Going on, yelling and gen length by Molly. It's going off, going lengthy and elm see ian for the sky that me im pre and Mama says some push free and glo for them, say must smile them. No, no, i' must do and re be Gannata canna watch me hey man, grateful man, grateful I went not on manna smile. Yeah. Once there is a live God, I'll want give me everything for some five Yeah love Sack Fries, big up to jommy car. I got to eat and come back. I'm seeing yeah, man, that's it one love Oh.
On the eleventh of May this year, Title forty two finally ended. I stually began to write this episode the day before on the tenth of May, but it was that day the DHS announced that Title forty two would be enforced until eight fifty nine pm Pacific or midnight Eastern. They kept Title forty two in place for every single minute they could, and that's day. Five hundred active duty troops arrived in El Paso and one thousand more set off for other border towns to join the two thousand,
five hundred troops already deployed to the border. According to oppress release from an Apartment of Homeland Security.
CBP and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement are further expanding detention capacity, ramping up removal flights, and shifting agents and officers to high priority regions along the southwest border. This week, CBP opened two new holding facilities, and the Department of Health and Human Services is increasing its bed capacity to
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.
On the ground. This assistant and planning didn't exactly meet the task at hand, albeit the specific call out of El PASA so does suggest that they saw their task as not looking bad In the right wing media hits some audio recorded after a couple of hours walking around talking to people at Sanisedro, where Customs and Border Protection had detained around five hundred people in between the two thirty foot fences that make up the border between Salisedro
and Tijuana. I'm just for people familiar with San Diego 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 patrols. So I just spoke to some young Colombian women who had crossed about fifteen miles east of here and then been relocated here and there in between these border walls. They don't have running water. What food and water they have appear to being surplied by volunteers on the Norse 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 breek. There's one portal toilet sort of thing that we can see about five hundred people, so it kind of gives you an idea of the conditions. Obviously those don't live up to the detention conditions that border patrol are supposed to a hole people under. But here we are. I guess border patrol 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. They're 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. 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, which is 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 we're not so very long ago. Nancy Reagan stood and said she hoped that there 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 war. Hamara Usefie, a volunteer from the Partnership for the Advancement of New Americans, described to me what she saw that night.
I see about five hundred beautiful, smiling faces of people who are desperately trying to get to safety, and they're confused. They don't know what's going on. They don't know how long it will take them. You know, they many of them are aware that something is happening today. So many of them are asking does this mean that I'll be
turned back? 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.
The first thing I noticed on arrival was dozens of hands sticking through the wall holding phones and charges. That's because people need to use the CBP one app to interact with border enforcement. But they've been detained by the same border enforcement in between two walls in an open field where there obviously isn't any electricity. They also need their phones to stay in touch with their families, to let them know they survived a difficult and dangerous journey
and that they're now technically inside the USA. Advet 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.
Attencion migrante.
Attention migrants in Mexico City or further north in the country. Why do you need to download CBP one. It's a free and legal way to get an appointment guaranteed at a port of entry. It's a clear way to solicit asylum, and you have the possibility to work while your case is being processed. If you present without an appointment, you can be prohibited from entering the US for five years. You will be subject to expedited deportation unless you 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.
As we heard yesterday, CBP one has been an a mitigated disaster. I'd shown a very clear bias towards certain types of wealthy and white asylum seekers, despite that it seems to have been the only plan in place the end of Title forty two. The hundreds of people detained in between defenses, whomably didn't have appointments and with no
way to charge their phones, they couldn't make them. 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 them 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 Rick Sacrudo over six years of getting free shied 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 the 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 have 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, the volunteers who came to help describe what they saw when participating in Mutilated a couple of days after, but.
It was definitely was.
I don't think it really struck me until, you know, after, after everything, and you know, after I left several hours later. But the kind of I mean, I am right about the situation at the border, but the kind of matter of fackness of there's just several hundred people, including children, just kind of between this fence and they're just stuck there with nothing, and the sort of a matter of fatness of the all was I think, I think the part that struck me the most. And it's been a much.
Challenging the process. In the days before the end of
Title forty two, confusion had rained at the border. A lot of people I talked to mentioned that they thought they had to cross before the end of Title forty two or they would be ejected and not able to apply for five years at a Title eight This misunderstanding might in part be due to some of the misleading rhetoric put out by MAJORCAS and others, which focused on the harsh penalties for crossing between ports of entry an attempt to appear 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. An 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. At 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.
Later that night, Diana Rodriguez the Columbia.
Diana was with two friends, all of them wearing little daisies in their hair and sharing a tarp shelter they'd made by tying a blue tarp against the wall so they could get some shade and privacy. I asked her where the flowers had come from. You hear theo you voice by Scherin.
Oh, the flowers, the flowers. Well, there are these little flowers, flowers that are growing here like in a garden. So when we went and took a walk over there and we found them, we put them on and they're pretty. We call these the little yellow flowers of hope, and they match the color of our bracelets. We picked them on the day we arrived, and we knew that we needed a little bit of encouragement. We got the yellow bracelets. Because we arrived on Tuesday, everyone got the same bracelet.
I asked, Diana, which you'd heard about Title forty two, which is ending a few hours after we talked.
Yes, it's the end of Title forty two. Title forty two is the one that endorses mass deportations. Yes, and well it's a question of you not just getting deported, but being repatriated. In other words, after this they do a full repatriation. But right now you are not registered in the system. But what they do is that they
only return you. They don't register you. But let's say, on the basis of Article eight, is that a few at least we are invading American territory, then we are in effect breaking a law, and what Article eight does is that they deport you and 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.
People at another camp in u Cumba heard the same thing from Colombians, and it seems like there are even news pieces run on domestic television explain that US plan to return many Colombians in the coming months and this might be the last best chance to cross the border without permanent consequences if you got caught in a Cumba volunteered estimated that two thirds of the people corraled 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 people had seen misleading information about immigration lawa on TikTok. Two days had passed since Janna arrived. She came with one of the girls she was now sharing a top 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 hope was a better life for young women like them. I asked them to describe that journey for me.
Yes, eight days, eight days more or less walking from Colombia from El Salvador to Guatemala, the New Mexico. To hear all that time walking and taking the bus. There's a part fifteen or twenty minutes from here where the wall ends, and we crossed there there was a Mexican patrol and when they changed shifts, we ran and here we are on American soil. We arrived on foot and the police brought us here. They opened the gate and dropped us.
Here along the way, she said, they've run into a lot of people. The micand journey north is such a common trick that people living along the way have found a way to make a buck, but also a way to make a difference. It's not uncommon for my gorant to be extorted, robbed, or threatened. It's also not uncommon for them to be fed by strangers, perhaps handing off bags with food in them to passing trains or buses, or perhaps given a place to sleep for the night by someone they might never see again.
There were parts where we were extorted. They took all the money we brought. They robbed us, they stole our passports, they still our documents. So it's always quite dangerous. Let's say that it's dangerous to take this journey. Yes, just as we have met some bad people along the way, we have also met some very good people, people who have given us a hand, people who have helped us, people who have collaborated with us in ways you least expect.
I asked Dianna what she hoped for now she was technically inside the USA.
Yes, let's say the hope is that they will listen to our case, listen to our case, and let us fight the case inside. Yes, because we want to be able to explain the conditions we are in and the reasons that those of us who are here came here, things like extortion, kidnapping, and because our lives are in danger in Colombia. So we wish that they at least listen to our case and let us plead our cause.
Before we started recording, Deanna asked what network I was with. I thought that was an astute question. Networks like Fox show up at the border, although I didn't see any Fox National reporters on my trip. Certainly local news channel kus I was there, but they're reporting on the ground
differed from their xenophobic and outright incorrect online coverage. I asked Diana, what you'd want to say to folks who might have had their perspective influence by the constant demonization of migrants by right wing media.
There are many people who, let's say, are in a mindset of not wanting migrants, and they view them with contempt. Because where xenophobia exists, it's hard for us because we suffer along the way. We would like you to change your way of seeing things and your way of thinking so that you don't look at us with contempt. We have a saying in Columbia that says that he who was born in a golden cradle never suffers or never
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 faces 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.
One of her friends who she was sharing a top with, leaned over to give an example.
Everyone despairs because everyone wants to leave, so everyone sees each other as enemies. So let's say, for example, right now, when they are sending cars to collect people to process, so everyone there thinks, I hope they take me. Then when they don't it gets to a point where, yes, where you despair. I mean it's desperate. Well, everyone, everyone is in the fight together, all in the fight.
I have to get another dusting down from a CBP agent who really liked to RaSE his squad bike passing utulaid tables splayed to a man from Angola. I'll leave his name out, as he preferred for me not to share it. He'd been into Juana for three days. He said he was waiting his chant to plead his case for asylum.
No, it's just me and my sister. We suffered a lot. There were bandits. We came here to be safe. It's no way to live. People broke into our house to violate women, to look for people, and I was injured. Then yeah, why did I leave to come here? Over there, they're not they're not the means to live.
We didn't get it. Your aunts to talk for long, and some of the recording I got wasn't very good. He was waiting in line for food, and to be quite honest, I don't like prodding people to share their trauma, but with so many journalists crowding the border asking them to do just that, it tends to be what people offer. Lots of African migrants can be quite cautious of the media because talking to the media at home could get them in trouble. I spoke to a friend of mine,
himself a migrant from Africa. He said that if migrants don't speak 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 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.
I am the best one. Yeah, it's got a timber raps up.
He's gotta get.
My man up.
There we go and get my man's up. Hey, you know it's leg jennly is. He went on yelling and genn but Molly, it's going off, not going likely and lem see ian for the sky, dunt me I pre mama says something push free and glo for them, say mut smile them no normals do and re being gonna talk. Canna watch me hey man gradeful man, gradeful? I went not and go on manna smile. Yeah, once there is life. God all want give me everything for some fun. Yeah, love suck great fries pick up to Jomy, got to eat,
don't come back. So yeah, man, that's it one. Look. Oh that was beautiful. Yeah, I'm I'm Joseph.
I asked him about some of the stuff we spoke about before, but he didn't want to share it.
Yeah.
That's the old testimony to me and you and God have to go into church. But I'm gonna give you that the next time.
Okay, buddy, Alright, just just experienced a lot of personal harm from conflict back home in Jamaica. I had a difficult journey here with his five year old son.
Yeah, it's rough. It's rough out there, man, you know, it's a rough.
How did you come like you come? I asked him how his young son ha dealt with the journey. It's not a safe or easy one for an adult, let alone for a little child.
It's it's just kind of scary. B he pulled.
Yeah, that's good.
You have my energy inside.
That's good.
Yeah.
Are you how's he finding it here in the camp?
Oh? Yeah, that camp. I don't know why. That guy is just like me. We just don't make anything better us. Yeah, what it's working there because you guys give it a strength and supported in.
Us the not.
Joseph wanted me to know that he wasn't giving up his home. He loves Jamaica, but he also wants a better life for his son.
Is that it's that? Isn't that like I'm giving away my home? My home is a good place. Yeah, yeah, it's a good island, nice place to be.
Of course, this perspective is very common, and it's one that often gets left out of reporting. Coming to the USA is a very hopeful act. It's not abandoning your family or your home. It's trying to make their lives better in your life, Livabool. Joseph was quite guided with his story, and that's fine. It's his to share as much as little as he wants. I came to the USA without having to get persecuted or hurt, and people who don't 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 as international and US law suggests should
be able to. CBP made people sit in lines all day with no indication of when they would be taken to the port of entry for processing. Sometimes I heard people saying if everyone didn't sit down, there'll be nobody processed that day. But the only food, water, and medical attention available to the migrants was ZAK which could be passed through the wall, and they had to get out of their lines to receive this aid. Yeah, I'll let kay, but describe what it looked like.
They had people waiting in lines that like you're to sit in a line in a specific assigned spot. But it wasn't always clear if those how those lines actually worked, because they would kind of take people from lots of places. I think they might have been prioritizing family for children, or people with some kind of medical needs or something like that. But we would that you would never know when they were going to come, and we didn't seem to know also who they were going to choose to take.
We assume we didn't know exactly where we were taking them, but we assume they were taking the Port of Venture in Sannes ce Tour, which is about a mile away. And so what would always happen 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 CD people wasn't going to wait for us to get the phones.
One thing a lot of people we talked to shared was that there was another camp, which we later found house as many as eight hundred single men. It's fairly usual to keep single men apart from family, but keeping them in an inaccessible place without adequate food or water is not usual. The camp was further west, and despite repeated requests from myself and others, including those delivering aid, we were not allowed to access it. One pair of 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
is 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, and never got any response on why people were not allowed to help the single men in the other camp.
Just not helping. What little water?
Nothing else? No food, no water, blankets, clothes, nothing. I'll go try and go up there.
Even with these camps being pretty desperate places, folks look after one another. We spoke a lot with one lady who spoke English. She was there with her own family, but she was also looking after two Tagi children who'd come alone. Their mother spoke a little English, so she relayed news to the children by calling their mother and
having her translated 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 about 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 Nukumber, 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 wall 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 Hucumber and this makes crossing much only 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 u Cumba 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 one thousand people desperately
trying to scratch out a little shade in the desert. Others, all accounts popped up. One was apparently in someone's yard, and the people of this tiny desert town so 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 post online and then drove out to Cumber to see what she could do to help.
At first, I was just super touched by the activation and the carrying, and my son was asleep, comfortable in his car seat, you know, in our Mercedes van. And my husband is still trying to get citizenship after being here since he was two years old. So and we're married and he pays taxes. And when I saw our friends activating, I just told him tomorrow's Mother's Day and I need to come back here, and it's not safe
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 would received their donations and the assistance and went back to their shelters.
A few days after the migrants arrived, I camped out in Hukumba. I was cold in my sleeping bag at night and dizzy in the sun in the day. It's not a place where you'd want to be stuck outside the long but it's a place where fifteen hundred or so people were held for days little more than the shelters. They are built out of creosota and mesquite to protect
their families from the elements. They slept on the dirt or in cardboard boxes left over from the food volunteers 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 Cumber 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 a 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.
I don't know the best way to say this, but what hit me deeper was when this might seem strange, but when I saw women's sanitary napkins or the diapers, or the babies, like it was kind of like a fabric padded crib basinet type thing. That suddenly hit me on a deeper level would make me emotional, because it's like then you start to realize, like, wow, what if
that was me and my child? Or I'm not a mother, but I can only imagine what that must be like for them to be going through these things as a as a woman, being on your period and being out and not having anything you know, going to the bathroom out there, what do you use when you don't have those supplies?
So yeah, it just.
That was when it hit me deeper, and I knew I was doing the right thing by being out there and helping in whatever way I could, because I don't I don't when it comes to the politics side of it, when it comes to like legality and just different aspects of it. In that way, I don't have necessarily an opinion one way or another. I'm not educated enough to feel like I can I can argue one way or another,
or defend one 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 BeO support.
Katie hadn't expected to make migrants at the camp when she first showed up. She knew it was important not to flog the camp with volunteers, and their help was needed packaging and preparing aid drops, which she was happy to do. But in the end, she traveled up to the camp with a friend who spoke Portuguese so they
could help translate and distribute supplies. I asked her what it was like to see the supplies she'd purchased a few hours before end up in the hands of people who desperately needed them.
They don't even have a grocery store in her cumber They have one mini mart with nothing in it, and that was sold out the first day. So these people who we would look at without a lot of resources, passing the abundance of what they actually have. Well, I saw a lot of families. I could tell that there were leaders within the group because they were helping organize
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 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, so and it was like disheartening, and you're like, oh, this is how it works. And in this case, money that I directly spent on resources that were needed was going directly to the people.
In all likelihood, people crossed in a specific spot because someone dropped them there telling them it would be easy. In fact, it was anything but people die crossing around here. In the dirt around Cucumber, I found discarded fly tocineries and documents from Turkey, Nicaragua, Columbia, Mexico. There were also little children's toys, shoes, and hundreds of empty water bottles
which we diligently picked up. But none of the more than one thousand people who had board patrol held in this camp have planned for what they got, which was several days being detained in the desert by CBP with inefficient 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 of 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, I 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 down about immigration law, these folks may not have been intending to evade border patrol, but to come to the USA and to take their
legal right to claim asylum. I spoke to Sam, a volunteer with extensive on the ground experience and umanitarian crises, about what he'd seen at the camp.
Oh my name is Sam Schultz.
He said, many of the people who found themselves in a cumber had likely been told by people smokelers, but this was an easy way into the US. In the end, it was anything but.
They I mean, I know they didn't expect that they were just waltz across the border at a normal check station. But they thought it was going to be they were sold in bill of goods.
So let's put it that way.
Walk.
Yes, that's it. And so I mean, I feel sorry for anybody who's taken advantage of all like that. But most of the people that I met again who are not Colombians, were of the wealthier side of the on their countries. I met some of Becky's, some Kazakis, a bunch of people from India, a couple of Pakistani guys. I mean, they didn't get here cheap.
The wall behind the people in Hookumba cost twenty five million dollars a mile. On average. The border patrol agent drove around in f one to fifty rapped to trucks that started eighty thousand dollars and each make a starting
salary of sixty thousand dollars in their first year. Surveillance towers that dot the desert, including one which provided a tiny scrap of shade to migrants resting under its solar panels, can cost a million dollars apiece, but people in the cumber 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 Cucumber, 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 the Cumber. 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 a 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 t Win 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 Haucumber that ended with them being held by border patrol in the open desert with 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 perc said no. Border patrol distributed one water bottle to each migrant in the morning. When asked where the 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 where the border patrol provided adequate sanitation such as toilets, all of the asylum seekers that we interviewed, meaning one hundred percent, said no. Border patrol 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 where the 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 Customers to 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 CBP 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. Like Kay, but describe the conditions they saw a couple of days after the end of Title forty two.
It's really the product that it's hard to under state. The conditions there were not safe or sanitary. I guess this is sort of related to medical issues, but there was. It's been, you know, to their credit. The suspect has been reported in the media that there was a single portable toilet for anywhere from I guess there's probably twenty
to 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 back room multiple times a day in this single portable like just a construction site toilet. It was right next to the phone charging station on their side of the wall. And my I would just feel sick if I get
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 it's still not you know, a sanitary in a situation to be in since I mean, they don't have a future for space. So that's definitely one of the ways that people are being fed in terms of their health and safety.
Here's Amara who hear more from tomorrow describe being inn of a medical incident.
And the call that I got this morning was of a woman who was rushed out because she had an emergency situation, taken to the hospital. The hospital didn't know what to do with her, so they sent her right back here in the middle of the night. In the middle of the night and they brought her here. She doesn't have any documents. CBP didn't get a chance to process her yet, so she doesn't even have any proof that she actually came to the port of entry and
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.
Seven medications that they gave her, and she speaks daddy.
She's from Avon as Than.
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 wet.
That's why I came out here. I talked to her.
Her.
The other folks who were out here didn't know why she was just sleeping here, and I came out and tried and translated.
And now we have her at a hotel.
Okay.
The witness one of the emergencies described in the Southern Border Communities Coalition lawsuit. When they visited the camp, he's describing it in.
Terms of you know, medical care as well. I guess in one of the parts of the aid operation I was my known was most people. I think there's a probination both of people who were you know, and then street medicine as well as people who were like nurses volunteering their prime and things like that and mostly taking care of just kind of protain first aid for the
most part. There was a situation where someone was having an a perject reaction, a fairly severe one, and I happened to carry in EpiPens, so I simply that to one of one of the street medics, and then they eventually did.
All this person.
The reaction bought severe enough that it was an an hour or so later at that none one was called, I assumed by one of the volunteers, and uh Amber Valance and Border patrol came to open the gate and bring this person into the country. They did eventually treat her, but it was a very it was a long time a from thence that of somethings, which is someone as someone who has anaphylexis reactions food and it's had that happened many times in her life. That is absolutely terrifying.
I cannot imagine how terrifying. It would be to be experiencing a life writing situation when you work for RAPS and and and you know there's no authority that really cares that you're there. And I don't know if she would have been able to get help if there have been volunteers on I said for the wall, especially once with.
Practical training, where volunteers weren't. Things were worse in Texas, and I just a Reyes Alvarez, an eight year old girl born in Panama to Honduran parents, died in CBP custody. Rossell Rees, the girl's father, told NBC News that they gave authorities documents about the girl's medical conditions congenital heart disease and sickle cellonemia while they were in immigration custody. They said that a doctor there examined dan adeath and
that she had contracted the flu. Alvarez her mother said she spoke to both detention 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, Reyes said his daughter was in a lot of pain, a
lot of pain. I begged them to call an ambulance, Alvarez said, adding their authorities told her the girl's condition wasn't serious enough to warrant calling an ambulance. Avarez said her daughter begged authorities as well, telling them she could not breathe from her nose or mouth. Avares 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 compily 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 at his US immigration, the asylum process stands out as both rigorous and complicated. Asylum is a process by which people unable are 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're in a bust to a processing facility where they're 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 Jo 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.
Yeah, how you either.
I'm a freelance journalist.
I'm here reporting.
For my boss, James Stout. He's at iHeartMedia.
I'm wondering if you're letting media in here to see.
The guys said only not okay.
Also the actually guys and not the strict n of this area here Okay.
So if we're going to set up, it has to be on the side of the line.
Because I'm a lot of traffic.
Yeah, and it's very dangerous for your pa.
So like beyond here, a past the college.
Yeah, from here over okay, cool, I'll.
Say how you're working.
Thank you.
One of the folks we'd met was able to stay in touch for our WhatsApp and share the hotel rules with us. They were pretty strict. Migrants are confined to their rooms, they can't have visitors, and they can't even order food delivery from the hotel where they're hosted by Catholic charities. Migrants need to get to their sponsor in the United States if they have one. If they don't have one, they can be sent just about anywhere. I've heard of East African folks having ended up in Alaska,
for example. Once they get to where they're going to be, they check him 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 systems 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. Another table, work is getting harder and harder to find. Even if they do find work on less than minimum 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, were transporting migrants to the hotel and guarding it. Like CBP. The private contractors you guard, transport and incs 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 great 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 yearest 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, intufficiently trained, and
improperly vetted. The company grosses over twenty billion dollars, and it's affiliates are 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 war pieces and contractors who install the wall pieces, General Atomics who sell CBP drones, and the Israelian American companies who sell
the surveillance technology to the government. All these people make money, but the poorest people in the world are the only ones losing money, and sometimes they're lives when they cross our southern border. Tomorrow we'll hear from some of the people who made no money and looked after the migrants, and we'll continue to support them through the asylum process.
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.