It Could Happen Here - Elon’s Border Adventure

Episode Date: October 5, 2023

James is joined by Shereen and Robert to discuss Elon Musk’s perpetuating of border myths, and to talk about how to refute them. James also shares some updates on the camps in Jacumba. Support Border Kindness Venmo Venmo.com/border-kindnessCashapp https://cash.app/borderkindnesscashZelle /paypal [e-mail] omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey guys, I'm Kate Max. You might know me from my popular online series, The Running Interview Show, where I run with celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, and more. After those runs, the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast, Post Run High, is all about. It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together. Listen to Post Run High on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You should probably keep your lights on for

Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow. Join me, Danny Trails, and step into the flames of right. An anthology podcast of modern day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The 2025 iHeart Podcast Awards are coming. This is the chance to nominate your podcast for the industry's biggest award. Submit your podcast for nomination now at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. But hurry, submissions close on December 8th. Hey, you've been doing all that talking.

It's time to get rewarded for it. Submit your podcast today at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards. Okay, I am also going. Cool, let's go. Let's fuck it up. Maybe that should be our intro. Keep it in, Daniel, keep it in.

Yeah, leave it all in, Daniel. What's fucking up my cool zone media? That's a great question, Robert. It's one we'd all like to answer. The answer is, yeah, Reagan. Reagan gold coins. Yeah, we've got into it. Oh, that's what's funding, James.

It's a common mistake, mixing those two words up. Okay, I see. Yeah, yeah. I thought it was because we got into a dispute about who is going to get the next gold coin

that they send us every month. Yeah, that's what funds our incredible work, your incredible work mostly over at the border. That's right. Yep. Before and after. Very good, Robert. Very good. Thank you. Magic, man. Yeah. Right before and after I go, I dive like Scrooge McDuck into my giant pile of gold coins and it helps me recover. But yeah, talking of the border, I am not the only one with a giant pile of gold coins who has been going to the border because a friend of the show, Elon Musk,

has also been taking... Man, why you gotta bring him into this? Sadly, Robert, he brought himself into this. Why he gotta bring himself into this? Yeah, really, this wasn't my choice. Believe me, buddy, I would like nothing more than to never hear his name again. But unfortunately, Dress... I would like to hear it again, but specifically, I would like to hear the sentence from a news anchor,

Elon Musk eaten by a crocodile. Yes, I was just thinking eaten by a crocodile. In a failed motorcycle stunt in the Florida Keys. Yeah, I'd settle with like hippopotamus crocodile. In a failed motorcycle stunt in the Florida Keys. Yeah. Yeah. I'd settle with like hippopotamus crocodile. Sure. Any large semi-aquatic animal eating him would be pretty amusing.

Yeah. Yeah. If a manatee ate him, I'd be fucking pumped. That'd be amazing. That'd be awesome. Yeah. We'd love to see it. Yeah.

If anyone has. The one carnivore manatee. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's been training its whole life for this. Yeah. That'll be on our next merch drop. Okay, so yeah, Elmo,

in some kind of, I don't know, like punished Woody cosplay. It was very costumish. Yeah, we have a saying in Texas for people who wear cowboy hats and cowboy boots when they shouldn't and it's all hat no cattle and that is he is the definition of that well the aviator glasses I think really punched it up you know yeah god yeah he just looked like a bellend like I can't it's really

remarkable that he can be that wealthy and always look so awkward. And you could just pay someone to buy you clothes, bro. At least Jeff Bezos got yoked when he got really rich. Elon Musk still looks like Humpty Dumpty. Bezos does look... Bezos looks weird as fuck. Like a plastic thing. They all look weird. I don't care about the fact that Elon Musk is, you know, he's not jacked or swole, but he's not a wildly abnormal body shape for a man in what, his fucking 50s?

Yeah, he's older than I imagine. I will shit on him for playing at something he clearly is not because no man has ever been further from being a cowboy. Yes, that is true. He has very few cattle. Yeah, there's no sh in in anyone's body shape it's just funny to mock elon musk i guess um so yeah elon turned up at the border and he decided that he was going to learn about the border and the way that he decided he was going to learn about the border was by assembling a collection of cops and one representative to lie to him about the border, which many of you who follow things like journalism will be aware that cops lie, actually, quite a lot.

And that is what happened here, unsurprisingly. So I guess I just want to take this chance to, A, update everyone on what's been happening since we last updated everyone, what's been happening at the border, and B, just address some of these myths. I know something we talked about over the break was lots of people between now and the end of the year will be seeing family members who they might not see very often,

and they might not see them between now and the next election. And there are a lot of myths specifically about migration that we will maybe copy in another episode. But I think there's some valuable stuff here that people can address. If people in your circle have been influenced by Elon Musk's citizen journalism,

then I think it's really important to just point out that it's all bullshit and so easily discoverably bullshit. Now, obviously not everyone spends as much time at the southern border united states as i do and not everyone lives on the border elon musk doesn't live on the border either and he clearly thinks that people who do uh exist in some kind of wild west fantasia where people you know wear cowboy hats and cowboy boots um but like for most of us for many of us this is our day-to-day reality and so it's easy to go i guess and talk to some cops and like wave at some people who have been corralled up like like they

like cattle or some kind of animal attraction yeah right like not engaging with them as people and and throughout this right like at no point in his little border screed which i don't think you have to watch by the way if you haven screed which i don't think you have to watch by the way if you haven't watched it like i'm very no you're not you're not gonna like benefit from it no you won't learn shit no but there is there is a clip i found that's like a minute long on youtube from the live stream where the like maybe like most 90 of it is him trying to flip the camera to the other side yeah that was that was very funny yeah that yes uh real iron man vibes uh from the guy who can't reverse his camera and then

he ends up just holding it the other way around in selfie mode yeah uh yeah this intellectual yeah no titan elon musk so i think the first part is that when he starts to well first he says as an immigrant myself which like yeah bro fucking i'm an immigrant too the difference is i didn't have to walk across the desert carrying my child and then be detained in open air concentration camp while people around me got fucking hypothermia and then questioned about the legitimacy of my like travel and right to be here and then unable to work for years. Migration experiences are different and you don't have a right to condescend to people who are often among some of the least fortunate people in the world just because your mom was a

Canadian citizen and you came here to go to school. It's not the fucking same. I say this as someone who came here to go to school, right? It's the same as if I were to take a fucking flight from North Africa to Spain and be like, well, having migrated to Spain from Africa, it's clearly not a dangerous journey. Well, no, it's a completely different situation. Yeah, and you compare yourself to Amelia Earhart in the same sentence. Yeah, exactly. No, different. So yeah, Elon Musk came to this country in a very different circumstance

to many of these people. Hey guys, I'm Kate Max. You might know me from my popular online series, The Running Interview Show, where I run with celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, and more. After those runs, the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast, Post Run High, is all about. It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together.

You know that rush of endorphins you feel after a great workout? Well, that's when the real magic happens. So if you love hearing real, inspiring stories from the people you know, follow, and admire, join me every week for Post Run High. It's where we take the conversation beyond the run and get into the heart of it all. It's lighthearted, pretty crazy, and very fun. Listen to Post Run High on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome. I'm Danny Trejo. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter? Nocturno, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora.

An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of My Cultura podcast network. Available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The 2025 iHeart Podcast Awards are coming. This is the chance to nominate your podcast for the industry's biggest award.

Submit your podcast for nomination now at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. But hurry, submissions close on December 8th. Hey, you've been doing all that talking. It's time to get rewarded for it. Submit your podcast today at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards. That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards. The first claim that's made in this video, which is which is bullshit, is this quote, unquote, open border policy. Now, at no point do any of these like old men in hats define what they mean by open border policy. And that's because it doesn't exist. It's not a

thing. There is no open border policy. There has never been an open border policy. I was in Tijuana at the Midwest, if people know where that is. So at that point in time, on the day Biden was inaugurated, I was there, right? I was there because a large group of migrants were waiting to see if Joe Biden would change anything. And they had been stuck in Tijuana for months, years in some cases. I spoke to people who had been sexually assaulted. I spoke to people who had been robbed. I spoke to people who lived in fear for their lives, right?

And they were not safe in Mexico and wanted to come to the United States. And they had seen the way Biden campaigned and they hoped that he would do something better. Did he? Fuck no, he did not. For years, he continued the same policies that Trump put in place in COVID. Biden, Title 42, more people than Trump did, right? The Title 42 policy was in place for much longer under Biden than it was under Trump. It's completely untrue to suggest that Biden at any point in his presidency opened up the border. What did happen in May, as people will be aware, is that Title 42 ended. It didn't end because Biden decided it had to end. It ended because the emergency for covid19 ended and title 42 is not immigration law it's public health law and so with the end of this policy that that allowed the government to do

things it would not normally be able to do because it was a quote-unquote emergency they were not able to do this extraordinary and extraordinarily cruel thing, which was Title 42. That wasn't a Biden choice. That was a decision forced upon him. Indeed, the Biden administration defended Title 42 in court. What has happened since then is that migrant numbers have dropped. They have decreased since the end of Title 42. That's because lots of people saw the harsh anti-migration rhetoric that was coming from the Biden White House, right? Mayorkas out there spouting stuff about bans. You'll be banned from seeking asylum for five years if you're caught crossing between ports

of entry. And that led to people thinking they had to cross before the end of Title 42, right? Now, what Title 42 did do is create a massive backlog of asylum applications because we weren't processing those applications and we were bouncing people back to Mexico where, as I've hopefully already illustrated, they were not safe. They didn't feel that that was a safe third country for them. And so in the months after Title 42, those people have tried to cross and to make their asylum applications, right?

They're supposed to use an app called cbp1 as we've documented in very great detail that app is completely unfit for purpose and people can listen to my title 42 episodes they can listen to the interview what it did with jake and austin about cbp1 the issues with it are many the facial liveness scan that it does doesn't work for people who have darker skin uh it requires wi-fi it requires internet connectivity these are things that not all migrants have and that the migrants who do have tend to be richer and tend to be whiter so it facilitates a certain type of migrant at one point in uh i believe april of this year 40 of the c CBP1 appointments that were made for asylum applications were made

for people who spoke Russian. People who spoke Russian are not 40% of the migrants. That was in Tijuana. And I guess what that means is that people, especially in my experience, people from African countries are unable to apply for appointments using CBP1. Also, it's only available in a couple of languages or three languages, I believe, English, Spanish, and Haitian Creole. If you don't speak those languages, it's going to be a lot harder. There are many other issues with CBP1 and other apps that DHS uses. But what has happened since the end of Title 42 in May, this backlog has begun to sort of, people have started to try and present their applications. And what's happening now is that people are crossing in very large numbers. That's not untrue. That happens at this time of year. So the last kind of quote unquote normal years we had

were, I suppose, 2018 and 2019. If people cast their minds back to the November of 2018, you remember that was the Trump midterms, and you remember the quote unquote migrant caravan that arrived in Tijuana at that time with thousands of people. The reason that people are always traveling at this time of year is because it is easier to travel in the months when it's hot. So we will see more people arriving in the next few months. That's part of seasonal migration. It's because there's demand for work. If you're working harvesting things as a day laborer, that happens at the end of the summer. This is part of a normal and natural cycle. People have always traveled since human beings have existed to take advantage of different conditions, different access to resources. But the idea that at some point Biden instituted an open border policy is nonsense. Biden has closed that border,

he's built walls through Friendship Park, he's built walls in Texas, he's built walls in California, he's funded DHS more. That border is certainly not open. The large groups of people that you are seeing going through the asylum process under US immigration law, as they have under every other president, they come into the United States, they do an initial interview, and they're released with a notice to appear in court. That's always been the case. Now, are those notices to appear for dates further in the future now? Absolutely. That's because our system is backlogged, right? Because we spent all our fucking money on

giving Border Patrol, the Blackhawks, giving our cops tanks, whatever it is that we spend our money on. We haven't spent it on making it easier and quicker for these people to get their asylum claims adjudicated. One of the claims that they make in the video, I'm skipping out of the order they make them in, is that he's speaking to a representative who's a representative for the southern border region of Texas. He's in Eagle Pass, Texas, which is an area which has seen a lot of migration. The guy says there's no repatriation here. Of course, there isn't any repatriation there. That's not what happens in Eagle Pass. People come. Some of them will be immediately repatriated if they are found to be, for instance, I know that in May, somebody who was found to be on the United States terrorism watch list tried

to enter the country. That person wasn't released with a notice to appear. That person was immediately bounced into either return to their country or more likely, in their case, incarcerated. Some people will be detained there. Some people will be repatriated there but that's because like del rio texas or eagle pass doesn't repatriate people that's not their role the courts are the ones who decide who is eligible for asylum right and it's worth noting that this fiscal year so that's's through August of 2023, we're recording in October, but I couldn't find September stats, immigration judges have issued removal and voluntary departure orders for 39.4% of completed cases, totaling 223,570 deportation orders. So it's absolutely ludicrous to say that there's no repatriation. Nearly half of those cases, when they come to court, result in repatriation.

The representative claims that he called the president of Guatemala and the Guatemalan president said, we'll take people back. Great. Of course they will. That's how international law works. It's not the Guatemalan president's job to decide who is allowed asylum in the United States. That's the job of the immigration courts. They are deeply flawed, but it's ludicrous to suggest that these people are not being sent back because a deeply problematic number of them are being sent back, often to very dangerous situations. I think it's uh it's deeply misleading and uh and it's troubling to see like elected officials making these claims i know that elected officials just lie to you know to to reinforce the narrative but it's still troubling another claim they were like he was

really shocked uh that people were playing golf next to the border the u.s border is thousands of miles long like we long. For those of us for whom it's not an oddity to come and cosplay at, it's where we live. And of course we do stuff near the border because it's our home. I was camping near the border this week. I ride my bike near the border all the time. There are other golf courses near the border. There are parks near the border. There's a Tommy Hilfiger discount courses near the border. There are parks near the border. There's a Tommy Hilfiger discount store near the border in San Ysidro. It's our home.

Yeah. This is something that when we were at the Butterfly Sanctuary, a friend of ours who had kind of lived on the border for forever, Mariana brought up a lot, which is that prior to September 11th in particular, these were just communities. The fact that there was a border was more theoretical than anything else. You would cross pretty free. I had friends in Southern California that go into Mexico for the weekend. You didn't have a passport or anything. Families would cross to be with each other and stuff.

It was not the way it is. Even post 9-11, for those of us who are fortunate enough to have century which is an expedite you can skip the line basically because you've been pre-cleared uh i i go to tijuana to have dinner pretty often like i'll take the trolley down there and then walk through with my bicycle and then ride my bike to the gastropark or something have dinner have a couple of beers ride my bike back back, take the trolley back. It's a nice evening. Yeah. I don't know how common it is now, but like a lot of like people that work like nine to five retail jobs or whatever it is,

they would just like leave Tijuana and come back. Like my dad, my dad had hired a bunch of those workers and it was just like normal. It was very normal to do that. More so now because San Diego is less affordable than it ever has been like yeah i think the people that don't live near a border or like believe the ridiculous claims made about it they i think they imagine the border is like in this barren wasteland and it's just like a chain link fence or something i don't think they understand

what it actually is they imagine like this desolate yellow filtered scene from Breaking Bad. Yes, exactly. Like movies like fucking Sicario, right? Where it's just this constant series of gunfights and like violence occurs on the border. It's the same thing. It's actually a version of the same shit that's happened with like San Francisco

and Portland, right? You'll have like a riot on a block or you'll have like a store get robbed and then people develop this because it gets so hyped by the media there's that you can't go into these cities they're death zones you know i was like no man like fucking it most most of its nature right like that's the fucking border um anyway it's just a place. It's not in any way remarkable like that. The primary danger

is the fact that people are stopped from having access to things like water that they need by the state. So maybe it's a good time to talk about some of the dangers

that migrants are facing right now. In the last couple of weeks, maybe since we last recorded, I believe five migrants have been shot on the southern side of the border um people so like this week in southern california it was much colder i know it's hot in lots of parts of the country it wasn't here we had rain uh we're recording on um like the first second of october um but like last weekend was very cold. I was in a camp near Hakumba on Friday night, through late Friday night, maybe into Saturday morning. And it was cold,

it was wet. Temperatures were getting like into the single digits, Celsius into the 40s and 50s Fahrenheit. When it's wet and it's that kind of temperature, that's when you start worrying about people getting hypothermia, which is exactly what happened. People were sick. People had to be evacuated. On Friday night, I was heating up milk for a baby, a tiny little baby in my camping stove so the baby could have milk at not not freezing temperatures right um i gave someone my gore-tex jacket uh i was there with james and jacqueline from border kindness and some other friends i know some of them listen to the podcast and it makes me really happy that people who listen to this like take the time out of their busy lives to show up and help other people like

that's one of the coolest things about what we do we're very proud of those people and everyone else you know yeah pick up the slack come on guys yeah like i know on that topic like there are relatively few of us it's a it's a very remote area where we were it's so fine it's you know you need a truck to get to it maybe a decent clearance car would be fine but um there were like six of us at one point, it is not easy to do that day in and day out. It really affects you to see someone's little baby sleeping in the dirt. And they're asking you like, you know, can I have a jacket? And you've already given someone your jacket. Can I have a sleeping bag? And you've given away all the sleeping bags you have like, uh, it's fucked. It's not good for you. And I know it's taken a toll on those people and it would be great if

more people could come um as james and jacqueline said we're vetting everyone because there are people who would like to do harm to migrants and people who don't like migrants and uh so if you go back and listen to that episode all the relevant links and email addresses to volunteer are there even if you just send money uh it's better to send money than to send stuff we've had a ton of i spent a decent chunk of friday afternoon going through donated stuff some of it's great some of it i'm afraid like if it if a jacket is uh has giant holes in it for you it also has giant holes in it for someone who's less rich than you and it doesn't keep them any warmer than it keeps you right so like you know it's better if people send money but that's taken its toll on people it's taking its toll on the people in the

camps too not to say that they're not in very good spirits like it's so i was there at about 10 o'clock at night when people what happens right is people walk around the gaps in the wall which again didn't come up in in elon musk, right? There were giant yawning gaps in the wall because they were trying to build as much of it as possible before the 2020 election. And so they skipped the hard parts. So people walk through where the wall stops. They're met by Border Patrol.

Border Patrol then drives them. I don't mean drives them, like puts them in the back of the vehicle. I mean drives them like you would drive cattle by going behind them in a vehicle and pushing them forward and walks them forward uh and walks them into the camp right and then they arrive in the camp and uh it's it's like they arrive and

like i was going up to to ascertain you know what sort of group it was were they people who were in severe distress right like hypothermic or hurt or injured uh i know someone came later in the week who had a very bad injury who had fallen maybe trying to climb the wall um and so you're going to kind of triage that group right and some people were really stoked they're in america like uh and they wanted to give me like a hug or a fist bump and be like yeah i'm here obviously some of them weren't prepared none of them were prepared for sleeping outside and then generally like there have been large kind of just shelters made out of cacti or brush or scrub or whatever's there uh which tend to be based around like national groups right just people have their communities so like there's one for colombian people brazilian

people punjabi Sikh people there were Kurdish people uh Turkish a lot of Turkish people Afghan people. And so they kind of, because they could talk to each other, they'll be like, hey, come over here, Afghan friend. We'll look after you. We've got this shelter set up. We've got a fire going. Get yourself warm.

And then those people can spend anywhere from one to three days there before they're taken out. So it's an extremely bad situation, and it will only get worse as the weather gets worse. Talking of things which are bad, should we take this opportunity to pivot to things that people don't need to buy? Yeah, they definitely need to buy them, James,

because... Pass. Anyway, here's ads. interview show where I run with celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, and more. After those runs, the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast Post Run High is all about. It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together. You know that rush of endorphins you feel after a great workout? Well, that's when the real magic happens. So if you love hearing real, inspiring stories from the people you know, follow, and admire, join me every week for Post Run High.

It's where we take the conversation beyond the run and get into the heart of it all. It's lighthearted, pretty crazy, and very fun. Listen to Post Run High on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome. I'm Danny Threl. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter? Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters,

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I wanted to return to addressing some words of disinformation that Elon Musk got from Men in Cowboy Hats. One of the things they talked about a lot was that they talk about numbers, right? They're like, oh, there are 2 million, there are 4 million. At no point do they say what these numbers represent. Are these numbers net migration? Are they border crossings between ports of entry are they the number of asylum cases are they the number of encounters that border patrol has had because as we know right an encounter doesn't necessarily mean individual if one person crosses two or three

times that's two or three encounters right and they never talk about that because they're just pulling this shit out their asses uh like you want information, these people are not the people to get it from. None of them are even working in border enforcement. These were sheriffs that he spoke to. They talk a lot about how there are quote unquote 2 million of them, but the real number is 4 or five million because of the quote unquote gotaways, i.e. people who have not been processed at all, right? Who have entered between ports of entry and then are undocumented. This is nonsense. People don't want to be undocumented.

People are here because they believe they have a legitimate asylum claim. They are fleeing violence. We've been over the five categories that you can get asylum for before on the podcast. I won't read them out again. I have seen people, for instance, I saw one person who they were transported to the hospital. The hospital let them out on the street in San Diego. They took a cab back to the border because they don't want to just be floating around in the u.s with no papers unable to work worried that like a parking ticket or a traffic stop could send them back to wherever they'd fled from right because they've fled because they're afraid of

something and they don't want to be sent back i think something that really bothered me in the video was how much they emphasize that like remember, remember, most of these people, they can be escaping prison. They're all, they used to be incarcerated. I'm just like, what? Like, that's not, it's just like this fear-mongering tactic that's so silly and trying to make people all believe

that there's, everyone at the border are just, like, prison inmates, essentially. Yeah. The other side you often get is, like, well, they're all young men heading over. a lot of this like some of this is like racial panic they're gonna you know take our women or whatever some of this is like you know men are soldiers you know it's military military age males the reality is that like especially when you're talking about like the migrants who are crossing the fucking darien gap. This is an incredibly dangerous journey. Young men are generally a little more capable physically of it.

And also it's, you know, especially given some realities of a lot of, you know, these cultures, that's who you expect to go and make money and send it back to their family. Yes.

Right. Like that's, that's just like, it's not, they're not invading you, you know, this is like, these are the people who are going to work jobs and send money

back to their families. Yeah. Like we live in a society which is both patriarchal, patriarchal misogynist, right? They're able to command a higher wage and they can use that to keep their families alive. I've spoken to lots of families for whom the young men left the country they're in first earned money somewhere else, and then was able to raise enough money to get the rest of their family smuggled out

or to facilitate their transport and then bring them to the US because they felt it wasn't safe for them there. Also, if you're a military-aged male in some countries, Russia or lots of countries in the Sahel now, you could be forcibly drafted into one of any number of conflicts that you want no part of. I wouldn't want to do that either. I'd want to leave. I've spoken to people who have fled

that kind of situation this week. So yeah, the gender balance, I don't know. It's very hard to get a sense of the actual gender balance because Border Patrol tends to process women and children first, and especially unaccompanied children, of course, first. But it's very hard to get a sense of the actual gender balance without looking at Border Patrol statistics, and they take a month or two to come out generally. They talk about people with teardrop tattoos. I would estimate that I have seen tens,

if not hundreds of thousands of people at the southern border. I've never seen anyone with a teardrop tattoo. It's just comical how they describe these hordes of people trying to get into your home. Yes, I genuinely think that someone looked up, I don't know, Latino gangster on Google Images right before. Racist Google Images or whatever, before they went down to the border like i've never seen anyone with a teardrop tattoo you'd have to be a bit of a lemon to like present yourself for asylum with obvious like stuff like that yeah they're absolutely gonna ask you about your tattoos they'll ask you about everything it's just laughable it's ridiculous it's all based in myth and not in reality and like

what troubles me the most i think is i don't know how many people have watched elon musk's live stream right um hopefully most of them that did saw someone completely incapable of like asking interrogated questions or reversing the camera on his phone uh or like dressing like a cowboy. But there has been, to my knowledge, no national network coverage of what's happening in Hukumba. There has been limited local coverage of what's happening in Hukumba. What there has has already stopped

because it was a kind of one and done situation for a lot of outlets, but it's not one and done for the people who are volunteering. It's not one and done for the people who are still arriving. We're going to see more of this. In between now and 2024, the border is clearly an area

that both parties, I guess, have decided that they can grandstand on. Biden can show himself as being, quote-unquote, tough on migration. I don't want to live in a world where our leaders are tough on little babies who just walked across a desert. That's a fucked up thing to be tough on migration. I don't want to live in a world where our leaders are tough on little babies who just walked across a desert. That's a fucked up thing to be tough on. It could be tough on corporate corruption if you want to front up to someone. And I think the Republicans are going to push on Biden being weak on the border. There will be more migration this year than we have seen in

a long time because we created a backlog, right? Because climate change is worse every single year. And I think as we've documented extensively on our show, parts of the world are becoming less and less survivable. I went to the Marshall Islands this summer. They are disappearing. So of course people are going to want to come to somewhere where they feel safe. There are record numbers of people crossing the Darien Gap right now.

That is something that will result in record numbers of people showing up at a border. Yeah. And for every like group of people who make it across the Darien Gap, there's folks who don't. Taking that journey on foot without kind of access to modern quality overlanding equipment is like putting a bullet in a revolver and playing a game of Russian roulette. Like, it's extremely dangerous. Yes.

Not to mention that you'll be preyed upon, like, all the way. And they talked about the trains, actually, in that video as well, how the migrants control the trains. Fuck off. Like, I have seen people who have lost limbs on trains, right? That's an incredible... Jumping on a moving train is not an advisable form of transport. I have seen people who have lost limbs on trains. Jumping on a moving train is not an advisable form of transport. It's not a safe one.

The fact that people feel they have to take it suggests that what they are fleeing feels even less safe to them. I don't have children, but if I was to take my kids and grab onto a moving train, I would only do that if i thought that what i was fleeing was less safe than that moving train yeah and to talk about last resort literally like that's how desperate you are to better your situation it's not like yeah i don't know it just makes me the the rhetoric the rhetoric is all backwards about that yes like when you look at what some of these people are fleeing, right? Like, on Friday, I was helping hand out water bottles. And I was, there was a Punjabi man helping me, right? Like, he was one of the volunteers who, who was like, helping us to distribute food and helping us to communicate with people in the language they could understand.

Very nice guy. And I was thinking about the stuff that is happening in India right now, and the way that that country is becoming increasingly monolithic, I guess, Hindu nationalist, I guess you could call it. I think that's fair, right, Robert? Yeah. Yeah. It's not getting any safer for them there. And I've seen tons more Sikh people than I've ever seen at the border before. No, there was a... I mean, fuck, it's not necessarily safe in Canada, right? Where one of those guys got murdered recently. Yeah, yeah.

Well, that happened in America too, right? Someone shot up a good water thinking it was a mosque because they can't fucking differentiate between different faiths and they saw a turban. Yeah, I mean, in Canada, I believe it was a Sikh man who got assassinated at the behest of the Modi government. Oh, wow. Jesus Christ. Yeah. Western intelligence led to Canada accusing India

of Sikh activists assassination. It's a fellow named. I just want to make sure because this is a story people should we may do some more direct coverage on this. But yeah, there was a guy named uh hardy uh singh nijar who was a sikh separatist activist and was uh gunned down by two masked men in british columbia jesus christ india denies that this was at their behest

but yeah like this is and this is by the way it's not just a thing that that india does political assassinations from authoritarian, directed by authoritarian countries in Western countries have become more and more common, right? A lot of this started with what Russia was doing, the poisoning, the Skirpal poisonings and stuff. But like this is growing more common as this sort of like rules based international order that I think to some extent we all kind of tricked ourselves into thinking existed increasingly breaks down. But that's all to say, there's a good reason why a lot of Sikhs might be trying to come into the US right now. Yeah. Yeah. There's a good reason why I'm seeing so many of them on the border. There's a good reason why I'm seeing a ton more people from Russia, right? And they don't want to go on record. And that's because they're very afraid,

right? That they've come from a totalitarian state, which can hunt them down, as Robert just illustrated, anywhere in the world. They don't want to talk. I'm seeing people coming from Colombia, Honduras, Guatemala. One of the things that Musk was shocked about was that not all these people are Mexican. I don't know how big he thinks Mexico is and and like what what he believes the population of mexico to be but at one minute he's like yeah it's two million a year like like does he think mexico is just like dwindling and there are like eight people left like mexico is a large country but like like it it does not provide us with with millions of migrants a year um well it's just more of that like comically impossible narrative right like

whatever i mean people and people are going to believe it it's just part of the show yeah and it confirms a lot of biases that always exist and i guess hopefully we've dismissed some of that nonsense and i think i don't i think people who listen to this generally have empathy anyway but hopefully this has given you some tools to talk about this to other people. What I will say is I'm not a big representative caller. I called my representative to help with a migration case for someone from Myanmar who asked for help. She was useless.

But maybe this is an area where the federal government has water bufflers, big water containers, it has MREs. If these were American citizens and this was a hurricane or an earthquake, that shit would be there. It's not because they don't think that they matter as much. San Diego County has declared an emergency and said they can't do anything. That's complete fucking nonsense. Again, they could if these were American citizens.

They would if these people were white wealthy people living in La Jolla. They're choosing not to because they don't think it will hurt them. Maybe it won't, right? But I think you can make a meaningful difference by donating your money because the only people who are helping are the dozen or so folks who all convoyed out there on Friday night down a dirt road in our trucks and handed out the beans and rice and Ritz crackers. But you can make a difference with your money. The border kindness links I'll put in the description again. You can also make a difference maybe by calling your representative and shaming them.

Because this is a government-created problem. And the government is sticking its hands up in the air and being like, oh no, what a surprise, we didn't know how to do it. Yes, they knew this was coming. These people, many of them have walked from Colombia. We knew these people were arriving. We've been putting this off since COVID for three years, since the start of the COVID pandemic i should say um covid is

very much alive i've seen some people who i don't know like obviously weren't able to rapid test everyone but there are a lot of sick people coughing right there were people with scabies uh there were people who were very unwell um that again if you detain people in congregate settings and the only masks are the ones that we bring as volunteers and that's going to happen right we'll probably get some infectious disease that they'll get to share with uh even if you don't care about other people i'm sure it'll come bite you in the ass eventually right uh when when freaking chicken gun you know that's not vectored in that fashion but you know cholera or something rocks up in America. So I would urge people to do something because so few people are, and the only people who are helping

are mutual aid groups who are overstretched and stressed and tired and broke. And so if you can help, you should. And whatever that looks like to you, if you want to volunteer, that's great. I would urge you to go through the channels that are set so you don't just show up and like get yourself or someone else in trouble and we'll just make things harder uh but yeah there are meaningful ways that people can help very few people are and largely i think that's because the border exists as some kind of wild west fantasy for most people consuming media in america and hopefully yeah if you if you encounter someone who believes that this will help you give you a little bit of information a little bit of some tools to dismiss some of that

stuff yeah dismiss and demystify really because it's just like this imaginary big bad wolf that no one really understands yeah totally like it's nonsense that everyone in america is a migrant they're indigenous people here now and they always have been uh but a lot of people have some kind of migration story and like i don't give a fuck if your great grandpa came here quote unquote legally the barriers were not in place yet there wasn't a wall when your Meemaw came from wherever she came from. But in all of our communities, this country doesn't work without the labor of recently arrived migrants. I think if you look at the news, I go to places where wars are happening. That's part of my job. So does Robert. Then I see those people at the border. The reason they're here is because they're fleeing something worse. And I think maybe grounding it in that,

I don't think anyone would want a little baby to be sleeping. I know some pretty conservative people who were pretty outraged by what happened in May and it's worse now. Uh, and, uh, yeah, no one in their right mind wants a little baby to be shivering out in the desert. Um, you know, no one in their right mind wants a mother to be breastfeeding and sleeping underneath a cardboard box. Cause that's all she has, you know, like that's not, uh, if, even if you believe in this very liberal construct of America as a welcoming nation, and it shouldn't be who we are and it shouldn't be how we treat people and if you believe that nations shouldn't exist and borders are bullshit then no one should be treated like that and

it's on all of us to help, I guess. Yes. Anything else, guys? Nope, I think that's about it. Magic. Okay, thank you for joining me for this heartwarming episode. Yeah. All right, everybody. That's going. Thank you for joining me for this heartwarming episode. Yeah. All right, everybody. That's

going to do it for us here at It Could Happen Here. Until next time, you know, stuff. 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 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. Hey, guys. I'm Kate Max. You might know me from my popular online series, The Running Interview Show, where I run with celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, and more. After those runs, the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast, Post Run High, is all about. It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together. Listen to Post Run High on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow. Join me, Danny Trejo, and step into the flames of right.

An anthology podcast of modern day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into tech's elite and how they've turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search,

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