don't like it either, Like this of all the things I've reported on and like I've put it on some dark shit and like being to some dangerous places et cetera. Like, nothing has been harder for me to get over then little kids at the border, Like I have hundreds of stories about it, but I remember one little girl. This shit makes me want to cry. I remember it's one little girl whom she had left her teddy bear behind. She wanted a

teddy bear. And like this, little girls are cleaving in a fucking tent. Right. This is in twenty eighteen, when when like the mid terms were happening. So they were holding a large group of people right next to the border, right they were staying in a baseball stadium, and myself and some friends had gone to help. And this little girl was just like the sweetest little kid. Like she came out, she was holding my hand, and then I asked if she wanted to go on my shoulders. She

wanted to go on my shoulders, you know. And at this point, the way that they were getting people to leave that area and go to another area was by cutting off their access to water. Oh my god, they wanted so like we were able to get some water, and we were able to give them as much water as we could buy on our credit cards. And I asked her what she wanted, and she said she had to leave her teddy bear behind, and it just fucking broke my heart, like without like you know, going into

too much personal trauma. Details like that shit kept me from sleeping for weeks, and I found it so hard to come back it us like twenty eighteen, around November, I guess and like go to like a remember someone's having some Thanksgiving thing and just I just wanted to fucking shout at everyone and be like, what the fuck is wrong with you? Anyway, So I went and bought her.

It's especially from a from a child, you know, like their their experience, in their perspective is just like just I don't know, you see how rad is Yeah, Like I don't know. Children shouldn't be treated about that, forced up like we shouldn't be standing in the parking lot of a fucking Tommy Hill Figure discount store in San Diego launching tear gas at little children in Mexico. It's one of the like the images of like what America

does to people that will stick with me forever. It's yeah, yeah, I'm glad you were down there helping though, Like especially again, according their access off to water is like the most like one of the most inhumane things, but then against all very inhumane Yeah, and that time was difficult for everyone involved. That was also one of the most impressive. This is one of the times when large NGOs weren't allowed to operate because of various concerns and legal things.

So the entirety of the aid effort for those people was done through mutual aid, right through completely ad hoc mechanisms. That were church people, people from various migrant advocacy groups in San Diego, people from my love to Alado, who we've spoken to on the podcast. That's how I met

them for the first time. Number of those people actually were surveiled by border patrol, as we found out two years later, and had warrants on them, etc. But everyone who came came like not because it was a job, because it was the right thing to do, and like there wasn't a day I was down there then there weren't people turning up with trucks full of stuff. This is my friend and I. Someone managed to get us

a projector from their workplace. And know how they got a projector from their workplace, I don't care, and a bunch of DVDs. My friend used to be an electrician and they moved everyone to a nightclub. It was a nightclub and another part of Tijuana at our old nightclub Old and massive thousands of people were in this big kind of open at nightclub situation. It was very strange.

They had the women and the young children in one area that like very clearly had been a pole dance room like anyway, and they had like these bars that were like, you know, like a balcony area. So we went up to the balcony area and then me and a couple of these older kids who with the migrant group were able to get climb across the room, find some wires connected projector and do a little a little

movie theater for the children. And they remember they were watching like Beverly Hills Chihuahua Sweet when I left, And yeah, they were having like just little gestures are so important though, like yeah, I mean, it doesn't fucking fix anything, but if they can have two hours of watching a film about a dog or whatever like not that that yeah exactly. Yeah, yeah they deserve that, and they deserve a lot more than that. But yeah, it was those little nice things

that made it bearable, I guess. But yeah, there was I still have like fairly disturbing recollections of lots of things asking on the border. So let's just do a quote from Joe Biden, because we do do love a bit of Joe Biden. My message is this, if you're trying to leave cool By, nickar Owaga or Haiti have agreed to begin a journey to America, do not do not Just shut up at the border, stay where you

are and apply legally starting today. If you don't apply through the legal process, you will not be eligible for this new parole program. Anyway. Joe By can go fuck himself. But I think that I hope, I hope that obviously lots of little anecdotes of help, but we shouldn't see these people as statistics or numbers, and we should see them as people. So I've got a couple of interviews that I've done and needs to just one as I went back to some notes and found so I was

just going to read them out. So I won't give their names just for their own security. And but sometimes I've used pseudonyms on the publicies. Sometimes I have used their names when they're willing to use their names, like it's it's their choice, right It should always be their choice. If you're a fucking reporter and you're filming children without their consent or their parents concent you camp just a

spectacle for your story. Yeah, exactly. You can jog on and I hope someone throws your camera in a river, so he's one. I have three daughters, age thirteen, ten and six. I've always had my own business selling food, and I paid what we would call extortion money, but with the pandemic, I couldn't pay welly over three or four months. They said that I didn't pay, they would burn down my shop and me and my daughters would be raped and killed. With what little I had left,

I left with my daughters. It's hard to get work here. That's an immigrant. There are some jobs, but not the sort that are for me. I have to try and be an example to my kids. One day I was juggling by the traffic lights and some guys tried to pick me up. They said they knew where I lived and they would hurt me and my daughters, who didn't work for them. They made me work in a bar.

I escaped, but that's how I broke my hand. I didn't want to go to the US, but I need to leave this country now for the same reason I left my own. Then I'll read one more. We came from Mondoras to flee the violence. We have come to this camp in the last few days, but it's scary here. We don't feel safe. There are people coming or taking photos of children of the women. Men off for the women here money to go with them. They tried to get them to sleep with them. There's a woman here

filming us as well. We found actually a big activist for Donald Trump. This was in twenty twenty one. Some people came to snatch a child here. Between the group, we're working to make a security committee to protect the children because there are people who would take the children here. We aren't a caravan. We're just people from all over the world who have come here for a better future. We're asking Biden. We know it's complicated and he has

a lot to sort out, and we have patience. We know he has to make compromises, but please think of us here. We are in danger. Please give us a solution. It's sucking, heartbreaking, Yeah, it is heartbreaking. Shit. I wish there was like some kind of happy ending I can put on this or I don't know there are great things you can do with mutual a groups. There's a group that I'm hoping to interview next week called Borderland's Relief Collective in San Diego, who do kind of a

lot to help people crossing the border. There are groups like Altro Lalo you can donate to. The public. Comment is still available for the Biden to propose new restrictions, so I guess you can come out on that if you think that will help help. I guess this is an area sometimes we're talking to politicians my help, because they make the laws that that affects people's right to

kind of live with basic dignity. But yeah, I don't have a great solution to this, especially like if people aren't in a place where they know people here are struggling to get by. I understand that not everyone can afford to donate, of course. Yeah, but yeah, this is pretty bleak. And just because it's not like being beamed into your living rooms anymore because Orange Man bad doesn't

mean that it's still not impossibly cruel. Yeah, it's I mean, just because another old guy took over, it doesn't mean like the same things were already there. It's not like they just poofed into thin air, like all the terrible things that were already happening. That's what I don't understand is like people just assume. I don't know what they assume. I'm not going to ramble on like that, but it's

heartbreaking and you should donate if you can. Yeah, yeah, donate, Do you stuff, shout at people and do whatever you think we'll make a difference because it's pretty bad. It could Happen here as a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated

monthly at cool zonemedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.