October 31, 2024 • 41 mins
In the fourth installment of his series on the Darién Gap, James talks to migrants at Lajas Blancas reception center north of the Darién, who can often be stuck there for months without the money to continue their journeys.
Sources:
https://www.instagram.com/p/DAaDkSwh1Jk/?igsh=bmgyanBteW10czd5
https://www.themanual.com/outdoors/darien-gap-feature/
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2024/apr/18/panama-darien-gap-jose-raul-mulino
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2022/10/27/the-darien-gap-a-deadly-extension-of-the-us-border
https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/supporting_resources/jmhs.pdf
https://www.strausscenter.org/publications/asylum-processing-at-the-u-s-mexico-border-august-2024/
https://www.msf.org/lack-action-sees-sharp-rise-sexual-violence-people-transiting-darien-gap-panama
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Also media.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
It's me James, and before we listen to this episode today,
I just did want to make you aware that I
conducted these interviews in French and Spanish, mostly Spanish, and
then transcribed and translated them. So what you're hearing is
a translated interview that's being edited for brevity and content.
I hope you enjoyed the episode. At some of you
(01:12):
recognize the audio that we opened this show with, and
then if you won't, it's a sample from the fourth
Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle that Manuchow used to open
his shows with. It's a piece of music that's very
emotive for me. Obviously, I'm a white leftist guy in
my thirties who learned Spanish and decided to live in Barcelona.
So I have a story about running into Manuchow once
where he was busking, but that's not what I want
(01:34):
to share today. Because I'm technology challenged, I can't seem
to get my phone to download songs, but I've managed
to download the same Manuchow playlist, and I ripped off
a rewriteable CD when I was in high school and
put it on the various headphones and garment and watch
it that I've had of the last two decades or so.
When I'm away for work, I like to run whenever
I can. Obviously, I wasn't just going to go for
(01:54):
a jog straight into the Darien Gap. But once we
were out of Bajajiqito, it gave me some time to
run and think and process the things that I've seen.
And while I do that, I listen to the same
does not al so MP three files. I was listening
to this song one day after I got back from
LaaS Blancas as I sweated my way up ahead in
the rainforest, hoping to see a sloth. I didn't see
(02:16):
a sloth, but it seemed like an appropriate soundtrack. Manuchow
himself is a child of refugees from Francoist Spain. He
sings in French and Spanish, while off and Galician and Portuguese,
among other languages, often several of them in the same song,
the product of growing up among other migrants of diverse backgrounds.
I like the way he plays with language because it
(02:37):
reminds me of the way I so often speak to
my friends Spanglish, for example, or Frannglais. It's the way
people talk in border regions and refugee camps, languages that
don't have the support of a state or the academy,
but nonetheless convey so much meaning for so many people.
That song in particular reminds me of my first time
reading about Zapatismo in a tiny anarchist cafe in the
(02:58):
West Midlands. I remember struck as a kid from Europe
who would frequently drive to France or Belgium to race
bikes and buy cheap beer. That the USA still maintained
a fortified border with Mexico. People couldn't travel freely, but
money could. It was its realization and the writings in
particular Soucomante Marcos, along with my talks in Spain to
old anarchists, that encouraged me to learn Spanish, which I
(03:21):
pursued by spending months in Spain and Venezuela and learning
thanks to the patient to the people around me. It
was a new anarchism which came from the periphery, not
only a liberal corps, which gave me my first serious politics.
I traveled to Venezuela to understand the revolution there. I
did a PhD to try and understand the revolution in Spain.
It's all very well understanding things, but I think it's
(03:43):
much more important to do things, and I tried to
practice mutual aid as much as I can. Since I
got back from the daddy En, I've loaded up a
heavy backpack and carried water into the desert and spent
hours trying to connect the friends I made in the
jungle with services along the way. In the face of
so much cruelty, it's good to be doing something to
help and carrying the waters away. I can make a
(04:03):
material difference in a terrible situation. But in all my
time reporting, I've really never felt as disempowered and helpless
as I did in Last Blancas. Here at the first
official migrant reception center after Daddi Enne. The Panamanian government
registers migrants NGOs, offer a few services, and the US
funded process of deportation for migrants from Colombia, Cuba, Venezuela
(04:27):
and India begins. Some of those sent to India might
well be Nepalese who often travel on fake Indian passports.
The Siddle cluster of cheap tents, shipping container offices, un shelters,
and barbed wire fences is where the rubber meets a
road for the USA's border and migration policy, and it's
heartbreaking to witness as migrants were called up to the
(04:47):
security office to begin the deportation process. I tried to
narrate the scene into my voice recorder, but I struggled,
in part because their family members asked me questions, hoping
I can help. Yeah, plankings on a say, But in
a larger part this was also difficult because I couldn't help,
(05:09):
and I deeply wanted to. The best I could offer
was an arm around someone's shoulder and the promise to
email anyone who I could think of and ask what
was going on. This guy's just sobbing. Ah. Yeah, that's
really tough. Some people's parents, some people's partners, And I'll
(05:40):
explain exactly what was happening in a moment, but first
I want to explain how I got here. On the
day we left Maragante, we set off at the same
time some migrants who are making their own journey to
last Blankets is carrying only myself and my fixed daddy
and Aguero. So we're moving a lot faster than the
boats full of migrants on the way north. We passed them,
(06:01):
they smiled waves. We rode by many of them had
met me the day before. All of them were ecstatic
to have survived to daddy En and be heading north.
You know, it's a pretty busy stretch of river that's
probably three or four piaguas full of migrants. Hello, there,
kids shanging and men taught them some English words yesterday
(06:22):
and they're shouting them back to me today, which is nice.
I got it family from Panama. They might be Indio
people or something. They little Bill shocked to the whole scene.
(06:43):
Here we are patting another bit agua. Now they're all
waving in me. It's got to be uncomfortable. Pack that
dancy into a bi agua one, two, three, four or five, six, seven,
eighty nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirty forty sixteen people. Yeah,
(07:07):
once they boath arrived, they did embark in Las Blancas.
The next day. I was there to meet them. They're
just walking into LaaS Blancas. It's hectic here. So it's
a new shop here, and outside the shop they've made
like a line of outlets to charge people. It's a
dollar an hour to charge your telephone. As we go in,
(07:28):
there are a row of like kind of sheds which
represent shops and then further in every ngo has its
own little kind of shed. They're all covered in tarps.
They're like canvas and tarp tents. Actually here so see
UNISEF see oh I am. Yeah, they have that sort
(07:48):
of little tent office here. I guess see here as
for example has route information, psychological supports. They space for women,
WUNISEF has. There's some workshops for children. And then in
the hours, I guess, nice little chairs in there, yeah,
(08:11):
seas then you can't take photographs in there, which is good. Yeah,
And then it's just a crowd of people coming out.
And there's also Mormon, little little Mormon situation.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
Yea.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
I guess thee O I am are supported by Church
of Jesus Christ on that today saints. Then the Red
Cross has got a shipping container. I've been hoping last
Black Guests would be a better scene than Bajugito, with
more organized sleeping arrangements and hopefully basic necessities like clean water,
food and Wi Fi provided by their numerous NGOs who
(08:51):
work there. But if anything, it was worse in Bahjigito.
In Bajuquito, migrants were exhausted but also ecstatic to be
at the jungle. Then you they'll be moving forward the
next day, and for a few bucks they can get
anythink they needed in the village. The locals told me
that if kids didn't have the money to eat, they
fed them for free. I didn't see this, but nobody
seem like they're having a very hard time in any
(09:12):
of the days have visited the village, at least not
for financial reasons. Magots can get as far as Baho
Jiguito on a few hundred dollars in their tenasty. They
pay Columbian guides a few hundred bucks to bring them
across the ocean from Necopie and to walk them from
the border, and they parried Embarra Perraguero's twenty five bucks
for a ride up the river. But once they get
to last Blankerts. For a good number of migrants, their
(09:35):
journey grinds to a halt. Many of them told me
they've been stuck in the camp for weeks or even
months because they couldn't get that sixty dollars that they
needed to pay for their travel north. There's no Western
Union in the camp, and the only way to transfer
money is very local interomediay who charges between twenty and
twenty five percent of the sum being transferred as a fee.
In the morning, migrants arrive on their peraguas, just as
(09:57):
we did. I drop down the boat ramp when I
them to help with their bags, and I'll go about their
journey from there. They formed two lines, one for men
and one for women and children. They have their bag
search and their passport checked. They're given a welcome kit
for the Red Cross with some basic necessities toilet paper,
a toothbrush, some soap, stuff like that, or some of
(10:19):
them get a kid. When the kids ran out, it
was long before the line of people did. By the
time the men were finished, they were given little more
than a shrug and good wishes better Red Cross volunteers
and allowed to head off into the camp. Within the camp,
there are a few rows of small casitas that are
allocated to u accompany children and families. They're little more
than four walls in a roof, but they offer a
(10:40):
bit of privacy for most migrants, though there isn't space
and they have to search for a spot of empty
ground in the crowded camp where they can pitch the
same tents they bought a neckockley the Wi FI which
a Red Cross usually provides, wasn't working when I arrived,
so I had to let people hot spot off my
phone all day. At least the promised food really was free,
but the migrant told me it was far from good. Still,
(11:02):
this is supposed to be a temporary camp. People register here,
get any medical attention they need, and then move forward
to Costa Rica. That's the theory anyway. In practice, if
you can't get the sixty bucks, you need to move forward,
or someone stole it for me in the jungle, or
you are forced to walk to the camp because you
didn't have twenty five bucks for the boat and then
someone rubbed you. Then you're stuck.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
We have been here a month. You have people who've
been here a month and a half. I've been twenty
seven days here. Well, I thank god because we have
three meals a day. We have water, but it still
hurts the girls. The food and water always make me
sick with diarrhea. It bothers me. I vomit and the
heat is so desperate. But we have to hold on
(11:50):
because even though we don't have the resources, like we
don't have enough to pay for a ticket, we have
to hold on here a little longer. We don't have
any family members can give us support.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
Either what's keeping the migrants here is money, or rather
a lack of bit. They need sixty bucks to leave.
Buses used to take five free passengers per bus, but
under Panama's new regime, it seems like they don't. Instead,
migrants just gradually a mass in growing number of tents
that populate the grassy areas of Las Blankets. They might
try and do some informal work. I saw one guy
(12:23):
who was cutting hair for a dollar a time, but
I couldn't really get a satisfactory response to what they're
expected to do. If they don't have the money and
can't get someone to send us seventy five dollars, they'd
need to cover their travel costs and the twenty five
percent transfer.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
Feel if you're short ten dollars, they don't put you
on the bus or anything. So things are terrible here.
There should at least be support for migrants who at
least come with few resources. They don't have money or anything.
They can search your bags so they can see that
you're not lying that you don't have money. Because nobody
(12:57):
wants to be stuck here, you have to move forward
because nobody wants to be stuck here in Panama. The
idea is to move forward to get further ahead. We
brought our children to look for a future, not to
be locked up here in Panama, as if we've been
in prisoned.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
The group even tried to leave on foot, hoping to
begin walking north, and so it's for better future and
a way to make money on their way. But they
were caught, they say, and returned to the camera.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
And they beat me hard. I gave myself up because
they had caught her, a grandmother with my other daughter.
I returned myself voluntarily and they beat me up anyway,
and from there we've lost the desire to walk back there.
What can we do rights? They don't care about them.
We are human beings, but we don't have rights here
(13:48):
in Panama.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
They do have the money. Margarets could take a bus
to the Costa Rican border when the busts first arrived.
I tried to describe the scene as migrants rushed to
buy food, not only for this journey, but also so
for their journey through Costa Rica, where food and other
basics are much more expensive. I'm here in Lahablancas when
the first buses have arrived. It's about noon. The first
bus is going to be followed people who had been
(14:11):
waiting in line for hours already, so they're kind of
lining up by the bus.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
And then.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
The next bus is people seem to be kind of
rushing to get to them. They're rushing to my food.
I can just see this guy has like an entire
carrier bag full of pink Way for biscuits and coke bottles,
that that's going to be his food for the next
eleven hours. I guess other guys will see with bags
of bread rolls and stuff, and they're the first people
are getting on the bus. Now, these buses aren't entirely safe.
(14:41):
In twenty twenty three, forty two people died in a
bus crash. This year, seventeen were intured in a crash
in August. Now, migration offices ride in each bus with
the migrants to check on safety protocols and make sure
they don't get off anywhere else in the country just
like everywhere else on their journey. People make money off
the migrants in last blankets. A bus costs sixty dollars
(15:02):
ahead and has fifty five passages three thousand, three hundred
dollars a bus. More than a dozen buses leave every day.
They even half of a thousand or so people who
arrived us a transfer service to get their bus fare.
That's seven five hundred dollars in transfer fees alone. Of course,
not everyone in the community is making thousands of dollars
off the migrants. I interviewed local shopkeeper who still sits
(15:24):
just outside the camp gates, and I asked him to
explain his stock, which included the oddly popular I backed
the blue, thin blue Lion T shirt. So I'd seen
several people across the daddy and gap.
Speaker 4 (15:33):
In Okayamo only fucking money.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
I asked him what was the most common shopping list
for migrants see Cassie.
Speaker 5 (15:51):
Yes, almost all of them coming by sets for ten, fifteen,
twenty dollars. It depends there are many who don't have them.
I have children's sets for five dollars. I have sets
for five dollars that are pants and sweaters, which is
what they're looking for the most. Those that are socks
without underwear, backpacks for fifteen dollars because the backpack is
so worn out and they need it so much that
(16:12):
it carries their belongings. Look it's not really everyone who
can buy. There are certain people who buy, of course,
if everyone bought, but there are very few who can
buy something to leave here. Almost seventy percent leave dirty
because they don't have anywhere to get money, and the
little they can get often comes from selling their phones,
their watch, a cap, or their sneakers to be able
to get money to pay for their fare to keep going.
Speaker 2 (16:35):
I asked him how the migration had impacted the community.
With people making a lot of money, I asked, were
they mad about the trash and the pollution of the river.
These are legitimate concerns, even if they're used in bad
faith against the migrants.
Speaker 5 (16:47):
Now, you're so much effect though nobody is perfect, but
I can tell you one thing. Honestly, the migrants suffer
a lot to be able to carry out this journey.
And there are many times when I've even had to
give them clothes, some because they don't have any. And well,
when a father and family with children comes, what can
I say, Look, I have a family, I.
Speaker 4 (17:04):
Have to do this. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
I asked him what he felt the solution was to
the suffering here, the damage done both to people and planet.
Speaker 5 (17:13):
Okay, I say that oppressing people so that they don't
go through the dairy. And it's not the solution because
if you put it to the point, even if they
don't know an exact percentage, the immigrant gives the economy
of the United States a balance because the people born there.
Not to criticize them, people born there want a stable
job and he doesn't want to feel like he's very,
(17:35):
very low. However, the immigrant is there and he's picking fruit,
going to the fruit trees, going to the vegetable fields,
going to the garbage dumps, going picking up things that
many Americans who live there don't do, of course, and
so they need them to say that they don't go.
They need the support of the immigrant to be able
to have the balance that they have today.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
Like a lot of Panamanians I met, he was broadly
in solidarity with the migrants. I didn't really encounter anti
migrants sentiment at all in my time at Panama. In
the capital city, which locals just called Panama but we
can call Panama City, migrants are not really physically present,
nor are they present in conversation. I found the transition
for the jungle and the refugee camps back to the
(18:18):
bustling city pretty challenging a lot of ways. I find
I'm oddly comfortable amidst the chalos and trauma of a
refugee camp. It's a familiar environment for me, and I
know how to conduct myself. I feel safe with the migrants,
and I tend to find them very open and welcoming
to me. I can talk to anyone and they can
talk to me. I bring toys for children and try
to bring resources for adults, and sometimes I bring my
(18:40):
harmonica if I being really cliche in a weird way.
Refgue camps are a little safe space for me, and
even though I know it's bad, I can console myself
that I'm helping a little or at least giving people
some hope and some information. That made me feel a
bit better. But in the city I found it hard
knowing that people were in a terrible situation and that
nobody hears seem to care. I went for a running
(19:02):
the jungle near the city, trying to get some perspective
and clear my head, but I just ended up screaming
and didn't consider it driver. I was angry at them
for they're hitting me, but I was just angry at
everyone all over the US and even here in Panama City,
for their indifference as so much human suffering. The lack
(20:12):
of concern about migrants in Panama City made what I
saw next at Last Blankets even more surprising. An announcement
of the loudspeakers called several Colombian passport holders to the
migration office. At first, it seemed like they were just
going to a little wooden shed with a couple of
CENTA Front officers in it to return their documents. I
had already noticed that some migrants, and seemingly most of
(20:33):
the African migrants, were being called to a different shed
to do biometric scans. I wondered if this was part
of the same process. But shortly thereafter a truck rolled
up and several of the Colombians were loaded in. Apparently
neither they nor their partners knew what was going on.
They're taking some of the Columbian guys away to report them.
You can hear a little kid crying for his dad, okay, listen,
(21:06):
and taking his brother and his brother's wife, taking some
other lady's husband, some of little kid's dad and making
them sit on the floor. I don't know why, Yeah,
(21:28):
I don't know what they're going to do now. She's
trying to give her husband the money and a SIM
card so you can call her. You're gonna go get
some more food. Other morguts approached me to us if
I knew, which I didn't. The one lady who'd been
(21:49):
there for weeks told me that people who leave this
way never come back and they end up being deported,
So we assume that's what's happening here. Yeah, this really sucks.
Now they're taking the deportation by. There's men crying, I said,
wives are on their women crying, their husbands are on
their kids are crying, their parents are on there, and
(22:10):
they've just done this crossing and now they're going to
send them back. By the time I got back to
the city, I was getting texts from migrants with photos
of them and handcuffs. More and more of them were
being deported, particularly the Colombians. One of them, texting me
after being returned to Columbia on a flight, gave the
following account of detention.
Speaker 6 (22:30):
They treated us.
Speaker 7 (22:31):
Very badly verbally and psychologically. We all had to do
our business in the same cell, and they threw food
on the floor for us to eat as we were
all in handcuffs. They told us that of Venezuelan had
burned down the migrant detention center in San Vincente and
that we would all pay for it, and that the
Colombians didn't need to leave the country because the president
there said it was doing well and there's plenty of work.
(22:53):
None of that is true.
Speaker 2 (22:55):
The American facility in Samba cent they was burned out,
and the people working there it was a Venezuelan migrant
who did that. But all of that excuses any of this.
We weren't able to access that facility as the people
who had detained there can't really consent meaningfully to an interview.
That's a fair enough for paction. But the migrant who
was deported also alleged that they received no hearings or
(23:17):
a chance to appeal their deportation. Instead, they were detained
for eight days, spent their last US dollars, and were
then kicked out of the country. They were not detained
or arrested upon reaching Columbia, which makes it a little
more difficult for me to believe the claim that only
people without standing warrants in Columbia were being deported. These
weren't the only allegations of mistreatment. I heard Margarets came
(23:38):
to me and whispered about the abuse of black migrants
who were forced to walk to Lahas Blancos because they
couldn't afford the boat ride. I should note that it
wasn't the migrants who had been robbed or abuse that
came to me. It was other migrants. It was a
group of guys had given a water filter too. While
they were leaving to walk from Lahas Blancas. I hadn't
been able to join them, but when they got there,
we ran into each other again, and they came up
(24:00):
to meet to share their concerns for the black men
who had walked with them. In one instance, one migrant
told me he was robbed by what he called quote
police dressed as thieves. The deportations, which seemed to be
increasingly commonplace, are being funded by US taxpayer dollars. The
same day that Molino took office in July, Homeland Security
Secretary Alejandro Majorcas, himself the child of migrants, visited Panama.
(24:24):
Panama's a relatively young country and one which the US
occupied part of for much of the last century, but
despite a real struggle for independence, the Panamanian government didn't
seem concerned that the U S Secretary of Homeland Security
was present at the inauguration of a president in a
country that decidedly not the U S homeland. The official
DHS readout of his trip notes that the US has
(24:45):
enjoyed a flourishing strategic relationship with Panama for over one
hundred years, which is certainly one way to sum up
decades of occupation, violence, and profit from the Panama Canal
and one of the more brutal dictatorships in the long
list of authoritarian regimes that the US preferred to minister,
even socialist governments in the Western Hemisphere. They also announced
that the US government would quote help the Panamanian government
(25:06):
to remove foreign nationals who do not have a legal
basis to remain in Panama. Obvious yet to take this
moment to note that under the United Nations Refugee Convention,
refugees do have a legal right to travel through a
country on route to another. His Erica describing that right.
Speaker 6 (25:21):
The Refugee Convention is complex.
Speaker 8 (25:23):
The UES afford a lot of rights to people who
have fled their countries based on persecution. You know you're
supposed to be able to pass through whichever country you want,
go to whichever country you want, not be criminally prosecuted
for crossing the border between ports of entry, and not
be turned back to a country where you face harm.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
The US allocated six million dollars for a six month
pilot program of repatriations. If the program meets the USA's goals,
they might consider expanding it to other countries along the
migrant route. According to reporting in Rutters, as of early October,
they've deported five hundred and thirty people to Colombia. That's
half the people I saw arriving in a single day
in Bajojigito. Because Panama's government and Venezuela's government have ceased
(26:05):
relations after the election, Panama is now struggling to deport
Venezuelan's back to Venezuela, and it's actively searching for a
third country into which to deport them. But even if
the program resulted in one plane loaded day, which it
hasn't yet, that would be roughly ten percent of the
total daily in traffic, and far fewer planes are traveling.
What it will do, like so many other DHS policies,
(26:26):
is play into the hands of smugglers. Already new ocean
routes are being used, which see migrants, many of whom
cannot swim, taking long journeys around Panama on ill equiped boats.
This doesn't help anyone apart from the DHS contractors and
staff equipping and training Panamanian personnel, and the human traffickers
making more and more money from migration. I also a shopkeeper.
(26:47):
His opinion on this.
Speaker 5 (26:53):
Look, I'll tell you I think that instead of giving
them a reward for deportation, they should give them support,
a lot of support, because it is a huge sacrifice
to leave your country where you were born, your children,
your family, leave it to be able to have a future,
and you go with your mentality that your future is
the United States that will give you an opportunity to
get ahead and give well being to your children. Now,
(27:16):
ten percent of those who go are going to destroy
the good name of the migrants, But what people really
want to do is help their family, and this balance
unbalances everything that is being done by good people, because
there are many good people who want to get ahead,
and I think that the United States should support give
support to people who really want to fight and move forward.
(27:37):
As I just told you, they give a lot of
benefit they contribute to the country.
Speaker 2 (28:14):
After leaving Las Blancas, I felt pretty down about the
fact that people were just hitting a wall that they
couldn't overcome. Since then, I've stayed in touch with many
of them. For some a friend or family member was
able to send the money and they made it to
costantly on the bus. From there, they crossed quickly into
Nicaragua and Guatemala before arriving in the Mexican border city
of Tapachula in the state of Chiapas and ironically not
(28:35):
so very far from whether Zapatista's made their revolution thirty
years ago. Once they crossed the southern border of Mexico,
migrants can begin their application for asylum using the CBP
one app that we've talked about so much on the
show before. They can use it in Tabasco and Chiapas,
the southern border states, and then once again when they're
north of Mexico City. To recap very briefly, the app
(28:56):
is terrible and almost every way, including its inability to
recognize blackfaces. It's limited functionality on Android phones, which is
a vast majority of devices used by migrants. It's constant
crashing an eight to nine month wait time for stylum appointments. His'
erico explaining some of those problems.
Speaker 3 (29:11):
You have to have a relatively new smartphone, you have
to have an address, all the people you're traveling with
have to be with you right, and you have to
first get through the initial kind of registration phase.
Speaker 6 (29:26):
Which doesn't always work. The program is very glitchy.
Speaker 3 (29:29):
You have to take a live photo, and you have
to wait essentially, so you know, it's kind of random too.
Speaker 6 (29:35):
Some people will get.
Speaker 3 (29:36):
An appointment within three months, but I would say most
people are waiting nine to twelve At this point. You
don't have any legal status in Mexico while you're waiting,
unless you can apply for some other status in Mexico independently.
Speaker 2 (29:49):
That it is yet very poorly designed. It's also a
de facto a metering system on asignum' erico explaining.
Speaker 3 (29:55):
That we've been litigating against the use of CBP one
for a few years now now. My organization out at
the level and Patient Bridge Alliance, and the reason why
we are fighting against the required use of CBP one
is first because it is an illegal metering system. So
we've already litigated the fact that there is no number
(30:17):
limit on the amount of individuals who can seek asylum
at the US Mexico border, and Customs and Border Protection
legally does not have the right to turn people.
Speaker 6 (30:26):
Away, and CBP one essentially allows them to do that.
Speaker 3 (30:31):
You know, there were physical metering lists at ports of
entry before CBP one was implemented as essentially the only
way to access the US asylum system at ports of entry,
and now it's.
Speaker 6 (30:43):
A digital metering list and it's very limited.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
Recently, the Department of Homeland Security lost a court case
which forced them to release records in there with some
of the app plugs and data regarding CBP one. I'm
still in the phase of coming through that asking my friends,
you know more about technologies than I do, explain exactly
what the limitations with the app are, But it doesn't
really matter. DHS is well aware of the app's flaws,
and it doesn't really seem to see the most flaws
(31:08):
at all. The goal of the app is to make
it harder for people, even those with very legitimate asylum claims,
to obtain asylum in the USA. As we heard yesterday,
the CHNV program is no better. A recently Reddit thread
of applicants who've been waiting nearly two years. What it
didn't mention yesterday is a parallel program for another group
of migrants, which I'll let Erica explain.
Speaker 3 (31:28):
I want to mention the fact that there is a
cap I think it's thirty thousand a month or something
like that for those four countries, But it's almost identical
to the Ukrainian United for a Ukraine program, which doesn't
have a cap right, so there's no limit to how
many Ukrainians can get the same benefit.
Speaker 6 (31:48):
And they are renewing the humanitarian prole.
Speaker 3 (31:51):
For Ukrainians, which I believe was just announced almost within
weeks of them announcing that they're not renewing for the
other four countries.
Speaker 6 (31:58):
So it's really a very stark demonstration of how the
US immigration system, even when it's a relatively mean or
benefit is based on race, is based on which country
you're from.
Speaker 2 (32:13):
What this means is it in practice? The migrants I
spoke to face a long and dangerous way in Mexico
while others skip ahead. I've got nothing against the Ukrainians,
and I don't think many of them do either. I
tried to go to Ukraine and report, but the avisas
ended up taking so long that I missed the flights
that I'd booked. I have, however, a serious problem with
(32:33):
a Biden administration which left people who fought alongside its
own US troops to die in Afghanistan and turned away
migrants small over the world, but then opened its arms
to a country that just happened to have the majority
of its citizens be the same race as the president.
It's cruel and it's wrong, and it's barely ever even
mentioned in national media coverage. But that's not fortunate enough
(32:54):
to be Ukrainian. Here's what waiting in Mexico looks like.
Speaker 3 (32:57):
The incidence of crime director at migrants is horrifyingly high.
We had done an electronic survey a few years ago,
and this was during title forty two, when people were
just being expelled to Mexico, and if I remember correctly,
it was like around twenty five to thirty percent of
people had been either raped.
Speaker 6 (33:20):
Such traffic assaulted, kidnapped. I mean, the list goes on
and on.
Speaker 3 (33:25):
We've seen a lot of people lose their lives just
due to violence, and the kidnapping rates are through the roof.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
Almost everyone you've heard from in this series is now
stuck in Mexico. Some of them have been kidnapped, paid,
ransomed and released. Some of them have been sexually assaulted.
Many of them have been robbed. Some of them have,
after surviving one of the most deadly land migration routes
on Earth, been killed while waiting in Mexico for an
app to stop crashing on their phones. Over a week
(33:52):
since I got home, I've seen them go gradually more
desperate and afraid just to get to Mexico. Many of
them have spent several thousand dollars. Once they're in Capatula,
they faced with the astronomical costs for the trip north
off just several thousand dollars more, and many of them,
their fund exhausted, have slept on the streets. Those didn't
speak Spanish struggle to find refuge. Those who did wanted
(34:15):
to move quickly north, but struggle to find the money here.
The Iranian migrants you heard earlier in the series explaining
what they'd already heard about CBP one.
Speaker 4 (34:22):
It's so tough because the some polices in their way,
they are two to our money that became from Iran.
It was so difficult for us and the resumed a
way so Mexico. Mexico is so difficult for us and
something is CBP one is not working for our for us,
(34:47):
for Iranian people, Yeah, I hope the people who are
in Mexico City for about three months.
Speaker 6 (34:56):
For three months, Yeah, CPP wanted.
Speaker 9 (34:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (34:59):
Because of that, Iranian people go to the wall and yeah, yeah,
it's not our choice.
Speaker 2 (35:07):
We have to do this.
Speaker 4 (35:10):
We don't want them, but it's we have to do this.
Speaker 2 (35:12):
Yeah, it's good to explain that. According to a study
conducted at the University of Texas, wait times are as
high as eight or nine months on average. Now mexicoing
out it's on the thirty first of August that it
will provide security and food for migrants who have an
appointment to travel north from the south of the country
to the place where they have a CBP wall appointment.
Margarets absolutely have been robbed or kidnapped on their way
to their appointment and missed it as a result, but
(35:34):
they're just as honorable in the eight or nine months
that they have to wait for one. Margarets and Tapajula
are at a very high risk for kidnapping and are
often held until their families pay ransoms, but without money
or an appointment, they have little means of leaving the city.
Some choose to travel a little further north and then
hop on a freight train known as Labstia the Beast,
(35:54):
an extraordinarily risky endeavor that several of the people I
spoke to for this series have undertaken. The only place
to ride on these trains is on top of carriages,
exposing migrants to freezing temperatures in the desert night. Even
on the train, they're not safe from kidnapping. Like many migrants,
the Iranian group were well informed about domestic politics in
the US, and they said that when they made their
(36:16):
journey north, they wanted to be sure to avoid the
states where local law enforcement was likely to turn them
over for deportation. In reality, that could be any of
the states. But they're probably right that their life would
be a little easier on the West Coast.
Speaker 4 (36:29):
I heard it's so difficult and about three months, four months,
more than seven months, they will arrest us in the US.
I heard in Mississippi.
Speaker 2 (36:39):
It takes us in the middle of Africa.
Speaker 4 (36:42):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think that the California is a
little little, little yeah, certainly our.
Speaker 9 (36:49):
Money is very excuse me, shits money in the world,
and we have to pay a lot of money for
this way.
Speaker 4 (37:00):
Our one yeah dollar, one dollar is sixty thousand.
Speaker 2 (37:08):
Some of course, which used to cross the border between
ports of entry as they become desperate to see their
families or afraid of remaining in Mexico. Since President Biden's
executive audio earlier this summer, doing this can result expedited
removal proceedings, and effectively, Biden's new ruling denies asylum by
default to anyone crossing the border when daily crossings have
(37:28):
passed twenty five hundred. In fact, this is the continuation
of extremely punitive and cruel politics that have been in
place since he was finally forced to stop using Title
forty two, which, if you're not aware, is a public
health law used by the Trump administration and embraced by
the Biden administration as an asylum law. It has already
resulted in the deportations of people back to places where
they have extremely credible fears of harm and created a
(37:51):
system whereby migrants have no idea how they will be
treated on any given day. Again, it's play into the
hands of anyone seeking to smoke or migrants into the
country undertake well also harming innocent people coming to this
country to US for protection. He's Erica's short history of
Biden's asylent policy since last year.
Speaker 3 (38:08):
So when the Biden administration lifted Title forty two, they
essentially imposed what I call a transitvent.
Speaker 6 (38:16):
So there's a couple of components to it.
Speaker 3 (38:19):
One is, if you do not enter the United States
out of port of entry with a CBP one appointment,
you are presumed ineligible for asylum unless you fall under
a few narrow exceptions which are not consistently applied. So
the exceptions are things like you were having a medical emergency,
you were running for your life, you know you couldn't
(38:40):
access the app for some reason. But in practice those
exceptions are almost never applied at ports. There's been a
few kind of alternative programs run by shelters or local
governments where people with extreme medical vulnerabilities, for example, can
be let in without an appointment, but we don't know
(39:02):
whether the ban applies to them once they enter without
that appointment, right, So it's like I said, inconsistently applied exceptions.
If you enter between a port of entry, you're presumed
and eligible for asylum. Again, unless you meet some narrow exceptions,
and what that means is you can still apply for
other types of protection in the United States. So there's
two principal types of protection. One it's called withholding a removal,
(39:26):
which is like asylum but with a higher standard. And
then the other is Convention against Torture, which you just
have to prove it's more likely than not that your
own government will torture you, which is more extreme than persecution.
But is it necessarily based on a protected ground. So
the torture could be for any reason, but it's a
high hurdle. But the most important thing is those two
(39:50):
types of protection are not path to citizenship and they
do not allow you to petition for your family. So,
for example, if you get asylum in the US and
then you want to ask for your life and children
to join you, there is an avenue for that, and
all of you can eventually become citizens. Withholding a removal
and Convention against Torture, you basically get a work from it.
(40:11):
If conditions in your country change, they can deport you
and you can never leave the United States and you
can never reunify with your family, and you could never
become a citizen.
Speaker 2 (40:20):
This won't deter people. I speak to people every day
who cross to Daddy in We're kidnapped, robbed, and sometimes
raped on their way here. They're going through all of
that because we refuse to give people a dignified or
safe way to come here. They know it's a risk,
and they continue to come because they think it's the
only option. His powers from coming and explaining that it's.
Speaker 4 (40:40):
Deadly, how will lie to you.
Speaker 9 (40:43):
It's fifty fifty alive on date.
Speaker 1 (40:45):
Honestly, weecause, but we had to take the riks because
I think.
Speaker 2 (40:49):
That was only awesome that we had. If you can't
imagine taking those risks, it's likely because you can't imagine
the things these people are leaving behind either. As a
conflict reporter, I've been able to see a small amount
of what they're fleeing, war, death, poverty, state violence. I
don't know if i'd be brave or strong enough to
(41:09):
do the same, but I have a lot of respect
for people who can. Tomorrow we're going to talk about
the people who help them along the way and what
you can do to support them. When the state works,
it could happen.
Speaker 9 (41:23):
Here is 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 now find
sources for it could happen here, listed directly in episode descriptions.
Thanks for listening.
Also media.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
It's me James, and before we listen to this episode today,
I just did want to make you aware that I
conducted these interviews in French and Spanish, mostly Spanish, and
then transcribed and translated them. So what you're hearing is
a translated interview that's being edited for brevity and content.
I hope you enjoyed the episode. At some of you
(01:12):
recognize the audio that we opened this show with, and
then if you won't, it's a sample from the fourth
Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle that Manuchow used to open
his shows with. It's a piece of music that's very
emotive for me. Obviously, I'm a white leftist guy in
my thirties who learned Spanish and decided to live in Barcelona.
So I have a story about running into Manuchow once
where he was busking, but that's not what I want
(01:34):
to share today. Because I'm technology challenged, I can't seem
to get my phone to download songs, but I've managed
to download the same Manuchow playlist, and I ripped off
a rewriteable CD when I was in high school and
put it on the various headphones and garment and watch
it that I've had of the last two decades or so.
When I'm away for work, I like to run whenever
I can. Obviously, I wasn't just going to go for
(01:54):
a jog straight into the Darien Gap. But once we
were out of Bajajiqito, it gave me some time to
run and think and process the things that I've seen.
And while I do that, I listen to the same
does not al so MP three files. I was listening
to this song one day after I got back from
LaaS Blancas as I sweated my way up ahead in
the rainforest, hoping to see a sloth. I didn't see
(02:16):
a sloth, but it seemed like an appropriate soundtrack. Manuchow
himself is a child of refugees from Francoist Spain. He
sings in French and Spanish, while off and Galician and Portuguese,
among other languages, often several of them in the same song,
the product of growing up among other migrants of diverse backgrounds.
I like the way he plays with language because it
(02:37):
reminds me of the way I so often speak to
my friends Spanglish, for example, or Frannglais. It's the way
people talk in border regions and refugee camps, languages that
don't have the support of a state or the academy,
but nonetheless convey so much meaning for so many people.
That song in particular reminds me of my first time
reading about Zapatismo in a tiny anarchist cafe in the
(02:58):
West Midlands. I remember struck as a kid from Europe
who would frequently drive to France or Belgium to race
bikes and buy cheap beer. That the USA still maintained
a fortified border with Mexico. People couldn't travel freely, but
money could. It was its realization and the writings in
particular Soucomante Marcos, along with my talks in Spain to
old anarchists, that encouraged me to learn Spanish, which I
(03:21):
pursued by spending months in Spain and Venezuela and learning
thanks to the patient to the people around me. It
was a new anarchism which came from the periphery, not
only a liberal corps, which gave me my first serious politics.
I traveled to Venezuela to understand the revolution there. I
did a PhD to try and understand the revolution in Spain.
It's all very well understanding things, but I think it's
(03:43):
much more important to do things, and I tried to
practice mutual aid as much as I can. Since I
got back from the daddy En, I've loaded up a
heavy backpack and carried water into the desert and spent
hours trying to connect the friends I made in the
jungle with services along the way. In the face of
so much cruelty, it's good to be doing something to
help and carrying the waters away. I can make a
(04:03):
material difference in a terrible situation. But in all my
time reporting, I've really never felt as disempowered and helpless
as I did in Last Blancas. Here at the first
official migrant reception center after Daddi Enne. The Panamanian government
registers migrants NGOs, offer a few services, and the US
funded process of deportation for migrants from Colombia, Cuba, Venezuela
(04:27):
and India begins. Some of those sent to India might
well be Nepalese who often travel on fake Indian passports.
The Siddle cluster of cheap tents, shipping container offices, un shelters,
and barbed wire fences is where the rubber meets a
road for the USA's border and migration policy, and it's
heartbreaking to witness as migrants were called up to the
(04:47):
security office to begin the deportation process. I tried to
narrate the scene into my voice recorder, but I struggled,
in part because their family members asked me questions, hoping
I can help. Yeah, plankings on a say, But in
a larger part this was also difficult because I couldn't help,
(05:09):
and I deeply wanted to. The best I could offer
was an arm around someone's shoulder and the promise to
email anyone who I could think of and ask what
was going on. This guy's just sobbing. Ah. Yeah, that's
really tough. Some people's parents, some people's partners, And I'll
(05:40):
explain exactly what was happening in a moment, but first
I want to explain how I got here. On the
day we left Maragante, we set off at the same
time some migrants who are making their own journey to
last Blankets is carrying only myself and my fixed daddy
and Aguero. So we're moving a lot faster than the
boats full of migrants on the way north. We passed them,
(06:01):
they smiled waves. We rode by many of them had
met me the day before. All of them were ecstatic
to have survived to daddy En and be heading north.
You know, it's a pretty busy stretch of river that's
probably three or four piaguas full of migrants. Hello, there,
kids shanging and men taught them some English words yesterday
(06:22):
and they're shouting them back to me today, which is nice.
I got it family from Panama. They might be Indio
people or something. They little Bill shocked to the whole scene.
(06:43):
Here we are patting another bit agua. Now they're all
waving in me. It's got to be uncomfortable. Pack that
dancy into a bi agua one, two, three, four or five, six, seven,
eighty nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirty forty sixteen people. Yeah,
(07:07):
once they boath arrived, they did embark in Las Blancas.
The next day. I was there to meet them. They're
just walking into LaaS Blancas. It's hectic here. So it's
a new shop here, and outside the shop they've made
like a line of outlets to charge people. It's a
dollar an hour to charge your telephone. As we go in,
(07:28):
there are a row of like kind of sheds which
represent shops and then further in every ngo has its
own little kind of shed. They're all covered in tarps.
They're like canvas and tarp tents. Actually here so see
UNISEF see oh I am. Yeah, they have that sort
(07:48):
of little tent office here. I guess see here as
for example has route information, psychological supports. They space for women,
WUNISEF has. There's some workshops for children. And then in
the hours, I guess, nice little chairs in there, yeah,
(08:11):
seas then you can't take photographs in there, which is good. Yeah,
And then it's just a crowd of people coming out.
And there's also Mormon, little little Mormon situation.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
Yea.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
I guess thee O I am are supported by Church
of Jesus Christ on that today saints. Then the Red
Cross has got a shipping container. I've been hoping last
Black Guests would be a better scene than Bajugito, with
more organized sleeping arrangements and hopefully basic necessities like clean water,
food and Wi Fi provided by their numerous NGOs who
(08:51):
work there. But if anything, it was worse in Bahjigito.
In Bajuquito, migrants were exhausted but also ecstatic to be
at the jungle. Then you they'll be moving forward the
next day, and for a few bucks they can get
anythink they needed in the village. The locals told me
that if kids didn't have the money to eat, they
fed them for free. I didn't see this, but nobody
seem like they're having a very hard time in any
(09:12):
of the days have visited the village, at least not
for financial reasons. Magots can get as far as Baho
Jiguito on a few hundred dollars in their tenasty. They
pay Columbian guides a few hundred bucks to bring them
across the ocean from Necopie and to walk them from
the border, and they parried Embarra Perraguero's twenty five bucks
for a ride up the river. But once they get
to last Blankerts. For a good number of migrants, their
(09:35):
journey grinds to a halt. Many of them told me
they've been stuck in the camp for weeks or even
months because they couldn't get that sixty dollars that they
needed to pay for their travel north. There's no Western
Union in the camp, and the only way to transfer
money is very local interomediay who charges between twenty and
twenty five percent of the sum being transferred as a fee.
In the morning, migrants arrive on their peraguas, just as
(09:57):
we did. I drop down the boat ramp when I
them to help with their bags, and I'll go about their
journey from there. They formed two lines, one for men
and one for women and children. They have their bag
search and their passport checked. They're given a welcome kit
for the Red Cross with some basic necessities toilet paper,
a toothbrush, some soap, stuff like that, or some of
(10:19):
them get a kid. When the kids ran out, it
was long before the line of people did. By the
time the men were finished, they were given little more
than a shrug and good wishes better Red Cross volunteers
and allowed to head off into the camp. Within the camp,
there are a few rows of small casitas that are
allocated to u accompany children and families. They're little more
than four walls in a roof, but they offer a
(10:40):
bit of privacy for most migrants, though there isn't space
and they have to search for a spot of empty
ground in the crowded camp where they can pitch the
same tents they bought a neckockley the Wi FI which
a Red Cross usually provides, wasn't working when I arrived,
so I had to let people hot spot off my
phone all day. At least the promised food really was free,
but the migrant told me it was far from good. Still,
(11:02):
this is supposed to be a temporary camp. People register here,
get any medical attention they need, and then move forward
to Costa Rica. That's the theory anyway. In practice, if
you can't get the sixty bucks, you need to move forward,
or someone stole it for me in the jungle, or
you are forced to walk to the camp because you
didn't have twenty five bucks for the boat and then
someone rubbed you. Then you're stuck.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
We have been here a month. You have people who've
been here a month and a half. I've been twenty
seven days here. Well, I thank god because we have
three meals a day. We have water, but it still
hurts the girls. The food and water always make me
sick with diarrhea. It bothers me. I vomit and the
heat is so desperate. But we have to hold on
(11:50):
because even though we don't have the resources, like we
don't have enough to pay for a ticket, we have
to hold on here a little longer. We don't have
any family members can give us support.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
Either what's keeping the migrants here is money, or rather
a lack of bit. They need sixty bucks to leave.
Buses used to take five free passengers per bus, but
under Panama's new regime, it seems like they don't. Instead,
migrants just gradually a mass in growing number of tents
that populate the grassy areas of Las Blankets. They might
try and do some informal work. I saw one guy
(12:23):
who was cutting hair for a dollar a time, but
I couldn't really get a satisfactory response to what they're
expected to do. If they don't have the money and
can't get someone to send us seventy five dollars, they'd
need to cover their travel costs and the twenty five
percent transfer.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
Feel if you're short ten dollars, they don't put you
on the bus or anything. So things are terrible here.
There should at least be support for migrants who at
least come with few resources. They don't have money or anything.
They can search your bags so they can see that
you're not lying that you don't have money. Because nobody
(12:57):
wants to be stuck here, you have to move forward
because nobody wants to be stuck here in Panama. The
idea is to move forward to get further ahead. We
brought our children to look for a future, not to
be locked up here in Panama, as if we've been
in prisoned.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
The group even tried to leave on foot, hoping to
begin walking north, and so it's for better future and
a way to make money on their way. But they
were caught, they say, and returned to the camera.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
And they beat me hard. I gave myself up because
they had caught her, a grandmother with my other daughter.
I returned myself voluntarily and they beat me up anyway,
and from there we've lost the desire to walk back there.
What can we do rights? They don't care about them.
We are human beings, but we don't have rights here
(13:48):
in Panama.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
They do have the money. Margarets could take a bus
to the Costa Rican border when the busts first arrived.
I tried to describe the scene as migrants rushed to
buy food, not only for this journey, but also so
for their journey through Costa Rica, where food and other
basics are much more expensive. I'm here in Lahablancas when
the first buses have arrived. It's about noon. The first
bus is going to be followed people who had been
(14:11):
waiting in line for hours already, so they're kind of
lining up by the bus.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
And then.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
The next bus is people seem to be kind of
rushing to get to them. They're rushing to my food.
I can just see this guy has like an entire
carrier bag full of pink Way for biscuits and coke bottles,
that that's going to be his food for the next
eleven hours. I guess other guys will see with bags
of bread rolls and stuff, and they're the first people
are getting on the bus. Now, these buses aren't entirely safe.
(14:41):
In twenty twenty three, forty two people died in a
bus crash. This year, seventeen were intured in a crash
in August. Now, migration offices ride in each bus with
the migrants to check on safety protocols and make sure
they don't get off anywhere else in the country just
like everywhere else on their journey. People make money off
the migrants in last blankets. A bus costs sixty dollars
(15:02):
ahead and has fifty five passages three thousand, three hundred
dollars a bus. More than a dozen buses leave every day.
They even half of a thousand or so people who
arrived us a transfer service to get their bus fare.
That's seven five hundred dollars in transfer fees alone. Of course,
not everyone in the community is making thousands of dollars
off the migrants. I interviewed local shopkeeper who still sits
(15:24):
just outside the camp gates, and I asked him to
explain his stock, which included the oddly popular I backed
the blue, thin blue Lion T shirt. So I'd seen
several people across the daddy and gap.
Speaker 4 (15:33):
In Okayamo only fucking money.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
I asked him what was the most common shopping list
for migrants see Cassie.
Speaker 5 (15:51):
Yes, almost all of them coming by sets for ten, fifteen,
twenty dollars. It depends there are many who don't have them.
I have children's sets for five dollars. I have sets
for five dollars that are pants and sweaters, which is
what they're looking for the most. Those that are socks
without underwear, backpacks for fifteen dollars because the backpack is
so worn out and they need it so much that
(16:12):
it carries their belongings. Look it's not really everyone who
can buy. There are certain people who buy, of course,
if everyone bought, but there are very few who can
buy something to leave here. Almost seventy percent leave dirty
because they don't have anywhere to get money, and the
little they can get often comes from selling their phones,
their watch, a cap, or their sneakers to be able
to get money to pay for their fare to keep going.
Speaker 2 (16:35):
I asked him how the migration had impacted the community.
With people making a lot of money, I asked, were
they mad about the trash and the pollution of the river.
These are legitimate concerns, even if they're used in bad
faith against the migrants.
Speaker 5 (16:47):
Now, you're so much effect though nobody is perfect, but
I can tell you one thing. Honestly, the migrants suffer
a lot to be able to carry out this journey.
And there are many times when I've even had to
give them clothes, some because they don't have any. And well,
when a father and family with children comes, what can
I say, Look, I have a family, I.
Speaker 4 (17:04):
Have to do this. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
I asked him what he felt the solution was to
the suffering here, the damage done both to people and planet.
Speaker 5 (17:13):
Okay, I say that oppressing people so that they don't
go through the dairy. And it's not the solution because
if you put it to the point, even if they
don't know an exact percentage, the immigrant gives the economy
of the United States a balance because the people born there.
Not to criticize them, people born there want a stable
job and he doesn't want to feel like he's very,
(17:35):
very low. However, the immigrant is there and he's picking fruit,
going to the fruit trees, going to the vegetable fields,
going to the garbage dumps, going picking up things that
many Americans who live there don't do, of course, and
so they need them to say that they don't go.
They need the support of the immigrant to be able
to have the balance that they have today.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
Like a lot of Panamanians I met, he was broadly
in solidarity with the migrants. I didn't really encounter anti
migrants sentiment at all in my time at Panama. In
the capital city, which locals just called Panama but we
can call Panama City, migrants are not really physically present,
nor are they present in conversation. I found the transition
for the jungle and the refugee camps back to the
(18:18):
bustling city pretty challenging a lot of ways. I find
I'm oddly comfortable amidst the chalos and trauma of a
refugee camp. It's a familiar environment for me, and I
know how to conduct myself. I feel safe with the migrants,
and I tend to find them very open and welcoming
to me. I can talk to anyone and they can
talk to me. I bring toys for children and try
to bring resources for adults, and sometimes I bring my
(18:40):
harmonica if I being really cliche in a weird way.
Refgue camps are a little safe space for me, and
even though I know it's bad, I can console myself
that I'm helping a little or at least giving people
some hope and some information. That made me feel a
bit better. But in the city I found it hard
knowing that people were in a terrible situation and that
nobody hears seem to care. I went for a running
(19:02):
the jungle near the city, trying to get some perspective
and clear my head, but I just ended up screaming
and didn't consider it driver. I was angry at them
for they're hitting me, but I was just angry at
everyone all over the US and even here in Panama City,
for their indifference as so much human suffering. The lack
(20:12):
of concern about migrants in Panama City made what I
saw next at Last Blankets even more surprising. An announcement
of the loudspeakers called several Colombian passport holders to the
migration office. At first, it seemed like they were just
going to a little wooden shed with a couple of
CENTA Front officers in it to return their documents. I
had already noticed that some migrants, and seemingly most of
(20:33):
the African migrants, were being called to a different shed
to do biometric scans. I wondered if this was part
of the same process. But shortly thereafter a truck rolled
up and several of the Colombians were loaded in. Apparently
neither they nor their partners knew what was going on.
They're taking some of the Columbian guys away to report them.
You can hear a little kid crying for his dad, okay, listen,
(21:06):
and taking his brother and his brother's wife, taking some
other lady's husband, some of little kid's dad and making
them sit on the floor. I don't know why, Yeah,
(21:28):
I don't know what they're going to do now. She's
trying to give her husband the money and a SIM
card so you can call her. You're gonna go get
some more food. Other morguts approached me to us if
I knew, which I didn't. The one lady who'd been
(21:49):
there for weeks told me that people who leave this
way never come back and they end up being deported,
So we assume that's what's happening here. Yeah, this really sucks.
Now they're taking the deportation by. There's men crying, I said,
wives are on their women crying, their husbands are on
their kids are crying, their parents are on there, and
(22:10):
they've just done this crossing and now they're going to
send them back. By the time I got back to
the city, I was getting texts from migrants with photos
of them and handcuffs. More and more of them were
being deported, particularly the Colombians. One of them, texting me
after being returned to Columbia on a flight, gave the
following account of detention.
Speaker 6 (22:30):
They treated us.
Speaker 7 (22:31):
Very badly verbally and psychologically. We all had to do
our business in the same cell, and they threw food
on the floor for us to eat as we were
all in handcuffs. They told us that of Venezuelan had
burned down the migrant detention center in San Vincente and
that we would all pay for it, and that the
Colombians didn't need to leave the country because the president
there said it was doing well and there's plenty of work.
(22:53):
None of that is true.
Speaker 2 (22:55):
The American facility in Samba cent they was burned out,
and the people working there it was a Venezuelan migrant
who did that. But all of that excuses any of this.
We weren't able to access that facility as the people
who had detained there can't really consent meaningfully to an interview.
That's a fair enough for paction. But the migrant who
was deported also alleged that they received no hearings or
(23:17):
a chance to appeal their deportation. Instead, they were detained
for eight days, spent their last US dollars, and were
then kicked out of the country. They were not detained
or arrested upon reaching Columbia, which makes it a little
more difficult for me to believe the claim that only
people without standing warrants in Columbia were being deported. These
weren't the only allegations of mistreatment. I heard Margarets came
(23:38):
to me and whispered about the abuse of black migrants
who were forced to walk to Lahas Blancos because they
couldn't afford the boat ride. I should note that it
wasn't the migrants who had been robbed or abuse that
came to me. It was other migrants. It was a
group of guys had given a water filter too. While
they were leaving to walk from Lahas Blancas. I hadn't
been able to join them, but when they got there,
we ran into each other again, and they came up
(24:00):
to meet to share their concerns for the black men
who had walked with them. In one instance, one migrant
told me he was robbed by what he called quote
police dressed as thieves. The deportations, which seemed to be
increasingly commonplace, are being funded by US taxpayer dollars. The
same day that Molino took office in July, Homeland Security
Secretary Alejandro Majorcas, himself the child of migrants, visited Panama.
(24:24):
Panama's a relatively young country and one which the US
occupied part of for much of the last century, but
despite a real struggle for independence, the Panamanian government didn't
seem concerned that the U S Secretary of Homeland Security
was present at the inauguration of a president in a
country that decidedly not the U S homeland. The official
DHS readout of his trip notes that the US has
(24:45):
enjoyed a flourishing strategic relationship with Panama for over one
hundred years, which is certainly one way to sum up
decades of occupation, violence, and profit from the Panama Canal
and one of the more brutal dictatorships in the long
list of authoritarian regimes that the US preferred to minister,
even socialist governments in the Western Hemisphere. They also announced
that the US government would quote help the Panamanian government
(25:06):
to remove foreign nationals who do not have a legal
basis to remain in Panama. Obvious yet to take this
moment to note that under the United Nations Refugee Convention,
refugees do have a legal right to travel through a
country on route to another. His Erica describing that right.
Speaker 6 (25:21):
The Refugee Convention is complex.
Speaker 8 (25:23):
The UES afford a lot of rights to people who
have fled their countries based on persecution. You know you're
supposed to be able to pass through whichever country you want,
go to whichever country you want, not be criminally prosecuted
for crossing the border between ports of entry, and not
be turned back to a country where you face harm.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
The US allocated six million dollars for a six month
pilot program of repatriations. If the program meets the USA's goals,
they might consider expanding it to other countries along the
migrant route. According to reporting in Rutters, as of early October,
they've deported five hundred and thirty people to Colombia. That's
half the people I saw arriving in a single day
in Bajojigito. Because Panama's government and Venezuela's government have ceased
(26:05):
relations after the election, Panama is now struggling to deport
Venezuelan's back to Venezuela, and it's actively searching for a
third country into which to deport them. But even if
the program resulted in one plane loaded day, which it
hasn't yet, that would be roughly ten percent of the
total daily in traffic, and far fewer planes are traveling.
What it will do, like so many other DHS policies,
(26:26):
is play into the hands of smugglers. Already new ocean
routes are being used, which see migrants, many of whom
cannot swim, taking long journeys around Panama on ill equiped boats.
This doesn't help anyone apart from the DHS contractors and
staff equipping and training Panamanian personnel, and the human traffickers
making more and more money from migration. I also a shopkeeper.
(26:47):
His opinion on this.
Speaker 5 (26:53):
Look, I'll tell you I think that instead of giving
them a reward for deportation, they should give them support,
a lot of support, because it is a huge sacrifice
to leave your country where you were born, your children,
your family, leave it to be able to have a future,
and you go with your mentality that your future is
the United States that will give you an opportunity to
get ahead and give well being to your children. Now,
(27:16):
ten percent of those who go are going to destroy
the good name of the migrants, But what people really
want to do is help their family, and this balance
unbalances everything that is being done by good people, because
there are many good people who want to get ahead,
and I think that the United States should support give
support to people who really want to fight and move forward.
(27:37):
As I just told you, they give a lot of
benefit they contribute to the country.
Speaker 2 (28:14):
After leaving Las Blancas, I felt pretty down about the
fact that people were just hitting a wall that they
couldn't overcome. Since then, I've stayed in touch with many
of them. For some a friend or family member was
able to send the money and they made it to
costantly on the bus. From there, they crossed quickly into
Nicaragua and Guatemala before arriving in the Mexican border city
of Tapachula in the state of Chiapas and ironically not
(28:35):
so very far from whether Zapatista's made their revolution thirty
years ago. Once they crossed the southern border of Mexico,
migrants can begin their application for asylum using the CBP
one app that we've talked about so much on the
show before. They can use it in Tabasco and Chiapas,
the southern border states, and then once again when they're
north of Mexico City. To recap very briefly, the app
(28:56):
is terrible and almost every way, including its inability to
recognize blackfaces. It's limited functionality on Android phones, which is
a vast majority of devices used by migrants. It's constant
crashing an eight to nine month wait time for stylum appointments. His'
erico explaining some of those problems.
Speaker 3 (29:11):
You have to have a relatively new smartphone, you have
to have an address, all the people you're traveling with
have to be with you right, and you have to
first get through the initial kind of registration phase.
Speaker 6 (29:26):
Which doesn't always work. The program is very glitchy.
Speaker 3 (29:29):
You have to take a live photo, and you have
to wait essentially, so you know, it's kind of random too.
Speaker 6 (29:35):
Some people will get.
Speaker 3 (29:36):
An appointment within three months, but I would say most
people are waiting nine to twelve At this point. You
don't have any legal status in Mexico while you're waiting,
unless you can apply for some other status in Mexico independently.
Speaker 2 (29:49):
That it is yet very poorly designed. It's also a
de facto a metering system on asignum' erico explaining.
Speaker 3 (29:55):
That we've been litigating against the use of CBP one
for a few years now now. My organization out at
the level and Patient Bridge Alliance, and the reason why
we are fighting against the required use of CBP one
is first because it is an illegal metering system. So
we've already litigated the fact that there is no number
(30:17):
limit on the amount of individuals who can seek asylum
at the US Mexico border, and Customs and Border Protection
legally does not have the right to turn people.
Speaker 6 (30:26):
Away, and CBP one essentially allows them to do that.
Speaker 3 (30:31):
You know, there were physical metering lists at ports of
entry before CBP one was implemented as essentially the only
way to access the US asylum system at ports of entry,
and now it's.
Speaker 6 (30:43):
A digital metering list and it's very limited.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
Recently, the Department of Homeland Security lost a court case
which forced them to release records in there with some
of the app plugs and data regarding CBP one. I'm
still in the phase of coming through that asking my friends,
you know more about technologies than I do, explain exactly
what the limitations with the app are, But it doesn't
really matter. DHS is well aware of the app's flaws,
and it doesn't really seem to see the most flaws
(31:08):
at all. The goal of the app is to make
it harder for people, even those with very legitimate asylum claims,
to obtain asylum in the USA. As we heard yesterday,
the CHNV program is no better. A recently Reddit thread
of applicants who've been waiting nearly two years. What it
didn't mention yesterday is a parallel program for another group
of migrants, which I'll let Erica explain.
Speaker 3 (31:28):
I want to mention the fact that there is a
cap I think it's thirty thousand a month or something
like that for those four countries, But it's almost identical
to the Ukrainian United for a Ukraine program, which doesn't
have a cap right, so there's no limit to how
many Ukrainians can get the same benefit.
Speaker 6 (31:48):
And they are renewing the humanitarian prole.
Speaker 3 (31:51):
For Ukrainians, which I believe was just announced almost within
weeks of them announcing that they're not renewing for the
other four countries.
Speaker 6 (31:58):
So it's really a very stark demonstration of how the
US immigration system, even when it's a relatively mean or
benefit is based on race, is based on which country
you're from.
Speaker 2 (32:13):
What this means is it in practice? The migrants I
spoke to face a long and dangerous way in Mexico
while others skip ahead. I've got nothing against the Ukrainians,
and I don't think many of them do either. I
tried to go to Ukraine and report, but the avisas
ended up taking so long that I missed the flights
that I'd booked. I have, however, a serious problem with
(32:33):
a Biden administration which left people who fought alongside its
own US troops to die in Afghanistan and turned away
migrants small over the world, but then opened its arms
to a country that just happened to have the majority
of its citizens be the same race as the president.
It's cruel and it's wrong, and it's barely ever even
mentioned in national media coverage. But that's not fortunate enough
(32:54):
to be Ukrainian. Here's what waiting in Mexico looks like.
Speaker 3 (32:57):
The incidence of crime director at migrants is horrifyingly high.
We had done an electronic survey a few years ago,
and this was during title forty two, when people were
just being expelled to Mexico, and if I remember correctly,
it was like around twenty five to thirty percent of
people had been either raped.
Speaker 6 (33:20):
Such traffic assaulted, kidnapped. I mean, the list goes on
and on.
Speaker 3 (33:25):
We've seen a lot of people lose their lives just
due to violence, and the kidnapping rates are through the roof.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
Almost everyone you've heard from in this series is now
stuck in Mexico. Some of them have been kidnapped, paid,
ransomed and released. Some of them have been sexually assaulted.
Many of them have been robbed. Some of them have,
after surviving one of the most deadly land migration routes
on Earth, been killed while waiting in Mexico for an
app to stop crashing on their phones. Over a week
(33:52):
since I got home, I've seen them go gradually more
desperate and afraid just to get to Mexico. Many of
them have spent several thousand dollars. Once they're in Capatula,
they faced with the astronomical costs for the trip north
off just several thousand dollars more, and many of them,
their fund exhausted, have slept on the streets. Those didn't
speak Spanish struggle to find refuge. Those who did wanted
(34:15):
to move quickly north, but struggle to find the money here.
The Iranian migrants you heard earlier in the series explaining
what they'd already heard about CBP one.
Speaker 4 (34:22):
It's so tough because the some polices in their way,
they are two to our money that became from Iran.
It was so difficult for us and the resumed a
way so Mexico. Mexico is so difficult for us and
something is CBP one is not working for our for us,
(34:47):
for Iranian people, Yeah, I hope the people who are
in Mexico City for about three months.
Speaker 6 (34:56):
For three months, Yeah, CPP wanted.
Speaker 9 (34:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (34:59):
Because of that, Iranian people go to the wall and yeah, yeah,
it's not our choice.
Speaker 2 (35:07):
We have to do this.
Speaker 4 (35:10):
We don't want them, but it's we have to do this.
Speaker 2 (35:12):
Yeah, it's good to explain that. According to a study
conducted at the University of Texas, wait times are as
high as eight or nine months on average. Now mexicoing
out it's on the thirty first of August that it
will provide security and food for migrants who have an
appointment to travel north from the south of the country
to the place where they have a CBP wall appointment.
Margarets absolutely have been robbed or kidnapped on their way
to their appointment and missed it as a result, but
(35:34):
they're just as honorable in the eight or nine months
that they have to wait for one. Margarets and Tapajula
are at a very high risk for kidnapping and are
often held until their families pay ransoms, but without money
or an appointment, they have little means of leaving the city.
Some choose to travel a little further north and then
hop on a freight train known as Labstia the Beast,
(35:54):
an extraordinarily risky endeavor that several of the people I
spoke to for this series have undertaken. The only place
to ride on these trains is on top of carriages,
exposing migrants to freezing temperatures in the desert night. Even
on the train, they're not safe from kidnapping. Like many migrants,
the Iranian group were well informed about domestic politics in
the US, and they said that when they made their
(36:16):
journey north, they wanted to be sure to avoid the
states where local law enforcement was likely to turn them
over for deportation. In reality, that could be any of
the states. But they're probably right that their life would
be a little easier on the West Coast.
Speaker 4 (36:29):
I heard it's so difficult and about three months, four months,
more than seven months, they will arrest us in the US.
I heard in Mississippi.
Speaker 2 (36:39):
It takes us in the middle of Africa.
Speaker 4 (36:42):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think that the California is a
little little, little yeah, certainly our.
Speaker 9 (36:49):
Money is very excuse me, shits money in the world,
and we have to pay a lot of money for
this way.
Speaker 4 (37:00):
Our one yeah dollar, one dollar is sixty thousand.
Speaker 2 (37:08):
Some of course, which used to cross the border between
ports of entry as they become desperate to see their
families or afraid of remaining in Mexico. Since President Biden's
executive audio earlier this summer, doing this can result expedited
removal proceedings, and effectively, Biden's new ruling denies asylum by
default to anyone crossing the border when daily crossings have
(37:28):
passed twenty five hundred. In fact, this is the continuation
of extremely punitive and cruel politics that have been in
place since he was finally forced to stop using Title
forty two, which, if you're not aware, is a public
health law used by the Trump administration and embraced by
the Biden administration as an asylum law. It has already
resulted in the deportations of people back to places where
they have extremely credible fears of harm and created a
(37:51):
system whereby migrants have no idea how they will be
treated on any given day. Again, it's play into the
hands of anyone seeking to smoke or migrants into the
country undertake well also harming innocent people coming to this
country to US for protection. He's Erica's short history of
Biden's asylent policy since last year.
Speaker 3 (38:08):
So when the Biden administration lifted Title forty two, they
essentially imposed what I call a transitvent.
Speaker 6 (38:16):
So there's a couple of components to it.
Speaker 3 (38:19):
One is, if you do not enter the United States
out of port of entry with a CBP one appointment,
you are presumed ineligible for asylum unless you fall under
a few narrow exceptions which are not consistently applied. So
the exceptions are things like you were having a medical emergency,
you were running for your life, you know you couldn't
(38:40):
access the app for some reason. But in practice those
exceptions are almost never applied at ports. There's been a
few kind of alternative programs run by shelters or local
governments where people with extreme medical vulnerabilities, for example, can
be let in without an appointment, but we don't know
(39:02):
whether the ban applies to them once they enter without
that appointment, right, So it's like I said, inconsistently applied exceptions.
If you enter between a port of entry, you're presumed
and eligible for asylum. Again, unless you meet some narrow exceptions,
and what that means is you can still apply for
other types of protection in the United States. So there's
two principal types of protection. One it's called withholding a removal,
(39:26):
which is like asylum but with a higher standard. And
then the other is Convention against Torture, which you just
have to prove it's more likely than not that your
own government will torture you, which is more extreme than persecution.
But is it necessarily based on a protected ground. So
the torture could be for any reason, but it's a
high hurdle. But the most important thing is those two
(39:50):
types of protection are not path to citizenship and they
do not allow you to petition for your family. So,
for example, if you get asylum in the US and
then you want to ask for your life and children
to join you, there is an avenue for that, and
all of you can eventually become citizens. Withholding a removal
and Convention against Torture, you basically get a work from it.
(40:11):
If conditions in your country change, they can deport you
and you can never leave the United States and you
can never reunify with your family, and you could never
become a citizen.
Speaker 2 (40:20):
This won't deter people. I speak to people every day
who cross to Daddy in We're kidnapped, robbed, and sometimes
raped on their way here. They're going through all of
that because we refuse to give people a dignified or
safe way to come here. They know it's a risk,
and they continue to come because they think it's the
only option. His powers from coming and explaining that it's.
Speaker 4 (40:40):
Deadly, how will lie to you.
Speaker 9 (40:43):
It's fifty fifty alive on date.
Speaker 1 (40:45):
Honestly, weecause, but we had to take the riks because
I think.
Speaker 2 (40:49):
That was only awesome that we had. If you can't
imagine taking those risks, it's likely because you can't imagine
the things these people are leaving behind either. As a
conflict reporter, I've been able to see a small amount
of what they're fleeing, war, death, poverty, state violence. I
don't know if i'd be brave or strong enough to
(41:09):
do the same, but I have a lot of respect
for people who can. Tomorrow we're going to talk about
the people who help them along the way and what
you can do to support them. When the state works,
it could happen.
Speaker 9 (41:23):
Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts,
from cool Zone Media. Visit our website cool Zonemedia dot com,
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Thanks for listening.
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