Native Landpod is a production of iHeartRadio in partnership with Reason Choice Media. Welcome Welcome, Welcome, Welcome, Welcome, Welcome Home. Everybody is his Native Lampod. I'm your host, Angela Raie. I am with you all today to talk about some really important pressing issues. I want to just spend a little time talking to folks in my community about our posture around immigration. We are witnessing people being deported in
public spectacles. People are being arrested and put on buses, put on planes, deported to places that they did not once call home. One of the most recent examples is about a man named kilmar Abrago Garcia. And this man was deported, uh. Nobody knew what happened or why he was said to have been a gang member, and the Trump A Minute stration is fighting to prevent him from
being brought back from an Ol Salvador prison. And the kinds of things that they're saying in response to the Supreme Court ruling around kill mar Abrego Garcia's return to the United States is insane. There's a court document that
was filed. This is the defendant's response to plaintiff's motion for additional relief and one of the things that is listed here is that as they say that the court should deny the plainiff's request, the planeff would be kill mar Abrego Garcia for further relief, because the relief is inconsistent with the Supreme Court's instruction requiring this court to respect the President's article to authority to manage foreign policy.
So they are making the claim that you can deport someone on US soil who has not done any of the things that you alley, You wrongfully targeinated him, targeted him, you wrongfully deport him, but he should stay in custody in our Salvador and he should not be returned because it is an affront to the president's foreign policy powers. If there was ever a time to think back to the podcast where we talked about the constitutional crisis that is upon us, the constitutional crisis that we are now
living in, this is now. That is what is happening right now. It's not a court decision away. They got to the Supreme Court and the president and his cronies are testing whether or not they could actually overrule the Supreme Court. They don't have to comply, and this is what happens when you put someone in the White House who was alleged to have ninety one felonies. When you get a crook, you get crooked behavior. So you're curious about why someone with all.
Of these.
We have to say alleged because they're litigious even though they don't follow core orders, but alleged felonies, why they would break the law. Why do you think a fela gonna break the law? Like, we have to buy into the fact that when someone shows us who they are, we've got to believe them. So that's the first thing I want to put on your radar. The second thing I want to put on your radar is Madawi most of Madawi is an organizer, a pro palac Citian organizer
who supported demonstrations last year at Columbia University. According to The New York Times, he was detained on Monday. He was detained while at an immigration meeting to secure his citizenship. This man has been a resident of Vermont for ten years. While he was at his citizenship meaning meeting, he was arrested or detained by ice. Right, this is the kind of new world we're living in. This is most In Madawi Again, his mother's his lawyers, his sister nobody could
find him. After he was detained in Colchester, Vermont, his lawyers requested a tro which is a temporary restraining order to prevent this government, if that's what we're gonna call this thing, this fascist regime, from sending him anywhere. And here's the thing. I want us to examine why this is so problematic. A lot of us in my community believe that an immigration problem is not our collective problem.
That could not be further from the truth, because at some point or another, at some point or another, these folks are gonna come knocking at your door. Let's roll the clip of the immigration attorney. This happened to the.
Really care who they're trying to deport or ask to leave the United States.
When Massachusetts resident Nicole Mitcerroni received this email on Friday telling her to leave the country, she was baffled.
At first. I thought it was for a clients, but I looked really closely and the only name on the email was mine. Said that my parole status had been terminated and I should leave the country within seven days.
But the forty year old is a US citizen.
I think it's most likely a mistake and they're just casting a really wide net, but it's a little concerning that these are going out to US citizens.
Mitcarroni is an immigration attorney working with many clients facing possible deportation issues, so her name and email are on a lot of paperwork and a statement. A senior Department of Homeland Security official told US Customs and Border Protection is issuing notices terminating parole for individuals who do not have lawful status to remain. If a non personal email, such as an American citizen contact, was provided by the alien, notices may have been sent to un tended recipient.
I think it's really scary that this is going on. It says that they're not being very careful. I think it's a scare tactic. I think they want people afraid of immigration.
Yeah, so here's the thing, and Nicole, I want to just acknowledge you and thank you for your courageous work in this time. It's a really dangerous, challenging, overwhelming time to be an immigration law So Nicole, who is based in Boston, received an email that says it is time for you to leave the United States. If you do not depart the United States immediately, you will be subject to potential law enforcement actions that will result in your removal from the United States. Let me tell you all
why this is a problem to me. I was recently on a television program and I said some things that people did not like. Their immediate response to me on social media platforms, particularly on Twitter, was if I hate it here so much, I should leave right. And so, anyone who is working to protect people's First Amendment rights, or their Fourteenth Amendment protections, or their their Second Amendment rights, or their Fifth Amendment rights. Anyone who is opposed to
what this administration is putting forth is being threatened. Normally, those threats come from Twitter trolls. Now the Twitter trolls have taken residents in the Trump administration. That is what we're dealing with. So why I started where I started with the two people who have, for all intents and purposes, been disappeared. That many other folks who we've seen be detained, regardless of their background, Palestinian or Arab American, as someone
who is a Latino. Right, at some point, black folks, white folks, it's going to come knocking at your door. Nicole is an example of that. Sure they can say it was a mistake, but you. We all would be foolish if we don't believe that this scare tactic is by design, and it's something that we've got to be
paying attention to. When you get an email that says you should immediately leave the country, the country where the only country that you've known to call home, not only is that scary and intimidating, I don't think it's by mistake that they would have sent it to an immigration attorney. So now I want to just tell you about why I think we have to tap into our humanity in
this moment. I'm sure there are people at home who are watching, who are saying, you know, I would love to care about what's happening in immigration, but I'm just trying to make ends me. I just am trying to make sure I have enough money to pay my light bill. I'm just trying to make sure I can afford these expensive ass eggs. I'm just trying to make sure I can buy gas from my car. I'm just trying to make sure I can buy clothes for my kids. I'm just trying to make sure I can pay my ties
at my church. Whatever your set of circumstances are, there is something that binds us all together. There's blood that runs through our veins. Right we wake up in the morning, we blink, hopefully, we can move our fingers if we have the activity of our limbs. We can hear, if we have the ability to hear, smell, see taste, if
we have those abilities. But if we are breathing, whether it's buy an assisted device or not, humanity, that is the common thing that binds us all together in this moment where people are feeling attacked on every side, We've got to lead with our humanity. We've got to lead with our humanity because the moment we prefer ourselves over someone else, the moment their struggle, their trial, their issue
doesn't matter to us. We are essentially doing the same thing that I don't know if you all have ever seen someone trip and fall, right, just so, say you're outside and you see someone trip and fall. Imagine the number of people that stop to say, hey, are you okay? Can I help you up? Is there anything you need? Versus the person that just walks by. And I'm thinking about the parable in the Bible of the Good Samaritan, right,
the person that just walks by. And then finally there's that one person that stops to say, are you okay? We have to be in an era, even with fascism in the White House, We've got to be in an arrow where we stop to say, but are you okay? What do you need? How can I help? If you're too busy, if you're too overwhelmed to just say are you okay? We've got some we got to redoce some things because we cannot leave our humanity at the door when people are suffering like this, because how would we
want someone to show up for us? I think my trauma response in this life is often overperforming and doing because I just want somebody to do that for me. I want to make sure that in my darkest moment, in my most challenging time, I'm not by myself, else that I can stand together with other human beings who have the same need or a different one, to pitch in and say are you okay? Or how can I help? So I'm telling you all this, I'm starting to tear
up because I'm thinking about these images. I want to put up the images from the El Salvador in prison so we can look at something that looks very familiar to that in history. We can put that image up there's an image of men being brought into prison, being tied, their hands being tied behind their backs, their legs overlapping with one another, their faces in mass in masks, with their faces buried into the small of the back of their neighbor. And there are rows and rows and rows
of these men whose heads have been shaved. And it reminds me of something very very traumatic in my own ancestry, and that is the image of people who were forced out of their homes, snatched from their loved ones, from the continent, the motherland, Africa. And so when you look at this image of the belly of a slave ship and you think about the image of these men who are shackled together the same way our ancestors were shackled together.
When we say never again, that never again can't just be about black people, That never again has to be about all people. Nobody deserves to be treated like that nobody. And so I would ask us to dig deep, to think about what we need to be able to lean into these moments, to stretch ourselves to be there for
our neighbors. The one who helps us to check out our groceries at the grocery store, the one who sits next to us in our places of worship, the one who teaches in our classrooms for our K through twelve students, or the ones who might be the teacher's assistant at our college was our favorite professor. I want us to think about the elder who's taking care of his aging life. I want us to think about the cancer patient that wouldn't have access to resources if we don't lean into
our humanity. Y'all, we got to do different. We know better. We cannot turn a blind eye to this crisis. I don't care who you voted for. You know this is not right. And for the church leaders who continue to amplify this man and pray for this man and lift him up, I'm noting not saying pray for his mental health and his state of mind, like, please pray for that right. Please pray that God visits him in his sleep and does not let him rest until he does
right by humanity. That should be the prayer. But I just would ask our church leaders to think about the Bible you read and the God you serve, and if this is really it right when you think about for those who are read letter Christians, you got the red letter Bible, the King James version or the New King James version, whatever you have, the red letters, because you need to know for a fact what Jesus said in
the New Testament. I want you to find the places where Jesus ever recommended it behavior like this, or do you think about the prayer, the beatitudes, where the beattitudes where he talks about how we should treat our neighbor, how we should love our neighbor, how we should visit the sick and feed the hungry. Right, that is the God I know. And so this version of God I
don't recognize. If you're telling me that this is Christianity embodied in the federal government, I don't know that Christiananity. That's not the Christianity that I'm a part of. That's the Christianity of overseers and plantation owners and enslavers. But that's not the Christianity that I ascribe to. So with that, I want to just show you what happens when you elect someone who is an aspiring dictator and how they
talk to someone who is an abusive dictator. This is what happened just the other day when Donald Trump met with the Al Salvador's president Naive Bikela, and they met in the Oval office, and I want you to hear what Donald Trump has to say about homegrowns. I'd like to go a step further. I mean, I say I said it to Pam. I don't know what the laws are. We always have to obey the laws. But we also have homegrown.
Criminals that push people into subways, that hit elderly ladies on the back of the head with a baseball bat when they're not looking.
That are absolute monsters.
I'd like to include them in the group of people to get them out of the country.
I'd like to include them in getting them out of the country. There's another clip where Donald Trump is on a hot mic. If we have time to pull it, I think would be good. A hot mic talking to Naive Bikela and he says that he needs to build more prisons. He Trump tells Bukel he needs to build more prisons in El Salvador because they have more people, the home growns, who they want to deport. Now, I
want to tell you all that that troubles me. I don't know if any of you all at home have people who are in your family or loved ones or friends who are incarcerated, but I do. And when I think about who he could be calling the home growns with as broad and umbrella as that might be, as big of a tent as that might be, our people
are in direct time's way. So while you turn a blind eye to this because immigration isn't your problem, or they're taking your jobs, or they're creating all this violent upheaval in your community, where you really can't point to
that as a fact completely. I'm not saying there aren't micro levels of examples of that, but as state governments are impacted because they no longer have those tax pay dollars to rely upon, or the federal government is impacted because they no longer have those dollars to rely upon. As your homes may not be cleaned anymore, your hotel rooms may not be cleaned anymore. There's no one to pick ripe fruit or vegetables, or there's no one to help finish a construction project, or there's no one to
help finish computer code for the latest AI development. I want you to think about this moment. I want you to think about the times where you turned a blind eye because your low was heavy, or because you don't care, or because there's somebody you've got to be mad at. This is the moment where we have to call up on our humanity and do the right thing, even if it's hard. That is what is required of us. So I'm asking you all to lean into your heart space
and to learn about these people. Kill maar Abrego Garcia, who the Trump administration is blatantly defying the Supreme Court order for to leave him in ol Salvador. I want you to think about most Senma Madawi, who was getting his citizen citizenship, actively sitting there right in that moment to get his citizenship. I want you to think about everybody else who White America might be afraid of and call them homegrowns, and decide that that's reason enough to
deport him, to port him or her. For these folks, right, I want you to think about Trayvon Martin who was shot and killed by a vigilante George Zimmerman because he would have been deemed a homegrown or Alton Sterling, or a George Floyd, or a Breonna Taylor, because they would
have been deemed inadequately, inappropriately and wrongfully as homegrowns. These are the people who if they were alive to tell it, or am nott Arbury if they were alive to tell it, because they're relying relying on citizen tips, not fact checking these things, not ensuring that they have the right person before they deport them. If they look like a criminal, if they look like an immigrant, if they have a bad tattoo or some a tattoo they decide is bad,
then these are the people that have to go. Is that what you want to be associated with? Not for me. I want this country to turn a page. It's time to turn the page on history and stop being so proud of and endorsing this country's racist, evil, treacherous past. And by not embracing it, I'm not talking about erasing history books or getting rid of museums or banning books.
I'm talking about not repeating the same mistakes. And so when you look at this picture of these men in an El Salvadoran prison, and when you look at this picture of these people on a slave ship and it doesn't look any different, challenge yourself to say, this cat happened in the United States and it can't happen anywhere else. Challenge yourself to say, even if I don't know this person. I know they don't deserve this challenge us to do and be better. That's what time we're on right now,
we come home now. Native Lampard is a production of iHeartRadio and partnership with Reason Choice Media. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.