It Could Happen Here - CZM Rewind: Title 42, Pt 2: Migrant Stories

Episode Date: October 15, 2025

In part two of James' series on Title 42, we hear from asylum seekers in San Ysidro and learn about the human impact of CBP’s inhumane detention practices. Original Air Date: 5.31.23See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Hello, America's sweetheart Johnny Knoxville here. I want to tell you about my new true crime podcast, Crimeless, Hillbilly Heist, from Smartless Media, campside media, and big money players. It's a wild tale about a gang of high-functioning nitwits who somehow pulled off America's third largest cash heist. Kind of like Robin Hood, except for the part where he's still,

from the rich and gifts to the poor. I'm not that generous. It's a damn near inspiring true story for anyone out there who's ever shot for the moon then just totally muffed up the landing. They stole $17 million that had not bought a ticket

to help him escape. So we're saying like, oh God, what do we do? What do we do? That was dumb. People do not follow my example. Listen to Crimless, Hillbilly Heist on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast. Hey, it's Ed Helms host of Snafoo, my podcast about history's greatest screw-ups.

On our new season, we're bringing you a new snafu every single episode. 32 lost nuclear weapons. Wait, stop? What? Yeah, it's going to be a whole lot of history, a whole lot of funny, and a whole lot of fabulous guests. Paul Shearer, Angela and Jenna, Nick Kroll, Jordan, Klepper. Listen to season four of Snaff.

with Ed Helms on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. There's a vile sickness in Abbas Town. You must excise it. Dig into the deep earth and cut it out. From IHeart Podcasts and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Manky, this is Havoc Town. A new fiction podcast sets in the Bridgewater Audio Universe, starring Jewel State and Ray Wise. Listen to Havoc Town on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Rich Russians Falling Out of Windows podcast is back. Sad Olegak Season 2. Since we left

you in 2023 after season one, many politically motivated Russian millionaires have continued to die in suspicious circumstances. Season 2 gets very weird. Listen to Sad Oligarch on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I know I'm be alleging like Bob Mollie. Skr enough to have gone likely in hell me see. Aim for the sky that me pray. My mama says son push for your glory. For them say my smile, them don't know my story.

Pia got to talk and watch me. Hey, man grateful, man grateful. On a gwan, man, a smile, yeah. Once there is life. God alone, give you everything for survive, yeah. Enough sacrifice. Pick up to Jamaica. We've got to do it and come back home.

See? Yeah, man. That's it. One love. Peace out. On the 11th of May this year, Title 42 finally ended. I actually began to write this episode the day before on the 10th of May. But it was that day that DHS announced that Title 42 would be enforced until

8.59 p.m. Pacific or midnight eastern. They kept Title 42 in place for every single minute they could. And that same day, 500 active duty troops arrived in El Paso, and a thousand more set off for other border towns to join the 2,500 troops already deployed to the border. According to a press release from the Department of Homeland Security, CBP and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement are further expanding detention capacity, ramping up removal flights and shifting agents and officers to high-priority regions along the southwest border. This week, CVP opened two new holding facilities, and the Department of Health and Human Services

is increasing its bed capacity to prepare for a potential increase in unaccompanied children. DHS also launched targeted enforcement operations in high-priority regions along the border, including El Paso, to quickly process migrants and place them in removal proceedings. DHS last week also announced over $250 million in additional assistance for community.

communities receiving migrants. On the ground, this assistance and planning didn't exactly meet the task at hand. Albeit, the specific call-out of El Paso does suggest that they saw their task as not looking bad in the right-wing media. His Samordia recorded after a couple of hours walking around talking to people at San Isidro, where Customs and Border Protection had detained around 500 people in between the two 30-foot fences that make up the border between San Jacidro and Tijuana. I'm just for people familiar with San Diego, like in the Tijuana River Valley

park by International Hill where Border Patrol are holding people in between the two border fences. For those who thought we didn't have a border wall or weren't having a border wall, we have at least two, sometimes three, but right here we have two. People are being put in between these fences by Border Patrol. So I just spoke to some young Colombian women who who had crossed about 15 miles east of here and then been relocated here and they're in between these border walls. They don't have running water.

What food and water they have appears to be being supplied by volunteers on the northern side. They've just been given space blankets, but a lot of people are literally sleeping under bin bags right now on blankets. It's a pretty brink. There's one port-to-to-to-to-oilet sort of thing that we can see, about 500 people.

So kind of gives you an idea of the conditions. Obviously, those don't live up to the detention conditions that Border Patrol are supposed to hold people under. But here we are, I guess. Border Patrol have just said that they're calling an ambulance. There have been a number of medical emergencies. They're nearly always are in these situations because you're holding people. They're old people, young people, sick people. And they're in the sun all day.

They're in the cold all night. If it rains, they get wet. If it's hot, they get hot. If it's cold, they get cold. They get cold. blanket a minute ago, which is always a pretty bleak thing. If you've not been here, you'd be forgiven for not knowing that we have a double layer of walls separating us from our neighbours in Tijuana.

Both sections are now of the Trump period design, but we're standing in a place where not so very long ago Nancy Reagan stood and said she hoped that there wouldn't be a fence here for very long. Now there are two towering walls, and their little children stuck sleeping in the dust between them. All the aid to these people had to go through the wall too, and that meant no hot meals because the gaps are smaller than a plate. Someone tried to bring tents, but they wouldn't fit.

Everything from food to clothes to medical supplies had to go through the gaps in the war. Hamara Yusefi, a volunteer from the Partnership for the Advancement of New Americans, described to me what she saw that night. I see about 500 beautiful, smiling faces of people who are desperately trying to get to safety. and they're confused.

They don't know what's going on. They don't know how long it will take them. You know, many of them are aware that something is happening today. Many of them are asking, does this mean that I'll be turned back? What is going on? I see, I see, you know, people who don't even have, many kids don't have shoes. They don't have, I talk to individuals who lost everything on them. They don't have jackets.

They're trying to cover themselves with any kind of covering that they have. Some of them using trash bags, others using scarves and other types of things to cover themselves from the sun. We are in San Diego, so it's quite sunny here. The first thing I noticed on arrival was a dozens of hands sticking through the wall, holding phones and charges. That's because people need to use the CBP1 app to interact with border enforcement. But they've been detained by the same border enforcement. in between two walls in an open field where there obviously isn't any electricity. They also need their phones to stay in touch with their families,

to let them know they survived a difficult and dangerous journey and that they're now technically inside the USA. Here's the advert of CBP broadcast in Spanish to encourage asylum seekers to download the app before they put them in a place they couldn't charge their phones. Attention, migrants, and Mexico City or further north in the country. Why do you need to download CBP1? It's a free and legal way to get an appointment guaranteed at a port of entry.

It's a clear way to solicit asylum, and you have the possibility to work while your case is being processed. If you present without an appointment, you can be prohibited from entering the U.S. for five years. You will be subject to expedited deportation unless you comply with the strict requirements of the asylum process. In the majority of cases, it is assumed that migrants do not comply with the requirements for asylum, and you won't have the right to work unless you comply with the strict requirements. Again, if you are now in Mexico City or further north, download CBP-1. As we heard yesterday, CBP-1 has been an unmitigated disaster and has shown a very clear bias towards certain types of wealthy and white asylum seekers.

Despite that, it seems to have been the only plan in place the end of Title 42. The hundreds of people detained in between defenses presumably didn't have appointments, and with no way to charge their phones, they couldn't make them. It's not clear of making them would have helped, as it seems that they were already being detained and thus they would have to file the offensive asylum claims, effectively stopping the repatriation process by claiming that they couldn't safely be sent back to their country of origin.

This is opposed to making an affirmative asylum claim that people should have been able to make at the border with a CBP1 appointment. These would not have to be argued with the threat of repatriation hanging over the person making the claim. volunteers, local people, a mosque group and a church group all showed up soon after CBP began dumping more people in between the fences. An hour after my own arrival, I'd given away all the charge cables that I had in my truck, which is a lot more charge cables than I thought I had in my truck.

And all my charge bricks accrued over six years of getting free shit at the consumer electronics show in Las Vegas. Later, I came back with a massive solar generator that I like to use when I'm living off grid, but I still need to write stuff. Even all my home electronics ephemera, and the combined efforts of non-profits, religious and mutual aid groups couldn't really make much difference to the 500 people from around the world, mostly families with children, being held between the two fences. When it got hot, they got hot.

When it got cold, they got cold. When the wind blew, they got dust in their eyes, and everything was constantly dirty. The only hot food volunteers could get to them was pizza. Some of the detained people had cash, and they were able to order DoorDash on the Tijuana side, but again, the meals had to fit through a hole barely wider than my arm. The only way to get clean was with wet wipes, and there was only one bathroom. There was no shade or shelter either, and the only way people could construct shelters were through tying tarps to the border wall itself.

I like Kaba, one of the volunteers who came to help, describe what they saw when participating in mutual aid a couple of days after. But it was, it definitely was, I don't think it really struck me until, you know, after everything, you know, after I left several hours later, but the kind of, I mean, I have read about the situation of the border, but the kind of matter of factness of there's just several hundred people, including children, just kind of between this fence, and they're just stuck there with nothing. and the sort of matter of factness of that all was, I think the part that struck me the most and it's been the most challenging to process. In the days before the end of Title 42, confusion had reigned at the border. A lot of people I talked to mentioned that they thought they had to cross before the end of Title 42 or they would be ejected and not able to apply for five years under Title VIII.

This misunderstanding might, in part, be due to some of the mislellanation. leading rhetoric put out by Majorcas and others, which focused on the harsh penalties for crossing between ports of entry in an attempt to appear strong on the border to their colleagues in D.C. They didn't place as much emphasis on the right to present and claim asylum at a port of entry, but as we saw yesterday, it's virtually impossible to actually do that, and Tijuana is already full of thousands of people trying to do that exact thing. Given a set of circumstances, it makes sense that many people took the days before the end of Title 42, a at the final chance to cross.

Before Title 42 ended, I spoke to Diana Rodriguez from Colombia about her understanding of what was going to happen later that night. Diana Rodriguez, of Colombia. Diana was with two friends, all of them wearing little daisies in their hair, and sharing a tarp shelter they'd made

by tying a blue tarp against a wall so they could get some shade and privacy. I asked her where the flowers had come from. You hear the rest of the interview voiced by Shereen. flowers. The flowers, uh, well, there are these little flowers, flowers that are growing here like in a garden. So when we went and took a walk over there and we found them, we put them on and they're pretty. We call these the little yellow flowers of hope, and they match the color of our bracelets. We picked them on the day we arrived, and we knew that we needed a little bit of

encouragement. We got the yellow bracelets because we arrived on Tuesday. Everyone got the same bracelet. I asked Deanna what you'd heard about Title 42, which is ending a few hours after we talked. Yes, it's the end of Title 42. Title 42 is the one that endorses mass deportations. Yes, and well, it's a question of you not just getting deported, but being repatriated. In other words, after this, they do a full repatriation. But right now, you are not registered in the system. But what they do is that they only return you.

They don't register you. But let's say on the basis of Article 8 is that if you, at least we, are invading American territory, then we are in effect breaking a law. And what Article 8 does is that they deport you and they put you in the registered database saying that you broke the law and they punish you for five years and you lose the right to request your asylum through legal channels. People had another camp in Hukumba, heard the same thing from Colombians. And it seems like there were even news pieces run on domestic television explaining that US plan to return many Colombians in the coming months, and this might be the last best chance to cross the border without permanent consequences if you got caught.

In Hacumba, volunteers estimated that two-thirds of the people corral under the desert sun were from Colombia. Of course, in recent years, there has been instability and violence there, which also drives migration. One of my sources also mentioned that a lot of Colombian people had seen misleading information about immigration law on TikTok.

Two days had passed since Gianna arrived. She came with one of the girls she was now sharing a tarp with and met another when they were all dumped in the camp together. In the days before they were detained here, they had crossed three countries on their way to what they hoped was a better life for young women like them.

I asked them to describe that journey for me. Eight days, eight days more or less, walking from Colombia, from El Salvador to Guatemala, then Mexico to here, all that time walking and taking the bus. There's a part 15 or 20 minutes from here where the wall ends, and we crossed there. There was a Mexican patrol, and when they changed shifts, we ran, and here we are on American soil. We arrived on foot, and the police brought us here. They opened the gate and dropped us here. Along the way, she said, they'd run into a lot of people. The Migrant Journey North is such a common trek that people living along the way have found

a way to make a buck, but also a way to make a difference. It's not uncommon for migrants to be extorted, robbed, or threatened. It's also not uncommon for them to be fed by strangers, perhaps handing off bags with food in them to passing trains or buses, or perhaps given a place to sleep for the night by someone they might never see again. They were parts where we were extorted. They took all the money we brought. They robbed us, they stole our passports, they stole our documents.

So it's always quite dangerous. Let's say that it's dangerous to take this journey. Yes, just as we have met some bad people along the way, we have also met some very good people, people who have given us a hand, people who have helped us, people who have collaborated with us in ways you least expect. I asked Gianna what she hoped for,

now she was technically inside the USA. Yes, let's say the hope is that they will listen to our case. Listen to our case and let us fight the case inside. Yes, because we want to be able to explain the conditions we are in and the reasons that those of us who are here came here, things like extortion, kidnapping, and because our lives are in danger in Colombia. So we wish that they at least listen to our case and let us plead our cause. Before we started recording, Deanna asked what network I was with. I thought that was an astute question. Networks like Fox show up at the border, although I didn't see any Fox National reporters on my trip. Certainly local news channel KUSI was there,

but their reporting on the ground differed from their xenophobic and outright incorrect online coverage. I asked Deanna what you'd want to say to folks who might have had their perspective influence by the constant demonization of migrants by right-wing media. There are many people who, let's say, are in a mindset of not wanting migrants and they view them with contempt.

Because where xenophobia exists, it's hard for us. Because we suffer along the way. We would like you to change your way of seeing things and your way of thinking, so that you don't look at us with contempt. We have a saying in Colombia that says that he who was born in a golden cradle never suffers or never sees what he does not know. So it's hard when you're born in a golden cradle and you don't see beyond what you have. So there are people that in our case, in my case, I lived a very hard life where you see the war between armed groups. they exist outside the law and they can control an area

and you see the kidnapping you see the rape of girls recruitment, extortion, death yes so it's hard when we experience that and people say things like these migrants are coming to invade our country we also ask them to treat us as people

because if we are here it is not because we want to invade a territory it is because we want to come to fight for a better future for our children without stepping on anyone. Nobody wants this, but where we come from, we receive travelers with open arms. And it's hard when one is a migrant, when one lives the experience of being a migrant. It is a very hard thing to be a migrant, having to endure cold, hunger, rain, sun, that is, all these things, and then arriving here and seeing faces of contempt. It's hard.

It is very hard. So, yes, the important thing is that people must know that being an immigrant is not easy. Being an immigrant is not easy. One of her friends who she was sharing a talk with leaned over to give an example. Everyone despairs because everyone wants to leave. So everyone sees each other as enemies. So let's say, for example, right now, when they are sending cars to collect people, to process. So everyone there thinks, I hope they take me. Then when they don't, it gets to a point

where, yes, where you despair. I mean, it's desperate. But, well, everyone. Everyone is in the fight together. All in the fight. screw-ups. On our new season, we're bringing you a new snafu every single episode. 32 lost nuclear weapons. Wait, stop? What? Yeah. Ernie Shackleton sounds like a solid 70s basketball player. Who still wore knee pads. Yes. It's going to be a whole lot of history, a whole lot of funny, and a whole lot of guests. The great Paul Shear made me feel good. I'm like, oh, wow. Angela and Jenna, I am so psyched. You're here. What was that like for? you to soft launch into the show.

Sorry, Jenna, I'll be asking the questions today. I forgot whose podcasts we were doing. Nick Kroll. I hope this story is good enough to get you to toss that sandwich. So let's see how it goes. Listen to season four of Snap-Foo with Ed Helms on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. There's a vile sickness in Abbas town.

You must excise it. Dig into the deep earth and cut it out. The village is ravaged. Entire families have been consumed. You know how waking up from a dream? A familiar place can look completely alien? Get back everyone! And if you see the devil walking around inside of another man,

you must cut out the very heart of him. Burn his body and scatter the ashes in the furthest course. corner of this town as a warning. From IHeart Podcasts and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Manky, this is Havoc Town, a new fiction podcast sets in the Bridgewater Audio Universe, starring Jewel State and Ray Wise. Listen to Havoc Town on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Devil Walks in Abistown. In early 1988,

federal agents raced to track down the gang they suspect of importing millions of dollars worth of heroin into New York from Asia. We had 30 agents ready to go with shotguns and rifles and you name it. But what they find is not what they expected. Basically, your stay-at-home moms were picking up these large amounts of heroin. They go, is this your daughter? I said yes. They go, oh, you may not see her for like 25 years. Caught between a federal investigation and the violent gang who recruited them, the women must decide who they're willing to protect and who they dare to betray.

Once I saw the gun, I tried to take his hand and I saw the flash of light. Listen to the Chinatown Stang on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or anywhere you get your podcasts. The rich Russians falling out of Windows podcast is back. Sad oligarch season two. Since we left you in 2023 after season one, many politically motivated Russia millionaires have continued to die in suspicious circumstances. We dig deeper into these odd deaths,

which include everything from mushroom poisoning and mysterious heart attacks to window clumsiness and suicide by decapitation. One thing we have found since we started back in 2020, is the information on the suspicious deaths has become much harder to find. Not just that, it seems as if state-controlled media in Russia is being utilised to purposely confuse and contradict the reporting that gets put out. As you can probably imagine, season two gets very weird.

Listen to Sad Oligarch on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. After yet another dusting down from a CBP agent who really liked to razz his quad bike past the mutual aid tables, spoke to a man from Angola. I'll leave his name out, as he preferred for me not to share it. He'd been in Tijuana for three days, he said, and was waiting his chance to plead his case for asylum. It's just me and my sister. We suffered a lot.

There were bandits. We came here to be safe. It's no way to live. people broke into our house to violate women to look for people and I was injured then yeah why did I leave to come here over there they're not they're not the means to live

we didn't get a chance to talk for long and some of the recording I got wasn't very good he was waiting in line for food and to be quite honest I don't like prodding people to share their trauma but with so many journalists crowding the border asking them to do just that it tends to be what people offer lots of African migrants can be quite cautious of the media

because talking to the media at home could get them in trouble. I spoke to a friend of mine, himself a migrant from Africa. He said that if migrants don't speak English or Spanish, it can be very hard for them to get information. And there aren't as many non-profits set up to serve them as there are for Spanish-speaking people, for example. They can often end up isolated and alone. I did get a better chance to talk to a Jamaican man called Joseph.

It's his singing you've heard at the start of this episode. Mostly, we talked about things in America, about how he lost his phone on his journey. We got him another one at Walmart. And about things like football and music. I didn't record all of that because sometimes it's nice to just talk to people. Hopefully it makes their dare a bit brighter and gives them some information. Maybe they could help.

He did let me record a bit of an interview, and some of him singing. He was pretty guarded on the recording, but as you can hear in this clip, we had a good time when we weren't recording. Yeah, you want to hear my best one? Yeah. Hold on, hold, hold on, hold on. He gave him a mouth up. He's got a limber up.

He's got my mouth up. There we go. You know, it's a legend in it, is he? You know, it's a legend, like Bob Molly. Scorn off, enough can't go likely and hell me see. Aim for the sky that me pray. My mama says son push for your glory. For them say my smile, them don't know my story.

Pee, I gotta talk and watch me. Man grateful, man grateful, all when nothing's no go on, man a smile, yeah, once there is life. God alone give me everything for survive, yeah. Enough sacrifice. Big up to Jamaica. We've got to do it and come back home, see it? Yeah, man, that's it. One love, peace, out.

Yeah, I'm Joseph. I asked him about some of the stuff we spoke about before, but he didn't want to share it. Yeah, yeah, that's a whole testimony. Me and you and God have to go into church for that. But I'm going to give you that the next time. Okay, buddy. All right. Justice experienced a lot of personal harm from conflict back home in Jamaica and had a difficult journey here with his five-year-old son. Yeah, it's rough. It's rough out there, man, you know? It's rough. How did you come? Like, you come...

I asked him how his young son had dealt with the journey. It's not a safe or easy one for an adult, let alone for a little child. It's just kind of scary. but he pulled through. Yeah, that's good. He has my energy inside. That's good, yeah. How has you finding it here in the camp?

Oh, you're at the camp. I don't know, boy. That guy's just like me. We just don't make anything better. Yeah, but it's working here because you guys give you the strength and supporting us, you know? Joseph wanted me to know that he wasn't giving up his home. He loves Jamaica, but he also wants a better life for his son. It's not that.

It's not that. It's not like I'm giving away my home. My home is a good place. Yeah, yeah. It's a good island, nice place to me. Of course, this perspective is very common, and it's one that often gets left out of reporting. Coming to the USA is a very hopeful act.

It's not abandoning your family or your home. It's trying to make their lives better in your life livable. Joseph was quite guarded with his story, and that's fine. It's his to share as much or as little as he wants. I came to the USA without having to get persecuted or hurt, and people who don't look like me should have that same right as well. Sadly, coming to the USA is also scary and confusing, even for me with three university degrees and all the intersectional privilege I have

and 15 years living here and a recently minted US passport now, I worried for years that maybe I'd made a mistake on a form or missed some kind of deadline. Speaking of deadlines, what none of the migrants could tell us, what they all wanted to ask about was exactly what was happening to them as Title 42 expired. A Congolese lady asked me if her passport would be confiscated, a lady from Senegal asked if she needed to pay a bribe like the one she'd paid in Mexico.

It wasn't really clear at first if these people were being detained and under what process they were being received. Would they be sent back to Mexico under Title 42? Repatriated, under Biden's interpretation of Title VIII, or given the right to plead their case of international and US law suggests they should be able to. CBP made people sit in lines all day with no indication of when they would be taken to the port of entry for processing

sometimes I heard people saying if everyone didn't sit down there would be nobody processed that day but the only food, water and medical attention available to the migrants was that which could be passed through the wall and they had to get out of their lines to receive this aid I'll let Kiber describe what this looked like they had people waiting in lines that hoped they had to sit in a line

in a specific assigned spot. But it wasn't always clear how those lines actually worked because they would kind of take people from lots of places. I think they might have been prioritizing families with children or people with some kind of medical needs or something like that. But you would never know when they were going to come and we didn't seem to know also who they were going to choose to take. We assume we didn't know exactly where you were taking them, but we assume they were taking the port of entry in Santa Cedar, which is about a mile away. And so what would always happen when they come and get a group is like three or four people from that group would sprint over to the wall because we still had their phones. And CDP wasn't going to wait for us to get the phones.

One thing a lot of people we talked to shared was that there was another camp, which we later found housed as many as 800 single men. It's fairly usual to keep single men apart from families, but keeping them in an inaccessible place without adequate food or water is not usual. The camp was further west, and despite repeated requests from myself and others, including those delivering aid, we were not allowed to access it. One pair of Jamaican twins, both young men, told me they had walked up there and that things were very bad. People were only given one small water bottle in the granola bar every day, they said. One person told me they'd heard people were eating grass.

I asked CBP's press office for information on this, but they didn't respond. Here's one clip of a man trying to explain how bad things were there. It's hard to communicate across language barriers, and with a war between you, it's even harder. But I could tell he was very concerned for the folks that we couldn't get to. Despite myself and others trying, and me addressing this issue directly in emails to CBP, and never got any response on why people were not allowed to help the single men in the other camp. Just not helping. One water.

Yeah, little water. One chocolate. Nothing else, no food, no water, blanket, clothes, nothing. Money, finish. I'll go try and go up there, I don't know. Even with these camps being pretty desperate places, folks look after one another. We spoke a lot with one lady who spoke English. She was there with her own family, but she was also looking after two Tajik children who'd come alone.

Their mother spoke a little English, so she relayed news to the children by calling their mother and having her translated for her children. Other folks took it upon themselves to try and walk to the camp for single men with water. And people constantly helped us find the owners of phones by wandering through the rows of people sheltering under tarps and space blankets to look for people who had left us their devices to charge. In Okumba, a town an hour or so east of San Diego, things were worse. Humbba's home to a cute hotel, a lovely lake, a hot spring and an awful lot of big rogues. When the border war was being built in earnest before the 2020 election, they skipped some of the harder areas.

Perhaps they figured it would be too hard to cross there. It's not. Perhaps they wanted to maximise the mileage before election day. Well, it didn't help much. But either way, for some reason, the wall just takes a little break in Hukumba. And this makes crossing marginally easier there. However, the boulder fields, scorching hot days and cold nights make it anything but easy. On Thursday night, the 11th of May, locals in Okumba became aware that CBP were holding people on a dirt road in the open desert just a few miles east of town and a few hundred feet from the wall. The people held they didn't have access to toilets, running water or shelter. With every hour that went past, the number of people grew.

The biggest camp soon held over a thousand people, desperately trying to scratch out little shade. in the desert. Other smaller camps popped up. One was apparently in someone's yard, and the people of this tiny desert town stood about helping as best they could. Soon, they were joined by volunteers from all over the county.

Katie was one of those volunteers. She doesn't live in Akumba, but her friends do, and her family sometimes spends time there. Once she heard about what was happening, she knew she had to help. I let her describe her feelings after she saw the posts online

and then drove out to Okumba to see what she could do to help. At first I was just super touched by the activation and the carrying and my son was asleep comfortable in his car seat, you know, in our Mercedes van, and my husband is still trying to get citizenship after being here since he was two years old. And we're married, and he pays taxes. And when I saw our friends activating, I just told him tomorrow it's Mother's Day, and I need to come back here, and it's not safe for you here. So when I first arrived, I thought it was kind of odd that everything was organized around a random road. that has a gate and there were five um only five border patrol at the time and about that was a larger camp so i want to say at least 800 people maybe a thousand i didn't see

them all because um many of them received their donations and the assistance and went back to their shelters. A few days after the migrants arrived, I camped out in Hukumba. I was cold in my sleeping bag at night and dizzy in the sun in the day. It's not a place where you'd want to be stuck outside for long, but it's a place where 1,500 or so people were held for days, little more than the shelters they built had for Creosote and Mesquite to protect their families from the elements.

They slept on the dirt or in cardboard boxes left over from the food volunteers fed them. and under whatever folks on tiny desert count could find to give them. By the time I arrived, the migrants were gone and volunteers were cleaning up. The landscape was dotted with impressively constructed brush shelters. Volunteers from Hacumba set up tables to distribute food, blankets, water and clothing. Other volunteers stayed away from the camp itself and spent time packing things into individual sizes, perhaps combining hats and socks and maybe a toy for a child in one bag, or breaking down Costco packages of snacks into individual portions.

It's not necessarily the most rewarding task, but it's an important one. I asked Marissa, another volunteer who had previously worked in San Diego for the Forest Service, what she felt when we were cleaning out some of those shelters together a couple of days later. I don't know the best way to say this, but what hit me deeper was when this might seem strange, but when I saw women's sanitary napkins or the diapers or the babies like it was kind of like a fabric padded crib bassinet type thing that suddenly hit me on a deeper level that make me emotional because it's like then you start to realize like wow what if that was me and my child or I'm not a mother, but I can only imagine what that must be like for them to be going through

these things as a woman being on your period and being out and not having anything, you know, going to the bathroom out there. What do you use when you don't have those supplies? So, yeah, it just, that was when it hit me deeper. and I knew I was doing the right thing by being out there and helping in whatever way I could because I don't I don't when it comes to the politics side of it when it comes to like legality and just different aspects of it in that way I I don't have necessarily an opinion one way or another I'm not educated enough to feel like I can I can argue one way or another or defend one position or another,

I went out there purely for my love of humanity. And I think being able to support in whatever way I can, that was the way that I felt like I could serve and be a support. Katie hadn't expected to meet migrants at the camp when she first showed up. She knew it was important not to flood the camp with volunteers, and the help was needed packaging and preparing aid drops, which she was happy to do. But in the end, she traveled up to the camp with a friend,

who spoke Portuguese, so they could help translate and distribute supplies. I asked her what it was like to see the supplies she'd purchased a few hours before end up in the hands of people who desperately needed them. They don't even have a grocery store in Hacamba. They have one mini-mart with nothing in it. And that was sold out the first day. so these people who we would look at without a lot of resources passing the abundance of what they actually have

well I saw a lot of families there I could tell that there were leaders within the group because they were helping organize as much as the volunteers were and unfortunately there was language barriers you know and so those that could speak multiple languages whether they were border crossers or volunteers were together in it and or and that was part of that organization that I'm talking about you know and and it was actually a very calm scene when we first came up I saw my son's hat that I donated and a little boy hugging this jaguar stuffed animal and the jaguar was really significant to my friend and I when we found it so it was

really touching just to like see see the things that we were bringing being literally being distributed like sometimes when you think you're helping I worked for a door-to-door campaign when I was in my teens and I got 50% of what I raised and it was like disheartening and you're like oh this is how it works and in this case money that I directly spent

on resources that were needed was going directly to the people in all likelihood people crossed in a specific spot because someone dropped them there telling them it would be easy In fact, it was anything but. People die crossing around here. In the dirt around Hucumba, I found discarded flight

itineries and documents from Turkey, Nicaragua, Colombia, Mexico. There were also little children's toys, shoes, and hundreds of empty water bottles, which we diligently picked up. But none of the more than 1,000 people who the Border Patrol held in this camp had planned for what they got, which was several days being detained in the desert by CBP with insufficient water, no shelter and very little food.

and no information on what was happening or how long they could expect to be there. Sadly, didn't get there in time to speak to any of them. I was in Arizona looking for border vigilantes and wondering what CBP had been doing to migrants there, where they have the full support of local law enforcement and a large percentage of the ageing population. To my surprise, I didn't find much. It seemed like most people had crossed in the San Diego County area. Many had flown or walked to Tijuana. Of course, migrants just like us have access to the news and to weather

forecast in maps. Crossing in Arizona, a place known for cruelty and very hot weather, doesn't make any sense when California offers a better political and weather climate. And with the mixed messages coming out about immigration law, these folks may not have been intending to evade border patrol, but to come to the USA and stake their legal right to claim asylum. I spoke to Sam, a volunteer with extensive on-the-ground experience in humanitarian crises, about what he'd seen at the camp. Oh, my name is Sam Schultz. He said many of the people who found themselves in Hukumba

had likely been told by people smugglers that this was an easy way into the U.S. In the end, it was anything but. I mean, I know they didn't expect that they were just waltz across the border at a normal check station, but they thought it was going to be. They were sold a bill of goods, let's put it that way.

Yes, that's it. And so, I mean, I feel sorry for anybody who's take advantage of it like that, but most of the people that I met, again, who are not Colombians, were of the wealthier side of the, on their countries. I met some Uzbekis, some Kazakhis, a bunch of people from India, a couple of Pakistani guys.

I mean, they didn't get here cheap. The wall behind the people in Hukumba cost $25 million a mile on average. The border patrol agent drove around in F-150 wrapped a trucks that start at $80,000, and each make a starting salary of over $60,000 in their first year. surveillance towers that dot the desert, including one which provided a tiny scrap of shade to migrants resting under its solar panels, can cost a million dollars apiece, but people in Acumba received only one small water bottle each day, despite the punishing weather. Although Customs and Border Protection did not seem to make any plan to shelter migrants in Acumba, they did plan to have contractors, paid $40 an hour to take them away. I found a job advert for a southwest border transportation and security officer at ISS Action Security, the agency photograph transporting migrants in Hacumba.

The job posting, which was posted two weeks before the end of Title 42, has a description that includes patting down all detainees and applying appropriate restraints prior to boarding vehicles. The process through which migrants become detainees normally involves processing, which had not been done in Nucumber, but it seems the presumption of ineligibility announced on the day Title 42 ended came into effect here. This might seem a minor distinction, but it's important. It means that people have to file a defensive asylum claim

and not an affirmative one. They have to plead why they shouldn't be deported rather than why they have a right to stay. Many of the people will have been trying to cross before the end of Title 42, like Deanna, because they felt they would face a less serious penalty. many of them flew to Tijuana a walk from further south in Mexico

or even in Central America I likely spent their entire savings on a trip to the gap in the wall near Hacumba that ended with them being held by Border Patrol on the open desert with next to nothing in the way of shelter sanitation or sustenance as a way to quantify this I want to reference a UCSD

U.S. Immigration Policy Center report apparently had some pretty problematic practices but anyway these are results from its survey When asked whether Border Patrol gave them enough water for the day, over half of the asylum seekers that we interviewed, approximately 53%, said no. Border Patrol distributed one water bottle to each migrant in the morning. When asked whether Border Patrol gave them enough food for the day,

all of the asylum seekers said no. Border Patrol did not distribute any food. When asked whether Border Patrol provided adequate sanitation, such as toilets, all of the asylum seekers that we interviewed, meaning 100% said no, Border Patrol provided one porter body for the entire encampment. When asked whether Border Patrol provided adequate shelter such as shade to protect them from the sun, all of the asylum seekers that we interviewed said no. Border Patrol did not provide any shelter. When asked whether Border Patrol provided blankets to keep them warm at night, all but one of the asylum seekers we interviewed said no. Border Patrol provided blankets. some migrants, but the overwhelming majority did not receive blankets.

Altogether, two-thirds of the asylum seekers were interviewed, said that they agree or strongly agree with the statement, if I did not receive food and water from volunteers, I would not get enough food and water from Border Patrol to survive. These aren't exaggerations. As we'll see, several migrants did come very close to losing their lives in the five or more days that CBP detained people out in the open along the border. Hey, it's Ed Helms, and welcome back to Snafoo, my podcast about history's greatest screw-ups. On our new season, we're bringing you a new snafu every single episode.

32 lost nuclear weapons. Wait, stop? What? Yeah. Ernie Shackleton sounds like a solid 70s basketball player. Who still wore knee pads? Yes. It's going to be a whole lot of history, a whole lot of funny.

a whole lot of guests. The great Paul Shear made me feel good. I'm like, oh, wow. Angela and Jenna, I am so psyched. You're here. What was that like for you to soft launch into the show? Sorry, Jenna, I'll be asking the questions today. I forgot whose podcast we were doing.

Nick Kroll. I hope this story is good enough to get you to toss that sandwich. So let's see how it goes. Listen to season four of Snap-Foo with Ed Helms on the I-Hurl. Hard Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. There's a vile sickness in Abbas Town. You must excise it. Dig into the deep earth and cut it out.

The village is ravaged. Entire families have been consumed. You know how waking up from a dream? A familiar place can look completely alien. Get back everyone. He's going to next. And if you see the devil walking around inside of another man, you must cut out the very heart of him, burn his body,

and scatter the ashes in the furthest corner of this town as a warning. From IHeart Podcasts and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Manky, this is Havoc Town, a new fiction podcast set in the Bridgewater Audio Universe, starring Jewel State and Ray Wise. Listen to Havoc Town on the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get. get your podcasts. The devil walks in Abistown.

In early 1988, federal agents raced to track down the gang they suspect of importing millions of dollars worth of heroin into New York from Asia. We had 30 agents ready to go with shotguns and rifles and you name it. But what they find is not what they expected. Basically, your stay-at-home moms were picking up these. large amounts of heroin. They go, is this your daughter? I said yes.

They go, oh, you may not see her for like 25 years. Caught between a federal investigation and the violent gang who recruited them, the women must decide who they're willing to protect and who they dare to betray. Once I saw the gun, I tried to take his hand and I saw the flash of light. Listen to the Chinatown Sting on the IHeart Radio app. Apple Podcasts, or anywhere you get your podcasts. The rich Russians falling out of Windows podcast is back. Sad Olegarch Season 2.

Since we left you in 2023 after season one, many politically motivated Russian millionaires have continued to die in suspicious circumstances. We dig deeper into these odd deaths, which include everything from mushroom point, poisoning and mysterious heart attacks, to window clumsiness and suicide by decapitation. One thing we have found since we started back in 2022 is the information on the suspicious deaths has become much harder to find. Not just that, it seems as if state-controlled media in Russia is

being utilised to purposely confuse and contradict the reporting that gets put out. As you can probably imagine, season two gets very weird. to sad oligarch on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. protection by the southern border community's coalition regarding their actions this week, stated that, quote, many migrants have fallen into medical distress because of the conditions, and CBP has been slow to provide access to medical attention, often only responding at the insistence of advocates. As a result, one woman suffered life-threatening allergies, a child suffered an epileptic seizure, and a man suffered an unattended infection on his leg.

Medical attention was slow to arrive, and when it did arrive, it was often insufficient. I'll let Kaiba describe the conditions they saw a couple of days after the end of Title 42. That's really the part that is hard to understate. The conditions there were not safe or sanitary. I guess this is sort of related to the medical issues, but there was, it's been, you know, to their credit, this aspect has been reported in the media, but there was a single portable toilet for anywhere from, I guess, there's probably 200 to 400 people there.

I heard a couple different citations of how often this toilet is serviced and cleaned and and the waste removed anywhere from once or twice a week to once every week or two weeks. Either way, that's not remotely sufficient for 400 people using the bathroom multiple times a day in this single portable, like just a construction site toilet. It was right next to the phone charging station on the side of the wall, and I would just feel sick if I got to, if I said too close to it. It was really vile. It was not safe. It is not a way for people to be helping.

And I do know, I think a lot of, thankfully, people stop using it, but then they don't have a privacy or that's still not, you know, a sanitary, you know, situation to be in. since, I mean, they don't have the future on space where they were. So that's definitely one of the ways that people would be being neglected in terms of their health and safety. Here's Hamara, who will hear more from tomorrow, describing another medical incident. And the call that I got this morning was of a woman who was rushed out because she had an emergency situation taken to the hospital. The hospital didn't know what to do with her. So they sent her right back here in the middle of the night, in the middle of the night. And they brought her here.

She doesn't have any documents. CBP didn't get a chance to process her yet. So she doesn't even have any proof that she actually came to the port of entry and tried to seek asylum. And she was just sleeping right here. And she has burns all over her body, has an infection. I read the seven medications that they gave her. And she speaks daddy. She's from Afghanistan.

Her husband got taken by the Taliban, and she escaped running for her life. And she's here. and she has sunburns all over her face and she has nowhere to go. She thought she was still detained. She actually thought she was still detained. She was just trying to get back to the other side of the border. She thought she was still in Mexico.

No one explained anything to her. They brought her back here in the middle of the night and she was freezing. And so that's why I came out here. I talked to her. The other folks who were out here didn't know why she was just sleeping here. And I came out and translated

and now we have her at a hotel. Kaba witnessed one of the emergencies described in the Southern Border Communities Coalition lawsuit when they visited the camp. Here's them describing it. In terms of medical care as well, like I said, one of the parts of the aid operations that was going on was people,

I think there was a combination both of people who were, you know, and then street medicine as well as people who were like nurses volunteering their time and things like that. And mostly taking care of just kind of to be in first aid for the most part. There was a situation where someone was having an allergic reaction,

a fairly severe one, and I happen to carry an Epipin, so I simply give that to be one of the street medics. And then they eventually did, well, this person, the reaction got severe enough that it was in our soul later that 9-1-1 was called, I assumed by one of the volunteers and ambulance and border patrol came to open a gate and bring this person in the country. They did eventually treat her, but it was a very, it was a long time I found out of the sentence, which is someone, as someone who has anaphylaxis reactions to food and

that happened many times in their life, that is an absolutely terrifying, I cannot imagine how terrifying it would be to be experiencing a life-threatening situation when you are trapped and, you know, there's no authority that really cares that you're there. And I don't know if she would have been able to get help if there haven't been volunteers on the side of the wall, especially ones with medical training. Where volunteers weren't, things were worse. In Texas, Anadis Tanayvarez-Alvarez, an eight-year-old girl born in Panama to Honduran parents died in CBP custody.

Rossell Reyes, the girl's father, told NBC news that they gave authorities documents about the girl's medical conditions, congenital heart disease and sickle salamia, while they were in immigration custody. They said that a doctor there examined Anadith and that she had contracted the flu. Alvarez, her mother, said she spoke to both detention authorities and medical personnel at the station multiple times to explain her daughter was complaining of pain and shortness of breath and that she was getting worse. I'll quit the next part directly from the NBC story. They never listened to me, she said. Reyes said his daughter was in a lot of pain, a lot of pain.

I begged them to call an ambulance, Alvarez said, adding that authorities told her the girl's condition wasn't serious enough to warrant calling an ambulance. Alvarez said her daughter begged authorities as well, telling them she could not breathe from her nose or mouth. Avres says that eventually her daughter lost consciousness and died in my arms. She said authorities took the girl from her arms and put her on the floor, trying to revive her. My daughter died there in the station, she said. Avra said she feels authorities did not do enough to help her little girl. My daughter is a human being.

They had to take care of her, she said. Despite what you might have heard on the network news, the asylum process is anything but easy. I've had several visas, a green card, and a US passport, and I can confidently tell you the only easy way I've ever seen to come here is to be very rich. But even among the convoluted bureaucratic mess that is US immigration,

the asylum process stands out as most rigorous and complicated. Asylum is a process by which people unable or unwilling to return to their country because of persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, politics, or membership of a particular social group may remain in a safe country. From the 11th of May onwards, migrants at the border were assumed ineligible for asylum if they crossed between points of entry. They must enter the defensive asylum process to prevent themselves from being deported. What this means for people we heard from earlier is that they are now taken for whatever

Godforsaken holding area they're in and bused to a processing facility, where they're interviewed by an asylum officer to determine if they have a credible fear of persecution. They may need to provide a translator if there isn't an interviewing agent who speaks their language. And if they're determined to have a credible fear, they're told to check in with the US Customs and Immigration Office, and sometimes given a notice, which may or may not be dated, to appear in court. My colleague Joe tried to get into one of these hotels to talk to one of the people we'd spoken to at the border, but he was pretty quickly shut down.

Hey there. I'm a freelance journalist. I'm here reporting for my boss, James Stout. He's at IHeart Media. I'm wondering if you're letting media in here to see the condition. Absolutely not. Okay. And also, we ask you guys not to restrict any of this area here.

Okay. So if you're going to set up, it has to be on this side of the line because we have a lot of traffic. Yeah. And it's very dangerous for you, okay? So, like, be on here or pass the colors? Yeah. From here, over.

Okay, cool. I'll stay on your way. Thank you, sir. One of the folks we'd met was able to stay in touch via WhatsApp and share the hotel rules with us. They were pretty strict. Migrants are confined to their rooms. They can't have visitors, and they can't even order food delivery.

From the hotel, where they're hosted by Catholic charities, migrants need to get to their sponsor in the United States if they have one. If they don't have one, they can be sent just about anywhere. I've heard of East African folks having anything. ended up in Alaska, for example. Once they get to where they're going to be, they check in with US Customs and Immigration Services in their new location, and they're given a special phone which also tracks their movements.

They may have a DNA sample taken in addition to fingerprints. Later, sometimes years later, they attend a court hearing or two to determine their eligibility to stay. I've heard of lawyers charging from $5,000 to $12,000 for these hearings, and non-profit legalists and services are totally overwhelmed at the moment. The system's massively backed up, and court dates have been given as far out as 2027 already. They may or may not be able to work during that period, and under the table of work is getting harder and harder to find. Even if they do find work, on less than minimum wage,

it can be very hard to save about $5,000 for a lawyer. A migrant who can't find non-profit help are at a significant disadvantage when it comes to their asylum hearings. Again, private security contractors, this time from Allied, were transporting. migrants to the hotel and guarding it. Like CBP, the private contractors who guard, transport and incarcerate migrants or rely on the broken immigration system to make money. Unlike CBP, the agents themselves aren't well paid. $19 and hours are going rate for Allied, not much higher than San Diego's $16.30 minimum wage. But the company itself is huge. It's the third last year's private employer in North America after Walmart and Amazon. Allied guards are at prisons, airports, and

shopping malls across America, and it's alleged that some are underpaid, insufficiently trained, and improperly vetted. The company grosses over $20 billion, and its affiliates of frequent political donors. All across this story, you'll see this. Allied security, ISS action security, people smugglers, customs and border protection, contractors who build the wall pieces and contractors who install the wall pieces, general atomics who sell CBP drones, and the Israeli and American companies who sell the surveillance technology to the government. All these people make money. But the poorest

people in the world are the only ones losing money, and sometimes their lives when they cross our southern border. Tomorrow, we're here from some of the people who made no money and looked after the migrants, and we'll continue to support them through the asylum process. It could happen here as a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for it could happen here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening. Johnny Knoxville here. Check out Crimeless, Hillbillie Heist, my new true crime podcast from smartless media, campside media,

and big money players. It's the true story of the almost perfect crime and the Nimrods who almost pulled it off. It was kind of like the perfect storm. a sewer. That was dumb. Do not follow my example. Listen to Crimeless Hillbilly Heist on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Hey, it's Ed Helms host of Snafu, my podcast about history's greatest screw-ups. On our new season, we're bringing you a new snafu every single episode. 32 lost nuclear weapons. You're like, wait, stop. What? Yeah, it's going to be a whole lot of history

a whole lot of funny, and a whole lot of fabulous guests. Paul Shear, Angela and Jenna, Nick Kroll, Jordan, Klepper. Listen to Season 4 of Snafu with Ed Helms on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. There's a vile sickness in Abbas Town. You must excise it. Dig into the deep earth and cut it out. From IHeart Podcasts and Grimm and Mild from. Aaron Manky, this is Havoktown, a new fiction podcast set in the Bridgewater Audio Universe,

starring Jewel State and Ray Wise. Listen to Havoc Town on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Rich Russians Falling Out of Windows podcast is back. Sad Olegark Season 2. Since we left you in 2023 after season one, many politically motivated Russian millionaires have continued to die in suspicious circumstances. Season two gets very weird. Listen to Sad Olegac on the IHeart Radio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast.