Factually! with Adam Conover - Why is Border Patrol Exempt from the Fourth Amendment? with Todd Miller

Episode Date: February 24, 2021

No feature of the American landscape is more absurd than the border. It cuts across natural landscapes, is highly militarized, and possesses the largest law enforcement agency in America. Why? Journalist and Author Todd Miller joins Adam to explain why the heck Border Patrol got involved with the BLM protests last June, what “check point trauma” means, and why we need to build solidarity, rather than division with the people who share the continent with us. Todd Miller’s book - Build Bridges Not Walls - is out at the end of March, and can be pre-ordered at citylights.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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So if all of that sounds good, if you want a big box of delicious snacks like this for yourself, use the code factually for $15 off your first order at Bokksu.com. That's code factually for $15 off your first order on Bokksu.com. I don't know the way. I don't know what to think. I don't know what to say. Yeah, but that's all right. Yeah, that's okay. I don't know anything. Hello, everyone. Welcome to Factually. I'm Adam Conover. You know, as Americans, we treasure our constitutional rights. We know that the government can't do anything to interfere with our religion or how we choose to express it. We know that if a soldier wants to quarter themselves in our goddamn attic, we can tell him to buzz off. And we know that we have the right to freedom of speech, to protest for whatever the heck it is we believe,

to sound off in the comments around this great land. We know about these rights. And we also believe that the government can't take our stuff or rifle through it without a warrant. That's the Fourth Amendment, which protects us against unreasonable searches and seizures. It's in the Constitution, and we believe that it applies to all of us. Well, I've got some unfortunate news for you. If you're one of the nearly two-thirds of Americans who lives within 100 miles of a border, that Fourth Amendment is kinda, well, not something that totally applies to you because courts have ruled

that if you are a reasonable distance from the U.S. border, federal law says that Customs and Border Patrol can board buses and boats to demand people show their immigration documents. They can search your property without a warrant. Basically, the Fourth Amendment doesn't apply to them. And that reasonable distance ends up being about 100 miles, 100 miles from the border. You know what's included within 100 miles of the border? Many of the largest cities in America, like New York and Los Angeles and even Chicago. That's right.

It's in the Midwest, but it's 100 miles from the border. And the southern dangle state of Florida exists entirely within that 100 mile border band. That means that every single person in Florida does not have Fourth Amendment rights when it comes to Customs and Border Patrol. And it's not like there are just a few Customs and Border Patrol agents. The CPB is one of the largest law enforcement agencies on the planet. There are more Border Patrol agents than FBI agents. Their agency has grown massively in recent decades, and the border that they now, quote, protect has been increasingly militarized

over that time. Our border is now traced by walls, surveilled by cameras and drones, and patrolled by tens of thousands of agents. So here's the question. Why is the border, out of everything in America, so important that it requires us to relinquish our rights and embrace a permanent state of militarized vigilance. What exactly is going on here? I mean, the truth about our border, like all national borders, is that it's fictional. It doesn't exist. It wasn't laid down by whatever deity created North America. We just slapped some lines down in the middle of the desert and said,

that side's America and that side's Mexico, ignoring the fact that a big chunk of the land once was Mexico. And before that, it was something else. And way into the future, it'll be something else again. It cuts across geographical features like aquifers, watersheds and animal habitats and natural migration patterns, doing incredible damage in the process. And despite our militarized border, despite all of the time and money and infrastructure and lives that we are pouring into this artificial barrier, people are still crossing. When you think about it, the border is one of the most bizarre features of the American landscape. We spend massive resources and empower a huge law

enforcement agency to violate the Constitution in order to enforce a boundary that is inherently imaginary. I mean, I don't care what you think. You got to admit that is weird. Well, to break down exactly how weird it is and to give us a firsthand account of his decades of reporting on the border and the conflicts and contradictions that he has seen there. Our guest today is journalist Todd Miller. His most recent book is called Build Bridges, Not Walls. He is a fantastic guest. I really hope you enjoy him. Please welcome Todd Miller. Todd, thank you so much for being here. It is great to be here. Thank you, Adam. Last saw you on an episode of Adam Ruins Everything called Adam Ruins a Murder, where you were on to talk about Border Patrol, about America's borders. Let's get into it. I mean, the Border Patrol is one of the most massive and powerful yet poorly understood

institutions in American law enforcement. What do most people not realize about it? Jeez, where do we start with the Border Patrol? Well, one thing is just their exponential expansion. If you look at the in the last 20 to 25 years, for example, in the mid 1990s, there were 4000 Border Patrol agents, there were 4,000 Border Patrol agents, and now there's 21,000 Border Patrol agents. In 1995, there was a Customs and Border Protection, which is the parent agency of the Border Patrol. Now there's a CBP. CBP contains the Border Patrol, but it also has a special forces unit. It also has what they call field operations. It has a number of different components to it, and it's the largest federal law enforcement agency at 60,000. And so

we're looking at, you know, just this very dramatic expansion of Border Patrol agents, if you just want to take that statistic alone over the last, you know, in a very short amount of time, because the Border Patrol themselves formed in 1924. It was 1920. So from 1924 to 1994, there was basically a group from maybe 500 agents to 4000. And then it went from 4,000 to 21,000 now. Now, the reason to look at this expansion of the Border Patrol is they don't only work on the actual border. Yeah. So you have the international boundary line. If you look at the international boundary line with Mexico, it's about 2,000 miles long. But when you think of the border, you actually have to imagine something much bigger than that.

They work in what is known as a 100-mile zone, 100-mile jurisdiction. So it's probably better to imagine a band that goes along the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border, but also up the coast, and then also along the 5,000-mile Canadian border, and then also down the eastern seaboard, right? And so that... So you go along the entire border of the country in 100 miles. So like 100 miles east of Santa Monica, which is the, you know, western city here where I live um a hundred miles east of san francisco a hundred miles east of portland oregon a hundred miles south of milwaukee or a hundred miles north of el paso like a hundred miles west of new york city like in a band around you once you start

picturing that that seems like kind of most of the country or at least a huge amount of the country, maybe a third. That's a huge area. It's a gigantic area. If you look at the U.S. population, it's two thirds of the U.S. population. Approximately 200 million people live in that border jurisdiction. I'm like picturing that's like all of Florida, right? It's like it is. Yeah, it's Florida. If you're in Florida, you're an entire you're in. You live on the border zone and the Border Patrol has jurisdiction over where you live

and the state of Maine. Many people don't know that, but the state of Maine is completely in the border zone. Yeah, it's not something that you often think about people in Maine sitting on their porches, chomping on a corncob pipe and sitting on the border. It's not like what we picture. And the Border Patrol has special powers in this zone. That is correct. Yeah. So that's one of the main things to think about when you are looking at this zone.

The zone that the at first the ACLU ran a report, the American Civil Liberties Union ran a report on on this border zone. And they first called it a constitution free zone. They since it's important to mention that they since revised that to say, you know say people absolutely do have constitutional rights in these border zones, but it's Border Patrol, they have the right to search or seize you. In other words, your Fourth Amendment protection not to be searched nor seized is mangled or it's suspended. As I sit right now here in Los Angeles, I am inside this zone. And you're saying that vis-a-vis the Border Patrol, I actually don't have Fourth Amendment rights. The Border Patrol could come into my house, search and seize my belongings and even myself, which I would believe is unconstitutional. But I actually do not – I'm not protected by the Fourth Amendment from the Border Patrol. We're in this very room.

Right. It seems quite improbable, right? Yeah, what the fuck, Todd? What's... Okay, let's think of it this way. Well, first it's reasonable. They have reasonable suspicion, right? So that's not probable cause. It's reasonable suspicion. So if an agent saw you

walking down the street and saw something that gave the agent agent through the agent's criteria, reasonable suspicion, and they were doing a roving patrol, you know, in the neighborhoods in Los Angeles. And they and yeah, they could come in to your house. And I think actually they wouldn't. In this case, there are rules around going into dwellings like but even those rules are are mangled, I should say, because because they're not they have to have a warrant to go into to a dwelling. within 25 miles of the board so there's a hundred mile zone but then there's a sub zone of 25 miles and then that 25 mile zone they they border patrol can go onto private property they just can't go into a dwelling but they do they are they do they're always people like on the people are talking about what they call home invasions constantly or border patrol goes into their

house they're looking for somebody but to go back to your example of the LA, one thing that I should mention, so people wouldn't think that this is so, I mean, it's very unlikely, but is it? So remember in the summer when there were protests every night, Black Lives Matter protests in Portland. And all of a sudden it was reported that BORTAC, and BORTAC is a special forces unit of the Border Patrol, were on the streets of Portland and they were snatching up activists and putting them into unmarked vehicles and then driving them off. That is an example of a hundred mile zone, all of a sudden expanding into another region where you wouldn't necessarily think the border patrol would operate. And then not even, not patrolling the border per se, but using their special constitutionally mangled powers or extra constitutional powers to then, you know, just arrest people and drive

them off in unmarked vehicles. And so where do these extra constitutional powers come from? I mean, there must be some like the you know, the police can't do this. The FBI can't do this. But there's some legal framework under which the border patrol in this zone has special powers. Where do they come from? So they come from, I believe it was a, there's a couple of rulings that happened in the 1940s and 1950s. One, I believe it was coming out of one of the first immigration laws that border patrols, it stated that border patrol could patrol what they called a reasonable distance from the border. And then that reasonable distance was declared to be in a 1950s ruling, 100 miles. And so that came during a time

when this is why the expansion to 21,000, that CBP at 60,000 agents is such a big deal. At that time, we're talking about 200, 300 agents. We're not talking about this gigantic, the largest federal law enforcement agency in the United States. Yeah, this is literally like guys at toll booths at that point. Like just sort of, I assume much, I don't know what they were doing but they were like yeah they're they're fucking guarding the border they're not like roaming around in vans yeah not necessarily they're not uh i remember like i i go and uh interview people on the tonautom nation which is just south of where i live in tucson uh which is it's the in terms of yeah it's like the second

largest indigenous uh reservation native american reservation in the united states and it's and it's the in terms of yeah it's like the second largest indigenous uh reservation native american reservation in the united states and it's and it's the people have been bisected by the border but they talk about um you know even before 1990 or before 1995 they hardly ever saw the border patrol except for this one guy who would show up every once in a while and who was kind of nice. That's how they describe it. And then he would, you know, he might hang out in a house for a little bit and then he'd go away. So it's changed pretty drastically. So I don't want to, there are things about the border patrol in the past that are very, you know, they, that doesn't mean that there haven't been like massive abuses done by the border patrol.

I mean, the border patrol were rounding up Japanese and Japanese Americans and putting them in internment camps. They were, you know, rounding up Mexican and Mexican Americans in the 1930s and deporting them. And they did these massive deportation raids and operations like in the 1950s. So I don't want to totally, you know, you know, you know, wash over that. But but it's but this but the expansion of it within the 100 mile zones has turned what was a rather small agency into this gigantic force with all these budgets behind it. So they had two to 300 agents. Then there was a ruling that said they had much larger jurisdiction. And then that, what did that cause the agency to expand? Hey, now that we have larger jurisdiction, let's get more agents and go further inland.

Is that what happened or? Eventually. At first it didn't. They didn't, they were just, They didn't expand hardly at all. They were just growing slowly but surely. They probably were very close to the border, you know, sticking close to the border at that point. They do do checkpoints. put up these checkpoints really permanent checkpoints yeah where traffic has to stop and then you get interrogated by an agent and they determine whether you can go on or not just like the adam and ruth adam ruins everything episode right yeah this has become a real flash point in the southwest right that that the border patrol will set up a checkpoint that's between two american cities like not not you know on a route coming from the border or anything like that just

like hey somewhere in arizona on a regular old highway we got a checkpoint stuff and we're going to stop everybody and ask for what id or what are you doing or can i pop the trunk and and stuff like that and like to a lot of amer, we've been brought up to say, at least white Americans, we've been brought up to say, well, this is unconstitutional. Hold on a second. You can't fucking do this. And then, of course, for non-white Americans,

it's like an incredibly potent opportunity for discrimination. Yeah, exactly. And it's true. In Arizona, the checkpoints tend to be from the south north. So anytime you're any paved road going north from the border, you're going through a second border. You're going through the checkpoints. But there's the one I'm thinking of that really fits what you describe. And there's several of these is the one between Las Cruces. And if you know the Interstate 10 and you go through Las Cruces, New Mexico,

coming from El Paso, you're going on the East-West Highway, right? The I-10. And then you go through a Border Patrol checkpoint and there it is, you know, on this East-West route. And yeah, all of them. So what the deal is, you pull up. If you're a U.S. citizen,

technically you don't have to show identification. That's one of the technicalities. So they're supposed to ask you your citizenship. But while they're asking your citizenship, they'll do a quick visual inspection. And then we go back to that reasonable suspicion criteria. And within that reasonable suspicion criteria is racial profiling. Of course. Now, and they even, when it was, I think it was in the 2015 or 2014, when the Obama administration

was trying to get like racial profiling, you know, trying to extricate it from all the different departments. And they went to the Department of Homeland Security and an official from the Department of Homeland Security, and I'm paraphrasing, but this is quoted in a New York Times article. He said, we depend on what he said, ethnic profiling. So in other words, they admit it, right? They admit that they do racial profiling at these checkpoints, that it's part of their reasonable suspicion criteria. And if, so what happens, you go through, there's a visual inspection. If they deem you, if they deem something about you suspicious, then you're put into secondary inspection. And I've talked to agents about this. They will look at, you know, do you only have one key on your key ring? Are both your

hands on the steering wheel? Like, what do you, they look at everything. They try to like, it's almost, you know, and then, and then secondary inspection is really where a lot can happen, including, you know, you'll get interrogated, questioned. They'll take you out of your car. They'll search your entire car from head to toe. They'll tear apart your seats. They'll make you sit on the ground. They might even handcuff you. I've heard horrific stories.

I've heard of people being sat on the ground with children with their hands behind their back. And one person saying, I don't, you know, we have children here. We're in the hot sun. It's a summer in Arizona. And that caused the agents to come, like pull out a baton, like they were going to hit.

You know, there's stories of these sorts of things happening in these checkpoints, especially when people get pulled over. And these are people, again, traveling on a public road in the United States. That's all they're doing. Traveling on a public road in the United States. And does this happen to American citizens as well? I mean, it's bad enough for it to happen to non-American citizens.

But we have this classification in America where we say, I'm an American citizen and this can't happen to me. And I think that's a little honestly restrictive. I think we should extend empathy and rights to non-American citizens as well when they're in America. There's many non-American citizens who are important to this country. I don't know. It's a basic – you have human rights whether or not you're an American citizen. But it's I think we have an understanding of the egregiousness even more when it's happening to to American citizens. Yeah, I would even say in the checkpoints, like non-citizens or people that don't have papers at

all, avoid the checkpoints. They don't go through the checkpoints. It's part of the scheme that makes people walk around them and go through the desert and that sort of thing. And so when, like the example I just gave, was an American citizen. He's also a citizen of the Taunot Nation. So in the Taunot,

again, that's the Native American reservation right on the border. Every paved road out of the nation um has a border patrol checkpoint so it's almost like a second layer of border but you know the people that live on the on the reservation are u.s citizens and they come so they're on a paved road going driving they have to stop at a checkpoint and the the incident i just i just mentioned was was you know one of many that this person, I interviewed him, the person that told me this, and he, like, gave testimony to a number of different incidents that he's had. But it's really typical for people on the Taunton Nation to have some sort of what they call, what many people call traumatic episodes at the checkpoint.

In fact, one person even has coined a term called checkpoint trauma. So even approaching the checkpoint because something's happened in the past or because you've heard of so many people with so many incidents, you start to like get nervous. Of course, well, if you're sitting on the ground with your hands cuffed behind your back, you know, in the hot sun with your kids, it happens once. And you're just trying to leave your fucking house to get to work or go to the next, go to the city to see a movie or whatever. And that happens to you. Yeah, you're going to, your heart's going to pound the next time you pull through there.

Absolutely, that would happen. And this, I don't know. I mean, I did a whole episode of TV about this and just talking to you about it. I'm still flabbergasted that this happens in America. I mean, like our cultural understanding of what, you know, a fascist country looks like of Nazi Germany. What's one of the main images we have? It's, you know, the, the, the jack booted, like government agent bending down to your window and saying,

eat a paper, a bit, and like your papers, please. And then you're terrified. You pull out your papers and I, Oh, I hope they accept them,

you know, and all that. And that's like, that is what we picture as being un-American as being the thing that we defeated in world War II. That's in America. We're all about freedom. That's one of the basic things of freedom is the free ability to move about your own fucking country.

And we're doing it here in the U.S. Am I not right about that? What the fuck? I'm sorry. I'm getting mad. I don't want to get mad on this show, but I am getting mad. Yeah, that's exactly what happened. And when you're talking, it reminded me of this episode that happened with Senator, Senior Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont.

Wow. And he was driving. And so this goes to show you it's not just the southern border. He's driving in the state of New York. He says he was 125 miles. And he gave testimony to Congress about this. He was 125 miles away from the border. So he's not even, he's outside of the 100-mile zone.

So that goes to show you that maybe the 100-mile zone is, he's kind of near Syracuse, I believe, or Syracuse, New York, or somewhere around there. And he's driving, and there's a Border Patrol checkpoint. And he's surprised. And he even has a license plate to say he's a senator. And they pull him over. And according to Leahy's testimony, the agent asked him to get out of his car.

And then I have to paraphrase. I'm sorry. I wish I used to have this totally memorized. But he said, he said, under whose orders? And then the agent pointed to the gun on his hip and this and he said that's this no under whose authority and the agent pointed to the gun on his on his hip and he said this is the only authority i need and that and that was to patrick lahey right wow a fucking senator right a white senator right uh so yeah it fits your description i mean my god at the very least that's not that also shows a problem of the culture of the border patrol that an officer would even say that i mean civilian control of law enforcement in the military is like supposed to be a pretty high value in american society and for a law enforcement official to say or think that that should be

society and for a law enforcement official to say or think that that should be anathema it's like under whose authority well i should you know i was given an order by a lawful authority that's how authority is supposed to work it's not supposed to be i have a gun so i can do whatever the hell i want i i think that's also un-american yeah and it seems like that's, or, I mean, with a border patrol, I would say there's, there's both elements of both, right. It is at the end of the day, it's a command, top-down command structure. They get their, their orders from department of homeland security. Like even if you look at how checkpoints are put up or taken down in the state of New York, that they, the fact that it's even there in the first place comes from a top-down order. But then you have these incidents, and this isn't the only one. There's so many of them

where there's an abuse of authority or pointing to my gun or worse, right? Like the whole incident with pulling out the baton or macing somebody or or pulling them out of their car or, you know, tailgating them and spotlighting cars or, you know, pulling over people. And, you know, there's so many stories of which many people would be would consider abuse. Right. Even rights violations. would consider abuse, right? Even rights violations. I want to find out how they ended up. I want to ask you in a second about how they ended up in Portland, pulling people into vans. But before that, I just want to talk about one more border issue. Another one that a lot of people have encountered is when you're crossing the border, how you apparently have no rights over

your personal privacy. There's stories of, you know, people's phones getting taken. I've seen, and this is like, you know, to show you how big this problem is, in the tech press for white-collar tech workers, there's all these guides about how to protect your phone from the border patrol to use a password instead of your fingerprint because they can force you to use your finger, but they can't force you to divulge a password.

And the problem is people have corporate secrets, personal information you know nd aid stuff on their phones that they literally can't have other people going going through and so it's become a problem for like google employees like how do i get across the border without having my shit taken um i can only imagine how bad of a problem it is for people who are at the other end of the privilege spectrum i mean mean, tell me about that piece of it. Yeah, that piece of it's becoming a bigger and bigger and bigger deal. When you look at the stats of electronic devices, phones, computers,

that have been confiscated by the Border Patrol, or CBP, I should say, usually, because you're usually coming through a port of entry of some sort. The numbers have just been growing and growing and growing and growing and growing over the years. And there was a case, the ACLU brought this to, I think, I can't remember what court, but there was a case on it. And the court ruled against the ACLU. They ruled in favor of CBP in saying that they could confiscate devices. I mean, I did a profile on a student at McGill University in Montreal who came across. He would cross back and forth to go visit his parents in New York City. uh he would cross back and forth to go visit his parents in new york city and um and one time he was he was a middle eastern studies major i believe so he had pictures and he had some pictures of from travels he got he'd taken to the middle east and i think he had a picture of i can't remember

of what stored on his computer like something Hezbollah or something like that. But just like a picture of somebody like a dude, you know, I can't remember. It was like an innocuous picture of some sort, but that very picture caused the agent to then take him. He was on an Amtrak train. They took him off the train.

They put him in, they put, they detained him for hours. Then they confiscated his computer. And then when they let him go, they put, they detained him for hours. Then they confiscated his computer. And then when they let him go, they, they, they didn't give him back his computer. Then his computer was sent to him 15 days later. And it was obviously, they'd obviously busted into it. And, and, and, and he then talked about like, there was a trauma after that.

Right. And he then talked about like there was a trauma after that, right? And the trauma never really went or didn't go away for years because every time he crossed the border after that, he went into secondary questioning and they had to search through his stuff and they would look through his electronic devices. So once it happens one time, then it's like you're set. It's going to happen to you a zillion times until the algorithm stops. And this is an American citizen, I assume.

You said parents in New York. Yeah, I think he was dual French, but U.S. French. Dual. Student of Middle Eastern studies was flagged for secondary screening because he had a picture of Middle East, even if it's a picture of a Hezbollah bombing taking place. If you're a student of Middle Eastern studies, it's okay for you to have a picture of that.

What the hell? I mean, I'm sorry. I should know by now better than to say it's un-American because the truth is stories like this, our history is full of them, but it's contrary to our professed values and to our image of ourselves as a country. And again, this is something that you, you know, your, your laptop is confiscated because of photos on it. That sounds like something from an authoritarian country on the other side of the world it certainly does yeah it definitely does yeah and then there's the stories of um and on the on the on the border between michigan and ontario detroit particularly

port huron um they were uh all of a sudden there was a number of cases of people muslims that were crossing from one side to the other. U.S. citizens, they go to Canada and come back, who are then being systemically harassed by Customs and Border Protection. I did interview somebody in this sort of situation. In this case, he had a grueling story. I haven't—this was from years ago, so I have to remember. He had a grueling story. I haven't, this was from years ago, so I have to remember, but, but he, they went, they went to a conference, I think in Toronto from Port Huron.

It was a conference during like the, I think it was right at Christmas, like December 25th, but it was a conference, you know, that they went to and then they came back and, and there was all of a sudden he looked out his window the car window and there's all these cbp agents with like uh machine guns like surrounding their car and they were all brought in and they were interrogated and they were asked all kinds of questions or asked questions about where they went to what they were doing there um what plans did they have, all these things. And at one point, I can't remember exactly, but they put him in a position that was akin to torture.

Like they made him stand and he made him like... In a stress position. In a stress position as part of the interrogation. And this is Customs and Border Protection. This is going across the border. And that was just one case of, I think, dozens and dozens of cases of U.S. citizens who are Muslim that were going across the Canadian border there, but coming back and facing this sort of discrimination. Well, and so how does so that's all bad enough. How does this how does the Border Patrol, how does the agency end up pulling people into vans in Portland? That doesn't seem to have anything to do with the border. That doesn't seem to that. That's if you want to take the most unfavorable view towards those protests, you'd say that civil unrest, which to me sounds like, I don't know, the National Guard or something. How does that's what is normally called out for those things.

How does the Border Patrol end up doing that? Right. So one, again, looks the 100 mile zone. Exactly. So they can they have jurisdiction that can be there. It's part of the border. You know, Portland, what is it, 60 miles, 70 miles from the coast or something like that. So it's technically in the 100 mile zone.

I think the actual international border is 12 miles out to sea. So it's barely in it, but it's there. So there's that. And then, but Border Patrol and in particular BORTAC. So BORTAC is the name of the unit that was in Portland. Why did tactical things have the stupidest names? BORTAC is the name of the unit that was important. Why did tactical things have the stupidest names? BORTAC. Because tactical's in it, we got to make it this dumbass acronym thing?

Sorry, go on. Yes. I would agree with your assessment. But yes, so BORTAC is there. And they're usually, you know borta i don't know if you've been following the nomer no more deaths as a humanitarian organization that you know provides clinics for people crossing the border puts out water provides humanitarian aid because people are crossing through the desert well they've been raided by border patrol. Like their, their camps have been raided by border patrol now like at least five,

four or five times in the last three or four years. And that's usually BORTAC, right? They're the, they're the, you know, they're the, they're kind of like the, what is the word? Like their special forces, the SWAT team, they come in and do these sort of operations. They also do international trainings, but we can talk about that later if you want. But so they're the ones that deployed. They're part, it's not just Border Patrol.

They're a part of a joint task force. So the federal government sent in a joint task force. So there's other like armed agencies, other forces from DHS. But BORTAC, you know, what are they doing? They're applying what they've learned about the border, they're border patrol agents. So they're applying all the, you know, they're training from the border. They're bringing the border apparatus, right? Who belongs, who doesn't belong, who can do things, who cannot do things,

who's criminal, who's innocent, all those sorts of mentalities of the training of the border patrol to Portland to a protest, right? even argue if it wasn't in a 100-mile zone, they would still deploy BORTAC and say that. I bet I would, I put money on it that they'd, you know, the 100-mile zone might not even be confining for an operation like that where they were a part of a joint task force. But it wasn't only Portland. They were, Border Patrol was deployed in Washington, D.C. during the Black Lives Matter protests there. So there's pictures of that. You can see in this case, it was more just the green uniformed agents.

They were on the streets of Washington, D.C. It's amazing because I laugh because I see them all the time in Arizona. They're in forced green uniforms. You know, if you see them in Washington, D.C., walking the streets, it's just out of place. Right. And so but there they are. And then after, you know, right after the Ford George Floyd killing and in Minneapolis, um, this isn't Bortech,

but CBP sent their drones over Minneapolis directly after the George Floyd Floyd killing in like early June. And they were doing surveillance operations as part of, so those are just three examples, recent examples of how, you know, this expand. It's like there's a border and all this this kind of suspended constitution and, you know, these violations. And then it just expands. Right.

It goes everywhere. It's almost like the border becomes a proving ground. And what causes this expansion? And we got to take a break in a second, but I just want to understand this piece of it. What causes this expansion? And also what to me seems like lawlessness, like, you know, an agent saying this is all the authority I need or, you know, ununiformed agents and unmarked vans just picking people up. I'm like, well, hold on a second. Like, I don't think that other agencies do.

I don't think the Secret Service is going around hustling people to unmarked vans. They all wear suits and they take their orders from the president. You know what I mean? And they do with counterfeiting or whatever. It's like pretty strict about like what it is that they do. But the Border Patrol, you're just constantly hearing stories where you're like, I don't think that's what that border patrol is for.

And I don't think it's legal for that. What's going on? You know, like what is causing this sort of explosion in mandate and jurisdiction and dodgy behavior? Yeah, I mean, in a way that that sort of behavior is what they do.

I mean, on the borderlands, when they come across a group of unauthorized people crossing the border, they snatch them up and put them up into vans and detain them and pretty much disappear them at times, right? That's what they do. So they just bring that, what they're already doing, into other places. And then this sort of extra constitutional powers they have, they're not like, again, they're not confined to the Constitution. I remember I talked to, I interviewed somebody in that CBP headquarters in Washington, D.C. And we got onto this topic.

And he said, and he started talking about the Fourth Amendment. And he told me precisely, exactly, we are exempt from the Fourth Amendment. Exempt from, I mean, it's not even the Fourth Amendment, even there's mangled or it's kind of worked sometimes. He said, we're exempt from it. It's already been shown that. And so there's this idea that they can do things that other agencies cannot do. Todd, this is very bad for the largest law enforcement agency in the country to say we as an entire agency are exempt from the Fourth Amendment, which is the amendment against unlawful search and seizure. Correct? Yes, yes, yes, yes. That's bad for the largest law enforcement agency in the country

to believe that about that, about itself and for it to be true to an extent. Yeah, it's both right. It's I, you know, until that, and in this case, I was talking to, you know, I was, I was interviewing an official from CBP in their Washington, D.C. headquarters, who was not an agent. He was, he was dressed in a suit and tie and talking to me, and he told me that, right? So it's definitely a part of their just fundamental belief of the core of the system. And then it is, it is played out every day, right? You could say, oh, it's rogue, but is it, right?

Or is it just following how it's been established? And you go back to the racial profiling, like we're exempt from that too. We're exempt from the Fourth Amendment. We're exempt from any racial profiling regulations. We're exempt from everything until you're pulling people off the fourth amendment. We're exempt from any racial profiling regulations. We're exempt, exempt from everything until you're pulling people off the streets everywhere. You're right. I guess my idea of like, oh, this must be them going rogue. How is this possible? If that's the way it's set up, that's what it's for. Um, my God. Okay. We have to take a break.

When we get back, I want to ask you about why we have a border in the first place and your other work reporting on the border. We'll be right back with more Todd Miller. OK, we're back with Todd Miller. Okay, we're back with Todd Miller. That was just an epic first half we had about the Border Patrol, but you've been reporting about the border for 20 years. You have a new book, Out or Coming Out. Coming Out. And you're starting to ask yourself the question, my understanding is, of why we even have a border when the effects of it are so dire.

Can you tell me about that a little bit? Yeah, I mean, it's, it really, the book, the new book starts out when I was driving in the borderlands, actually in the Tonautum Nation, about 20 miles, 10, 15, 20 miles north of the border. And I was driving down this dirt road. Um, and I just came from a mountaintop and this mountaintop was, it was one of those like beautiful views and you're so close to the border, but all of a sudden you just couldn't see the border. The border was just non-existent from the, from this vantage point. So I'm coming down this mountain, having this wow um feeling and then i'm driving down this dirt road and all of a sudden a person came came out of the desert so i'm driving through the sonoran desert people who are familiar with the sonoran desert and others it's like very hot it's in the it's

in the summertime september um and uh there's saguaro cactus, barrel cactus, mesquite all around. And a person comes onto the road, and I immediately stop. And I give him a glass of water, so I start talking to him. And it turns out he's from Guatemala. He had crossed the border. Well, he didn't tell me that, but I surmised that. And I asked him if he wanted anything else, if he needed anything else. And he was clearly, you know, in a state of, he looked like he'd been walking through the desert for a while.

And he was definitely thirsty because he chugged down the water really quickly. And he said, can you give me a ride? Right? And I had to hesitate. I had to sit there. I had to hesitate. And in this hesitation came this, this book, like here, here comes a person who's asking for a ride. In any case, you know, of course, you're going to give somebody who's, who looks like they're about to die of thirst a ride. Yeah. somebody who looks like they're about to die of thirst, a ride. And I knew at the same time I was in this border zone, the one that we just described, the one that's just filled with Border Patrol agents. Those 21,000 agents are all around.

They have drones. They can be watching from the sky. They have surveillance towers that that um can have cameras that can see seven miles away they have motion sensors they have the helicopters they in the motion sensors if you step on on one of them go in a command center command center will will you know get their angle their cameras to where you are so I knew I was in this like huge surveillance apparatus right in the middle of it, even though it was at the same time, it just, I was out in the middle of the desert. Um, and I had to think that I had to think all these things because, because if I were to

give him a ride, then from this place to another place, it would be a felony. If they caught me, it would be a felony. So, yeah. And so one of the rule, like I can give them a glass, you know, according to the humanitarian aid kind of setup, you can give a person food, you can give them water. But if you further their presence in the United States, you're doing an act of smuggling. Thus, you are, you know, it's a felony.

And so I had to think that. And so this new book is almost like, wow, like the act of just an act of what you would do for anyone at any time, like give them a ride, to simply give them a ride is criminalized, right? And how on earth can that be so? just looking at borders. And in the sense, in this book, I have several other books that are really, you know, straight, more straightforward journalism, looking at border issues from different perspectives. But this one is more like looking over 20 years of reporting, 20 years of talking to people, 20 years of looking at borders, 20 years of studying them, reading books about them, talking to experts about them and all this stuff. And just really coming to a realization that this is at best an absurdity, right? It's why do we even have, you know, the serious question of why they even exist to begin with.

I mean, I go into that. I don't know if I want to go into that quite yet, but the whole idea of why they exist, you know, really became a fundamental question of this reporting, in this new book. Yeah. I mean, it's a difficult question to answer. Why do borders exist? I mean, they's a difficult question to answer. Why do borders exist? I mean,

they're a fiction, right? I mean, our nations that we have are structures of the human mind. You know, they're not based on geographical features for the most part. They're completely impermanent. Many borders around the world, you can't even tell where they are. It's not agreed upon where the border is. You know, if you look at the average map, a good number of those lines that have been drawn were made up by cartographers. And, you know, it doesn't actually exist. If you look at, for instance, the recent, you know, conflict in near Armenia is a very good example of that, where these two countries are like, you know, fighting over who controls this piece of land. And yeah, what is the, what purpose do they serve? Is a difficult, more difficult question to answer

than you might think at first. Yeah, it certainly is and you think about um this like the u.s mexico border for example i mean it's it's really the result of a bloody war um the u.s the the mexican-american war in the mid 19th century um when you when you look at mex Mexican history books, it's called the Yankee invasion, right? It's like the invade,

like Mexican territory was invaded by the United States and taken over. But then when you look at indigenous peoples that live here, it's like, all of it was just like the new Spain was imposed upon it. And then the United States. And it's interesting when you go back to the border border in arizona like the surveyors the cartographers the soldiers just showed up and started drawing it without consulting like the tonauts and people for example they weren't consulted at all they just showed they just showed up and started drawing the border or like the continent of Africa, the 1883 Berlin Conference, European powers basically sliced up Africa into the shapes of the countries that they are right now.

And they cut through, just like the U.S.-Mexico border, because if you look at the Tona-Atom, there's Tona-Atom on the U.S. side, Tona-Atom on the Mexican side. There was no consideration. There was a common language, common traditions, you know, common people in the same, like I would have been recently to Southern Kenya or not recently before the pandemic, of course, but, uh, the, the Maasai people in Southern Kenya, the, the line drawn by Europeans in Berlin cut right through, you know, cut through their territory. One part's Kenya and one part of the Maasai live in Tanzania. And so they're not able to organize together in the country, right? It's like a divide and conquer. And there's a lot of colonial roots, like a colonialism is very much attached to this,

to these formations of borders. And there's one academic that calls it the violent, wait, no, gosh, I can't remember. Sorry. I'm going to have to think of an academic term and I can't remember it. But it's something about the violence of origins, right? Most borders started with some sort of violence and then there's a politics of forgetting. And then you're supposed to forget that violence ever happened. So you forget it and the border just becomes as natural as a river or a mountain range. It's just there, right? A map will be color-coded so you see the world in these color codes of these shapes, and you forget where the great mountain ranges of the world are,

the rivers and the natural borders that you would have. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You forget about the, yeah, those man-made lines become more important than the watersheds and the rivers and the,

the actual natural features that, that were there originally and are still there and are still, you know, determining so much of where we, you know, what characterizes where we live. But I mean, by imposing those borders, we also reshape the country and our ideas about those borders reshape those areas. I mean, the fact that our southern border is so militarized

and the northern border is less militarized, i'm sure it's militarized to some extent but not nearly the same extent means that it has dramatic effects on the lives of people living in those places you know someone living in i i was struck by when i found out that uh yeah i was always aware that for instance people went you know go back and forth between canada and the u.s you know for business you know If you're living up in the Great Lakes region or Maine or somewhere like that, it's just part of life. Canada's right there and you go there. You have business exchanges and stuff like that. And I never thought of the southern border in the same way.

And then I read some piece somewhere years ago about how there are people in the El Paso region who commute from La Ciudad Juarez. Right. Am I correct? That's the that's the Mexican counterpart to El Paso. El Paso is a split city. It's like the twin cities, but half of it's in the U.S. and half of it's in Mexico. And there are people who commute every single day across the border, just like you might commute from the suburbs or you might commute from Minneapolis to St. Paul. There are people who do the same commute, except they're commuting across the most militarized border and it takes them hours. And that's that starts to seem absurd when you look at when you look at it that way. you look at when you look at it that way yeah that's exactly um in fact i uh a job i had um a decade ago i was as i worked with a binational organization and i would commute to nogales mexico every day not every day but several times a week um and then same exact thing You'd have to wait in these long lines and hours at times to, you know, to get back. You'd have to plan. You start to have to plan for it. You're like, oh, what should be, you know, 30 minutes now is three hours. Right. And you just it just becomes part of how you plan your day. Right. And you just it just becomes part of how you plan your day.

Oh, if you cross the border, then you're going to have to allow. Oh, I can't I can't cross the border today because I have to get back for this at this time. Right. And you have all you just have to put that as part of your psychological psychology and the planning. And at some point you have to ask, what purpose is this serving? You know, I mean, all of this, you know, militarization and prevention of people crossing the border. I mean, people do cross the border still, despite all this in large numbers. They come across on planes, on boats. They come across through the desert. Despite the largest law enforcement apparatus in the country.

And, you know, now we've got, got half-completed walls all over the place, we've got drones, like you said, you were driving through, and it felt like there were Border Patrol agents all around you, and still people are crossing, but just now at great misery, at great humanitarian cost, at a great cost of loss of life, of huge expenditure of resources, it does make you ask, what is the point of militarizing the border in this? I mean, sure, draw a line on the ground, but why make it impermeable? Yeah, one thing I always,

or I thought about, I kind of thought about in this new book is the border is always drawn for the people, the poorest people, the people who are dispossessed. Like the mining company from the United States that goes to Zacatecas in Mexico and takes over a whole community and uses their water supply and drops cyanide in it. There's no checkpoint for them. There's no agent stopping that company's executives saying, hold on a second. Yeah, nothing. Nothing like that. No, they're flying over 35,000 feet over the border and arriving with no problems. There's no ICE agents rounding them up and detaining them in detention centers. There's no deportation apparatus for them.

And also for U.S. military that's crossing borders all over the world. And the countries don't have any say about that or greenhouse gas emissions. Like when you compare the United States to like Central American countries, if you take the United States has emitted like 700 times more emissions than greenhouse gas emissions than El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras combined. And right now, when you're looking at Honduras, if people have been following the caravans that have been coming from Central America, like there's an 8,000 person caravan coming from Honduras. And it turns out that many people in that caravan have been displaced by the hurricanes. There's back-to-back hurricanes that hit, Category 4 hurricanes that intensified over warm, absurdly warm Caribbean waters. They went from a tropical depression to a Category 4 really quickly, and they pounded Nicaragua and Honduras.

And of course, climate scientists say that's a part of the climate crisis, right? The intensifying storms. And now people's houses are flooded in all these communities and they're in this and then they're in this caravan and they're heading north. And so you but like you look at the greenhouse gas emissions from the United States across borders and affect people in other places all the time compared to like those in Honduras, which is just like a fraction. It's our greenhouse gas emissions that are causing hurricanes to become more extreme and more frequent. Right, exactly.

And then you start thinking, whoa, if what is this border? Like, what questions are we at? What questions are officials asking to put this border or to militarize this border? Right. What are like, are they you're trying to stop displaced people? I mean, are you, so you put up a border? Like, if you look, like some of the research I did for one of my books was looking into climate change and finding out there's all kinds of documents,

of course, in the Pentagon, but also in DHS, which is following the Pentagon's lead, about the future, about people being displaced due to climate, about, you know, what is the answer to that? And then when you look at the DHS documents, it's building more walls. That's what they say, preparing for mass migrations. So you have the question, the problems, right? People being displaced, people being on the move. And you'd think, well, the solution to this would be to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, maybe. Or maybe it would be not having the mining company going and poisoning people's waters, or not sending toxic waste to the community in San Luis Potosi,

or not sending toxic waste to the community in San Luis Potosi, or not having the other mining company want to dig under a community's cemetery for silver, like they were trying to do in this community in Honduras. And people actually sat in their cemeteries, in the cemetery where their ancestors, where their grandparents are buried, saying, you're not going to let you come in here and dig underneath us. Like maybe the questions that we need to ask, you know, are other, you know, that if we're going to like have a solution for a world where less people have to be displaced and be on the move. But it seems like there's only one question being asked and that's, oh, how do we stop people from crossing our border? one question being asked and that's, oh, how do we stop people from crossing our border? And then the only answer becomes building walls, building surveillance, putting more agents. And I mean, the militarization of the border has even meant, even if you want to adopt the point of view that, hey, we can't let people willy nilly into the country and we need to have control over it and da da da, you know dah, you know, we, we can talk about

how impossible it is to immigrate into the country legally and, and all those sorts of things. And I could make the argument that, oh, you know, people who cross the border are an asset to America rather. We can have that whole argument that we've, that we've had before. That's being had, someone's having that argument on CNBC right now, you know. But even if I were to adopt the point of view that said, OK, we want to control who comes through the border, the fact is that the militarization of the border has been counterproductive to that goal. We had Douglas Massey on our show a number of years ago who does field research on who crosses the border and who has crossed the border since I think the 70s. He's been going down and doing field research on who crosses the border and who has crossed the border since I think the 70s.

He's been going down and doing field research, just counting people, interviewing them, doing basic field research. And he found that as the border got more militarized, basically, and I'm sorry, you know all this stuff and you tell me if I'm wrong. No, you're right. But that, you know, the in the southwest agriculture for the entire history of the country had been migrant labor, had been people coming across from Mexico. They work the fields from growing season, then they go back home. That was like the fucking system, you know, and that's how we built the country. We built it that way. Then in the sort of Reagan years, we started militarizing that border saying you can't come across the border anymore. And so instead, those people started coming across. And since they could no longer move freely back and forth, they came

across and they put down roots. They said, well, now that I can't go across back and forth and I got to scramble over a fence or like through the desert or whatever. Well, now when I get to Phoenix or wherever it is I am, I'm going to I'm going to hang out and like, you know, raise my kids here because I can't go back and visit my kids back over in Mexico. And that if you are someone who hates people from Mexico being in America, well, you just made your problem worse. You didn't you didn't solve anything by by increasing by increasing that border presence. I'm sorry, but your racism actually made more people who you're racist against live in America. So you fucked up.

Am I right about this? I mean, this is the story that we heard from Douglas Massey. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's that's totally true. Like people, you know, it's so hard and so dangerous to cross the border. And, you know, you end up going through the desert. You go and maybe so many people have died crossing the border. There's been more than 8000 bodies that have been recovered since the 1990s. That, yeah, I mean, who wants to do that again?

Who wants, you know, and and and so it's, you know i've unfortunately you end up talking to people who just don't feel like they can go visit family and and sometimes people will do that you know if if a loved one like a parent dies they'll go oh then they'll go back for a funeral and then they have have to i've met people crossing the border who've done that but then they have to they have to come all the way back through the desert, risk their lives to get back. And so, yeah, that's that's the effect. That's one of the effects the militarized border has. That's for sure.

What if you had the power, if Todd Miller could completely you could do whatever you want with the border, you know what I mean? Like, what's a better world for us to live in when it comes to the border? Like, if we were able to think about it differently and have it mean something else, what could it mean instead? And what benefits would we see as a result? I mean, I think we have, I mean, when you think of the 21st century and the problems and and what's coming down the pipe um and you could even put it in the context of the pandemic that's happening right now uh or climate change climate climate like people are saying you think this pandemic is bad well that's just like the appetizer for what's what's being predicted

as far as the climate crisis that's going to hit thisizer for what's what's being predicted as far as the climate crisis that's going to hit this planet more it's already hitting this planet right we can talk about what's going on in texas right now or yeah you know any number of things any at any time right um but uh but um like when you think about the the threat like when you have the borders the way they are, what is being told to us as the threat is somebody coming across from another place across that wall. Oh, on the other side of those train tracks, that person's going to come and get you, right? That's what you're told. You're constantly told. It's not, it's definitely not creating a solidarious world, right?

It's not, it's creating a world of divisions, us versus them. It's creating a world where people are not cooperating. They're not able, they're not able to, to organize together in ways that we need to. We need, like, when you think of just displacement alone, displacement is predicted to be, there's places that are predicting a billion people to be displaced by 2100. Like this idea that a world on the move, you know, with sea level rise alone, I think, you know, whole coastal cities are supposed, they're going to become uninhabitable and people

are going to have to move from one place to another and livelihoods are going to be lost. It's kind of like what you're seeing in Honduras right now with people coming north. are going to be lost. It's kind of like what you're seeing in Honduras right now with people coming north. The number of unlivably hot days where you live is going to rise like the number of days where being outside could kill you in Tucson is going to go up, up, up, up, up, and people are going to have to leave. Yeah, this last summer was the worst ever in Tucson. It was 106, This last summer was the worst ever in Tucson. It was 106, 100 degree days. And the average in Tucson is 62.

So it's almost double what I would say was the average. I'm sure the average is going to grow now. But yeah, I mean, we're looking at a crisis that really knows no borders. And it's really going to take a global effort, you know, to figure out what to do. And there's some things that are already in place. There's going to be pretty massive displacement. And this idea of dividing into sections where some people are allowed and some people are not, some people are included and some people are not along racial divisions, right? Because you look at those borders and they're often these racial divisions um some people even use the term global apartheid to refer to refer to this world of of a globalized militarized borders that that you see between the global north and the global south where people are

being displaced and um you can see it in the european union and middle east and africa right people coming coming coming into the european union they're doing the same thing fortress europe is called right mediterranean people boats capsizing in the mediterranean like people dying in our our deserts and um this is like wrong right this is what we have to like the the world that is forcing us to think of of contemplating doing things differently. And and that, I think, might mean organizing ourselves differently. It's like there's so many things like the pandemic right now needs a global response, like all the talk about the strains now. You know, it doesn't even matter. Like you could, they could go completely away in the United States, but if there's a strain coming from wherever, right.

Then it's a global problem, right. It's just the borders don't stop it. It's a global problem. So, so it takes like, it takes thinking about things differently, thinking about things not confined to these places. And then on top of that, the United States, European Union, Australia, the kind of power centers and how did they become such wealthy places? And why is the world, why is there endemic inequality in the world? Why, you know, why in some places you can, like why in here, in Tucson, in the minimum wage here sucks, right?

But I can earn $7.25 an hour, which would seem like a lot in Nogales, which is an average line worker in a maquila for a U.S. corporation, would make, like, 30 minutes from my house. Just because of a line yeah you know and it seems like those that's what the border the borders are organizing ourselves into a stratification of inequality of who's accepted and who's not and it's it's inadequate to answer are the problems i hand in the globe to answer like what what's coming, the real threats. And it seems like it's about time or it's either going we if we don't do it, it's going to be forced to really think about organizing things and doing things differently. organization would be, you know, and the the nationalists, the fascist nationalists, you know, what do they hate? They hate the globalists. Right. That's the big that's their big curse word. That's their big slur. These people are globalists. And, you know, I'd say I don't love the globalists either. But who are we talking about? You know, who what is our previous vision

that we've had of open borders? right? It's the corporate vision. It's the Thomas Friedman vision. It's the IMF and the World Bank. It's the moving capital freely from country to country. It's letting Facebook and Amazon and Exxon do whatever they want, right, in any country. That's been the vision of it. And there is a word that you said earlier. You said solidarity between people of these countries. And I feel like that's a different version. Global solidarity is a much stronger vision because fuck what the corporations and the wealthy people at Davos and, you know, and in Dubai want to do. The people at the top of the Burj in Dubai, not the people working, cleaning the rooms. You know, we should have solidarity with those people. We should have solidarity with the people in the factories in Mexico that you're talking

about. We should have like, like what we need is the knowledge that like, okay, my, my wealth as an American, my, uh, is, is built on emissions that are causing hurricanes that are displacing people in Honduras. And I therefore have a responsibility to them they have a responsibility to me because we exist on the same fucking continent you know we're part of the same we're part of the same system um and then we have that in common and we need to to have some some solidarity together with each other as people as working, as citizens of the continent,

and then expanding that out to the world. So I don't know. That's what's sort of coming to me is like, because I don't think that, you know, again, when we say open borders, we think about, you know, the policies of the 90s that sort of brought us to this place and the early 2000s, and those don't seem appealing, but I think there's an alternate vision

that you're helping bring into focus for me. Yeah, I totally, that's, I think that's it. Like when you look at, you know, those policies of like North American Free Trade Agreement, NAFTA, which is basically an open borders policy. It was written by 500 corporations, right? There wasn't like civil society organizations invited to be a part of this. There wasn't like people who are going to be most affected by NAFTA, small farmers organizations in Mexico. Many like there's like a million small farmers displaced within two two years of NAFTA in Mexico because they couldn't compete with the U.S. companies. two years of NAFTA in Mexico because they couldn't compete with the U.S. companies.

They weren't invited. They weren't invited to the table. So it's not a solidarious version of open borders. It's open borders for certain people, certain companies, um, you know, that, you know, Archer Daniel Midland can transport its corn across into Mexico without any, you know, red tape. But the small farmer in Mexico can no longer compete. And so and so like what that is not an answer to the problems we have at hand that's causing the problems. Right. That's that. I don't know if that's what's meant by globalists. Right. But that's that's that's what's, you know, that's a globalist is a slur. I mean, that's all that's all it is. But there is that. What is the connotation? It's the it's what you're talking about. It's the it's the wealthy, you know, exporting jobs because they can, you know, pay people less over there.

But that's not the kind of open border that we want. We want you know, we want to have a solidarity with the people, with our neighbors, with the people who we share this planet with. Exactly. Why can't, I mean, I do, but why is it an impediment for me to go across Nogales and meet with people and organize with those people and understand we live in the same place, right? Where I'm in Tucson, they're in Nogales. We're in the same region. We're in the same place. You know, why can't we, I mean, we're, we're co-creating a place together in a lot of ways,

but yet there's this big, huge um the border wall and now it's like wrapped with razor wire it's even more visually appealing and with cameras mounted and border patrol agents and and when you try to go to the border wall and talk to people across it they'll go what are you doing what are you are you trying to pass strings across the border you know so you're it's just why is it so hard you know why is it so hard to do that solidarius come together um and and and on top of that when it does happen it's amazing right like there's some there's some ecological projects by national projects that are like conserving water in a drought-prone Arizona, where water tables are rising during a drought, which is totally impossible. But here they are,

a cross-border project, people working in Mexico, people working in the United States, because the drought is nailing them both, right? And coming together, like building these gabions, and here and then coming together like building these gabions which which conserve water and they end up both water table rises it doesn't the water table doesn't doesn't look at the border it just rises right it doesn't stop it doesn't go hey there's a border there i shouldn't rise on that side of the border it rises right yeah and it's just like it the border makes no sense right it just in these it just makes no sense at all. It doesn't work for the water table. The water table rises either side.

Yeah, because ultimately we live on the same scrap of land. I mean, yeah, the borders, again, are a fiction that, you know, I mean, occasionally we're able to build some structure there that create, changes the physical landscape in our own puny way. But like, I mean, you know, the rain falls on it and the water flows, you know, to both sides alike. And when we, you know, our, uh, again, our emissions change weather patterns, you know, um, and then that causes, uh, ripple effects that then affect us. And then that causes ripple effects that then affect us. And this is all one system and we can't,

you're, you're completely right. It's impossible to wall ourselves off and pretend like it isn't like what happens in what happens in Mexico, what happens in Brazil, what happens in China happens here. Yeah, exactly. It's,

it's, that's's exactly so this is this is why the name of your book is build bridges not walls that is correct yes well uh uh i'm uh i'm really thrilled to have had you on the show to talk about it and thanks so much for sharing these ideas and these experiences with us um and yeah i mean people get, is the book out now? The book will be out the end of March. People can pre-order at City Lights. City Lights is the publisher. So you can pre-order at City Lights, but it will be out at the end of March.

Wonderful. Todd, thank you so much for coming on the show to talk to us about it. Really appreciate you. It was my pleasure, Adam. Thank you for having me. the show to talk to us about it. Really appreciate you. It was my pleasure, Adam. Thank you for having me. Well, thank you once again to Todd Miller for coming on the show. I hope you enjoyed that conversation as much as I did. His book once again is called Build Bridges, Not Walls, and it will be out soon. And that is it for us this week on Factually. I want to thank our

producers, Kimmy Lucas and Sam Rodman, our engineer, Andrew Carson, the party god, Andrew WK, for our theme song. I got to thank the fine folks at Falcon Northwest for building the incredible custom gaming PC that I'm recording this very episode on. You can find me on social media at Adam Conover or at AdamConover.net. If you have any comments or questions about the show, if you have any topics that you would like to see covered in future episodes, shoot me an email at factually at adamconover.net. I'd love to hear from you. And that is it for this week on Factually. Thank you so much for listening.

We'll see you next time, and please remember to stay curious. That was a HeadGum Podcast.