It Could Happen Here - Darién Gap: One Year Later | Part Four: When Someone Needs Help

Episode Date: December 4, 2025

In the final episode of a four part series, James talks about the need for mutual aid, and speaks to the family hosting Primrose now.  Primrose’s Legal Aid Fundraiser: https://www.gofundme.com/f/immigration-lawyer-for-primrose Sources: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/21/world/americas/trump-us-mexico-border.html https://www.fresnobee.com/news/article299272524.html https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/woody-guthrie-deportee-song-immigrants-rare-recording-1235383582/ https://southkernsol.org/2024/09/30/marker-unveiled-at-1948-plane-crash-site-that-killed-28-mexican-passengers/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-orders/  http://www.toddmillerwriter.com/border-patrol-nation/  https://timzhernandez.com/all-they-will-call-you/  https://www.ice.gov/features/atd  https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/04/us/ice-impersonators-on-the-rise-arrests-made-as-authorities-issue-national-warning  https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=granuleid:USC-prelim-title8-section1225&num=0&edition=prelimSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. I'm Robert Smith, and this is Jacob Goldstein, and we used to host a show called Planet Money. And now we're back making this new podcast called Business History, about the best ideas and people and businesses in history. And some of the worst people, horrible ideas, and destructive companies in the history of business.

First episode, how Southwest Airlines use cheap seats and free whiskey to fight its way into the airline is. The most Texas story ever. Listen to Business History on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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. Had 30 agents ready to go with shotguns and rifles and you name it. Five, six white people pushed me in the car. Basically, your stay-at-home moms were picking up these large amounts of heroin.

All you got to do is receive the package. You don't have to open it, just accept it. She was very upset, crying. 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. Thanksgiving isn't just about food. It's a day for us to show up for one another. It's okay not to be okay sometimes and be able to build strength and love within each other.

I'm Eli Akani, host of the podcast Family Therapy, a series where we're really. Real families come together to heal and find hope. I've always wanted us to have therapy, so this is such a beautiful opportunity. Listen to Season 2 of Family Therapy every Wednesday on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Jingle bells, jingle all the way. Yo, yo, yo, can we get Thanksgiving first? I'm hungry. What's up, y'all? It's Kadeen.

And DeVal, the host of the Ellis Everett. after podcast. This holiday season, tune out the noise and tune in to Ellis Ever After. On Ellis Ever After, we get real with our crew about family, love and marriage, and everything else in between. Listen to Ellis Ever After on America's number one podcast network, IHeart. Follow Ellis Ever After and start listening on the free IHeart Radio app today. As we always do, we have included the sources for this podcast in the show notes. I've also included a link to Primrose's legal aid fundraiser. People will like to help out.

A week before you're going to help out. The week before you're hearing this, on a beautiful Southern California winter morning, and met some friends in a parking lot near the border. We hopped into our trucks and drove along dirt roads till we reached a pull-up. Once there, we threw on packs and hiked straight up a steep hillside. Even in late November, the south-facing slope was hot, but we were all sweating by the time we reached the GPS location we'd been given.

It wasn't hard to spot. A dark patch on the landscape where someone's remains had returned to the earth. One friend had carried a heavy wooden cross up the mountain. We dug a hole in the rocky ground, and then placed the white wooden cross in it. Silently, we filled the hole back up, stamped on the dirt until the cross stood straight up. Then we decorated it with marigolds and seashells and dry flower petals, doing the best we could. One friend carefully picked the petals off the flowers,

laid them on the arms of the cross, and another sprinkled poppy seeds into the ground. We stood in silence for a while, but the construction of the secondary border wall didn't halt for a minute. In silence, and then together, we paid our respects to Graciela Sunsion Gomez-Hernandez, whose last moments were spent looking at the same sky

we were looking at, gazing down onto the two border walls that were built to separate us from her. She died in September, in the heat wave. The same month a year before, I'd had to call 911 for several migrants with heat stroke I'd come across. She died, a friend told me, with her clothes folded next to her,

sheltering under a bush. Looking from the place we erected the lonely little cross that was all we had left to remember her, I could see four Border Patrol surveillance antennas. She was just a few hundred yards from the wall, from the road, but it took weeks for anyone to find her. to help. But we arrived soon enough to ensure that, at least in death, she was afforded to dignity the world has denied her in life. Then I strapped half a 50-gallon barrel into my backpack

frame, where my friends carried slabs of water bottles. As we walked, a construction vehicle above us drilled holes into the earth for pylons that would hold a second 30-foot wall on the 60 degree slope. Above the vehicle, a helicopter flew around, and then it flew back. Underneath it, we weren't the date on water bottles and threw them in a barrel. Doing this for years,

we've said goodbye to a fair share of people who he never got to say hello to, and whose faces we never got to see. Last summer, I helped search for the remains of a migrant who had passed away in a canyon deep in the desert. Every time I do this, fills me with a deep sadness, especially with all the friends from the jungle who I've lost touch with since then. It could be easy to look at everything I've laid out in this series and feel hopeless, but I don't want you to.

It could be easy to feel afraid as well, because now is a time that caring about other people is dangerous. It's possible, currently, for some folks to keep their heads down. and try and keep themselves safe, or to confine their actions to our angry posting on social media. But our politics shouldn't be about anger. It should be about love. Now more than ever, it's important to remember that. We don't act on our love and our solidarity with angry tweets. We act on it by taking care of people. However many walls they build, however many masked men with guns they send. I don't believe it's within the power of the state to stop people caring about

each other. And I hope that that care compels people to do something. In fact, I think seeing so much cruelty makes us all realize that it's up to us to care for one another. People have cared for Primrose and Kim in all kinds of ways since they came here. And today we're going to hear from some of them. Friends bought Kimberly's school books while they were stuck in Mexico. Some other folks put on a burlesque performance here in San Diego to raise money for her lawyer. Hundreds of you reached into your pockets to help her pay for illegal living expenses. When the state, both under Biden and under Trump, made her and Kimberly feel unwelcome, you didn't.

I've carried my fair share of water into the desert under the Biden administration as well. It was Biden's policies that left Illinois stuck in Mexico, not Trump's. It was Biden's policies that detained people in the open air and left them with no food or water or shelter. and it was everyday people like my friends and I who fed them and sheltered them and took care of them. We took donations and dived into dumpsters to grab tents and worked hard every day to build shelters, cook food and give away clothing so that people could feel welcome and safe here. Not a single elected official gave out a single sandwich, much less made one,

in the months that thousands of people were detained outdoors in a cumber and Salisidro. But people from churches, good Juarez, Latter-day Saints people and Quakers, as what as a whole lot of anarchists and crust punks and just desert people with no particular politics did. I'm not saying this to pat us on the back. I don't think any of us really wanted to be mentioned at all. Like many of us, some of my happiest memories were the days we fed strangers, and then sat around fires sharing stories and sometimes songs. Since then, I've been privileged to share the joys and struggles some of those people faced in their new lives here. I've attended their weddings. I've tried to help them understand Appalachian accents.

And I've helped them come to turn to the fact you simply can't get around large parts of this country without a car. I'm saying this because I think it's important that whatever happens after this current administration, we can't ever go back to the way things were before. We can't let migrants be invisible in our communities. We can't let them keep dying at the border. Let's talk about what caring looks like in Primrose's case. This time last year, I just released my Darien Gap podcast. And a few weeks later, I received a direct message via my Patreon news,

newsletter. It was from a guy called Matt. My name's Matt. I'm just a normal person who listens to a lot of podcasts. I didn't know him and he didn't know me, but he listened to the podcast I made. I can still very vividly remember where I was when I listened to that, which was I was coming back from a dirt biking trip in Michigan, and so I had a seven-hour drive. And I was like, oh, cool, Here's a three-hour podcast that I'll listen to. And then I started listening to it. And then I was just like, I got into that mode where I was just like, I couldn't not finish it.

You know, I was like absolutely hooked and just needed to get all the way to the end and was just really, really moved by the whole thing. Like many Americans, until relatively late in the Biden administration, Matt knew about immigration, but he hadn't really grapple with the fact that what secure borders means is killing innocent people in the jungle, in the desert, and everywhere in between. That's how deterrence works. That's how it's supposed to work.

I didn't realize that that was like intentional. And then hearing, you know, hearing, hearing yours, I was just sort of like, oh, right, like just the fact that people would go to such a, just such lengths of a, of danger on a journey just across a continent. And knowing that once they get here, they're not even welcome, right? We're going to intentionally put up this like kind of life or death obstacle course. I kept thinking about it. And the next day I was like, let me like see if you've done anything else on it. And I found a couple of your, a couple of your other, your other episodes on it.

And I was like, wow, this. This is wild. And that was, you know, you were talking about the open air detention in the Hacumba area. And I was like, this is crazy. Like, this is just happening just right outside of San Diego. I mean, it's just wild. Matt felt like now that he knew this, he couldn't not do something about it. So it took some of his vacation time at work and came to Southern California.

The thing that was crazy is seeing all the equipment, you know, equipment, if you can call it that, left behind by the people traveling through these places where it's just like normal shoes and just like cheap Walmart backpacks and just you know the just basic stuff that you would just like wear to school. Matt joined friends in mind in the mountains, carrying water and helping with some tech issues we'd been wondering about. He saw the wall and he saw the damage it does. He saw the difficult terrain people have to cross just to get a chance to ask for help here, the ways they have to risk their lives even after they make it to the USA. He also got to experience the way that helping other people helps us.

As I was heading back home, I definitely had this feeling about, like, way less despair. Getting together with people to just do something, to just do something useful to help people, even if it's just like in a tiny way. like even if somehow it doesn't help but it's like it probably will but importantly doing it with other people it made me feel a lot better it made me not feel so like just everything is fucked like the world is descending into fascism or when there's nothing i can do about it it's like there are a lot of people who want to help doing stuff with them is like is good soon after like all of us. He saw the border bringing its violence into cities across the United States.

I mean, like, just masked federal agents, we assume, mostly, refusing to identify themselves, just randomly picking people up. I mean, it's crazy. And, I mean, I literally am a loss for words. I mean, it's just, it's so the opposite of what America is all about. Straight up, like, fascism. Like, I just, I never thought I would live through something like this. I always just thought that's the kind of thing that happens in other countries, you know? I guess a lot of us thought that. A lot of us probably thought this kind of state violence was confined to other places and other times. We wondered, perhaps absentmindedly, what we might do in those places and times.

For years, as a historian and a reporter, have thought about them, read about them, visited them. Now I'm living in them. It's always just sort of like, in the same way that you would think, think, what would happen if I was in this, I don't know, movie? Like, it's not real. Just think, like, oh, what if I was Jason Bourne? Matt and I stayed in touch. One day he was in L.A. on business.

They mentioned I've been helping Primrose navigate the mass transit nightmare that is Los Angeles so she could get to her ice appointment. He offered to stop by if he needed a ride anywhere. I connected to him. He saw her place, and he offered to help her get some furniture as well. Then it was time for him to fly home. Every day, like I do, he had to worry. about someone he knew being snatched. The Florida's settlement doesn't stop

eyes from redetaining people, and in L.A., they seem to be detaining anyone they could any way they could. Kim had been afraid to go out now, because she didn't want to go back to detention. So once again, Matt decided he wanted to do something, and he asked if Kim and Primrose might like to come and stay with him on the East Coast. That's not an easy choice to make. No, no means it means sharing your space. It also means taking yourself out of the safe group and accepting that the state's eye of Sauron might fall on you now. You know, I talked it over with my wife and we were like, you know, both wanted to do this. But, you know, we had to acknowledge, like, it might mean that, like, these assholes and masks

show up at our house, like, where our kids are and are, like, going to haul away just this family that might happen in, like, right over there. I mean, I don't like it, but I don't know. I just, I feel like you got to do something, you know. In the end, he says, it wasn't a hard decision to make. I mean, it was a lot easier because my wife was actually just like, 100% let's do it. And I was like, well, hold on a second. We should at least think through the outcome.

She's like, I don't care. Whatever. Just do it. Like a lot of people, Matt had always done things to help people, but nothing like this, Nothing that directly put him in between someone who needed to be kept safe and the people who didn't want them to be safe. Yeah, I mean, nothing is dangerous. I mean, charity stuff.

But sometimes with time, but usually just, like, giving money to people to, you know, who need it or whatever. But, you know, this is definitely the most, like, direct involvement to help someone who needs it. Certainly it's the first time that I've exposed my family to anything like this. You know the shade is always Shadiest right here. Season 6 of the podcast Reasonably Shady with Jazele Bryan and Robin Dixon is here dropping every Monday. As two of the founding members of the Real Housewives Potomac were giving you all the laughs,

drama, and reality news you can handle that. And you know we don't hold back. So come be reasonable or shady with us each and every Monday. I was going through a walk in my neighborhood. Out of the blue, I see this huge sign next to somebody's house. Okay. The sign says, my neighbor is a Karen. Oh, no way.

I died laughing. I'm like, I have to. you know you are lying humongous y'all they had some time on their hands listen to reasonably shady from the black effect podcast network on the iheart radio app apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast it's okay not to be okay sometimes and be able to build strength and love within each other thanksgiving isn't just about food it's a day for us to show up for one another i'm elia connie host of the podcast family therapy a series where real families come together to heal and find hope.

What would be a clue that would be like? I've gotten lots of text messages from him. This one's from a little bit better of a version of him. Because he's feeding himself well. It's always a concern. Like, are you eating well? He's actually an amazing cook. There was this one time where we had neighbors

and I saved their dog and I ended up inviting them over for food and that was like one of my proudest moments. This is family therapy. Real families, real stories on a journey to heal together. Listen to Season 2 of Family Therapy every Wednesday on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Robert Smith, and this is Jacob Goldstein, and we used to host a show called Planet Money. And now we're back making this new podcast called Business History,

about the best ideas and people and businesses in history, and some of the worst people, horrible ideas, and destructive companies in the history of business. Having a genius idea without a need for it is nothing. It's like not having it at all. It's a very simple, elegant lesson. Make something people want. First episode, How Southwest Airlines Use Cheap Seats and Free Whiskey to fight its way into the airline business. The Most Texas Story ever.

There's a lot of mavericks in that story. We're going to have Mavericks on the show. We're going to have plenty of robber barons. So many robber barons. And you know what? They're not all bad. And we'll talk about some of the classic great moments of famous business geniuses, along with some of the darker moments that often get overlooked, like Thomas Edison

and the electric chair. Listen to business history on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way. Yo, yo, can we get Thanksgiving first? I'm hungry. Hey, y'all, it's Kadeen. And deval.

The hosts of Ellis Ever After podcast. This holiday season, whether you're cooking for the family, Out buying gifts for the kids. Or crowded in holiday traffic. Tune out the noise and tune in to Ellis Ever After. On Ellis Ever After, we get rid with our crew about family. If you feeling like you're feeling, that's probably because you're a good parent. Friendship.

Be careful what you put in your body. Move your body and love it the way you love them cars that house, them clothes, them clothes, them shoes. Love yourself, the brunches. Love in marriage. You know what's become attractive to me? and it's because I've self-corrected and I guess I detoxified myself, accountability.

It has become so attractive. So attractive to me and everything else in between. I've told my most embarrassing moment on this podcast before, which was me taking a shit in a zip lock bag. So listen to Ellis Ever After on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. So one day this autumn,

Primrose and Kimberly said goodbye to Los Angeles, got on a plane, flew to the East Coast. I thought I was waiting at the right spot, but they let him out at a different... Oh, no. So they actually walked past me in the airport. I didn't even see it.

But I eventually figured it out. Luckily, the airport is not that big. And so I could just sort of walk and just walk all the baggage claim area, and I eventually found them. Then they went for sushi. Then for ice cream. A perfect suburban strip mall American evening.

The sort of evening people cross jungles and deserts be able to enjoy. The sort of evening the hundreds of people are met in the jungle will never be able to enjoy. Of course, it's hard to sit in a cold zone and talk about the things people endure to come here. Matt says sometimes it's still difficult to even comprehend what his new friends have been through. It's hard to answer. You're asking you a very good question about like, well, what was it like? It's like the difference, the distance between. like our shared experience is so vast.

It still often almost doesn't seem real. I've had that same thought. It's hard to hear stories from migrants and really think of them as human experiences, not just stories. That's why I go into the mountains and the desert. It's why I spent a decade asking editors to send me to Zalian. I don't think I could understand migrant's journeys

if I hadn't experienced a little part of them. And I don't think we should write about migrants and not write about what they go through to get to a strip mall sushi place. of course primrose isn't done with her interaction with immigration authorities yet they've had visits from ice in her new home but not from enforcement removal operations i mean like they know where she lives we told them where she lives so like she lives in my house so um you know yeah they might uh i don't know i mean yeah i i guess i'm like not as afraid of that

I have to say that the ice people in seem just like a bunch of cheery folks. Like, it seems pretty different than, I mean, like I met many of them. Yeah. Part of this process. And they were not the like, you know, plate carriers and guns guys. They were just like the, you know, they work in the office and decide whether you get to move here or not.

Right, yeah, yeah. And they were like very friendly and downright helpful. Primrose is settling in at Matt's place now, but as Matt explained, their struggle isn't over yet. Now, like, our energy is more on how do we help her make her case? because she has an asylum case that, you know, she needs to win. And it's, you know, I'm not a lawyer, but, wow, sounds like what asylum is for. Literally running from a hostile government that she was protesting and was going to jail and torture her. Like, what is asylum for if not for that?

Of course, interacting with the asylum system has shown Matt some of its absurdities. Like the work permit clock the four-hour bus rides to Riverside, the endless changing regulations that one has to navigate or trying to survive without the ability to legally work. In what way can you do this legally? Without some, you know, group helping you, without like just somebody saying, fine, I will take you and pay for your living expenses,

what is the legal way to, like, seek asylum? You come here, they put you in jail. You stay in jail, which is fucking jail. Yeah. Or they let you out of jail. Good. Array, we're out of jail. And now you're homeless.

Yeah. You have no possessions and no ability to legally work. At least let them work. I mean, come on. Like, just let them get a legal job. That's just like the sort of bureau. bureaucracy version of the forcing people across the desert. It's like, well, okay, you won't die in the desert.

In this one, in this one, you will die or you will suffer under homelessness, more deterrence, you know? Everyone always says, oh, I support immigration, just got to be legal. You got to do it the right way. But they have no idea what they're talking about. Like, what is the right way? I believe everyone who says that has no idea what the right way is. Changing that. Making our laws line up with what anyone would see as basic decency isn't coming any time soon.

In the meantime, they have to navigate the asylum system as many contradictions. Primrose never got any follow-up care for her leg injury. The only way she could access care in her new home was, once again, totally impractical for someone without a car. Just another example of how the system sets people up to suffer and fail. There's no way to get her to the doctor. Well, okay, there is a way, a way technically. we could drive, like, an hour and 20 minutes, way out to this place that, like, as a thing with ice, that they will say, like, well, that's your approved, like, medical provider.

Like, I'm not going to drive an hour and 20 minutes each way to just do some minor thing. Yeah. So we pay out of pocket. So we go to a doctor and we go, here's the problem. and we have. We don't have insurance. Let's get this done for as little money as possible, because in the United States, if you don't have insurance, it is going to cost you. Yeah. And mercifully, my wife and I both know a number of doctors that we can sort of run ideas by. And if we didn't have that, like, I don't know what we would do. It would not be good.

I mean, I know what we do. We would drive an hour and 20 minutes to the place. And we would just like okay doctor help but like because you know we have connections and we are also willing to pay a little bit out of pocket she needed to get some medicine medicine is super expensive yeah you go to the CVS and you're like well you know oh we don't have your insurance on file we're like I know but how much is this going to really cost and dude drugs are so expensive Like, it's just, what are, what are those people supposed to do? It's a broken system. And it's not one we can really rely on government to change whoever's in office.

The Democrats don't have a great answer for this either. I wish they did. I mean, I will still vote for them because they're at least less bad. Yeah. You know, what other choice do you have? It's like, if there was a better party, I would be that one. that, I mean, if they had a chance of winning. Right.

Yeah, yeah. If no other party has a chance of winning, so yeah, man, I'm a Democrat. Like, and I will help the Democrats try to win elections. They push it in the direction that it needs to go. But the Democrats are part of the problem. I mean, like, they're not radically changing policies that would change this thing we've been talking about for the last hour. It's okay not to be okay sometimes and be able to build strength and love within each other.

Thanksgiving isn't just about food. It's a day for us to show up for one another. I'm Elliot Connie, host of the podcast Family Therapy, a series where real families come together to heal and find hope. What would be a clue that would be like? I've gotten lots of text messages from him. This one's from a little bit better of a version of him. because he's feeding himself well. It's always a concern. Like, are you eating well? He's actually an amazing cook.

There was this one time where we had neighbors and I saved their dog and I ended up inviting them over for food and that was like one of my proudest moments. This is Family Therapy. Real families, real stories on a journey to heal together. Listen to season two of Family Therapy

every Wednesday on the Black Effect Podcast Network, IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you've, get your podcasts. Jingle bells, jingle all the way. Yo, yo, can we get Thanksgiving first? I'm hungry.

Hey, y'all. It's Kadeen. And DeVal. The hosts of Ellis Ever After podcast. This holiday season, whether you're cooking for the family, out buying gifts for the kids, or crowded in holiday traffic, tune out the noise and tune in

to Ellis Ever After. On Ellis Ever After, we get rid with our crew about family. Have you feeling like you feeling. That's probably because you're a good parent. Friendship. Be careful what you put in your body. Move your body and love it the way you love them cars that house and clothes, them clothes, them shoes. Love yourself. The brunches. Love and marriage.

You know what's become attractive to me? And it's because I've self-corrected and I guess I detoxified myself. Accountability. Oh, yeah. That is bad attractive. So attractive to me and everything else in between. I've told my most embarrassing moment on this podcast before. which was me taking a shit in a zip lock bag. So listen to Ellis Ever After on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

I'm Robert Smith. This is Jacob Goldstein. And we used to host a show called Planet Money. And now we're back making this new podcast called Business History about the best ideas and people and businesses in history. And some of the worst people. Horrible ideas and destructive companies in the history of business. Having a genius idea without a need for it is nothing.

It's like not having it at all. It's a very simple, elegant lesson. Make something people want. First episode, how Southwest Airlines use cheap seats and free whiskey to fight its way into the airline business. The most Texas story ever. There's a lot of mavericks in that story. We're going to have mavericks on the show. We're going to have plenty of robber barons.

So many robber barons. And you know what? They're not all bad. And we'll talk about some of the classic great moments of famous business genius. along with some of the darker moments that often get overlooked, like Thomas Edison and the electric chair. Listen to business history on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Welcome to Decoding Women's Health. I'm Dr. Elizabeth Pointer, chair of Women's Health

and Gynecology at the Adria Health Institute in New York City. On this show, I'll be talking to top researchers and top clinicians, asking them your burning questions and bringing that information about women's health and midlife directly to you. A hundred percent of women go through menopause. It can be such a struggle for our quality of life, but even if it's natural, why should we suffer through it? The types of symptoms that people talk about is forgetting everything. I never used to forget things.

They're concerned that, one, they have dementia, and the other one is, do I have ADHD? There is unprecedented promise with regard to cannabis and cannabinoids. to sleep better, to have less pain, to have better mood, and also to have better day-to-day life. Listen to Decoding Women's Health with Dr. Elizabeth Pointer on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening now. When I first moved to the U.S., George W. Bush was president.

Soon after I got Hirabamba's elected, and it was Thanksgiving. I didn't know much about Thanksgiving, and I didn't know much about Thanksgiving, and I didn't have much time for history that overlooked settler colonialism anyway. But the day before, I was riding my bike down the coast, and I ran into some folks who were also riding their bikes. They asked what plans I had for the next day, and I told them I was just going to ride my bike all day, and that's what I'd like to do. They, having just met me, invited me into their home. The next day, they fed me, and we talked for hours and became friends. A decade and a half later, on the night before Thanksgiving, my friends cooked as many

beans so they could fit in their giant pot that we boiled above a propane burn and made from half for beer keg. In the cold of the desert, some Kurdish guys helped us ladle out scoops of hot stew for hundreds of people. I still don't go in for settler colonialism very much, but I felt thankful to be in a position where I could welcome people now. That same year on Christmas Eve, I was sitting on the tailgate of a pickup in the desert, kicking my feet so my toes wouldn't burn with cold. I spent the entire day building shelters for people out in the desert, left there for up to a week by the Biden administration. We'd handed out all our food again, but some folks who had been taking care of their kids

or trying to find a warm place out the desert went to sleep had missed out on eating. So I'd found a few boxes of HTRs, which are kind of like a worse but vegan version of MREs, and I took them from the truck and went over to the people who had missed dinner. They heated them up somehow on a piece of scrap metal over the fire. I can't really remember other than thinking it was really janky. I struggled to describe how special it felt. for me, to be able to share a little of the welcome I received with other people. Like that, I feel more hopeful, knowing that not only are other people just as upset as I am,

but that alongside those other people I can do things that I wouldn't have thought possible if I hadn't seen them with my own eyes and done them with my own hands. From Obama to today, it's been up to us to welcome migrants. Obama set records for deportation. Biden beat them, albeit, including Title 42 removals, and Trump will probably beat both this year. In the meantime, it's up to regular people to help one another. That should it make us feel hopeless. It should make us feel strong.

Matt's doing something remarkable, but I don't think he was in a very remarkable situation before. He was just a person, lucky enough to have some spare time and some space to look after someone. But there are millions of people like that in this country. There are millions of people who are mad right now. The anger alone is not going to help us take care of people. That's what the priority should be right now.

I don't want to paint Matt as the only person who helped Primrose, because hundreds of people help Primrose, from the Embara in the jungles of Panama, and her fellow migrants while she crossed Dalia and Gap. People across a continent took their time and their resources to help a stranger. I've heard of this from countless migrants as well. Some of them rode the train from southern Mexico up to the border, and people threw them food and warm jumpers to total strangers who they'd never met, who they'd never even get a chance to see. Across thousands of people, of miles, when states ignored their suffering, the hundreds of migrants I have talked to found food, shelter, and solidarity from ordinary people. And those people, in their own way, benefited

too. It was enlightening to me that, hey, it wasn't just me. Like, it's not just, oh, I, for some reason, I am the only one who's, like, really upset by all this. You know, there are other folks who are like this but but also just like a lot of other people are absolutely willing to take risks be generous with their time and money like there's a lot of them there's a lot of people who like want to help and that kind of community aspect of it was a surprise to me that that the doing it with other people was so powerful like i thought it was just about the doing the actual act of helping people somehow, but doing it with other people was just surprisingly good. Made me feel much more optimistic about our ability to get through this collectively.

I asked Matt, what do you want people to know about his experience? Well, I mean, I guess what I would like people to know is it's not as hard as you might think to help folks like Primrose. Like, it sounds insurmountable like, oh, no, I'm exposed to all this risk. and danger and legal hassle or whatever, but it's like, it's not that complicated. It's like they fill out a forum and it just says like, oh, now I live here. And then once to prove it, then they live there. The hard part is finding someone, especially now that migrants are more worried than ever to be

out and in the community. Any database would be a risk to them. But maybe that's not a problem that someone can solve. It's kind of like an information sharing problem. because, like, these folks are all across the United States, and the people who could host them are similarly all across the United States. But you don't have to take someone into your home. There are hundreds of things you can do wherever you are.

You can feed people who are hungry. Pick up someone's kid from school or take their dog for a walk. Fix someone's car so it doesn't get towed or ticketed or drive someone to a doctor's appointment. Creating safe communities for migrants is not a distinct act. from creating safe communities for everyone. I've never been a big political theory reader. But I think I've learned everything I need to know about politics in refugee camps and the deserts and mountains and jungles

that migrants traverse to get to this country. In Panama, I met with a priest who houses migrants. In California, I've helped Sikhs and Quaker friends hand out warm food in the cold. We can come from a broad range of perspectives and still get to the same place. When someone needs help, you help them. And if we all do that, then when we need help, someone will help us.

You don't have to wait four years to start. You can do it right now. While there are only some things we can do in the face of a government that doesn't want to help people like Primrose, there is an awful lot that we can do. For all the people who didn't make it to the USA from the jungle, we can help the people who did. We can also take this principle and make it a cornerstone of all our politics. The more people come to know migrants, the more they're not. will see how broken our system is.

The more people who see that, the more people will demand change. And I hope that they won't stop until we get a system that doesn't look at little children who aren't safe and say, we don't want to help you. Until we get a system that doesn't make them walk across jungles and through deserts before they even get a chance to ask for help. Before I go, I thought I would play a part of the interview I did with Senor Bonilla in Bahajukito last year.

I spoke to his son on Monday and he said his dad's still doing well. Truly, the migrants on this route are not here because they want to be. They are here because the economy in their countries is terrible, or something, everything is going badly on their countries. How could we mistreat them knowing that? We won't. Not us. Never.

This is a belief that we have. we are all children of God God made the world and humanity and we are not that different we are all brothers I want to leave the last word today to Primrose because really this is the story about her and Kim and the incredible tenacity and courage they showed to get here

even if I say I can me myself I can say thank you I don't even know how to say thank you but I'm just God, God please bless those people who put hands on me and came. I thought maybe I'm alone, but I realize I'm not alone here. I have also people who helped me. You guys will help me so much. I never even get helped even in my country the way I get helped here in America.

And I'm really, really. glad. I'm very glad for those people who helped me. I have, especially since when I was, even when I was in Mexico, in my prayers I just say, God, just bless those people who put hands on me. You make me feel better, you put smile in my face and even came. Because when we came here, I wasn't even heavy clothes to wear nothing. They just only the clothes they gave us in detention. where the detainers, that's the clothes I was having.

I was... When I want to wash, it was a T-shirt jacket, I just removed the top, then I wash the... The inside the t-shirt, when it's dry, then we bathed and put the new one we were like... But for now, I'm really, really appreciated a lot. I really appreciate a lot, because... You were there?

my life is like changing now so yeah yeah and it's like you were saying the things Kim will have will be so different from the chances you had right she can go to she speaks English she speaks Spanish she can go to school here yeah does that make you happy when you think about yeah I'm maybe even if I even told dear I was asking you one day, I said, Kim, what if I die today? She was even mentioned your name. Said, I'll just ask him. Maybe I can just go to school.

Yeah, she, yeah, wish also, she was like, Mommy, I want to write my book. When I start high school, I need to write my store of my life because we have been through a lot. But now we are happy. I don't want to live with your support, guys. I'm really appreciative, yeah, because if she go to school, I'm happy. I know she, I want here to have a better life. Yeah. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media.

For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for It Could Happen here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening. You know the shade is always shady is right here. Season 6 of the podcast Reasonably Shady with Giselle Bryan and Robin Dixon is here dropping every Monday. As two of the founding members of the Real Housewives Potomac were giving you all the laughs, drama, and reality news you can handle. And you know we don't hold back. So come

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