It Could Happen Here - CZM Rewind: Title 42, Pt 3: The Mutual Aid Response

Episode Date: October 16, 2025

In the third part of the series on the end of Title 42, James speaks to volunteers who gave their time and resources to help the people detained in the open air by CBP. Original Air Date: 6.1.23See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Johnny Knoxville here. Check out Crimeless, Hillbilly 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 in a sewer.

That was dumb. 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 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. 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, Clepper, Listen to Season 4 of Snafoo 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 Grim and Mild from Aaron Manky, this is Havoc Town. A new fiction podcast sets in the Bridgewater Audio Universe. Joel State and Ray Wise. Listen to Havoc Town on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The murder of an 18-year-old girl in Graves County, Kentucky, went unsolved for years, until a local housewife, a journalist, and a handful of girls,

came forward with a story. America, y'all better work the hell up. Bad things happens to good people and small towns. Listen to Graves County on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And to binge the entire season, add free, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.

just so that we don't have a mile long line of cars. We have trash bags, we have gloves, we have things that we're bringing up there. So we have cars that you can get all of that out of. Once we pull over, we're also setting up a couple pop-ups. Hocumba, California is a tiny town. You've probably never heard of it. It's actually really charming.

There's a hot spring and a gorgeous hotel. A few stores selling art, drinkets, that kind of thing. There's a lovely lake fed by the spring, and on this sunbaked morning there are about 50 people outside an old petrol station, nervously pounding bottles of water, applying sunscreen and getting ready to head out to the desert to clear up the ad hoc migrant camp that has held as many as 1,500 people out in the open, when Title 42 ended, and Border Patrol made no plans to keep them anywhere. It was a diverse bunch of people hidden beneath sunhats. There's an Australian film producer who was at a conference in Orlando and booked a flight over, a grad student painter. the folks who own the Hukumba Hotel who organise this whole thing. They're friends from the hospitality industry in San Diego. There were students and mums and dads and about the entire population of this tiny desert town.

There were also two former international aid workers who own a tower where you can look at the desert, which is actually a much cooler thing than it sounds. And there's also a museum of boulders right next to it. You should probably check them out during the area. I spent the day helping out in Hacumba. After the refugees, some of them in handcuffs, have been taken by private contractors to be processed by CBP's office of field operations.

We met at a petrol station in the middle of town. The space where the pumps should be was filled with tons and I do mean tons of bottled water, masks, hand sanitised or other necessary supplies. When I'd arrived the night before around 10pm, the eerie green and yellow lights reflecting from the roof had lit up the pallets of water like some kind of giant lava lamp. And driving across the desert, the town looked like it was glowing.

The town certainly has had a bit of a glow up in the last few years. Three business partners purchased the Humbah Hot Springs Hotel, a down-in-the-mouth property that had once been a glamorous desert resort, and they've been restoring the place for nearly two years. Inadvertently, they also purchased a lot of land and a few other run-down buildings in a town that were sold as a lot with the hotel. It was in one of these buildings, the old gas station, that they set up a de facto mutual aid hubbo almost overnight.

The hotel's not finished yet, and they probably didn't make much progress on it during the week when they were feeding more than a thousand people in the desert. The town's lake, fed by a natural spring, an old bathhouse used to be attractions. Today, the bathhouse of roof has fallen off, but it still makes a pretty cool concert venue, and the whole town offers commanding views of the border wall, which sadly is only a couple of hundred yards from the main street. When I arrived in Hukumba, everything was close. The mini-mart was sold out, the hotel was still being worked on, and the hotel kitchen was churning out food for volunteers at the cleanup effort.

I asked Marissa, one of the volunteers I met that day, about her first impressions on arriving at the meeting point. I was incredibly impressed by what the people of Hacamba and the hotel group of individuals that have organized this. I couldn't believe seeing their donation depot in that old car wash just to how well-organized everything was and that they provided so much for the volunteers. and just the level of love and compassion and was an amazing opportunity to be part of, very humbling.

I've been there since late the night before after visiting Border Crossings in California and Arizona. And Jeff, one of the co-owners of the hotel, kindly let me pull up my truck in some desert behind his house. Now I'm a person who enjoys sleeping outside, and I do it as often as I can. I try and camp at least once a month. But that night, I was cold, even underneath my downblank.

and I couldn't help but think of how desperate it must have been to spend nearly a week out there with nothing but a my last base blanket and some thorny bushes to keep you warm. It's certainly not the welcome that one would expect from the richest nation on earth, which had three years to repair for the day Title 42 ended. To get a bit of background in the town, I spoke to Natalie. So the previous owner bought it at an auction and I don't think the previous owner didn't realize how much he was getting and he kind of just like, neglected a bunch of it, you know, and then he was older, and so he finally sold off the hotel. He thought he was just buying the hotel, but he'd find all the land as well. So they when they bought the hotel, they acquired all the land and they're actually putting money into it and fixing everything up, which is really wonderful. The hotel and Lake and Hot Spring

really are wonderful, but the scene that had played out there on the 11th of May with anything back. Within a short period of time, more than a thousand people of all ages and nationalities will be held in the open desert and left to fend lardy for themselves. I let Natalie describe the space therein. There's lots of cactuses everywhere, so it's environmental, like watch out where you're walking. It's hot. It's hot in the day and really cold at night because it's the high desert.

There can be gusts of wind that can just take over and get dust in your eyes, your hair, everything's just, you're just filthy. a lack of food. I mean, there's no resources. You're in the middle of nowhere. I've talked to a lot of the volunteers, many of whom have been in the desert for nearly a week. They'd first been made aware of the impending humanitarian crisis

late on Thursday night, but one of the people working on a renovation of the Hot Springs Hotel got a call about it. Within a few hours, the hotel owners and all their staff were running what became very nearly the only source of food, shelter, and water for more than a thousand people trapped and held in the desert by CBP. I spoke to Sam, another volunteer, to get a sense of the response.

Now Sam is a kind of guy who just looks like he's at home in the desert. His wibram hat, boots, and long-sleeved shirt and pants told me he'd spent plenty of days under the baking sun out here. And his readiness with an isopropyl alcohol spray to disinfect people's boots after walking in an area that was likely covered in human shit told me he'd been around one or two situations like this in the past. I spent a great deal of my life as his second career. working in developmental relief logistics in Southeast Asia, mainly working with large age organizations. For example, a world food program, doctors without borders, UNICEF, many, many different place, thanks.

In the context of that kind of experience, it's easy to understand why people come to the United States. But I asked Sam to put the situation here into perspective for me. It's understandable that folks came to the U.S., but why to a tiny desert town of 500 people? These people were radically unprepared for what they were going to go through because they were sold a bill of goods by coyotes on the other side about what was going to happen to them. You understand? So they had really no idea what they were getting into at all.

And so there was not anything in the way of life-threatening situations for any of those people in any meaningful way. A great deal of discomfort. It could have turned very badly if these people here had not stepped up because of those. the Border Patrol, was completely overwhelmed. Yeah. And so there was never that bad of a situation here compared to what I have seen in other places in the past. As Sam pointed out, the migrants were now gone,

but we were still surrounded by tons of supplies. But at the time, there was no way of knowing the scope or scale of the need. And people reacted as best they could. Actually, it was overkill, but you had no way of knowing. At the time, there's just no way to know. How do you know ahead of time? You always ask for as much as you can get, because why would you not?

I mean, you never know. You don't know how many children with babies are on the other side of that wall right now. Might be zero, it might be 500. You have no idea, you know. Before anyone knew how or if this was going to end, or really what even was going on, dozens of people across the county decided to help. One of them was Katie. Here she is describing some of the volunteers she worked alongside.

There was a hot hodgepodge of people as volunteers, and leading it were some of the owners of a hotel out there, and that was the main organizers. But who showed up were people from the town, people that I knew and recognized. There were some really devout, like, their 24 hours a day, and then there were some coming in and out. But I met people from all over the county,

and most of them answered the call through Instagram of the hotel. All those volunteers called their friends, who called their friends, who gradually coordinated response. Natalie first became aware of this, as many volunteers did, through an Instagram post by Melissa, another of the three co-owners of the Okumba Hotel on Thursday night, just as Title 42 was ending. Natalie saw the post and decided to help.

At first she wanted to leave right then, at 1 a.m., as soon as she'd seen the post, after consulting her family, she decided to make her own post, asking for people to bring supplies that were needed. Soon, she was overwhelmed by the response. Yeah, I mean, immediately, even at one in the morning I was getting messages because I posted it, that's when I posted the story. I immediately got messages from front saying, I'll bring a blanket over, what's your address? Yeah, everyone just kind of rallied and started bringing supplies over. Collecting money as well. Some friends.

friends started collecting money and then bought stuff and brought loads of food and things to my house. Her husband ferried the supplies to Hacumba, where they were joined by donations from all over the county in the old petrol station. Like Natalie, Katie also saw her post and immediately felt compelled to help. She called a friend and some members of her family and said about raising funds and buying supplies. So I met my friend at a cafe, and in that, in the meantime,

and I don't know how much of this is really important. This is great. Yes, keep going. So in the meantime, I text my mother and my two sisters who live on the East Coast and just it was late at night for them. And I just said, I would love for you to send prayers because that's something that I believe. in. I believe in prayer or intention and thought reality. And some of it was just because I felt so touched, like praying for the community that I love too. And the next thing I know,

like my Venmo was blowing up and there was $1,000 in my Venmo. sent from my family members. And so by the time my friend arrived, we were like, let's go. And we filled our car with, amazingly, we found, like, organic, there's grocery outlet, right? So we found organic soup for, you know, a dollar or something, a can. And we spent a few hundred dollars. And the next morning, we met early, and we met early. We stopped in El Cone on the way, and we spent all the rest on, we went to three or four

thrift stores and bought every blanket and hat and baby carrier because we have both focused on motherhood in our careers. I asked people I spoke to about a week later how the experience had impacted them. It was overwhelming, just the way the community really keeps. came around and supported the people in Hukumba that were trying to help, you know. After we finished cleaning up, when we're back at the gas station, the Amazon driver was delivering, like, I think he delivered 350 boxes. And so we had to open them up and sort them, and it was, there was so much food.

I think that it was insane amount of food and it was awesome it was really cool just to see how many people stabbed up and donated unlike some of the people I saw in Santa Cedra Natalie, Katie, Sam and Marissa are not part of an NGO or a mutual aid collective they're just people who wanted to help

and that describes most of the people in Hacumba although some of them did have previous and regular volunteer experience with excellent groups like border kindness I asked Katie to reflect on the mutual aid approach and the absence of massive multi-million dollar organisations. Yeah, the Red Cross wasn't there, right? No, they weren't there. We were told that the Red Cross couldn't come

unless Border Patrol called and Border Patrol told us that they weren't allowed to call the Red Cross. The one institution that did show support to people in Hacumbah was one that you might not expect given the support for this cruel immigration policy by almost all the Democrats in D.C. but things are different when you can see the results of these policies with your own eyes perhaps that's why I didn't see a single elected official in my entire week at the border

but one person I missed but who everyone mentioned was a lady who worked for California Senator Steve Padilla I won't name her as I don't have her permission but hopefully one day soon we'll be able to interview her I'll let Katie describe the role this woman played there was someone from Steve Padilla's team and that's the woman I rode with and um she was incredible her brother-in-law is the chef at the hotel so i think i mean she might have came anyway but she came faster and there was true connection and she stood up to the border patrol and said you know said we're allowed we're here on behalf of this senator so i mean i saw some, like, head-to-head arguments about our right to be there.

And most of us weren't paying attention to that. We were paying attention to the people that we were, you know, around. And no one that was out there didn't believe that we should be out there and that more help should be out there. Sadly, part of that familiarity with the system, this woman bought to the team also meant a familiarity with the cruel and arbitrary nature of it. Katie says that they had to organize for that as well.

So my friend and I, we ended up riding in her truck. So in Steve Padilla's, Senator Padilla's assistant's truck. So we had the opportunity to ask some questions that probably everyone out there wanted to know, including the migrants and it was like what will happen and what's the process from here and how do you know that these people are being tended to and i literally heard her on the phone getting as many bodies on the ground to start going to those centers where they're being taken to make sure that they were that that we would follow them through the entire process as

best possible monitoring their well cared for that they were well cared for as well cared for as possible in a system in a process like that

yeah but she literally said they're going to be bust off and put in cages and that they would do their best to make sure that no one was split up and that everyone was fed, showered, and they weren't allowed to bring anything with them. So a lot of the cleanup was all of the things that everyone donated

that had to be left behind, including some of the stuffed animals. For all the volunteers I spoke to, the chance to be of service was empowering. Here's Natalie discussing that. Yeah, I mean, well, like, in so many times, you, like, feel overwhelmed with, like, so much suffering in this world and, like, what can one person do, you know?

And so it did feel good to actually see an immediate impact, like, I'm doing this, and this is a result. Because sometimes you can just get discouraged, you know, like we're just one person. What can we really do? Can we really make an impact? And just seeing that and being able to see directly how that one person can impact, you know, can rally. Like just seeing how my friends came together, you know, went shopping, bought things, gathered money, collected money.

You know, my really good friend, Sam, she went to her local bar after, after she collected a bunch of money, went and dropped stuff supplies off at my house. She was just down at her local bar and just chatting with them and like, oh, what did you do today? And so she told them, oh, I collected money and I bought supplies. And the people, she ended up collecting about $200 more at the bar from people hearing her story. And so then the next day she went and bought more supplies and she actually ended up driving them out herself. she ended up doing like three drips just from her own talking to people and collecting. So just like the little impact that, you know, everyone just kind of coming together and making a difference.

Hey, it's Ed Helms and welcome back to 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. 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 who's 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 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, he's going to be 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 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 Aberstown. All I know is what I've been told, and that's a half-truth is a whole lie. For almost a decade, the murder of an 18-year-old girl. girl from a small town in Graves County, Kentucky, went unsolved, until a local homemaker, a journalist, and a handful of girls came forward with a story.

I'm telling you, we know Quincy Kilder, we know. A story that law enforcement used to convict six people, and that got the citizen investigator on national TV. Through sheer persistence and nerve, this Kentucky housewife helped give justice to Jessica My name is Maggie Freeling. I'm a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, producer, and I wouldn't be here if the truth were that easy to find. I did not know her and I did not kill her or rape or burn or any of that other stuff that y'all said. They literally made me say that I took a match and struck and threw it on her. They made me say that I poured gas on her. From Lava for Good, this is Graves County,

a show about just how far our legal system will go in order to find someone to blame. America, y'all better work the hell up. Bad things happens to good people in small towns. Listen to Graves County in the Bone Valley feed on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to binge the entire season ad-free, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Jonathan Goldstein, and on the new season of heavyweight, I help a centenarian mend a broken heart. How can a 101-year-old woman fall in love again?

And I help a man atone for an armed robbery he committed at 14 years old. And so I pointed the gun at. him and said this isn't a joke. And he got down. And I remember feeling kind of a surge of like, okay, this is power. Plus, my old friend Gregor and his brother tried to solve my problems through hypnotism.

We could give you a whole brand new thing where you're like super charming all the time. Being more able to look to people in the eye. Not always hide behind a microphone. Listen to Heavyweight on the IHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

In San Jacena, if you need medicine, right here, if you need medicine here, if you need medicine here, you need medicine, line up right here, if you need medicine right here. In San Jacira, a pretty diverse range of San Diego's came to help. On the first night, I personally left at about one in the morning, after spending almost two hours. hours trying to leave, but needing to get charged phones back to their owners by loudly in Spanish, then French, then English, describing the backgrounds on the phone or the color of their case. It wasn't a great system, and by the weekend, Kabor and others had seen that more help

and organization was needed. and they decided to plan a response. Here's Kaba describing how they prepared for that. Yeah, yeah, we met up at a target near my area because I had already thought that maybe I'll just grab some, you know, I was paying attention to people I knew who were doing in and what supplies they were saying was needed. The particular store near me has, like, a wall of travel size,

like these giant tubs where you can basically just scoop out 100 deodorate pans and toothpaste and things like that. Kaepa met up with some other members of a local mutual aid group. I'll make sure to include donation links for all the groups I've mentioned at the end of this series, so please make sure to listen right through to the end. I met up with him, and he had just received Ablachian donations through Mutual Aid Networks,

so we know even more of the travel size. I got some tooth hygiene kits, deodorant and a bunch of friends and papers because the kids that are between the walls don't really have much to do, unfortunately. So those went really fast. And so we got a whole bunch of bags of all those kinds of supplies, and then we dropped down to the border from there. By the time they arrived, various organizations had organized areas along the wall

for different kinds of aid to be passed through. Everything from clothes to food to medical supplies and toilet paper was piled up, given out. help for donations and organize the toilet paper, food, everything like that. And people would just come up to the wall. And if their family needed something, they would just kind of point to it and ask us if we were able to, you know, if there was a common language there. So yeah, we just kind of, you know, gave things as people needed them. I know that I helped give out some of the friends and pads of paper.

And those were a big hit. Tons of kids all came running over from the whole, all the parts of their camp when they heard that there was, there were toys being given out. So that was, it was, it was heartbreaking, but it was also, you know, it made me smile too. Seeing them smile and they'd be smile. Because of the need to use CBP1, and of course, the need to stay in touch with families back home, there was a constant and overwhelming demand for phone charging.

News reporters took phones back to charge in their cars. Some people bought charge bricks and power strips, and mutual aid groups wrote names on the back of the phones using painters' tape. and Sharpies so they wouldn't get separated from their owners. By the second day, it was a better system, but on the first day, it was chaos. I'll let Kaba, who spent a whole day charging phones, described the system that volunteers came up with to mitigate that chaos a little bit. And obviously they couldn't charge their phones if they're just in this kind of desert gap

between these walls that doesn't have any kind of amenities or anything. So we had a system where they were... pass a phone through and we would put a piece of tape on it with their name and give that a piece of tape with their name, the same name, and then they would give us, they came back a couple hours later and give us the tape back and we would match the names in the phone. And that was, it worked well enough. I mean, it was still an extraordinarily chaotic process. I mean, we had, we always had at least 100 phones on our side of the wallet at a given time. And some people had, you know, some people had chargers, some people didn't, some people had Android or Samsung or iPhones, and some people had wall adapters, and some people didn't have the wall AC adapters.

So we kind of had to, every phone that came through was we had to find a way to get it, you know, basically chained into the set of generators that we had, which was, do we have our power strips, do we have the right cables and do we have space on those cables? And I think it was a bit of a puzzle the whole time. The only part of it that really overwhelmed me was we did overload. Someone brought a bunch of USBC power strips, and we blew out one of them. And so there was now eight phones attached to it that I had to find new spaces for. And I was just like, that was the only point where I was just, I was just frustrated by this whole sort. situation. In addition to the fact that the phones that were plugged out and plugged into that strip had been charging for who knows how long since that thing is that methink short strip

or whatever happened to it. It was chaos, but it was a good nature of chaos. Over the several days that migrants were detained in the open with no shelter and inadequate sanitation just about two miles from the discount mall where you can buy cheap Ralph Lauren shirts if that's your jam, people showed up in ever-increasing numbers. The American Friend's Service Committee helped organize volunteers into groups to distribute food, package up wet, white snacks, medicines, give out tarps, and do just about anything else that they could,

or anything else that they could fit into zip-block bags that could be passed through gaps in the wall at least. People who had been immigrants themselves or who were the children of immigrants were notably numerous among the volunteers. I spoke to one of them. My name is Lon Chai. I'm a part of Asian Solidary Collective, a grassroots organization here in San Diego.

I've been coming over here since yesterday. I came here around five, six yesterday, and then I came back through here this morning and been here since. I got home at 12 last night and woke up, dropped my kid off, and came right back with more supplies. I've been reaching out to family, friends, and community to help donate supplies and things like that, food, whatever they may have. And I've pretty much been driving around city and collecting from folks that can't make it so I could bring it down here myself. So that's what I've been doing. Luncheon explained to me why it was so important to show up. My community, I'm pretty sure they're sympathetic to this because I'm coming from, I'm a first generation, Cambodian American here in the U.S.

And when my parents and my family fled their country, they went through this as well. So somebody somewhere came and provided the support, provided the aid, the donations for them to be able to make it to America, to cross over and able to provide out here for me growing up out here. You know, so it's just, I just sympathize with it with the whole thing. I mean, I mean, everybody should should feel the same way because somewhere down the line, our families went through similar situations. If you're not an indigenous, then your family somewhere down the history went through the same thing. So, you know, everybody should have a heart for this and be able to come down here and donate or donate their time or supplies, whatever the case may be,

you know, come out and help. He also explained why he feels it's important to encourage empathy for refugees. Well, you have to keep in mind, there's there's families out here, there's there's young children, there's babies. I mean, it takes a lot for a mother to pick up her infant child

and to leave where she's coming from. So that just says a lot about what's going on, where she's coming for her to trek and to go through this, to sit out here and cold and stuff, because if she would rather endure this and take the risk and the chances, that means where she's coming from is not as, you know, she's willing to take that risk.

Later that night, I saw an Afghan family come to help the other Afghan families. Their kids talk to other Afghan kids, separated by the border wall. They passed crayons through the wall and coloring books, and their little daughter asked her dad if she could give her what, to the Afghan girl being held in the camp. Her dad said, of course. I don't record or photograph people's children, certainly not without asking,

and I wasn't about to interrupt them, but it was a very sweet moment. The father of the family had worked in the Army Corps of Engineers. He'd been to the border before to build this section of the wall. I didn't really need to ask him how it felt to see folks stuck behind it, but it said a lot that he and his family

had taken the time to drive down, buy bags of supplies, and then come face to face with the people who needed them and hand them. them out. Like dozens of other folks, they tried to pass whatever they could through little gaps in the wall to make someone's day a little bit brighter. Another volunteer who we heard from yesterday came from a local group called Pana. Hamira had been at the wall since 5 in the morning and it was getting on for 5 p.m. when we spoke. I normally ask people what they ate for breakfast just to tune in

the volume levels on my recorder a bit, but I'm going to include it this time just so you can see how long her day had been and how hard she'd been working. Okay. Do you? What do you want me to say? Is that good? Tell me what you have for breakfast. I don't remember anymore. French toast. French toast. My name is Hamira Yusufi, and I'm with a partnership for the advancement of New Americans, Panna,

or an organization in San Diego that fights for the full inclusion of refugees and those who come from refugee-producing countries. We spoke about the emergency that had kept her here all day. So in terms of this morning, I mean, I was very concerned because there was an asylum. limb seeker who had an emergency and was rushed out of this place where now like for example where we are out right now is people who are being detained in the most inhumane way possible this is going against CBP's own protocols and policies as to how they're being detained with no they're not giving them food they're not giving them bathrooms they're not giving them basic basic

things that they need to survive and so that's why the community is out here today to do that 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? 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 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-Hart Radio app, 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 dead, I have a 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 sets 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 your podcasts. the devil walks in Aberstown All I know is what I've been told and that's a half-truth is a whole lie For almost a decade, the murder of an 18-year-old girl from a small town in Graves County, Kentucky,

went unsolved until a local homemaker, a journalist, and a handful of girls came forward with a story. I'm telling you, We know Quincy Kilder, we know. A story that law enforcement used to convict six people and that got the citizen investigator on national TV.

Through sheer persistence and nerve, this Kentucky housewife helped give justice to Jessica Curran. My name is Maggie Freeling. I'm a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, producer, and I wouldn't be here if the truth were that easy to find. I did not know her and I did not kill her. Or rape or burn or any of that other stuff that y'all said it. They literally made me say that I took a match and struck and threw it on her.

They made me say that I poured gas on her. From Lava for Good, this is Graves County. A show about just how far our legal system will go in order to find someone to blame. America, y'all better work the hell up. Bad things happens to good people in small towns. Listen to Graves County in the Bone Valley feed on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to binge the entire season ad-free, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Jonathan Goldstein, and on the new season of heavyweight, I help a centenarian mend a broken heart.

How can a 101-year-old woman fall in love again? And I help a man atone for an armed robbery he committed at 14 years old. And so I pointed the gun at him and said this isn't a joke. And he got down, and I remember feeling kind of a surge of like, okay, this is power. Plus, my old friend Gregor and his brother tried to solve my problems through hypnotism. We could give you a whole brand new thing. where you're, like, super charming all the time. Being more able to look to people in the eye.

Not always hide behind a microphone. Listen to Heavyweight on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Sadly, not everyone who gets your podcasts. Sadly, not everyone who should. showed up at the makeshift detention facility was showing up in solidarity. Local anti-migrant activist and blogger Roger Ogden showed up. Now, Ogden might be familiar to some listeners due to his attempts to host where he called a Patriot Picnic

and his advocacy for the removal of the historic murals in Chicano Park. Ogden organized gatherings in the park in 2017 and 2018, and they resulted in a huge and overwhelming community response to defend the park. And this time Ogden decided to keep to himself. But Natalie ran into some people who weren't quite. shy about their opinions? You know, a lot of the people in the Hukumba community are, you know, lower income. You know, they are struggling in their own struggle on their, and so I know, you know, maybe, I don't know. Like, for those people, I don't know, like, it's hard. I don't know. I mean,

towards the end, like when I was walking to my car, this man, this man in a car, like, pulled up and he's like, excuse me, what's going on over there? And it was like, oh, we're gathering, you know, some lies for the asylum seekers. And then I, you know, like, if you're from here, you kind of, if you're in Hukumba, you kind of already knew what was going on. And so him asking me that, I was kind of like, and then he just started laying into, I've had illegals, you know, have broken into my house a few times. Why are you supporting an illegal? and I'm like, we're trying to let, like, make sure that people don't die. And he just kept going off on me.

And so he, you know, his the whole, all the talking points that people have about not allowing people to seek asylum here. And so I just walked away. Marisa didn't run into the same kind of vocal opposition, but she said in her conversations and attempts to process everything she'd seen, she ran into some of the sort of knee-jerk, responses so people can only really make about immigration when they haven't looked the cruelty that they're advocating for in the face. It took me a little while to kind of work through just how I felt about it on an emotional, maybe spiritual level. I, you know, I spoke with family and friends about it, about my experience. And it's difficult to, I found it difficult to

explain my experience because I don't know that somebody can really truly understand that unless they've actually been out there and done it themselves because the arguments or or their kind of debate so to speak what they would come back at me with when I was sharing that is but we don't have enough food or housing to be able to support this that many people coming in. And I'm like, but we just had so many people and so much money put out there to help in a very short amount of time. Look how many donations were donated, how much money was contributed in a short amount of time from not that many people. I'm like, obviously we do have the money. Obviously, we do have the food. So where's the, where's the

breakdown? Like, is it our system that just doesn't allow for that happen? I don't know. And that's where, like, I don't, I don't understand it enough, but I feel like it just made me realize that I don't know that anybody that I spoke to afterward really understands it enough either because their arguments or their defense and what they tried to share on the opposite side of me going out there and supporting just felt like it was just something to say, you know, and, like, what they hear from the general media out there. And they also don't really, they can't quite grasp it. So they're just kind of throwing something out there, I guess, is what it felt like.

Kaba also ran into some less than charitable San Diego, this time down in San Yadro. Yeah, so I guess the first part is why they might have, or how they might have found us there, which is there's a local news organization in San Diego called KASI. which is kind of the i would describe as a local equivalent of something like one american news which is really unfortunate because we already have one american news here um but um they are pretty well known for um kind of a lot of like misinformation um kind of um and how's people uh immigrants um vaccines and all that sort of sort of thing but with kind of a local news sort of aesthetic to it and they were as far as i could tell

they were really the only identifiable media that were there throughout the day i read articles eventually that made me realize there were other um um um reporters there but they were identifying themselves the way that he was i was but they had said this one um cameraman just shooting b-roll i guess and he was walking to all the different parts of the wall and like all the different sort of stations for aid and like trying to like really trying to get as many faces as possible. You can kind of tell that that's like what he was doing. Everyone who I was around, I was kind of, you know, oriented mostly with kind of

like, like, anarchist mutual aid people. And, you know, when they saw the cable side track, they were like, okay, everyone needs to get a mask on, you know, and I still hadn't in that, I'm in 95 with me, so I wore that, and I had a, you know, slightly identifying logo on my sweats shirt, which I taped over so that, you know, that image wouldn't show up. Now, KUSI have drifted further and further right since 2020, along with their relatively minuscule viewership. These days, they engage in fake news culture war stuff,

like repeating the recent false accusations that Target was making tuckable swimming costumes for kids or labeling everyone in the asylum process illegal immigrants. It's sadly pretty standard for right-wing news organizations now. Kiber thinks that some of the people who saw footage on KUSI, or perhaps found the location posted on Ogden's blog, came down to the border. Like several hours later, that's like when we started to see people, you know,

kind of coming by and we could tell that they weren't volunteers because when people, like, when people who weren't even necessarily volunteering and drive by and say like, hey, I just were volunteering and I brought a case of water and they bring in the water and then they drive away. But the people who are doing, who were like here to, I think, you know, kind of just some kind of intimidation where, you know, they wouldn't approach directly. They would just kind of get out of their exceptionally large SUVs and just kind of watch and they would kind of you know get a little bit closer at a time

and then you know a little bit closer and kind of whisper to each other and you know pointed things and you know they were just kind of they were just watching and you know they got close enough that I could read their shirts and the shirts had a slogan that's associated with um the Christian nationalism. I'm still doing. So this whole family is kind of sad that the kids were wearing the shirts too. And so I kind of, yeah, I figured out that that's what was going on. And I never talked to them.

I didn't approach them, but I stood, when I was, you know, getting closer and closer, I kind of positioned myself in between the rest of the volunteers and this group, and just kind of, you know, didn't even really stare at them, just kind of, just kind of looked at them and just made it clear with my body language that I, like, I knew what they were doing, like, they weren't, you know, they weren't doing any kind of super agent thing or whatever. Like, they were being really, really obvious, and I just, you know, stood and positioned myself in a way that indicated that, you know, I know what you're doing and you're not going to get close, you're not going to interfere with, you know, what we're doing here. You're

not going to contact anyone or you're troll anyone or, like, whatever you might do. And eventually one of the people who is either volunteer or worked for like one of the NGOs can definitely tell there was something going on. So she went over and had a conversation with them that I couldn't hear and eventually they decided to leave. And I think she was just kind of trying to be diplomatic, but just sort of like asked them if they wanted to help and if they don't want to help and you know, you could go be somewhere else, I suppose. And it was, I mean, the sort of one amusing part to call it that was that they apparently complained to this person about me because they said that I had been watching them and I was racially profiling them because they were white. And I realize now that this is an alarmist interview, but just for the listeners, I am very, very white myself. I think it's important when we discuss volunteering to honour how hard this kind of experience can be on people.

Obviously, the trauma associated with seeing people brutalized by the state and capital is not the same as being brutalized by state and capital yourself, but that doesn't mean it's easy. I asked Natalie to reflect a little on children's toys we found in a shelter when we were cleaning up the camp. Like as a mom, like I have my own children and it just really, it's emotional. It's like, it's just, ah, like, I'm like, who's, who what child is playing with us, you know, here in this space and, you know, that no child

should be ever in, you know, an encampment like that or it just, no one should be living outside. No one should be doing that. But also it's like kind of like the humanity in a way, like that, you know, even a child's going to play wherever a child is going to play. And like that little toy of little, hopefully it brought that kid some joy. And that, moment, you know, if it was there a little piece of home or someone gave it to him or what, you know, it was, yeah, the reality. It was like a, it was like a person, you know, like a little artifact of someone who was actually there, you know, like it was a little more tangible than, you know, a sock, you know, that's not, it's not, I'm not thinking, you know, who wore that

sock, but think of who, who, who was playing with that joy, you know, was it a little boy, a little girl at hold where they, did they bring a home? Are they missing it? When I saw they had that she needed people to clean up, it was like, okay, I took a day off of work and went out there and just felt overwhelming. I mean, just one day of me working out there was really emotional. I can't imagine how, you know, Melissa and all the people that were on the ground just dealing with it. And I know they're just struggling a little bit and just processing it all has been really hard, you know, really hard. you know really hard it's just just just how how privileged we are you know like no one leaves our country because they want to they leave because they have to but they feel like they have

to and you know it's I mean it's respecting and honoring and understanding the privilege that you're in and not taking it for granted because it's very easy too Both Katie Marissa said they don't really identify as political and that they wanted to be there as people. Sometimes, often. Politics can become a complicated game of numbers and statistics, but it's important to remember that what this is really about is organising in such a way that we can take care of one another

and that the most important politics of all is the politics of feeding hungry people and maybe bringing a sad child or stuffed animal. Here's Katie talking about the community response. I think I'm a really compassionate, person and I'm not very political in the sense that, like, I don't really participate. My life and my community's life is solution-oriented. So I saw, like, that on a large scale.

Like, when people come together, we create solutions when, and you don't weigh. for someone like the government to show up and fix it because then people will die. You know, I mean, that's the reality is if that community didn't activate, there would have been a lot of dead people in the desert. Katie shared with me that she'd been having a difficult time, feeling guilty for not having the language skills to do more

and questing her own worthiness to be there helping. But in the end, she said, she felt that what she'd done was right and important. I'll leave you with her thoughts, and tomorrow I'll be back to talk about the people who put everyone in this situation in the first place, the Department of Homeland Security. I think an important thing is like so many times we hear about things and we say, isn't that awful?

And we kind of shut down because we don't feel empowered or we don't know how to help. And literally a smile makes a difference. A feeling of like, I see you and you belong on this planet makes a difference. And, you know, little kids packing up canned goods and fruit snacks for other little kids. they didn't see those kids but when the adult said they're going to be so happy to get that package they felt like they made a difference and those little girls are going to grow up and not be afraid to step up and make a difference i think a lot of people think like they can't do

enough so they don't do anything and if we all just do a little bit or what you can then And I think we would see a very large impact. Hacamba is a town of 500, and they just fed thousands, house thousands, clothed thousands, hugged and welcomed thousands of human beings. And those people in that town don't have much excess. and they made a difference and I was proud to be a part of that community in the way that I'm on the fringe of it and it made me want to be even more a part of it my feelings and intuition about that town were confirmed by watching the simplest action

make an incredible impact on real lives and real people and that this isn't demographics it's real bodies that have breeding hearts and breathe and we all share the same air in the same water and we're all connected and when you make one little drip in the bucket, it actually does make a difference. And I think that stops us sometimes when we think what we have isn't enough to give. But when someone has nothing, what you have is more than what they can imagine. It could happen here as a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcast from CoolZone 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. 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 tell about a gang of high-functioning nitwits who somehow pulled off America's third largest cash

heist. Kind of like Robin Hood had except for the part where he steals from the rich and gives 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 and had not bought a ticket to help him escape. So we're saying like, oh God, well, What do we do? What do you do? That was dumb. People do not follow my example. Listen to Crimeless, Hillbilly Heist on the IHeart Radio 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. Wait, stop? What? 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 grim and mild from aaron mankey this is havoctown a new fiction podcast sets in the bridgewater audio universe starring jule state and ray wise listen to havoc town on the i heart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts the murder of an 18 year old girl in graves county kentucky went unsolved for years until a local housewife a a journalist and a handful of girls came forward with a story. America, y'all better work the hell up. Bad things happens to good people in small towns.

Listen to Graves County on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to binge the entire season ad-free, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast.