It Could Happen Here - Addressing the “Border Crisis” Narrative with Al Otro Lado
Episode Date: January 31, 2023James talks with Nicole Ramos of Al Otro Lado about the many barriers people seeking asylum face, and the problems with the “border crisis” framing in legacy media.See omnystudio.com/listener for ...privacy information.
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Hi, and welcome to It Could Happen Here, a podcast which today is only me and my guest,
Nicole. And today we're going to be talking a little bit about immigration, about immigration policy over the last three or four years and
about some of the strange laws that impact it. So Nicole is joining me, she works for
Al Otrolado and Nicole would you like to introduce yourself and explain a little bit about what you do?
Hi my name is Nicole Elizabeth Ramos and I am the director of Al Otrolado's
Border Rights Project, which is based in Tijuana, Mexico. Great. Okay. So I think perhaps to start
off with, you could clue people in on a little bit of what you guys do, because you do some
incredible work. And it's very, very valuable to border communities. And I think a lot of people,
if they don't live in along the border might not
be familiar with it. At El Otorado we provide legal orientation to migrants that are considering
seeking asylum in the U.S. We started off as a project that focused locally on migrants in
Tijuana and over the years we have expanded to serve migrants in Mexicali and then remotely
in other cities along the U.S.-Mexico border, including Reynosa, Matamoros, Juarez, Piedras
Negras, Laredo. And in this legal orientation, we're providing information about what are the
current policies at the moment that will impact their ability to seek asylum in the U.S. or prevent them from doing so?
Or how these policies might be impacting their family composition, so policies that are related to detention or family separation.
we provide legal orientation, we are then identifying asylum seekers that fall into several vulnerability categories to provide additional accompaniment through this process
because the policies are shifting and changing and becoming more restrictive over time. It's very
confusing and cumbersome to weed through all of the fuzz and figure out what you need to do in order to
seek asylum in the U.S. So that's where we come in. And we provide the orientation in multiple
languages. The border is a very diverse place. It is not just Spanish speakers that are coming,
but people that speak Haitian Creole, French, Farsi, indigenous languages, Russian, Ukrainian,
French, Farsi, indigenous languages, Russian, Ukrainian, Turkish, and all of these people need access to information. That's one of the pillars of our program is that migrants have the absolute
right to accurate legal information about the process that they will be entering.
Among the asylum seekers that we work with, we also identify those that are in need of shelter and make referrals for related shelters for medical care.
In some instances, we assist with obtaining medications or obtaining a needed surgery if the migrant does not have access to those resources, helping them obtain access to HIV medication or hormone treatment.
them obtain access to HIV medication or hormone treatment. And of those migrants,
we are also connecting them with other supportive services from our partners that have shelters,
that have programs where they're giving them basic dispenses of food because they are struggling with food insecurity, trying to create as much of a social safety net as
possible because folks are waiting at the border for longer and longer periods of time. The border
used to be a place that people passed through. Maybe they were here for a few days before
ultimately they were able to present themselves at a U.S. port of entry to a U.S. official and enter the asylum process.
However, now we have individuals that have been waiting at the border for years who may not have
work status in Mexico, may not be Spanish speakers, and are really struggling to meet their basic
needs. And so we've had to expand our services from not just legal service provider, provider of legal information, but also providing humanitarian aid so that people can be healthy and as well
as possible while they're waiting. Yeah. And it's incredibly valuable. And it's amazing how you guys
have like can continue to step up and scale up as the federal government has continued to fail people um and
i think if people haven't come to the border they probably won't be aware of like you say that
diversity of people um who come to the u.s mexico border like i remember a couple of years ago i was
working with an aromo translator and we would speak to people who would come from ethiopia
people come from eritrea it's a very of course people from Eritrea. It's a very, of course, people coming from Ukraine now.
It's a very diverse space, which is something that kind of gets collapsed
pretty often in border reporting, I think, like all that diversity
gets collapsed into like just people are lumped together as migrants
or people seeking asylum.
And that's a shame because it's what makes, part of what makes
it so complicated, but also what makes
these border places such kind of interesting and special places and i like what you said about all
the sort of services that are provided as well it's incredible to look at how these services
are provided by a huge broad network of like volunteers of non-profits of ngos as well as some government agencies and how
people have stepped up consistently especially in the last i guess six seven i don't god it did
seem such a long time uh it's like since 2016 2017 how people have stepped up to help each other
along the border so perhaps if we go back you and i were just talking before we started if we go back
to 2018 which people may or may not remember was the midterm and the middle of Donald Trump's presidency.
kind of the center of something of like a and they became i think their their arrival was used by both political parties as part of their sort of midterm messaging um and i think that was maybe
for some people especially if they're younger and had been watching their news a sort of first
introduction to the asylum process so can you explain kind of how asylum is supposed to happen?
And then maybe we can get into some of the weird and bizarre things that have been happening to it in the past three or four years.
Asylum is supposed to be a system that's managed first by government authorities under Title VIII, Section 1225 of the United States Code, a U.S. immigration officer at a port of entry or at any point in between ports of entry, such as Border Patrol,
when they are presented with a person that expresses that they have a fear of return to their home country, that they fear persecution, to refer them along the track to be processed as
an asylum seeker. Now that can mean that that person is still detained for the entirety of
their asylum case and sent to an immigration detention center. That could also mean that
that person is given court paperwork to show up in immigration court at a later date to begin the process of explaining their case
to the immigration court and getting a final decision. Over the years, beginning at the end
of the Obama administration, continuing through the Trump administration, and also continuing even
now into the Biden administration, we have seen policies issued by CBP, which restrict access to the port of entry for asylum seekers.
Initially, it started out in 2016, where the Obama administration came up with a policy called the metering policy, which was known as the waitlist,
policy called the metering policy, which was known as the waitlist, which required at first only Haitian asylum seekers to put their name on a waitlist with Mexican immigration authorities.
And then they would be called in groups to enter the U.S. And that was in response to the exodus
of immigrants that we saw coming from Haiti and through Brazil in 2016. The metering list was
later expanded to apply to all nationalities, including Mexican migrants that were trying to
flee their own country, including those that had legitimate claims for protection of being
persecuted by members of their own government. Everyone had to still get on this list.
by members of their own government, everyone had to still get on this list.
That policy was extended in an ideological framework when the Trump administration came up with a program known as Remain in Mexico, and just building upon that idea that it is
okay to make asylum seekers wait in territory in which they fear persecution, because a
lot of people fear persecution in mexico yeah
um and under the remain in mexico policy also known as the migrant protection protocols mpp
they um we always refer to it as the migrant persecution protocols because it feels
it's extremely orwellian right like people like to use orwellian wrong, but that one's pretty 1984.
Yeah.
This program required asylum seekers that were entered.
They were placed into a program called MPP.
They were given a court date and people were to appear at court in their nearest border city where there was an immigration court at some date in the future.
It could be a few weeks.
It could be several months. It could be a few weeks. It could be several months. It could
be a year. And in between their court hearings, they would be required to remain in Mexico. They
could only go to the port of entry on the date of their court. They would be transported to court
and then transported back to Mexico after their court, leaving people in Mexico in limbo for years.
in Mexico in limbo for years. And then when the pandemic came, we saw the border close entirely under Title 42. The Trump administration billed it as necessary to protect the American public
from migrants that could be carriers of COVID-19. But this is really no different than other
immigration legislation that we've seen throughout history, which tends to paint immigrants as vectors of disease.
And we need to just keep them out at all costs.
And under Title 42, it's just a wall of policy.
People try to present themselves at the port of entry and they're turned away. People enter the U.S. custody and then expelled back to their
country of origin without any opportunity to speak with an asylum officer. Right now,
we have been dealing with Title 42 in a process where a certain number of people are exempted
from this blanket denial every day.
And different ports of entry along the border participate.
Each port of entry has its own cap, numerical cap.
And initially when this program started in May,
the names of people that were being submitted as exemptions,
the asylum seekers names,
were submitted by civil society organizations such as El Otro Lado. El Otro Lado, just this year alone, we've submitted around 11,500,
I'm sorry, in 2022, 11,500 exemption requests. And that was from individuals from 29 different
countries speaking just over 30 different languages.
So now, though, the system has recently changed to a smartphone application known as CBP1,
which requires migrants to download this application to their smartphone, assuming that they have a smartphone, and then complete this lengthy application that requires them to upload a photo for facial recognition software and wait for an appointment
date to be made available. And they have to keep entering the system multiple times until an
appointment date becomes available, waking up every morning at 5.30
for when the new slots are made available at 6 a.m.
And the problem among many problems with this application
is that right now it's only available in Spanish and English.
So if you speak any other language,
you are not able to access it.
And we have, to give you an example,
we have an online survey where people register or try to seek help from us. We have over, since April 21, over 15,000 unique, 50,000 unique responses. Around half of those are from Haitian Creole speakers, cannot access this app to get an appointment. The other issue is that
the facial recognition software that's integrated into the CBP1 app, you know, there's a lot of
studies throughout the years about how this software will lead to false positives or failure
to recognize for individuals that have Afro descendant features or individuals
that have more indigenous features. And we have seen this firsthand. So many of our Haitian
clients are unable to even complete the profile and they are taking photos with cameras that have
a decent lens capacity and they still can't get past the facial recognition software.
Yeah. It's just like a layers on layers of sort of, I don't know.
Sometimes it's just them being like ineffective. Sometimes it just seems cruel.
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Let's go back a little bit to Title 42, because that word's been thrown around a lot right um title 42 isn't an issue it's not immigration law is it it's it's public health law is that right
i guess it's public it's a public health policy that's part of immigration law
yes it's public health policy that's being applied in the immigration context to close the
border yeah and then one thing that i think uh we've seen a lot recently is like uh one of the
worst accounts on twitter which is the border patrol union likes to they do occasionally like
tweet their own losses which is kind of funny um but um they like to throw out these statistics right constantly about
encounters at the border can you explain how under title 42 each encounter might not be a unique
individual yeah absolutely those individuals are over counted because people will make multiple
attempts to try to enter the u.S. because they're so desperate.
It's a dystopian hellscape on this side of the border with people being trafficked, kidnapped for extortion, tortured, raped, murdered, sold.
And so if that were any reasonable person, you would try 10, 15 times, whatever it took to get across to safety.
And the Border Patrol Union is disingenuous because it knows this.
And instead, it pulls out a figure that is much larger than what it represents in actual people.
And they're disingenuous in how they describe it.
Yeah, I think it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see through it.
And of course, when we combine this with
the wall or the
fence or whatever you want to call it,
people are crossing in more remote and more
dangerous areas, which makes the crossing
more risky and results
in a higher incidence of people dying
or hurting themselves trying to cross.
Which, as you say, it's
not a reasonable thing to do
when you're faced with these terrible circumstances.
Yeah, there's a beautiful poem called Home by Warshenshire,
who's a Somali-British poet,
and one of the lines is,
you don't put your child in a boat unless it's safer than the land.
No one would attempt to cross a 30 foot wall or wade the Rio Grande or cross the Arizona desert in the middle of summer.
Unless what was behind them, they were so sure was going to kill them. Raising the height of the wall. To make it harder to cross. And to build as much wall.
Along the places where it would be.
A little bit easier to cross for people.
Making it so the only way to cross.
Is through the most dangerous parts.
That's intentional.
That is.
Designed.
For people to die.
Because the government mistakenly believes.
That if it kills more people
that folks will be deterred but that's um not actually what we see on the ground no and like
it's not a vacuum right people are coming from bad things like making just making the border
difficult one will do nothing more than kill more people which is what they've succeeded in doing sadly and so and then another thing i wanted to get at title 42 with this this crazy series of
court cases around title 42 right so can you explain like uh why title 42 hasn't been repealed
when we've done away with almost every other protection for people in kind of an ongoing pandemic? Title 42 could be repealed if the government was not so intent on fighting the repeal of Title 42.
The ACLU has been in court for the last few. And the judge in that case issued a decision in December
ruling that turning away asylum seekers using Title 42 as a pretext to turn asylum seekers away
was unlawful. However, that decision was stayed. The government requested that the decision be temporarily stayed to give
it time to make operational plans. The ACLU did not oppose that stay. And as a result, during that
time, a group of conservative states filed intervening litigation to make their arguments about how their interests were harmed by the decision.
So now that case is before the Supreme Court, and they will not hear the case until February,
and we could be waiting as long as June for a decision.
Yeah, many of those, lots of those states weren't even along the border, right?
They're some of the ones who sued yeah that's um still a mystery to all of us along the border how interior states
that sure might be receiving people coming from the border but um don't have that close nexus
as in their border community and they're being immediately impacted.
Yeah. Yeah. It was pretty, pretty venal stuff. And the other issue I want to raise for people
is the narrative is that we're in a crisis. The border is in a crisis. There's so many people,
we can't possibly help them all. We closed the border for over two years. So, of course, there's going to be more people because we've made it impossible for people to access.
However, the ports of entry have contingency plans for mass migration events.
This is something that was learned during the context of our litigation against CBP around access to the port of entry.
And we see that the government is capable of responding rapidly in a manner that is consistent with human dignity and how it responded to 30,000 Ukrainians showing up in Tijuana this spring. In some days, CBP accepted as many as
1,000 Ukrainians in a given day, whereas on those days, they were accepting zero of other nationality.
And they were able to get up to speed so quickly because every port of entry has a contingency
plan. We are the United States government. We are arguably one of the most powerful, well-resourced governments on earth.
If you buy the line that this is a crisis and we don't have a contingency plan,
then we've got a lot of work to do here. And so it's a manufactured crisis. We have the resources,
we have the personnel. CDP has the largest law enforcement budget of all the law enforcement agencies in the federal government, and they have tens of thousands of personnel.
It's what we lack is the political will and the emotional capital to do what we've already agreed
to under U.S. federal law, as well as the refugee convention, which we signed following World War Two, which
was designed to prevent further genocide, further persecution of large groups of people.
But we continue to renege on those obligations to which we agreed to.
Yeah, yeah.
Like when we talk about genocide and persecution, like I personally know people from Myanmar
who are really struggling with the United States asylum system right now.
Yeah, it's really deeply just infuriating to see them continue
to pursue this kind of like waving my hands in the air,
I don't know what to do kind of thing.
Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter?
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An anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America.
From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures.
I know you.
Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time.
Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network,
available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hola mi gente, it's Honey German and I'm bringing you Gracias, Come Again, Apple Podcasts, or is the podcast for you. We're talking real conversations with our Latin stars,
from actors and artists to musicians and creators,
sharing their stories, struggles, and successes.
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to deeper topics like identity, community,
and breaking down barriers in all sorts of industries.
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where we get into todo lo actual y viral.
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Hey, I'm Jacqueline Thomas,
the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature.
I'm Jack Peace Thomas, and I'm inviting you to join me and a vibrant community of literary enthusiasts dedicated to protecting and celebrating our stories.
Black Lit is for the page turners,
for those who listen to audiobooks
while commuting or running errands,
for those who find themselves seeking solace,
wisdom, and refuge between the chapters.
From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry,
we'll explore the stories that shape our culture.
Together, we'll dissect classics and contemporary works
while uncovering the stories
of the brilliant writers behind them. Blacklit is here to amplify the voices of Black writers
and to bring their words to life. Listen to Blacklit on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
let's talk a little bit about joe biden and his policies because like they've been lackluster or just completely like in some cases you know he's issued executive orders which basically have gone
unfulfilled right regarding asylum and so they made a statement a few weeks ago now when biden
visited the border.
Can you explain what he said in that statement and then sort of what the Biden administrationHS, other key positions to give the appearance that it was serious about reform and treating immigrants in a way that is
dignified and humane. But what we've seen is a continuation of Trump policies which restrict access to the border.
For example, the new asylum ban that they are proposing through regulation where individuals that have transited through another country and did not seek asylum in that country, even if that country was not a safe country for them, that they would be precluded from applying for asylum.
A lot of people have been enthusiastic about these new parole programs for specific nationalities,
like for Raguans, Venezuelans, Haitians, Cubans.
However, those programs are really just scraps.
They have a 30,000 person cap.
programs are really just scraps. They have a 30,000 person cap. The Ukrainian parole program had a hundred thousand person cap, which has already been surpassed, surpassed. Ukrainian
sponsors, well as the Ukrainian asylum seekers that were presenting through that parole program
had much less by way of requirements. And so they've made a a separate and not equal program
for other nationalities which just happen to be nationalities that aren't white yeah yeah it's
hard not to see a kind of uh white people first approach to asylum here uh yeah it certainly challenges your ability not to believe it's outright racist so i wonder
like going forward um obviously people listening will probably be sort of upset and concerned at
the continuing failures of our government to do anything about it can you outline like how people
can help i know uh there's lots of people who will do direct mutual aid, right? Like people like Food Not Bombs are feeding people in Tijuana. But how can folks maybe who are at the border and then who aren't near the remote, particularly if they have a foreign language
skill, because we can't serve tens of thousands of people each year with just the staff that we have.
And so we have a really robust remote volunteer network. I would also encourage people, as you
pointed out, to look for organizations in their own community that are
serving immigrants. It is incredibly humbling to move to another country and realize you don't know
how to read the light bill. You don't know how to register your kids for school. Can your kids go to
school? Where can I go to the doctor? What, you ambulance? Do I not have to pay for that?
All of these things that might be different for them and a real lack of volunteers to assist people with those daily integration activities that are so important to figuring out how your new community works. I also encourage people to, when there's an opportunity to have
conversations with your elected official, to have those conversations, write emails, go in person,
if that's an opportunity. Different officials will have open days for their offices where you
might be able to get, maybe not FaceTime with that official, but with their point person who is overseeing that issue.
Right now, our elected officials, they don't care about immigration because a lot of their
constituents are not making it known to them what it is that they care about and that they're willing
to go to drastic measures such as shutting down their office if they don't take action on immigration. We're all just
thinking about it as, okay, well, this is happening to immigrants. This is not me.
I am a citizen. But all of the worst fascist policies are tried out first on groups in society
that have less political power, on people that have criminal convictions,
on people who have disabilities
that make it impossible for them to communicate,
on immigrants.
And so I would really encourage,
if you're concerned about fascism,
if you're concerned about how your rights
may be trampled in the future,
focus on immigrants
because they are the
testing ground for a lot of fascist government's worst intentions yeah and we've already seen that
right if people aren't familiar it was Bortak among others who were out there running around
Portland chucking people into unmarked vans it was DHS drones surveilling people in Minneapolis. It was indeed DHS surveilling, I think, people from Malotrolado
and other organizations in 2018 when lots of us were crossing the border
very often to help people who were part of what was called
the migrant caravan then.
So this is happening to us, right?
There's a thing that Crimethink have on some of their posters,
which I always like, which is the border doesn't protect you,
it controls you, which I think is more true than ever now.
It's a place where we experiment with these policies
and they seem to get away with them, right?
It doesn't seem to be something that people care about
like they did even two or three years ago
under the Trump administration.
I wonder, Nicole, how can people, another thing that I think people lack
is like a direct connection to people seeking asylum
or to the situation at the border, right?
Like every time something happens, I'm sure you've seen this more often
than I have, someone from LA or DC or New York or wherever
kind of parachutes into border
communities does it I can see that this is the frustration that you share it does a story which
misses masses of context and then buggers off back to the place where they came from and so like
where can people find better connections to the situation for people seeking asylum i really like a blog and
it's also a podcast every week border chronicles todd miller's border chronicles i also would
recommend reading all of todd miller's books he is an incredible investigative journalist that
does deep dive on how we got to this militarized state of the border. So I would recommend starting with Border Patrol Nation
and just going straight through there.
I also think ProPublica also does really great investigative long dive reporting.
The Intercept, I would look at those places.
Yeah, yeah.
And I think if you're in a border community,
it's really not that hard to cross and see
what's going on for yourself and and do a little something to help you know make some of your
your money that you set aside for helping other people can go a long way and if you choose to use
it that way and nicole how can people support your work directly like is there a website or
a twitter account they can follow to find more about a Otrolado? We do have our own website. We're also on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn.
We regularly post opportunities to volunteer remotely, volunteer in person and campaigns
that people want to donate to. There's that opportunity as well.
Great. Is there anything else you want to share about that you feel that
our listeners should know, maybe if they haven't been following border situation closely?
The border situation is part of a larger historical context. And briefly, I talked about earlier,
the US is a signatory to the Refugee Convention, which is an outgrowth of the horror that the world
collectively felt when we came to grips with
what happened during the Holocaust. And, you know, we collectively said never again, never again.
Part of our part in the Holocaust was we rejected the MS St. Louis from the coast of Florida.
And there was over 900 Jewish refugees that were on that boat. No other country accepted them. Cuba, Canada rejected and ultimately had to go back to Europe. And some of those people ultimately died in the Holocaust. And those deaths are on our conscience.
asylum seekers are being turned away along the border when they have the legal right to present themselves under existing U.S. law and international law it's a it's a repetition of the MS St. Louis
except it's happening all across the border every single day yeah that's very well put and it it is
like it doesn't matter if it's one person or 100 people like it's a tragedy every time
we can't give some we have plenty of safe places for people to go, but we're deciding not to welcome them.
And yeah, it's very, very sad. Well, thank you so much for giving us some of your afternoon,
Nicola. If people want to find you personally, do you have a personal social media?
Yeah, you can find me on Twitter. I'm Luzon La Frontera on Twitter.
Okay, great. And Alotrolado,
is it just Alotrolado on Twitter?
Yes.
Alotrolado,
sometimes we have
alotrolado.org.
Okay.
Yeah.
So that's A-L-O-T-R-O-L-A-D-O
if people need to spell out, right?
Thank you.
Wonderful.
Thank you so much.
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An anthology podcast of modern day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin
America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your
podcasts. I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating. I don't feel emotions correctly.
I collect my roommate's toenails and fingernails. Those were some callers from my
call-in podcast, Therapy Gecko. It's a show where I take phone calls from anonymous strangers as a
fake gecko therapist and try to learn a little bit about their lives. I know that's a weird concept,
but I promise it's very interesting. Check it out for yourself by searching for Therapy Gecko
on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever on December 8th.
Hey, you've been doing all that talking.
It's time to get rewarded for it.
Submit your podcast today
at iHeart.com slash podcast awards.
That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards.