November 1, 2024 • 38 mins
James' final episode looks at the people helping migrants once they leave the Darién Gap, and how you can help.
Donation links for groups featured in this series:
Border Kindness: https://borderkindness.org/donate/
Al Otro Lado: https://alotrolado.networkforgood.com/projects/63833-al-otro-lado-fund
Fe Y Alegria: https://www.feyalegria.org/en/home-fya-international/
Sources:
https://www.oig.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/assets/2023-11/OIG-24-07-Nov23.pdf
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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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
All the 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.
Speaker 3 (00:18):
I hope you enjoyed the episode, just you.
Speaker 4 (00:30):
Finding yourself there and seeing how the environment looks like
you feel like you should give up. I cried it
grace of work for you to actually stand by and
say no, I'll keep on struggling. A lot of people
who give up, a lot of someone dies. Let it die.
People who were crying. Yeah, yes, we let people swear crying.
(00:51):
They didn't know how they could continue. It's not an
easy situation. It's not really an easy situation. Actually, it's
just the grace of God for us surviving, because I
can't say it's by my strength. It's actually the grace
of God. Because what we actually went through, we met
people living collapsed. We had to help them. You meet
(01:11):
your body, you give a lifting hand. It's not really
an easy thing. It's not something that if we are
fine tomorrow can advise any of our family members to
go through, because it's so that it's risky if your
family member is in there and it's not out. It
takes the grace of God for you to even lie
on your bed and close all your eyes either. Once
(01:31):
I survived, by the grace of God, I almost drowned.
In fact, I was drowning.
Speaker 5 (01:37):
By the grace of God.
Speaker 6 (01:38):
I was rescued.
Speaker 5 (01:40):
Yes, some guys that rescued me. I was already drowned.
I was gone. I was gone.
Speaker 7 (01:46):
I was drinking water.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Very readily all throughout the journey. North Margarets have little
choice but to rely on one another and the solidarity
of strangers. I heard dozens of stories that you've just
heard in my time in the Daddy End. Total strangers
who save each other's lives risk their own in the process.
For vers, it could only be crossed to people from
three different continents joined arms to form a human chain
(02:09):
the children and smaller people could hold on to to
avoid being swept downstream. Not everyone can help. Just surviving
the Dalian takes all of what many people have, But
for the people who are in a position to even
in desperate times, there's mutual support among the migrants.
Speaker 4 (02:24):
Very few people who are ever will help you. They're
very few people. Only people who are time can actually help.
That people will pass you by, and that people if
you have lost your strength, it's not easy for another
person to actually break though. We can really appreciate those
who help, because having your strength is another You must
help yourself before you can help another person, right, so
(02:46):
if you can really have their strength, it will be
difficult for you need to help another. So we don't
really condemn them, but at least we are praying where
we are bleeding on our brothers worst still behind, that
if they meet people, if they have the ability to help,
this should do so. Of course, it's not really uneasy
something give.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
Sometimes reporting on these places compete them as bleak, unwelcoming
or just miserable and certainly very sad. Things happen in
the jungle and in the camps, in human things, But
just like war or a natural disaster, sometimes the horrible
circumstances of the migration trail bring out the best in people.
As I've said before in this series, I'm comfortable in
(03:29):
the refugee camps at least in part because people there
are looking out for one another. Kids don't stop playing
the moment they become refugees, not an adults stop laughing.
In fact, these things become even more important that how
we keep our humanity in a system that's inherently dehumanizing.
And people don't stop organizing or caring about one another either.
It's not just the migrants, of course. One of the
(03:50):
families who've been stuck in Baho Jigito for almost a
month was given some money by a local Sender Front
member to take a bus. In Mexico, those who don't
have enough money to take buses will hop on freight
trains and as they speed through towns and rail yards
at night, local people will throw plastic bags of food, water,
and clothing to them. In Panama City, I visited a
Jesuit run shelter for migrants called Fate.
Speaker 6 (04:14):
Well Numbers. Cordniho is Coordina or the Promotion Social Accompanimento.
Speaker 3 (04:24):
Panama.
Speaker 8 (04:25):
Alberto went down a Darien recently, and we know from
firsthand experience that the difficulty they have is moving. So
some don't go through the stations, but they stay, so
they appear here in the city, and so they arrive here,
(04:46):
and some decide to stay and forego all the difficulty
of moving forward.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
Despite having been set up as a refuge recent changes
to Panamanian law had made that work difficult.
Speaker 8 (04:59):
We had to start that service because the state literally
prohibited us as agencies from providing a shelter, and under
the premise that if we gave them shelter without them
asking for it, they could consider us as human traffickers.
So what we do now is we give them food
(05:20):
and if they decide to stay well, we help them
with certain processes that we can call humanitarian aid for sustainability.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
I've seen a wide variety of faith based aid in
my time at the border. Much of it has been fantastic,
but with more than a decade of refugee camps from
resource pot settings, I've also learned to be a bit
wary of faith based charity. But something Elias said early
in our talk gave me a great deal of respect
for him. It's not justin he said it, but he
took the time to address his comments to me as
(05:51):
a journalist because he saw this as a problem in
part created by the media. Ford it worth. I think
he's right. It's something that as we try and help
my on a difficult journey. We must always keep in
mind he might come from a very different background than
my mutual aid group, but we do seem to share
the same belief in solidarity with the migrants.
Speaker 3 (06:09):
There's a fortunate.
Speaker 5 (06:12):
Unfortunately much of the media narrative.
Speaker 8 (06:15):
What they do is they victimize and ridicule people in
family groups and turn them into pariahs and beggars. Then
that is insulting to the dignity of the person. So
the way they portray migration is shameful in some cases,
and this is very difficult. Well for this, yes, I
(06:35):
think that's very important.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
After this, I figured I address the issue head on.
I'm asking about the many churches in Christians I see
preaching hate against people coming to the southern border of
the US.
Speaker 8 (06:49):
There is a sector in the Catholic Church and the
Evangelical Church that opposes it and is more closely linked,
and they are in fact they are they're benefactors of
Trump's campaign. So this one and this one are there, well, well,
those are like groups that are rejecting, let's say, the
(07:12):
basic principle of the church, which is that we must
welcome migrants and refugees. So they fundamentally reject it. So
they invent all these narratives that Haitians practice voodoo and
they eat pets and this and that or that and
it's shameful mean, or like the Venezuelans, that the majority
(07:36):
of them are from Triande Aragua gang or that they
come from areas that are what you call problematic or chauvannista,
and that.
Speaker 5 (07:45):
They are infuriating or that or that.
Speaker 8 (07:48):
All the same narrative that was created when when the
Maritos left Cuba. And it's not that the Cuban government
is sending all the prisoners on the Mariel boats to.
Speaker 5 (07:59):
Invade the un United States. It's the same narrative.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
Then they asked what he thought of the government's plans
to close the day Enda if they could even do that.
Speaker 8 (08:11):
People ask me, do you think the Darian gap is
going to close and that migration is going to disappear?
And I say, ask the Mexicans and the North Americans
if the Sonara Desert has stopped being a corridor for
people after Trump, Because there was a time when all
the media was focused on the migration that passed through
the Sonara and everything continues to happen, But then it
(08:34):
became invisible and ceased to exist for them. But people
continue to pass through and people continue to die. So
as you say this, this is going to continue. Maybe
not a half a million people, but the flow is
going to continue.
Speaker 5 (08:50):
It's going to continue.
Speaker 8 (08:52):
And then the question we should ask ourselves is what
are we going to do or how are we going
to accompany this flow? How are we going to accompanies
these lives? And in what way can let these people's
lives impact us?
Speaker 2 (09:07):
But like so many of us who work along the board,
he says, he's constantly fighting. It's negative messaging that encourages
people not to follow the natural impulse to help and
take care of one another.
Speaker 8 (09:19):
So it's not a question of how I always say,
and sometimes they tell me, oh that you always speak
so badly of Panama, But it's not speaking badly of Panama.
I love my country and I feel that we in general,
the Panamanian communities are very welcoming and very affectionate with
the migrants. The problem is the narrative that is created
(09:41):
and then it generates to stimuli that end up with
a situation where are not seen so positively. And consequently,
last week we had a meeting perhaps on national reality,
and we touched on the subject of immigrants, and the
first reaction was, no, it's not the state that pays
(10:04):
the fare of the migrants.
Speaker 5 (10:06):
It's not that. I mean, they pay their own fare.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
After a week of my interview requests being declined by
NGOs and government offices, I found my talk with Father
Alias refreshing. It's nice to know that you're not the
only one who sees the system as it is, which
is fundamentally flawed and entirely propped up by misinformation, hatred
and ignorance. But I don't want to get bogged down
on that. Father Alias told me that when he sees migrants,
(10:30):
he sees God in them, and that he experiences his
faith by helping others. My early experienced religion came in
high school from a priest who was a teacher who'd
been part of the anti apartheid movement in South Africa.
I'm not a religious person in myself, but I can
understand how seeing God and other people is not that
far from my own politics. Lifit seeing God and know
the people that in pels people stand up against apartheid
(10:50):
or to dedicate their lives to helping migrants. Then I
respect that. So after we come back, I want to
try and answer the question that pythea Alias ask, what
can you do?
Speaker 3 (11:23):
Ran into them.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
After getting back from the Dad End and hearing the
migrants share their struggles as they waited in Mexico for
an outlest designed to lay and discourage them, I really
struggled to come to terms with everything I'd seen and
was hearing. A bid to plenty of dangerous places, and
seen war, state violence, and terrorism. I know the tragedy
of death and violence, but the slow and deliberate suffering
(11:48):
inflicted on migrants, for people who lied to us every
day on television, is particularly hard to bear for me.
As I mentioned at the start of this series, I
think the grim reality of our migration system. On my
first day in Barjiguito, little girl's head hanging limply from
a makeshift stretcher a strangers carried her into town. It's
also cruel, so deliberate, and so unnecessary, and it felt
(12:10):
so disempowering. But that doesn't mean there's nothing you can do.
It doesn't mean there's nothing I can do.
Speaker 6 (12:17):
All right, Basically, what we're gonna be doing is we're
gonna go this way. I mean, we're gonna start. We're
gona go down into this well, We're gonna go that
way and see where the light break is on the
mid of the hill in between those hills running cut up.
I'm up in that area.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
That's James card Era of Border Kindness, sitting at the
roof of a group of five of us set out
on a water drop in the mountains east of the Cumber.
It's an area called Valley of the Moon, where boulders
the size of trucks stack up against each other, where
people have been crossing the border for decades. This is
a remote area and not unlike the daddy En. Much
of it is nearly impossible to access in a car.
(12:55):
To get water out here, we have to walk. And
if you run out of water or injure yourself, you
can't walk out of here. It's possible you'll die, just
like the migotes do in the jungle. People get robbed here,
just like in the dad Enn And if it wasn't
for the five of us with our backpacks full of water,
people could die of first here just like they do
in the jungle. I thought I was packing water bottles
(13:15):
into my frame pack. I thought about little kids I've
met in Baho Chiquito. This isn't the place for children either,
but over the last eighteen months, I've met hundreds of
them out here. I've given them my jackets and hats,
warmed up milk for babies in my camping stove, and
even wrapped a little girl up in a milar blanket
with me to warm her up last year. Just like
the Dadienne, the suffering here is out of sight and
(13:37):
out of mind for most Americans, and in a year
where we're constantly being told democracies under threat, I think
a bear is mentioning that migrants are treated as humans
without rights even when they're inside this country, and that
their lives are seen as dispensable so long as whoever
is in office can look quote tough on migration and
make TV pundits and big money donuts happy. There weren't
any TV pundits or big money dons on our water
(13:59):
drop a few of us everyday people. Some people come
out here because their family members across the desert. Some
come out because everyone who crosses a desert is part
of our family. Like Bonnio said, in all humans are brothers,
and none of us want our brothers or sisters to
die in their mountains, whatever their passport might say. And
(14:19):
so nearly every weekend, people all along the border load
up heavy bags for supplies. On this drop, each of
us filled our packs with water, cans of tuna, pineapple soup,
some warm clothing, and in this case an audio.
Speaker 6 (14:34):
Recorder recording recording in progress.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
Of course, just gave me an opportunity to discuss my
life's calling. Ensuring the correct fit of backpack harness systems.
Speaker 6 (14:47):
Yeah, you can release those, Yeah, it.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
Just doesn't wrap the cantrap.
Speaker 9 (14:51):
You either haven't drum the weight out or like, please
have adjustable frames so you can make them fit with
those days.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
Bad for that. With everyone suitably adjusted and ergonomically optimized,
we twisted on the audio record as I'd attached the
straps of our packs and set off.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
I just feel bad for you.
Speaker 5 (15:15):
What are.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
From the edge of the dirt road we took our
first steps into the desert.
Speaker 6 (15:23):
The first part is gonna be a little slippery. You
eat shit, It's okay, and don't be embarrassed. It happens.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
This part of the border isn't that far from a
Cumba where this time last year James and I spent
a freezing night trying to keep people alive, running our
camping stoves on full blast, giving away our own jackets
who needed them more than us. At that time, I
just returned from a trip to North and East Syria,
which was stressful in its own way, and seeing both
what people are leaving and how we treat them when
(15:58):
they arrive here really piss me off. A year later,
with bags full of water, JMS and I spoke about
things and how they got so much worse in the
last two years, but press coverage and more importantly, donations
have been way lower. It's same story up and down
the border, record deaths, newer and harder migration routes, different
(16:18):
migration patterns, and the people who cried outside ice detention
centers in Trump's first term cheering for more walls and
bigger DHS budgets. Meanwhile, unlike the Trump era, we don't
have the support of thousands of liberal people in California's
big cities. After the Democrats cynically use migrant suffering in
their twenty twenty campaign, they abandoned them upon acquiring power,
(16:40):
and their supporters have mostly followed them, so that left
five of us this particular morning to load up bags
and do the life saving work of dropping water. On
top of all the state violence, there's been more and
more interference with the water drops, and as we got
further into our route, we made the increasingly calmon discovery
that someone had taken it upon themselves to destroy our supplies.
(17:04):
O smn of ice.
Speaker 3 (17:07):
See that's probably.
Speaker 6 (17:11):
Slash ye sorry by the person's making a smirnoff ice.
Speaker 3 (17:14):
Yeah he's wrong. Yeah, they all lunched motherfuckers.
Speaker 6 (17:20):
I mean, I'm assuming it's a person who brought the
smirnoff ice because it seems like a smirnofvi's activity feed fella. Yeah,
I don't see a VP agent rolling threw with the
smirnoff Iyes.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
This isn't unique to border kindness. Someone has been shooting
supplies left by Borderlands Relief Collective half an hour west
of here recently, up and down the border. The combination
of total liberal inattention and xenophobic right wing hate whipped
up by streamers who I won't name and pseudo journalistic
grifters who I will name, like Bill Maluganlugan, of course,
was previously famous for claiming that the cop had a
(17:52):
tampon dropped in his coffee. In twenty twenty. Spoiler alert
if you're not familiar, this wasn't true. Belugan now works
as a quote unquite border reporter for Fox.
Speaker 7 (18:00):
Danny, Good morning to you. We are in Santa Siegro,
a part of San Diego, right now, where hundreds of
illegal immigrants have just been massed street released from border
patrol custody. This bus you see right here is apparently
an NGO or volunteer organization bus. They've all just gotten
off a border patrol bus. Two of them actually, they're
now waiting to board this bus. I've talked to several
(18:21):
of them from Peru, from India, from Colombia. The group
from Peru told me they are here to work. They
are going to Atlanta and Minneapolis to see if we
can talk to some of them real quick. Old espanon
the so Ecuadora. Don't us in New York going to
New York. They're don the so On, They're on the
(18:42):
so Costa Rica. Don't they have us in Los Atlanta.
Speaker 5 (18:47):
New Jersey?
Speaker 7 (18:48):
Don't the New Jersey, New Jersey. Don't they've us in Chicago? Chicago, Colombia, Columbia, Kerebaja, no,
no I see they yet they say they want asylum,
they don't want to work, they've done their son. Well,
where are you from?
Speaker 1 (19:08):
Sag Sanag?
Speaker 7 (19:09):
I think Senegal? From Senegal? We saw a lot of
Senegalese in Lukeville, Arizona. Where in the US do you
want to go to? What city?
Speaker 3 (19:18):
Francis France? Frosse France, France speak France.
Speaker 7 (19:23):
Oh he speaks French. I obviously do not speak French.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
The Loogan's lack of language competency isn't the only issue here.
It's a holy ecosystem of media built up of hyuristically
filming migrants without giving them a chance to humanize themselves.
And it's not just a right wing issue.
Speaker 10 (19:37):
This week, each day has been marked by new daily
records of migrants, both crossing the southern border and landing
in custody. The federal government is struggling to keep up.
Three Homeland security official say Customs and Border Protection is
holding about twenty seven thousand migrants and processing facilities as
of yesterday. President Biden spoke with Mexico's president about the
issue earlier today, and NBC News Homeland Security corresponding, Julie
(20:00):
joins me now to dig into this trend. So Julia, first,
just give us some perspective here. How is Customs and
Border Protection operating right now and what are your sources
saying about this historic rise in migrants at the border.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
Well, in some ways, there's actually a small victory here,
is in clay when you look at the fact that
CBP is seeing a record number of migrants, that they've
been at a record high now for three days in
a row. They broke the record of twelve thousand, maintained
that and there are now almost twenty seven thousand migrants
in CBP custody. When we got to just about twenty
thousand and twenty nineteen under the Trump administration, there were
(20:34):
migrants who were there for weeks and couldn't lie down
to sleep because they were so overcrowded. Now, because of
the technology, they're actually able to not even hold people
past seventy two hours and very quickly release them. But
the tragedy comes after that. There are a lot of
migrants who are being released on the streets without being
taken to nonprofits, and some of them don't exactly know
where they're supposed to go, even though CBP does try
(20:55):
to coordinate with the cities where they are released. That's
definitely happening in the Tucson, Arizona area and Eagle Pass, Texas.
Even though they are scrambling as fast as they can
to release migrants, that are still thousands who remain in
the field, a lot of them crowded under a bridge
an Eagle Pass, just waiting for CBP to take them in.
The reason a lot of people can give you different reasons. One,
(21:18):
perhaps Mexico is interdicting as many migrants as they were
earlier in the year. They're now lower on funds because
of these record highs. Another reason, sometimes migrants will say
that they're worried about a future Republican administration or a
future Trump administration that might be harder ANDed, so they
think now is the time to come.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
Two minutes into this report and we haven't actually heard
from a single migrant. All we hear is numbers. We
also haven't heard about door detention, which is the time
this was released with at its peak. Again, it's just
numbers and CBP statements.
Speaker 3 (21:48):
I should also.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
Point out that lots of people are held for more
than seventy two hours or three days. The Department of
Homeland Security office who inspected general report published in November
twenty twenty three, month before the new segment that you
just heard, said that fifty six percent of people were
held for longer than that, for some people being held
for more than a month. This information is publicly available
and even had a press release. I found it very quickly,
(22:11):
and they're reported on at the time. But NBC chowse
not to seeing migrants as a quote homeland security issue,
not as people. It's fundamentally the problem, and the way
we fix that is showing up as people to help.
Despite the massive media focus on the border in the
last year, I very rarely see other journalists actually at
the border.
Speaker 3 (22:31):
To give him credit.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
Malgan does sometimes show up, but he doesn't stay long
and he doesn't really have the capacity to interview migrants,
even if you wanted to. The border is vast and
mostly empty. It's a place I've come to know and
come to love, and my time dropping water and recreating
and doing other mutilaid projects out here. Now they have
a better understanding of the journeys people go through to
get here, even more determined to make this small part
(22:54):
of their trip less dangerous, and besides, I get to
see cool rocks.
Speaker 6 (22:58):
Oh say, mister potato here like he's dying off. Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay,
okay okay.
Speaker 3 (23:07):
No, I see that. Well, now you say it like that.
Speaker 6 (23:11):
It looked very yet the eyes are real close to
each other. Yeah, it's a very melting potato.
Speaker 3 (23:19):
Among the cool rocks.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
Last weekend I found a mini mouse doll. It reminded
me of Miami, the little girl i'd met him Baio.
I give my number to hundreds of people before leaving
Panama and heard from dozens, but up until that I
hadn't heard from Miami and her mum. I heard of
people being kidnapped, robbed, raped, and ransomed in Mexico. Some
(23:42):
of them have been caught by authorities and pushed back
to Chiapas, and others have been unable to leave Tapatula
after having all their money stolen. I wanted which if
any of these fates had before been Miami, and if
she was still having a pepper pig adventure. Sadly between
where I met her where I found a mini male,
There's nothing else I can do. They're here in the
(24:03):
mountains outside San Diego, where the wind blows so strong
sometimes you can barely stand up. I can do something
without the ability to do something, something which I know
is meaningful. I don't know how I'd managed to stay
on this beat. It's just too heartbreaking to meet good people,
share meals and laughter, in deep conversations with them, and
(24:24):
then see them fed into a teeth of a machine
that robs, brutalizes, and kills them. So that Joe Biden
can stand on a podium and say that border crossing to.
Speaker 3 (24:30):
Down this month.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
They are down, and that's allowed you due to enforcement
in Mexico. But I want to make sure that everyone
who does cross the border can do so safely and
they don't have to die on US soil after fighting
so hard to make it here. This hasn't been the
case for everyone this year. My friends up and down
the border have carried far too many little memorial crosses
into the mountains. And depending on the election results next week,
(24:53):
what we're doing might be illegal soon, but that'll never
make it wrong. Since early September, nine people have died
in a little part of southern California alone by friends
who searched for them, sometimes found their remains and undertaken
the thankless task of sharing the bad news with their families,
then constructive memorials in their memory. This is just one
of the many dangerous parts of the migration route north,
(25:16):
but it's the one that I can help with. If
you're nearby are visiting for a while. There are several
organizations dropping water on the border. Border Angels, Border Kindness
and Borderlands Relief Collective here in San Diego, Arho Samaritans, Noms,
Motes in Arizona, groups you search and rescue as well. Obviously,
not everyone lives here at the USA is Southern border,
but more than half of the population does live within
(25:37):
one hundred miles of a border. Even if you don't
live in the USA, or maybe you do but you
don't live anywhere near the border, I guarantee there are
migrants in your community. In the last year, I've worked
with migrant welcome committees in Maryland, church groups in the
rural south, Sikhs on the West Coast, occurred on the
East Coast, to name just a few. Without a type
of fanfare, people all over this country are making space
(25:58):
in their homes and their hearts for strangers, feeding them,
housing them, and helping them get set up in a
new place. For the most part, it doesn't get coverage.
Not a democratic administration, it doesn't get much of public
support either, but that doesn't mean it isn't necessary. Aside
from all the reasons it's important, dropping water on the
border is also fun for me. It's helped me learn
(26:18):
more about where I live. I appreciate the desert and
make new friends who generally share my outlook on the world.
I love being outdoors, and I'd be outdoors anyway, but
it's way my hiker is about much more than myself.
Speaker 9 (26:57):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Does that mean when you get somewhere
with signal? Yeah yeah, Please to all of you, please
share it. I'd like to follow your journey if that's okay,
and maybe we can talk again when you're in America. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
I gave my number to hundreds of people in the
dady In as well as some websites they might find useful.
One to NGOs explained the CBP one app are the
ones that might direct them to resources along their route.
Last Sunday night, as I was absent by and least
thrumming through a shotgun reloading manual in my living room,
as I love to do. My phone started buzzing. It's
done this so many times in the last months. Mostly
(27:34):
it's a photo of someone I met updating me on
their journey, or one of the little wooden animals that
they give to children, which has made its way to
Mexico and hopefully giving them some comfort along the way.
Often it's less positive news. Someone's been robbed or simply
run out of money and they need help. But I
got two messages this Sunday which lifted my spirits. Miami
little girl who had an adventure like Pepper Pig in
(27:56):
the jungle, I did you know how I was doing?
And she sent me a photo of the tiny stone
bear that I'd given her. She also wanted to know
if we could still go to see Minnie Mouse, who
she came to America, which I assured her we could.
I think it would be quite apt to visit a
place which bills itself as the happiest place on Earth,
where someone I met in one of the most desperate
parts of the planet. The second message was from one
(28:16):
of the migrants I'd met in the jungle, telling me
she'd made it to America, not just to America, but
to a part of the border where I've been dropping
water with my friends. Just a few weeks before I
left for Panama, she sent me a photo of a
rock with a message on it one way, which I'm
very familiar. She told me about her walk, one which
I've made myself, and she taught me how hard it was.
I said, I knew, but really I don't know, because
(28:38):
I wasn't carrying months of trauma with me on the mountain.
She's the only person out of one hundred son I
met who's made it here. Most of them are in
Mexico now, and most of them will remain there or
maybe get sent back home, or maybe they'll make a
desperate attempt across this week. As you hear this before
the election, it made me so happy to see someone
safely here, one person out of a hundred. For so
(29:01):
many of the migrants I met, America was a dream
and the journey with a nightmare. Since the series began airing,
I've seen videos of people I care about clinging to
freight trains that bruce bodies after being beaten. I've helped
them find healthcare after they were sexually assaulted, and tried
to find room at overcrowded shelters. I've helped trans ladies
navigate all of this and transphobia and misogyny, and tried
(29:23):
to find resources in French and English and Portuguese for
non Spanish speakers. I'd hope that I'd finished this series
with a single good story, a story of someone who
made it, who's living the American dream that people died
for in the jungle. But I can't because even the
people who made it here are here temporarily and broadcasting
anything about their journey would put them at risk whoever
(29:45):
wins the election next week. So instead, I want to
end with how you can make a difference, and I'll
start with a story and how little things can make
big differences. One day in bar Juquito, of sitting around
with a few Venezuelan kids, probably four to eight years old,
ripping pages out of my right in the rain note
book to make paper aeroplanes. Before I interviewed their parents,
(30:05):
I asked him about the jungle. They said it was
scary and they had nightmares. Now, I often find kids
in these places get scared of the dark, and I
used to bring these crappy little electric lights for them,
but they're bulky, and they're not very good. Recently, I've
been carrying the little packets of fishing glow sticks instead.
They gasped about ten bucks for maybe one hundred of
the little green lights. So I poured out my glove sticks,
(30:26):
cut my hands and snapped one. The children remaze of
the little glowing road, so I gave them the rest
of the packet. I told them they could keep them
for any time they were scared of the dark. Nearly
a month later, I sometimes get a message on my
phone with a photo of a little tiny glow stick
on a note of thanks.
Speaker 3 (30:42):
One thing that.
Speaker 2 (30:43):
Father Elia said that really impacted me is that when
he meets migrants, he asked what he sees of God
in them, and his work for them is where he
finds what there is of God and himself. Think I've
struggled so much with this serious impart because I've seen
so much of the best of other people, and indeed
the best of myself into such hard play. I always
struggle a little to readjust after trips like this, but
(31:04):
this one's been particularly hard. In the jungle, I saw
people helping, and in a sense, we were all in
it together. When it rained, we all got wet, and
when it got hot, we all huddled together in the shade.
We shared bottles of water, We sat at the same
tables and ate together. I can't really begin to experience
a full, varily inexperience because I've been lucky enough never
(31:24):
to have anything that bad to run away from. Better
have experienced incredible solidarity and kindness of the people who
went through it. I've also experienced the incredible indifference of
people at home, and indeed of the states and governments
of the world. The Colombian friends I met Las Blancas
and Barbjigito, who are handcuffed and deported and ripped from
their families, have already invited me to come and stay
(31:46):
in their homes in Colombia. But if their families make
it here, they won't encounter that kind of hospitality. Just
last week, I helped to translate for a Venezuelan family
living on the street in San Diego. Some of my
friends do sponsor migrants, and that's something any one can
do if you're able to. It's an incredible thing you
can do to change someone's life, and I can't encourage
you enough to do so. I really do see the
(32:07):
best of myself, of my friends, and of humanity, and
I work to help migrants. I would say that on reflection.
And I wasn't really an anarchist until twenty eighteen, when
I watched a state to the world abandoned thousands of
migros in Tijuana and climbed a fence with my friends
to take care of them, and specifically to distribute three
huge backpacks full of waffles and another friend had sent
from his waffle factory. I'd stopped believing in the benevolence
(32:29):
of the state a long time before, but it wasn't
really until then that I really understood the power of
people organizing horizontally to provide each other with dignity. Ever
since then, I've drawn a lot of hope for humanity
in the same place as I despair for people. Maybe
that's why I keep going back. Since then at the border,
I've seen people die. I've held crying babies and crying parents.
(32:49):
I've also shared meals with people from around the world,
made friends for life, and learned curdish disco songs about
killing people. I've danced around campfires with people I couldn't
imagined meeting. I i' Sparde my own journey here. Last Christmas,
when i'd normally be at the bar with my friends,
I stand the rock in the desert, eating a cold
vegan m Marie with an Ecuadorian family and some of
(33:10):
my friends. And all the Christmases I can remember, I
never felt so much like I was in the right place,
doing the right thing, with the right people.
Speaker 7 (33:19):
What.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
I've seen a lot of terrible things at the border,
in the jungle, and I'll never forget those. More importantly,
I've seen that together we can do incredible things, and
we can make the state irrelevant, especially in the places
it's chosen to be absent. I don't think we should
make demands of a state anymore. It's simply not in
its nature to care. But I do think we should
make demands of ourselves. I don't believe in God, and
(33:40):
I've written a whole dissertation about people who burn churches.
But I think I see something that's just as special
to me in the experience of mutual aid, and in
a way it fulfills not only people's material needs, but
also our human desire for dignity and mutual respect. When
I drop water at the border, or carry someone's bags
in the jungle. I see myself in them, and I
hope they see themselves a little bit of me. But
(34:02):
right now asylum system is so broken the very few
people even make it far enough to drink the water
I leave at the border, And despite the border featuring
heavily in this year's election, there seems to be no
national concern about the way our tax dollars brutalize people
across the continent. So I want to end by asking
you what you can do. It might be coming to
unhere to drop water. It might be sending some money
(34:22):
to one of the links un included the description. It
might be offering to translate for asylum seekers. It might
just be talking to people and helping to change the narrative.
You can vote or not next week, but there isn't
a box you can take that will change the things
I saw in the jungle. Trump wanted to deport millions
more people. Harris wanted to pass a bill that will
kill more people. You can't pass your commitments off to
(34:45):
someone whose box you take every four years. You have
to take them on for yourself. The way we change things,
it's in the way we do things every day every week,
no one's every four years. I want to end with
NOI's mum and her message to the American people. I
also want to ask if anyone of those how to
get cheap tickets to Disneyland, because I have just looked
that up and I cannot stress enough ho but I
(35:06):
am to afford it.
Speaker 11 (35:13):
Please excuse us because we know that we are knocking
on that door. There are a lot of us, but
we are desperate because complaining about the president we have
is not helping us. No, he's doing almost nothing. So
our children have no future and our country won't support us.
It's not easy to leave our parents, our friends, our relatives,
(35:34):
our grandparents, and we do not know if we will
ever return or if we will ever see them again.
It is not easy. But we also think about a
future for our children. And I do not know what
has happened, but we feel like living in a dictatorship.
We are living something very unpleasant and we do not
get any help. But those who help us, we want
(35:54):
to say thank you. They opened that door for us.
They have opened many doors for many ven as wing
so well we hope in faith that they will open
them for us.
Speaker 2 (36:11):
I want to take this opportunity to thank a few
people who made this possible. Firstly, Daddy and use my Fixer.
She was incredible. Secondly, I want to thank iHeart for
paying for this. Like I said, it's been nearly a
decade that I've been asking to do this story and
I'm just really happy that they trusted me to do it. Thirdly,
I want to thank everyone who trusted me with their stories,
(36:35):
everybody who stayed in touch as they've come north. I
want to thank border Kindness and Borderland Relief Collective who
have both welcomed me on their drops. And it's not
always easy to be around a journalist. It's not easy
to let someone record everything you're doing out there and
their inherent risks to that, and I really appreciate them
trusting me. I want to thank Dutch where Hammocks who
rush shipped to me a Hammock when my old one
(36:56):
tour right before I left. And I think most of all,
I want to thank all of you for listening, taking
the time, and all the listeners who have reached out
to say they're listening to the series, people who have
reached out to ask how they can help. I would
love to organize a way to help the people I've
spoken to. I spoke to someone just this morning who's
still stuck in Tapachula because she was robbed and her
(37:17):
and her daughter are five hundred bucks short for the
bus to ride north to Tijuana. I don't have the
capacity to organize that right now, but if someone else does,
they should reach out to me, because I would really
like to help these people who have become my friends
and who I care about, and who are right now
stuck in a very dangerous place because someone in Washington,
(37:39):
DC has made a choice to treat them with cruelty
and not kindness. So if that's you, if you're the
person who's going to minister that, please let me know. Thanks,
and I hope you enjoyed the series.
Speaker 3 (37:50):
It Could Happen 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, podcasts, or wherever.
Speaker 2 (38:01):
You listen to podcasts.
Speaker 3 (38:03):
You can now find sources for It Could Happen Here
listed directly in episode descriptions.
Speaker 2 (38:07):
Thanks for listening.
All the 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.
Speaker 3 (00:18):
I hope you enjoyed the episode, just you.
Speaker 4 (00:30):
Finding yourself there and seeing how the environment looks like
you feel like you should give up. I cried it
grace of work for you to actually stand by and
say no, I'll keep on struggling. A lot of people
who give up, a lot of someone dies. Let it die.
People who were crying. Yeah, yes, we let people swear crying.
(00:51):
They didn't know how they could continue. It's not an
easy situation. It's not really an easy situation. Actually, it's
just the grace of God for us surviving, because I
can't say it's by my strength. It's actually the grace
of God. Because what we actually went through, we met
people living collapsed. We had to help them. You meet
(01:11):
your body, you give a lifting hand. It's not really
an easy thing. It's not something that if we are
fine tomorrow can advise any of our family members to
go through, because it's so that it's risky if your
family member is in there and it's not out. It
takes the grace of God for you to even lie
on your bed and close all your eyes either. Once
(01:31):
I survived, by the grace of God, I almost drowned.
In fact, I was drowning.
Speaker 5 (01:37):
By the grace of God.
Speaker 6 (01:38):
I was rescued.
Speaker 5 (01:40):
Yes, some guys that rescued me. I was already drowned.
I was gone. I was gone.
Speaker 7 (01:46):
I was drinking water.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Very readily all throughout the journey. North Margarets have little
choice but to rely on one another and the solidarity
of strangers. I heard dozens of stories that you've just
heard in my time in the Daddy End. Total strangers
who save each other's lives risk their own in the process.
For vers, it could only be crossed to people from
three different continents joined arms to form a human chain
(02:09):
the children and smaller people could hold on to to
avoid being swept downstream. Not everyone can help. Just surviving
the Dalian takes all of what many people have, But
for the people who are in a position to even
in desperate times, there's mutual support among the migrants.
Speaker 4 (02:24):
Very few people who are ever will help you. They're
very few people. Only people who are time can actually help.
That people will pass you by, and that people if
you have lost your strength, it's not easy for another
person to actually break though. We can really appreciate those
who help, because having your strength is another You must
help yourself before you can help another person, right, so
(02:46):
if you can really have their strength, it will be
difficult for you need to help another. So we don't
really condemn them, but at least we are praying where
we are bleeding on our brothers worst still behind, that
if they meet people, if they have the ability to help,
this should do so. Of course, it's not really uneasy
something give.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
Sometimes reporting on these places compete them as bleak, unwelcoming
or just miserable and certainly very sad. Things happen in
the jungle and in the camps, in human things, But
just like war or a natural disaster, sometimes the horrible
circumstances of the migration trail bring out the best in people.
As I've said before in this series, I'm comfortable in
(03:29):
the refugee camps at least in part because people there
are looking out for one another. Kids don't stop playing
the moment they become refugees, not an adults stop laughing.
In fact, these things become even more important that how
we keep our humanity in a system that's inherently dehumanizing.
And people don't stop organizing or caring about one another either.
It's not just the migrants, of course. One of the
(03:50):
families who've been stuck in Baho Jigito for almost a
month was given some money by a local Sender Front
member to take a bus. In Mexico, those who don't
have enough money to take buses will hop on freight
trains and as they speed through towns and rail yards
at night, local people will throw plastic bags of food, water,
and clothing to them. In Panama City, I visited a
Jesuit run shelter for migrants called Fate.
Speaker 6 (04:14):
Well Numbers. Cordniho is Coordina or the Promotion Social Accompanimento.
Speaker 3 (04:24):
Panama.
Speaker 8 (04:25):
Alberto went down a Darien recently, and we know from
firsthand experience that the difficulty they have is moving. So
some don't go through the stations, but they stay, so
they appear here in the city, and so they arrive here,
(04:46):
and some decide to stay and forego all the difficulty
of moving forward.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
Despite having been set up as a refuge recent changes
to Panamanian law had made that work difficult.
Speaker 8 (04:59):
We had to start that service because the state literally
prohibited us as agencies from providing a shelter, and under
the premise that if we gave them shelter without them
asking for it, they could consider us as human traffickers.
So what we do now is we give them food
(05:20):
and if they decide to stay well, we help them
with certain processes that we can call humanitarian aid for sustainability.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
I've seen a wide variety of faith based aid in
my time at the border. Much of it has been fantastic,
but with more than a decade of refugee camps from
resource pot settings, I've also learned to be a bit
wary of faith based charity. But something Elias said early
in our talk gave me a great deal of respect
for him. It's not justin he said it, but he
took the time to address his comments to me as
(05:51):
a journalist because he saw this as a problem in
part created by the media. Ford it worth. I think
he's right. It's something that as we try and help
my on a difficult journey. We must always keep in
mind he might come from a very different background than
my mutual aid group, but we do seem to share
the same belief in solidarity with the migrants.
Speaker 3 (06:09):
There's a fortunate.
Speaker 5 (06:12):
Unfortunately much of the media narrative.
Speaker 8 (06:15):
What they do is they victimize and ridicule people in
family groups and turn them into pariahs and beggars. Then
that is insulting to the dignity of the person. So
the way they portray migration is shameful in some cases,
and this is very difficult. Well for this, yes, I
(06:35):
think that's very important.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
After this, I figured I address the issue head on.
I'm asking about the many churches in Christians I see
preaching hate against people coming to the southern border of
the US.
Speaker 8 (06:49):
There is a sector in the Catholic Church and the
Evangelical Church that opposes it and is more closely linked,
and they are in fact they are they're benefactors of
Trump's campaign. So this one and this one are there, well, well,
those are like groups that are rejecting, let's say, the
(07:12):
basic principle of the church, which is that we must
welcome migrants and refugees. So they fundamentally reject it. So
they invent all these narratives that Haitians practice voodoo and
they eat pets and this and that or that and
it's shameful mean, or like the Venezuelans, that the majority
(07:36):
of them are from Triande Aragua gang or that they
come from areas that are what you call problematic or chauvannista,
and that.
Speaker 5 (07:45):
They are infuriating or that or that.
Speaker 8 (07:48):
All the same narrative that was created when when the
Maritos left Cuba. And it's not that the Cuban government
is sending all the prisoners on the Mariel boats to.
Speaker 5 (07:59):
Invade the un United States. It's the same narrative.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
Then they asked what he thought of the government's plans
to close the day Enda if they could even do that.
Speaker 8 (08:11):
People ask me, do you think the Darian gap is
going to close and that migration is going to disappear?
And I say, ask the Mexicans and the North Americans
if the Sonara Desert has stopped being a corridor for
people after Trump, Because there was a time when all
the media was focused on the migration that passed through
the Sonara and everything continues to happen, But then it
(08:34):
became invisible and ceased to exist for them. But people
continue to pass through and people continue to die. So
as you say this, this is going to continue. Maybe
not a half a million people, but the flow is
going to continue.
Speaker 5 (08:50):
It's going to continue.
Speaker 8 (08:52):
And then the question we should ask ourselves is what
are we going to do or how are we going
to accompany this flow? How are we going to accompanies
these lives? And in what way can let these people's
lives impact us?
Speaker 2 (09:07):
But like so many of us who work along the board,
he says, he's constantly fighting. It's negative messaging that encourages
people not to follow the natural impulse to help and
take care of one another.
Speaker 8 (09:19):
So it's not a question of how I always say,
and sometimes they tell me, oh that you always speak
so badly of Panama, But it's not speaking badly of Panama.
I love my country and I feel that we in general,
the Panamanian communities are very welcoming and very affectionate with
the migrants. The problem is the narrative that is created
(09:41):
and then it generates to stimuli that end up with
a situation where are not seen so positively. And consequently,
last week we had a meeting perhaps on national reality,
and we touched on the subject of immigrants, and the
first reaction was, no, it's not the state that pays
(10:04):
the fare of the migrants.
Speaker 5 (10:06):
It's not that. I mean, they pay their own fare.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
After a week of my interview requests being declined by
NGOs and government offices, I found my talk with Father
Alias refreshing. It's nice to know that you're not the
only one who sees the system as it is, which
is fundamentally flawed and entirely propped up by misinformation, hatred
and ignorance. But I don't want to get bogged down
on that. Father Alias told me that when he sees migrants,
(10:30):
he sees God in them, and that he experiences his
faith by helping others. My early experienced religion came in
high school from a priest who was a teacher who'd
been part of the anti apartheid movement in South Africa.
I'm not a religious person in myself, but I can
understand how seeing God and other people is not that
far from my own politics. Lifit seeing God and know
the people that in pels people stand up against apartheid
(10:50):
or to dedicate their lives to helping migrants. Then I
respect that. So after we come back, I want to
try and answer the question that pythea Alias ask, what
can you do?
Speaker 3 (11:23):
Ran into them.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
After getting back from the Dad End and hearing the
migrants share their struggles as they waited in Mexico for
an outlest designed to lay and discourage them, I really
struggled to come to terms with everything I'd seen and
was hearing. A bid to plenty of dangerous places, and
seen war, state violence, and terrorism. I know the tragedy
of death and violence, but the slow and deliberate suffering
(11:48):
inflicted on migrants, for people who lied to us every
day on television, is particularly hard to bear for me.
As I mentioned at the start of this series, I
think the grim reality of our migration system. On my
first day in Barjiguito, little girl's head hanging limply from
a makeshift stretcher a strangers carried her into town. It's
also cruel, so deliberate, and so unnecessary, and it felt
(12:10):
so disempowering. But that doesn't mean there's nothing you can do.
It doesn't mean there's nothing I can do.
Speaker 6 (12:17):
All right, Basically, what we're gonna be doing is we're
gonna go this way. I mean, we're gonna start. We're
gona go down into this well, We're gonna go that
way and see where the light break is on the
mid of the hill in between those hills running cut up.
I'm up in that area.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
That's James card Era of Border Kindness, sitting at the
roof of a group of five of us set out
on a water drop in the mountains east of the Cumber.
It's an area called Valley of the Moon, where boulders
the size of trucks stack up against each other, where
people have been crossing the border for decades. This is
a remote area and not unlike the daddy En. Much
of it is nearly impossible to access in a car.
(12:55):
To get water out here, we have to walk. And
if you run out of water or injure yourself, you
can't walk out of here. It's possible you'll die, just
like the migotes do in the jungle. People get robbed here,
just like in the dad Enn And if it wasn't
for the five of us with our backpacks full of water,
people could die of first here just like they do
in the jungle. I thought I was packing water bottles
(13:15):
into my frame pack. I thought about little kids I've
met in Baho Chiquito. This isn't the place for children either,
but over the last eighteen months, I've met hundreds of
them out here. I've given them my jackets and hats,
warmed up milk for babies in my camping stove, and
even wrapped a little girl up in a milar blanket
with me to warm her up last year. Just like
the Dadienne, the suffering here is out of sight and
(13:37):
out of mind for most Americans, and in a year
where we're constantly being told democracies under threat, I think
a bear is mentioning that migrants are treated as humans
without rights even when they're inside this country, and that
their lives are seen as dispensable so long as whoever
is in office can look quote tough on migration and
make TV pundits and big money donuts happy. There weren't
any TV pundits or big money dons on our water
(13:59):
drop a few of us everyday people. Some people come
out here because their family members across the desert. Some
come out because everyone who crosses a desert is part
of our family. Like Bonnio said, in all humans are brothers,
and none of us want our brothers or sisters to
die in their mountains, whatever their passport might say. And
(14:19):
so nearly every weekend, people all along the border load
up heavy bags for supplies. On this drop, each of
us filled our packs with water, cans of tuna, pineapple soup,
some warm clothing, and in this case an audio.
Speaker 6 (14:34):
Recorder recording recording in progress.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
Of course, just gave me an opportunity to discuss my
life's calling. Ensuring the correct fit of backpack harness systems.
Speaker 6 (14:47):
Yeah, you can release those, Yeah, it.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
Just doesn't wrap the cantrap.
Speaker 9 (14:51):
You either haven't drum the weight out or like, please
have adjustable frames so you can make them fit with
those days.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
Bad for that. With everyone suitably adjusted and ergonomically optimized,
we twisted on the audio record as I'd attached the
straps of our packs and set off.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
I just feel bad for you.
Speaker 5 (15:15):
What are.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
From the edge of the dirt road we took our
first steps into the desert.
Speaker 6 (15:23):
The first part is gonna be a little slippery. You
eat shit, It's okay, and don't be embarrassed. It happens.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
This part of the border isn't that far from a
Cumba where this time last year James and I spent
a freezing night trying to keep people alive, running our
camping stoves on full blast, giving away our own jackets
who needed them more than us. At that time, I
just returned from a trip to North and East Syria,
which was stressful in its own way, and seeing both
what people are leaving and how we treat them when
(15:58):
they arrive here really piss me off. A year later,
with bags full of water, JMS and I spoke about
things and how they got so much worse in the
last two years, but press coverage and more importantly, donations
have been way lower. It's same story up and down
the border, record deaths, newer and harder migration routes, different
(16:18):
migration patterns, and the people who cried outside ice detention
centers in Trump's first term cheering for more walls and
bigger DHS budgets. Meanwhile, unlike the Trump era, we don't
have the support of thousands of liberal people in California's
big cities. After the Democrats cynically use migrant suffering in
their twenty twenty campaign, they abandoned them upon acquiring power,
(16:40):
and their supporters have mostly followed them, so that left
five of us this particular morning to load up bags
and do the life saving work of dropping water. On
top of all the state violence, there's been more and
more interference with the water drops, and as we got
further into our route, we made the increasingly calmon discovery
that someone had taken it upon themselves to destroy our supplies.
(17:04):
O smn of ice.
Speaker 3 (17:07):
See that's probably.
Speaker 6 (17:11):
Slash ye sorry by the person's making a smirnoff ice.
Speaker 3 (17:14):
Yeah he's wrong. Yeah, they all lunched motherfuckers.
Speaker 6 (17:20):
I mean, I'm assuming it's a person who brought the
smirnoff ice because it seems like a smirnofvi's activity feed fella. Yeah,
I don't see a VP agent rolling threw with the
smirnoff Iyes.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
This isn't unique to border kindness. Someone has been shooting
supplies left by Borderlands Relief Collective half an hour west
of here recently, up and down the border. The combination
of total liberal inattention and xenophobic right wing hate whipped
up by streamers who I won't name and pseudo journalistic
grifters who I will name, like Bill Maluganlugan, of course,
was previously famous for claiming that the cop had a
(17:52):
tampon dropped in his coffee. In twenty twenty. Spoiler alert
if you're not familiar, this wasn't true. Belugan now works
as a quote unquite border reporter for Fox.
Speaker 7 (18:00):
Danny, Good morning to you. We are in Santa Siegro,
a part of San Diego, right now, where hundreds of
illegal immigrants have just been massed street released from border
patrol custody. This bus you see right here is apparently
an NGO or volunteer organization bus. They've all just gotten
off a border patrol bus. Two of them actually, they're
now waiting to board this bus. I've talked to several
(18:21):
of them from Peru, from India, from Colombia. The group
from Peru told me they are here to work. They
are going to Atlanta and Minneapolis to see if we
can talk to some of them real quick. Old espanon
the so Ecuadora. Don't us in New York going to
New York. They're don the so On, They're on the
(18:42):
so Costa Rica. Don't they have us in Los Atlanta.
Speaker 5 (18:47):
New Jersey?
Speaker 7 (18:48):
Don't the New Jersey, New Jersey. Don't they've us in Chicago? Chicago, Colombia, Columbia, Kerebaja, no,
no I see they yet they say they want asylum,
they don't want to work, they've done their son. Well,
where are you from?
Speaker 1 (19:08):
Sag Sanag?
Speaker 7 (19:09):
I think Senegal? From Senegal? We saw a lot of
Senegalese in Lukeville, Arizona. Where in the US do you
want to go to? What city?
Speaker 3 (19:18):
Francis France? Frosse France, France speak France.
Speaker 7 (19:23):
Oh he speaks French. I obviously do not speak French.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
The Loogan's lack of language competency isn't the only issue here.
It's a holy ecosystem of media built up of hyuristically
filming migrants without giving them a chance to humanize themselves.
And it's not just a right wing issue.
Speaker 10 (19:37):
This week, each day has been marked by new daily
records of migrants, both crossing the southern border and landing
in custody. The federal government is struggling to keep up.
Three Homeland security official say Customs and Border Protection is
holding about twenty seven thousand migrants and processing facilities as
of yesterday. President Biden spoke with Mexico's president about the
issue earlier today, and NBC News Homeland Security corresponding, Julie
(20:00):
joins me now to dig into this trend. So Julia, first,
just give us some perspective here. How is Customs and
Border Protection operating right now and what are your sources
saying about this historic rise in migrants at the border.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
Well, in some ways, there's actually a small victory here,
is in clay when you look at the fact that
CBP is seeing a record number of migrants, that they've
been at a record high now for three days in
a row. They broke the record of twelve thousand, maintained
that and there are now almost twenty seven thousand migrants
in CBP custody. When we got to just about twenty
thousand and twenty nineteen under the Trump administration, there were
(20:34):
migrants who were there for weeks and couldn't lie down
to sleep because they were so overcrowded. Now, because of
the technology, they're actually able to not even hold people
past seventy two hours and very quickly release them. But
the tragedy comes after that. There are a lot of
migrants who are being released on the streets without being
taken to nonprofits, and some of them don't exactly know
where they're supposed to go, even though CBP does try
(20:55):
to coordinate with the cities where they are released. That's
definitely happening in the Tucson, Arizona area and Eagle Pass, Texas.
Even though they are scrambling as fast as they can
to release migrants, that are still thousands who remain in
the field, a lot of them crowded under a bridge
an Eagle Pass, just waiting for CBP to take them in.
The reason a lot of people can give you different reasons. One,
(21:18):
perhaps Mexico is interdicting as many migrants as they were
earlier in the year. They're now lower on funds because
of these record highs. Another reason, sometimes migrants will say
that they're worried about a future Republican administration or a
future Trump administration that might be harder ANDed, so they
think now is the time to come.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
Two minutes into this report and we haven't actually heard
from a single migrant. All we hear is numbers. We
also haven't heard about door detention, which is the time
this was released with at its peak. Again, it's just
numbers and CBP statements.
Speaker 3 (21:48):
I should also.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
Point out that lots of people are held for more
than seventy two hours or three days. The Department of
Homeland Security office who inspected general report published in November
twenty twenty three, month before the new segment that you
just heard, said that fifty six percent of people were
held for longer than that, for some people being held
for more than a month. This information is publicly available
and even had a press release. I found it very quickly,
(22:11):
and they're reported on at the time. But NBC chowse
not to seeing migrants as a quote homeland security issue,
not as people. It's fundamentally the problem, and the way
we fix that is showing up as people to help.
Despite the massive media focus on the border in the
last year, I very rarely see other journalists actually at
the border.
Speaker 3 (22:31):
To give him credit.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
Malgan does sometimes show up, but he doesn't stay long
and he doesn't really have the capacity to interview migrants,
even if you wanted to. The border is vast and
mostly empty. It's a place I've come to know and
come to love, and my time dropping water and recreating
and doing other mutilaid projects out here. Now they have
a better understanding of the journeys people go through to
get here, even more determined to make this small part
(22:54):
of their trip less dangerous, and besides, I get to
see cool rocks.
Speaker 6 (22:58):
Oh say, mister potato here like he's dying off. Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay,
okay okay.
Speaker 3 (23:07):
No, I see that. Well, now you say it like that.
Speaker 6 (23:11):
It looked very yet the eyes are real close to
each other. Yeah, it's a very melting potato.
Speaker 3 (23:19):
Among the cool rocks.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
Last weekend I found a mini mouse doll. It reminded
me of Miami, the little girl i'd met him Baio.
I give my number to hundreds of people before leaving
Panama and heard from dozens, but up until that I
hadn't heard from Miami and her mum. I heard of
people being kidnapped, robbed, raped, and ransomed in Mexico. Some
(23:42):
of them have been caught by authorities and pushed back
to Chiapas, and others have been unable to leave Tapatula
after having all their money stolen. I wanted which if
any of these fates had before been Miami, and if
she was still having a pepper pig adventure. Sadly between
where I met her where I found a mini male,
There's nothing else I can do. They're here in the
(24:03):
mountains outside San Diego, where the wind blows so strong
sometimes you can barely stand up. I can do something
without the ability to do something, something which I know
is meaningful. I don't know how I'd managed to stay
on this beat. It's just too heartbreaking to meet good people,
share meals and laughter, in deep conversations with them, and
(24:24):
then see them fed into a teeth of a machine
that robs, brutalizes, and kills them. So that Joe Biden
can stand on a podium and say that border crossing to.
Speaker 3 (24:30):
Down this month.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
They are down, and that's allowed you due to enforcement
in Mexico. But I want to make sure that everyone
who does cross the border can do so safely and
they don't have to die on US soil after fighting
so hard to make it here. This hasn't been the
case for everyone this year. My friends up and down
the border have carried far too many little memorial crosses
into the mountains. And depending on the election results next week,
(24:53):
what we're doing might be illegal soon, but that'll never
make it wrong. Since early September, nine people have died
in a little part of southern California alone by friends
who searched for them, sometimes found their remains and undertaken
the thankless task of sharing the bad news with their families,
then constructive memorials in their memory. This is just one
of the many dangerous parts of the migration route north,
(25:16):
but it's the one that I can help with. If
you're nearby are visiting for a while. There are several
organizations dropping water on the border. Border Angels, Border Kindness
and Borderlands Relief Collective here in San Diego, Arho Samaritans, Noms,
Motes in Arizona, groups you search and rescue as well. Obviously,
not everyone lives here at the USA is Southern border,
but more than half of the population does live within
(25:37):
one hundred miles of a border. Even if you don't
live in the USA, or maybe you do but you
don't live anywhere near the border, I guarantee there are
migrants in your community. In the last year, I've worked
with migrant welcome committees in Maryland, church groups in the
rural south, Sikhs on the West Coast, occurred on the
East Coast, to name just a few. Without a type
of fanfare, people all over this country are making space
(25:58):
in their homes and their hearts for strangers, feeding them,
housing them, and helping them get set up in a
new place. For the most part, it doesn't get coverage.
Not a democratic administration, it doesn't get much of public
support either, but that doesn't mean it isn't necessary. Aside
from all the reasons it's important, dropping water on the
border is also fun for me. It's helped me learn
(26:18):
more about where I live. I appreciate the desert and
make new friends who generally share my outlook on the world.
I love being outdoors, and I'd be outdoors anyway, but
it's way my hiker is about much more than myself.
Speaker 9 (26:57):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Does that mean when you get somewhere
with signal? Yeah yeah, Please to all of you, please
share it. I'd like to follow your journey if that's okay,
and maybe we can talk again when you're in America. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
I gave my number to hundreds of people in the
dady In as well as some websites they might find useful.
One to NGOs explained the CBP one app are the
ones that might direct them to resources along their route.
Last Sunday night, as I was absent by and least
thrumming through a shotgun reloading manual in my living room,
as I love to do. My phone started buzzing. It's
done this so many times in the last months. Mostly
(27:34):
it's a photo of someone I met updating me on
their journey, or one of the little wooden animals that
they give to children, which has made its way to
Mexico and hopefully giving them some comfort along the way.
Often it's less positive news. Someone's been robbed or simply
run out of money and they need help. But I
got two messages this Sunday which lifted my spirits. Miami
little girl who had an adventure like Pepper Pig in
(27:56):
the jungle, I did you know how I was doing?
And she sent me a photo of the tiny stone
bear that I'd given her. She also wanted to know
if we could still go to see Minnie Mouse, who
she came to America, which I assured her we could.
I think it would be quite apt to visit a
place which bills itself as the happiest place on Earth,
where someone I met in one of the most desperate
parts of the planet. The second message was from one
(28:16):
of the migrants I'd met in the jungle, telling me
she'd made it to America, not just to America, but
to a part of the border where I've been dropping
water with my friends. Just a few weeks before I
left for Panama, she sent me a photo of a
rock with a message on it one way, which I'm
very familiar. She told me about her walk, one which
I've made myself, and she taught me how hard it was.
I said, I knew, but really I don't know, because
(28:38):
I wasn't carrying months of trauma with me on the mountain.
She's the only person out of one hundred son I
met who's made it here. Most of them are in
Mexico now, and most of them will remain there or
maybe get sent back home, or maybe they'll make a
desperate attempt across this week. As you hear this before
the election, it made me so happy to see someone
safely here, one person out of a hundred. For so
(29:01):
many of the migrants I met, America was a dream
and the journey with a nightmare. Since the series began airing,
I've seen videos of people I care about clinging to
freight trains that bruce bodies after being beaten. I've helped
them find healthcare after they were sexually assaulted, and tried
to find room at overcrowded shelters. I've helped trans ladies
navigate all of this and transphobia and misogyny, and tried
(29:23):
to find resources in French and English and Portuguese for
non Spanish speakers. I'd hope that I'd finished this series
with a single good story, a story of someone who
made it, who's living the American dream that people died
for in the jungle. But I can't because even the
people who made it here are here temporarily and broadcasting
anything about their journey would put them at risk whoever
(29:45):
wins the election next week. So instead, I want to
end with how you can make a difference, and I'll
start with a story and how little things can make
big differences. One day in bar Juquito, of sitting around
with a few Venezuelan kids, probably four to eight years old,
ripping pages out of my right in the rain note
book to make paper aeroplanes. Before I interviewed their parents,
(30:05):
I asked him about the jungle. They said it was
scary and they had nightmares. Now, I often find kids
in these places get scared of the dark, and I
used to bring these crappy little electric lights for them,
but they're bulky, and they're not very good. Recently, I've
been carrying the little packets of fishing glow sticks instead.
They gasped about ten bucks for maybe one hundred of
the little green lights. So I poured out my glove sticks,
(30:26):
cut my hands and snapped one. The children remaze of
the little glowing road, so I gave them the rest
of the packet. I told them they could keep them
for any time they were scared of the dark. Nearly
a month later, I sometimes get a message on my
phone with a photo of a little tiny glow stick
on a note of thanks.
Speaker 3 (30:42):
One thing that.
Speaker 2 (30:43):
Father Elia said that really impacted me is that when
he meets migrants, he asked what he sees of God
in them, and his work for them is where he
finds what there is of God and himself. Think I've
struggled so much with this serious impart because I've seen
so much of the best of other people, and indeed
the best of myself into such hard play. I always
struggle a little to readjust after trips like this, but
(31:04):
this one's been particularly hard. In the jungle, I saw
people helping, and in a sense, we were all in
it together. When it rained, we all got wet, and
when it got hot, we all huddled together in the shade.
We shared bottles of water, We sat at the same
tables and ate together. I can't really begin to experience
a full, varily inexperience because I've been lucky enough never
(31:24):
to have anything that bad to run away from. Better
have experienced incredible solidarity and kindness of the people who
went through it. I've also experienced the incredible indifference of
people at home, and indeed of the states and governments
of the world. The Colombian friends I met Las Blancas
and Barbjigito, who are handcuffed and deported and ripped from
their families, have already invited me to come and stay
(31:46):
in their homes in Colombia. But if their families make
it here, they won't encounter that kind of hospitality. Just
last week, I helped to translate for a Venezuelan family
living on the street in San Diego. Some of my
friends do sponsor migrants, and that's something any one can
do if you're able to. It's an incredible thing you
can do to change someone's life, and I can't encourage
you enough to do so. I really do see the
(32:07):
best of myself, of my friends, and of humanity, and
I work to help migrants. I would say that on reflection.
And I wasn't really an anarchist until twenty eighteen, when
I watched a state to the world abandoned thousands of
migros in Tijuana and climbed a fence with my friends
to take care of them, and specifically to distribute three
huge backpacks full of waffles and another friend had sent
from his waffle factory. I'd stopped believing in the benevolence
(32:29):
of the state a long time before, but it wasn't
really until then that I really understood the power of
people organizing horizontally to provide each other with dignity. Ever
since then, I've drawn a lot of hope for humanity
in the same place as I despair for people. Maybe
that's why I keep going back. Since then at the border,
I've seen people die. I've held crying babies and crying parents.
(32:49):
I've also shared meals with people from around the world,
made friends for life, and learned curdish disco songs about
killing people. I've danced around campfires with people I couldn't
imagined meeting. I i' Sparde my own journey here. Last Christmas,
when i'd normally be at the bar with my friends,
I stand the rock in the desert, eating a cold
vegan m Marie with an Ecuadorian family and some of
(33:10):
my friends. And all the Christmases I can remember, I
never felt so much like I was in the right place,
doing the right thing, with the right people.
Speaker 7 (33:19):
What.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
I've seen a lot of terrible things at the border,
in the jungle, and I'll never forget those. More importantly,
I've seen that together we can do incredible things, and
we can make the state irrelevant, especially in the places
it's chosen to be absent. I don't think we should
make demands of a state anymore. It's simply not in
its nature to care. But I do think we should
make demands of ourselves. I don't believe in God, and
(33:40):
I've written a whole dissertation about people who burn churches.
But I think I see something that's just as special
to me in the experience of mutual aid, and in
a way it fulfills not only people's material needs, but
also our human desire for dignity and mutual respect. When
I drop water at the border, or carry someone's bags
in the jungle. I see myself in them, and I
hope they see themselves a little bit of me. But
(34:02):
right now asylum system is so broken the very few
people even make it far enough to drink the water
I leave at the border, And despite the border featuring
heavily in this year's election, there seems to be no
national concern about the way our tax dollars brutalize people
across the continent. So I want to end by asking
you what you can do. It might be coming to
unhere to drop water. It might be sending some money
(34:22):
to one of the links un included the description. It
might be offering to translate for asylum seekers. It might
just be talking to people and helping to change the narrative.
You can vote or not next week, but there isn't
a box you can take that will change the things
I saw in the jungle. Trump wanted to deport millions
more people. Harris wanted to pass a bill that will
kill more people. You can't pass your commitments off to
(34:45):
someone whose box you take every four years. You have
to take them on for yourself. The way we change things,
it's in the way we do things every day every week,
no one's every four years. I want to end with
NOI's mum and her message to the American people. I
also want to ask if anyone of those how to
get cheap tickets to Disneyland, because I have just looked
that up and I cannot stress enough ho but I
(35:06):
am to afford it.
Speaker 11 (35:13):
Please excuse us because we know that we are knocking
on that door. There are a lot of us, but
we are desperate because complaining about the president we have
is not helping us. No, he's doing almost nothing. So
our children have no future and our country won't support us.
It's not easy to leave our parents, our friends, our relatives,
(35:34):
our grandparents, and we do not know if we will
ever return or if we will ever see them again.
It is not easy. But we also think about a
future for our children. And I do not know what
has happened, but we feel like living in a dictatorship.
We are living something very unpleasant and we do not
get any help. But those who help us, we want
(35:54):
to say thank you. They opened that door for us.
They have opened many doors for many ven as wing
so well we hope in faith that they will open
them for us.
Speaker 2 (36:11):
I want to take this opportunity to thank a few
people who made this possible. Firstly, Daddy and use my Fixer.
She was incredible. Secondly, I want to thank iHeart for
paying for this. Like I said, it's been nearly a
decade that I've been asking to do this story and
I'm just really happy that they trusted me to do it. Thirdly,
I want to thank everyone who trusted me with their stories,
(36:35):
everybody who stayed in touch as they've come north. I
want to thank border Kindness and Borderland Relief Collective who
have both welcomed me on their drops. And it's not
always easy to be around a journalist. It's not easy
to let someone record everything you're doing out there and
their inherent risks to that, and I really appreciate them
trusting me. I want to thank Dutch where Hammocks who
rush shipped to me a Hammock when my old one
(36:56):
tour right before I left. And I think most of all,
I want to thank all of you for listening, taking
the time, and all the listeners who have reached out
to say they're listening to the series, people who have
reached out to ask how they can help. I would
love to organize a way to help the people I've
spoken to. I spoke to someone just this morning who's
still stuck in Tapachula because she was robbed and her
(37:17):
and her daughter are five hundred bucks short for the
bus to ride north to Tijuana. I don't have the
capacity to organize that right now, but if someone else does,
they should reach out to me, because I would really
like to help these people who have become my friends
and who I care about, and who are right now
stuck in a very dangerous place because someone in Washington,
(37:39):
DC has made a choice to treat them with cruelty
and not kindness. So if that's you, if you're the
person who's going to minister that, please let me know. Thanks,
and I hope you enjoyed the series.
Speaker 3 (37:50):
It Could Happen 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, podcasts, or wherever.
Speaker 2 (38:01):
You listen to podcasts.
Speaker 3 (38:03):
You can now find sources for It Could Happen Here
listed directly in episode descriptions.
Speaker 2 (38:07):
Thanks for listening.
It Could Happen Here News
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Robert Evans
Garrison Davis
James Stout
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