It Could Happen Here - Mutual Aid Work on the Border

Episode Date: April 14, 2023

James talks to two members of the Borderlands Relief Collective about their work dropping water on the border and how Border Patrol destroyed lifesaving humanitarian aid supplies.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards. Hello, podcast fans. It's just me today. It's just James. And we're doing another episode about the border. I'm joined today by Emmett and David from the Borderlands Relief Collective. And we're going to talk a little bit about people doing mutual aid on the border, the situation on the border, and for those of you who live a long way away from it, and a sort of pretty shitty thing that Border Patrol did to some supplies which were left out on the border earlier this month. So yeah, Emmett and David, if you'd like to sort of introduce yourselves and explain a little

bit about the roles you play, that would be great. Hey there, I'm happy to be here. My name is Emmett. I am splitting my time between being a geochemist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, being a PhD student, and trying to reconcile what it means to be living in this borderlands and being a part of a community that is partially criminalized, depending on who you were, where you come from, and also what it means for you to seek safety and freedom in your life. So I work in several organizing spaces, trying to shut down different detention centers, as well as supporting folks just make ends meet in San Diego and also supporting people keeping their lives and staying alive in this extreme borderlands that we live on. Hey, my name's David.

My job, I work as a surgeon. I've been living in San Diego for about 10 years and I've been doing humanitarian volunteer work in the borderlands, which we call doing water drops for something like six years. Got started with Border Angels and also did volunteer work with Border Kindness. Highly recommend that organization. Border Kindness, highly recommend that organization. And more recently, have been doing water drops in a mountainous area between San Diego and TJ with friends. And we just recently found a name for our group, and uh it's borderlands uh relief collective

great yeah and i think maybe i think if people think of san diego they think of like the zoo and maybe uh sea world uh and at the beach and all that kind of shit so like can you explain what it's like i've spent a lot of time time in the area where you guys do water drops. Can you explain what it's like and why it's such a difficult area to pass through for people who are trying to move north? Well, yeah, San Diego, as you said,

people think of the beach, but actually I think someone told me that San Diego County has some of the most diverse kind of ecosystems of any county in the so-called USA. We have high mountains where it snows when it gets cold out. We have low deserts where it routinely exceeds 100 degrees Fahrenheit in the summertime. I mean, 120 degrees Fahrenheit in the summertime. I mean, 120 degrees Fahrenheit in the summertime. And as far as the geography of migration, it really goes back to, you know, it's a direct consequence of federal border policy. I think many people will

be familiar with the term prevention through deterrence, which is sometimes elaborated as prevention of migration through environmental deterrence. And the whole concept is going way back to Clinton administration, the areas of the border near cities like San Diego were increasingly militarized with high border fence, intense patrol by armed officers, and increasingly recently, electronic surveillance, with the idea of relying on the extremely harsh terrain of the deserts and mountains to form a kind of a natural detachment. But they quickly found out within basically the first year or so of that federal policy that numbers of people crossing the border did not decrease.

However, deaths skyrocketed. That's something we understood, people in Washington, D.C. understood many, many years ago, but the policy persists. So the bottom line is people who are crossing the border from Mexico to the USA often resort to crossing in the most remote and dangerous areas of the border. So the area that we're going to be talking about, this mountainous region between San Diego and Tijuana, literally folks are going up and over the tallest mountain in the area, literally up and over the mountain, an extremely arduous walk. When we do these water drops, we're well rested. We hike all day and we come home exhausted. And we look at our Gaia apps and find that we've only hiked a very small portion

of the actual total journey. And we're always humbled by just the resilience and determination of people who do this crossing. Yeah. It's another thing I think people don't realize is that the amount of like physical just difficulty that people have to endure coming here is immense. And of course the reason that people are willing to take those risks is because it's not like they come from a place of safety, right? And it's not like they, you know, the reason they're willing to take risks is because it's a risk.

Being where they were is a risk. I think a lot of people will maybe have become more engaged with border policy during the Trump era. Certainly, like the legacy media narrative focused on the border very briefly. Maybe it peaked around the midterms in 2018, I think. And then people have lost a lot of interest since then. So for those of us who live on the border, it's remarkable how little has changed, I think. Maybe it's not particularly remarkable

because I don't think we really expected it to. But can you explain what, what if anything has changed since 2021 and how things uh have sort of remained the same in many ways yeah i think it's a really good uh question and it brings up a lot of the political nature um or kind of skewed identity-based conversations that exist in migration. And obviously, there's a lot of rhetoric that is quite hyperbolic around the so-called morality of people who are migrants in general, and then kind of categorizing certain people as worthy or not worthy of entrance into the so-called nation. And kind of furthermore, what does it mean for people to

believe any of those narratives and then support them at a federal political level. And as you were saying, during the Trump era, there was a lot of conversation in response to very, very hateful rhetoric from Trump and the administration targeted at certain people, but not from a deep place of really understanding or characterizing the conversation in general, or speaking by the fact that in San Diego or in California at large, more than half of the farm workers who kind of create this city that we are or the state that we are and support the very backbone of the fact that we're all still having our hearts beat are migrants and that our economy at large, as well as just the fabric of our nation is is based on

migrants and immigration so for us to pick and choose what that looks like is not only missing the majority of the point but is using as a talking piece is really as a talking piece for certain identities to feel vindicated to spend money and support certain for-profit corporations. For example, CoreCivic, one of the largest private prison corporations in the country, got $1.9 billion the previous year from the federal government. And therefore, you think about the connection between these enterprises and stories about immigration are quite linked. So I don't have all the statistics in front of me about how this specific number of crossings

has changed or the population has changed. But on the whole, nothing has really changed as far as the need goes. So thinking about four years ago, what were the specific crises that were occurring that were causing people to seek safety in the United States? Maybe some specific situations have changed and others have arisen. And as more and more people are coming to the United States fleeing from climate-related disasters, as well as ongoing stability, it's not as if the U.S. has engaged in any real project to support people to begin with or understand the underlying causes. So from that standpoint, nothing meaningfully has happened from either administration

to really understand or create policies that would support anyone seeking safety or from making decisions that are quote-unquote aligned with U.S. best interests. It's never been a part of the conversation. It's more to basically capitalize off of people in their suffering, whether that be to the, you know, to be a storyline that U.S. is helping people or is a savior of others or is trying to crack down on armed bandits or criminals who are crossing this borderland. I think it is worth, like,

the core civic example is really interesting because Biden made a big thing of, like, talking about shutting down, like, quote-un unquote private prisons, but it's still very much like funding the same things when they're not for people who are citizens of this country or. Yeah. And for those of those who aren't fully versed in, in kind of the, the, the basic relationship between private prisons and immigration, um, there are, is a relationship between Customs and Border Protection and different prison corporations

to basically put people who are apprehended, who are not initially deported under Title 42, in detention while their cases are ongoing and investigated for asylum or refugee status. And so these prisons make a profit and can basically demand a certain amount of money from the government per person who is in one of their facilities. And there's also a minimum that they will continually get money from the government, regardless of whether the beds are filled, but they have incentive to keep beds filled. So there is an economic relationship between these corporations and the government to basically put more people in detention. So that's a huge underpinning of this whole conversation is who is getting money

and how does it kind of further the certain aims of corporations, but also, um, agencies that basically get a larger amount of federal funding, uh, through apprehension of people. Right. Yeah. Like Biden has funded DHS more than Trump did and like DHS's budget. Does department of homeland security of which customs and border protection is a part um a border patrol is a part of customs and border protection it's a giant pyramid of of yeah people putting people in prison uh and it's also worth like reinforcing i think for people that like these people have done nothing wrong at the point in which they are incarcerated right like they have obeyed all relevant laws and

are getting in conditions which we've decided are not befitting prisoners in the united states but are okay for these people not that anyone should be incarcerated but yeah there's still a two-tier system so can you explain a little bit about your efforts to do mutual aid and to do a little bit of kindness on the border and make things a little bit better out there for people who are coming north? Yeah, what we do, again, just is in collaboration with other organizations that have been around a long time, a lot longer than we have, Border Angels, Border Kindness in California, No More Deaths in Arizona, many other organizations. And it really boils down to we don't want people to die on the trails crossing through the borderlands. people to die on the trails crossing through the borderlands.

And that actually informs where we drop. Unfortunately, all of our recent new routes that we supply, they're directly because we know that people have died in those locations or required rescue. We work in very close relationship with other volunteer organizations that focus on search and rescue and search and recovery. Search and recovery, meaning recovering human remains of people who have died. So there's a number of outstanding organizations that operate in California, Arizona, Texas. These include Eagles of the Desert, Armadillos, many other organizations. Most of these are actually made up of volunteers who are first generation immigrants, mostly from Mexico.

And so when people die or require rescue, we do find out from our friends and comrades in these SAR organizations, and we build water drop routes directly around that knowledge. So yeah, it really boils down to, yeah, we don't want more people to die making this journey. And so as far as what kind of supplies we leave, it's what we think may make a difference. We leave bottles of water, energy drinks like electrolyte, Gatorade, and so on. Cans of food with pop tops, all kinds of cans of fruit, beans, chili, whatever we think people may need. Of course, we tailor it based

on the time of year in the mountains in the winter, gets freezing it based on the time of year. In the mountains in the winter, it gets freezing cold, lots and lots of rain. So we've been leaving waterproof ponchos, warm clothing. In the summer, of course, it gets scorching hot in the desert. People die of hyperthermia. They literally cook to death. That's where electrolytes come in handy, sun hats, bandanas, baseball hats. First aid kits, we leave kits full of medical supplies. And more recently, you know, just observing the kind of used items that we find on the trail. the kind of used items that we find on the trail, kids' stuff, diapers, pacifiers. You know, we leave, you know, tampons, you know, that kind of stuff, containers of infant formula.

So it's kind of an iterative process, just leaving what we think people need. And yeah, that's kind of what we do. And just so folks are super clear, this is all like an initiative among you and your comrades, right? You're not supported by any government entity. The government entity is kind of doing quite the opposite of what you're doing. Yeah, correct. We are all volunteers in the sense that nobody is paid. We don't have any formal affiliations with any other NGOs,

much less governmental organizations. Right. So maybe people are wondering, they might have been familiar with the court case in Arizona, or they might not be like, if what you're doing is considered to be like legal humanitarian aid or not. Are you comfortable talking about that? Yeah so I think that's that's definitely a gray area that we find ourselves really occupying and I think that's

a bit of this kind of propaganda machine is what does it mean to engage with somebody who is seeking safety and fleeing for their lives? There's a certain place where that's touted to be a wonderful thing if you're Catholic charities and are providing beds. And for example, I wanted to make that distinction between several kind of charity organizations who do receive federal money to be engaged in this conversation versus grassroots mutual aid networks and communities who are doing this because it feels like. It's part of their communities mission, their families mission, or it means it's part of them being true to themselves and true to what feels just in this very confusing world. So what we're doing is very explicitly leaving humanitarian aid supplies that are potentially life-saving in areas where we know people need them. We are not having any specific or hands-on or person-to-person engagement with anybody. So there in Arizona, No Más Muertes became part of a conversation about providing critical medical support.

And that was a court case that really tested the limits of what does it mean to be in this gray area. And what was really important from the nuances in that conversation were what constitutes aiding and abetting, or so-called aiding and abetting, illegal immigration, which is basically, again, a very large gray area between are you enticing people to cross? Are you being paid as a smuggler to cross?

Are you doing something which is encouraging people to cross? Are you being paid as a smuggler to cross? Are you doing something which is encouraging people to cross? None of which was activity that was engaged with Numas Muertes or us. But in their case, specifically providing medical aid, crossed the boundary and they were raided. Their camp and their impromptu field tents where they were providing life-saving medical support was raided. And the kind of the finer points of that were that the outset being that the First Amendment protects humans in their religious freedom to practice whatever it be that furthers their religious beliefs and faith. And a very large point of their work was their affiliation and dedication to preserving human life, which, as we can imagine for many folks listening to this or

in general, that is very core to their belief system. And so there are very clear protections in the First Amendment of preserving people's right to practice their religion. So that was a case that kind of established a lot of what we're working under is these basic protections to be humanitarian aid workers following basic belief systems. What we're doing specifically is leaving supplies. So leaving supplies, the most egregious thing you can basically say about that is that we're littering or that we're abandoning property. And so, again, no mas martes. And in this larger conversation, it was established in the court that leaving humanitarian aid supplies that were with the intent of saving lives is not litter. So that was also a very big point, which is saying, no, we are not just kind of walking down the street and throwing out your bottle in the back of your truck.

This is specifically with the intent of saving lives. And the third place is that we are abandoning something in this area that would be constituted abandoned property. And as we'll speak about maybe more in the future, our supplies are consumed quite rapidly um and there is a statute in this in the state of is it is it a ban of property has to be it has to be left for more than 10 days to be considered abandoned property so even if we are leaving things in in these regions it is not considered a ban on property it's been less than 10 days so basically i guess just to just say that nothing we're doing is illegal from any standpoint and also um the the case in arizona kind of helped make a distinguishing uh make some

distinctions between whether our activity is is also frowned upon in public land which it is not because it is constituting uh humanitarian aid in a place that is desperately needed right and i think if folks go out to like i mean most people aren't going out to like valley of the moon or what have you but like if you want to look for abandoned stuff there it's not hard to find and uh it's not you guys doing that like shooting barrels or whatever that you know like someone was shooting a barrel last time I was out there. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows,

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Because I think, again, that will be news to some people, right? You guys are out there every week. And how much stuff are you dropping? And how quickly does it go? Yeah, to tell you the truth, we're still finding out ourselves because every time we think we know the answer, we're surprised by how fast it's being consumed. The bottom line is it's being consumed as fast as we can leave the supplies. So Emmett and I and many other of the members of our organization, Borderlands Relief Collective, we also are active in Border Kindness and in the past with Border Angels. And so we're used to a certain rhythm of doing a water drop, circling back usually a month later. And we're happy if maybe half of the supplies have been consumed. That's a good day.

When we started doing water drops in this mountainous region, first of all, we were just blown away by the evidence of heavy foot travel. I mean, these are, even though you'll never find a hiker, a recreational hiker on these trails. They look like established trails. They're worn in trails. And when we started doing these water drops, there's just a river of discarded water bottles, clothing, food wrappers, and just things that we have never seen before. And just things that we have never seen before, that amount of human activity, literally on the top consumed. So, yeah, we really, it's become apparent, we have been having a lot of discussions that we're very eager in trying to expand our number of volunteers, because the more we do this in this mountainous region, the more we learn how pressing the need is. So we're having a hard time just supplying

essentially one path that goes up and over the mountain. And we know that this is just one of many uh paths that are used by by people in this this region so really uh we're finding a hundred percent consumption every week or two at most of our our drop spots yeah so if people did want to we could just get that in here now if people did want to help you and they're in the region um it's would they be able to is there a way they could reach out yeah sure we just uh like i said we just came up with a our name after a a fun uh communal decision making process and we just a couple days ago uh did our first post on social media so if anybody's on Instagram, just search for Borderlands Relief Collective and click on the email and send us a DM, get in touch. If you're anywhere near the San Diego, we'd love to talk to you and definitely would like to expand the number of volunteers.

So you spoke a little bit about, we spoke about this Arizona case, right, where people got raided. I know you guys have also had some less than stellar interactions with CBP, Border Patrol specifically. And I get really mad if I call it customs of Border Patrol because it's Customs and Border Protection. So you guys had a thing uh was

it last month now in march um do you want to explain a little bit about what what happened in the incident first of all yeah so as part of our so i think as we already talked about we go out every weekend and that's again we're all busy lives. Dave is literally a surgeon and we're basically trying to find a time that we can get people together to go out there. So we pick the weekends and we have a changing number of people who are able to be out there with us. weekends, a route that starts basically at a road that is along the ridge of Otay Mountain. We start hiking down the south side towards the border and have established multiple routes along that path. And this one particularly is so slow going. You only go a couple of miles and it takes you most of your Saturday because of how steep it is, how thick the brush is. And also kind of, as Dave was saying earlier, even in the middle of day time with hiking boots, it's really treacherous. And we've spent a lot of time making sure that we're

safe in the process of going there ourselves so as we we left our first drop and then a second and it went down to our final drop and turned back and started going back up the mountain and we came to our second drop site and as we, we found something that was kind of really hard to process at first for us, which was that every single item that we had purposefully put inside of a crate and we had counted and we had left as we do, was scattered and littered across the ground. We had left more than 20 liters of water and every single bottle of water was opened and dumped out and thrown indiscriminately around this site. We had left, again, something like 20 cans of food,

beans, tuna, condensed milk, fruit, and every single can had been opened and had been its contents thrown around the area. We had left bags of socks and hats and those were covered in beans and fruit and again thrown into bushes so they could not be used. We had hand warmers because it's very cold and hand warmers are essential to kind of keep mobility. And every single one was diligently opened as if someone had really enjoyed taking time opening it and thrusting into the dirt. And that was something that was like so painful

and just confusing, very demoralizing, as you can imagine after just hiking that far. But more so, it felt so deliberate and hurtful. And initially we're of course wondering what had happened. We've done this for several years, many years, and never had we seen something like this before. And it became very apparent that someone had deliberately destroyed our crate. Even the crate itself, this milk carton, was smashed in half. The bottom of it

was torn out. And that is something that's very hard to achieve. Milk cartons are not very light, thin plastic. This was someone who had actively put a lot of force into smashing a milk carton so that nothing was left behind. On the way down, one thing that I didn't say a second cart so that nothing was left behind. We on the way down one thing that I didn't say a second ago was that we had seen an agent on the trail which was unique for us because normally they're just in their cars with binoculars looking from the road so we had seen someone near the trail but lost track of them earlier and we had kind of put it out of our minds. So after this had happened, we had kind of put two and two together and were wondering if this agent had followed us down the trail to this site. And then while we had left, stayed behind and destroyed the goods. It seemed

like the beans were still drying and the fruit was still drying in the sunlight so it hadn't have been too too far from the time that we had dropped initially and this is at a moment that there was five of us and trying to figure out what it meant for us to deal with this several two of us including myself raced ahead to try to interact with whoever has upped the trail knowing that they couldn't have been too far away. Not with any specific plan, other than just ask them what did they do and why did they do that, just in the sense of outrage, the sense of just like moral corruption, that someone would destroy this in a time that the CBP, as well as we know, that people are losing their lives because of lack of access to these very goods that were destroyed. Yeah, so we raced back as fast as we could. It was about a 45-minute hike back up, and we were really breathless and almost at the

point of feeling sick to our stomachs because we were both outraged and also hikes faster than we should have. And just as we had gotten back to our cars, kind of giving up hope that we'd interact with them, we saw two agents in their cars kind of pull away. And we flagged them down and got in front of them and kind of motioned for them to come back so we could speak to them. And I'm not saying we're the most savvy people, but we basically ran up to them and said, did you destroy our supplies? To which they acknowledged that they did. And only afterwards were we able to get our wits together to start recording them.

And as you'll hear in the audio, they acknowledged the fact that they knew where our site was, and they acknowledged the fact that they regularly destroy goods. And for us, the entire interaction was just so sickening um first of it after a while there was five of them with their guns um and their large guns out uh as well as their basic um intention to use intimidation their sheer numbers as well as this kind of perverse authority they have as the sole agents in charge of this public land. This is wilderness and BLM land in which they have no authority over us, yet use this sense of just power and ability to cause harm to minimize anybody else being able to to advocate for themselves so we

tried to stop them from from doing that and and kept asking them did you destroy our water and why did you do that and is that within your job description because there was something very clear to them to us that they didn't even know what their legality was they kept trying to deflect it the conversation saying oh migrants are leaving trash all the time, and referring to people as illegal aliens with this kind of larger rhetoric of saying that they're trashing the mountainside, like it's their fault. And as we repeatedly asked them, did you destroy our water? And they repeatedly said, well, have you seen what they do? And then kind of also saying, well, yeah, we try to clean things up. We try to pick them up. But that specific site was too far. So we just left it.

We just destroyed it and left it. Which, on the piggybacking on their conversation about this trash and that we're littering, and they're accusing us of aiding and abetting illegal immigration, they basically have nothing left to say about what their actions meant and without their purview, their mandate of their jobs. And it was an act you could tell that they were uncomfortable with because they were not within their job description. And we asked for their supervisor. They said they're going on the phone supervisor. The supervisor never materialized. And we can only assume that they had a conversation with somebody in a superior saying, back down. What you're doing is not correct and don't engage further. And since then,

we've had a conversation with their superiors and with CBP offices to the effect of saying that this was not within their job description and they did cbp offices to the effect of saying that this was not within their job description and this they did not condone this activity so um kind of looking into that further they were very much acting as individuals but individuals within a culture of abuse and within a culture of of sabotaging humans access to life-saving supplies. And that was nothing new to them. They had never encountered somebody trying to oppose them for doing that. It will be slashed by the time we get back to it. Wait, wait, wait. How do you accuse that?

Wait, wait a second. Let me ask you a simple question. The creek down there with the water and all that, was that yours? Yeah, it was my water. Was that yours too? Yeah. So it was your property. Exactly.

And you bought it and you slashed it. And I'm wondering why you did that. You left your property behind? We did not leave the property behind. We were going on a hike down there. While we were on a hike. We slashed all the way down there. And you left your property behind?

We were going on a hike. We were going on a hike. While we were on a hike, we slashed all our water. Is it in your job description to slash water and open cans and dump food all over the public land and wilderness area? It's an abandoned property. But then you can pick it up and carry it to your car then. No, it's a long hike, why would I do that? No, I'm like curious. It's okay for you to record. I'm gonna record this video.

I'm gonna record this video. I'm gonna record this video. I'm gonna record this video. I'm gonna record this video. I'm gonna record this video. I'm gonna record this video. I'm gonna record this video. I'm gonna record this video.

I'm gonna record this video. I'm gonna record this video. I'm gonna record this video. I'm gonna record this video. I'm gonna record this video. I'm gonna record this video. I'm gonna record this video. I'm gonna record this video. I'm gonna record this video. I'm gonna record this video. property And what do you do with it? We destroy it, we try to clean it up. That's cleaning it up?

That's one of the things we try to do. That was not cleaning it up. We either empty it out or we try to clean it up. That one was too far for us to bring it up. So you decided to just trash the whole area? When they're funded and equipped and transported and armed by the state, then it's not the same as individuals. Because we've seen that in Arizona, right?

People who are militias or what have you going out and sabotaging life-saving supplies as well. But it's still a little different when we have to pay taxes for them to go destroy water caches. And these are people who regularly, as we've seen on multiple occasions use helicopters to try to flush people out of uh under a tree that they fly within 30 feet of the ground and use the force of the rotors to force people out and up a hillside to waiting cars so their use of money and their use of force is definitely central to the tactics. Yeah, or he's helicopters to fire tear gas into Mexico. And it did a few

years ago. But yeah, it's certainly and that intimidation is like if I think people again, who don't live here might not be familiar with it. Like, I've been out in down by the border with Kumeyaay people doing religious ceremony and had Bortak guys dressed like, you know, like Navy seals hanging out with AR-15s and plate carriers while people like burn sage and pray. It's yeah. I mean the militarization, if you somehow can't conceive to care of people dying in the desert, the militarization of the border still affects everyone here and

it makes our lives less safe um there's a crime thinks crime think slogan that i always like to like use in these things which is the border doesn't protect you it controls you which i think is is kind of apt for this so now that they've trashed your supplies right and you found out they weren't supposed to uh i'm interested, like, how going forward, does that mean that you can't use that route? You can't drop stuff there anymore because you're worried about it happening again or because you're worried about them hanging out there to intercept people who are using your, like, supply cache? On the contrary, we've learned from the examples of other people who have been doing this work. Emmett already mentioned No Mas Mertes, No More Deaths in Arizona, Dr. Scott Warren. We've learned so much from their example where they were hauled into federal court and won.

And so we've learned from their examples of how to do this, as well as within here in California, the history of border angels. So back a few years ago, Border Patrol was slashing gallons of water in the deserts of eastern San Diego County, as well as Imperial County. On one particular day, the Border Angels volunteers found about 50 gallons of water slashed in the most violent way. And they knew it was Border Patrol. And so the way Border Angels responded was, number one, to change their tactics, to start dropping supplies deeper in the backcountry where the Border Patrol agents, you know, it's rare to find a BP agent that's motivated enough to really hike for too far away from their air-conditioned vehicles in the summertime. So, number one, they were going farther away from the roads and highways to the actual routes that people are walking. Number two, they punched back hard in public using social media. Back then, it was Facebook. This is going to be right when Instagram was getting popular. But just getting the word out. And Border Angels

is an organization that's been around for decades. They have a big following. The word spread. And just like many bullies, they kind of back down if you get in their phase sometimes. So that was our experience with this practice of Border Patrol slashing gallons in the desert with border angels. So when this crime occurred on March 18th in the mountains, we knew we could not back down. So we went back a few days later. That's when, as Emmett mentioned, we witnessed a Border Patrol helicopter for about an hour flying about, you know, it seemed like, you know, 10, 15 feet off the ground, really, really low, using the rotor wash to flush human beings out of the brush as if they were hunting animals.

And then we were back, you know, the next seven days later, after they destroyed the supplies, we went back with a good group. Number one, to clean up this shameful mess, these two Border Patrol goons left. shameful mess, these two Border Patrol goons left. We cleaned up all of that stuff and we left probably, what, three times the amount of original supplies. On our milk crates, we actually left laminated signs that addressed one by one all of the accusations that these border patrol agents tried to make against us. So the signs say, do not destroy, do not remove. This is not garbage. We are not littering. And this is not abandoned property. These are humanitarian aid supplies protected by federal case law, the 1994 Protection of Religious Freedom Act, and so on and so forth. So we put those signs just prominently on the milk crates, you know, just to send a message that no, we're not going to back down,

we are going to leave supplies. It is within our rights, and it is in support of human rights to do this. So of course, we have to be strategic about this. I mean, there is the danger, you know, we're always going back to the same place, you know, we're kind of, you know, blowing up the spot, as it were, you know, we're bringing heat to a route that's needed by people making a crossing. And so we are mindful of that, you know, we try to go to different places on different weekends and not try to bring too much attention to these paths. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I wonder like if people are, I was just thinking for people to visualize the area, if they're a place I could look up on like Google Earth, so they

could see like, where this kind of stuff is happening. If you're comfortable, you don't have to give like a exact location, obviously, but yeah, actually, I mean, speaking of google earth you you mentioned uh valley of the moon i mean google earth is impressive enough anybody can just use google earth and zoom in all the way and just follow along the border and you'll find thousands of footpaths um so yeah it doesn't take um yeah uh like a much detective work to actually visually see these footpaths. But yeah, it's real steep terrain, as Emmett mentioned.

The last couple times we've gone back to this spot where the two agents destroyed the supplies, Emmett has actually brought a mountain climbing rope just to make certain sections easier where we're kind of rappelling down this dry waterfall so really really steep very loose trails very easy to break an ankle and it just in that context it really it really hits you. We see so many shoes and boots along the path and just have to kind of just pause and think, well, if this person lost their shoe, if the sole of their boot melted off and they're hours away from the nearest road, what does it mean? How did they complete the journey? Did they complete their journey? So yeah, a little bit hard to describe, but I guess anybody who's I guess kind of familiar with Southern California, steep mountains, loose terrain, kind of get the picture. yeah um yeah they're gonna go

valley of the moon there's plenty of pictures of the uh very intimidating border fence that they have there it's like three foot high and rusty welcome i'm danny thrill won't you join me at the fire and dare enter? Nocturnum, 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.

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Is there anything else that you guys wanted to address that you feel like maybe people don't, that people should know about the board that they don't, about the work you do that maybe is misunderstood? Yeah, I guess I want to maybe bring up some of what I think is hard to convey to people who aren't there and aren't connected to a community who is suffering because of this or who aren't maybe thinking along the lines of what it

means to be a human in this space and actually be risking your life and coming up against helicopters and a federally backed militia who is actively seeking to harm you. So none of us in our group are claiming anything more than just witnessing what it means to be out there but i guess what's been true for me and and in kind of my conversations with my community as over the last couple years just trying to share this there is there is so much pain that is being inflicted upon this landscape, and there is so much harm that is actively supported by our nation.

Leaving your home, whether it be in another continent where you need to take a flight over to make this crossing, or whether it be hiking through Central America, starting in South America for months before reaching this moment, or leaving your family and your community closer to the border. These are moments that anyone who is alive could feel the pain of and the misery of having to abandon all that you know and put yourself at the mercy of the desert and CBP's overly aggressive and harmful tactics. So beyond all of the cases and the politics, I just, I oftentimes as we're walking, just try to put myself in the position of someone who is making these decisions.

And as Dave was saying, we're coming across people's clothing, food, underwear, places they've slept. or that that choice is worthwhile is something that is so lost in the numbers and the amount of people who die or what happens after it. And so for us, I think making it not about your political beliefs or the asylum process, but just the actual choices people are having to make very human decisions. That is something that is kind of haunts us. And the feeling that all we can do is leave water in a place that it might make the difference between someone in that position surviving or not. And furthermore, just living in a community where, you know, from the top of the mountain, we can see downtown San Diego and all of the luxury of this military town, all of the universities and all of this opportunity that we, feeling how similar humans are to each other and our basic needs, and how that's being taken from people is really harmful. And particularly, as you were saying,

these are areas held sacred by the Kumeyaay people and have been places of migration for at least 10,000 years. These are places that were difficult to travel and that people did for similar reasons to survive, to be safe. And there is a legacy of Oyas, of clay pots buried in the sand for travelers that has been ongoing for thousands of years. And for our current administration and government to create this wall in this place of so much pain is just testament to just the insanity of our desire to protect border against something else, protecting the borders against something that we feel is harmful to us.

Meanwhile, this migration is fundamentally how we survive and how we respond to these moments of change in humanity. And criminalizing that and causing hardship of that is just barbaric. I'll let you collect your thoughts and you can come back and make that statement because I think you do it very eloquently. But I want to jump on there and just kind of echo and elaborate on what you said. Yeah, we find lots and lots of physical items, but we also meet people on the trails. And that's a new thing.

You know, I've been doing these water drops for some time now. But when you say what has changed under Biden, not much. There's more people crossing the border than ever. There are more people dying than ever. As far as a volunteer who spends most weekends out in the borderlands, the only thing I notice is they stopped building Trump's 30-foot high fence and they started pouring all that money into electronic surveillance, where every single month we see more towers popping up all along the border with all kinds of very, very fancy military grade surveillance equipment. And as well as aerial surveillance, lots of airplanes, helicopters. I'm not sure if they're using drones, but we certainly, there's a lot of aerial surveillance. But what we see as far as the human dimension is in the old days, you know, we see footprints, we see shoe covers, you know, which people wear on their feet to hide

their footprints from border patrol. We see the empty water bottles and discarded clothing. But now we're encountering people pretty much every time we do a water drop because the number of people crossing is so high. People are crossing in the daytime, whereas in the past, usually they would cross at night. So wouldn't you say, Emmett, like pretty, it's pretty much every time we go out, at least one of our volunteers, if not the whole group, sees or even interacts with with a migrant on on the paths. And, you know, and of course, we respect, we respect their autonomy,

their privacy, we don't engage with them if they don't want to engage with us. The thing that I'll never forget is about a month ago, we were out in this exact same area supplying the same path. It was a rainy day, cold. We were wearing our Gore-Tex insulated clothing. We'd done a water drop. While we were doing the water drop, we can see on the next mountain peak, a Border Patrol helicopter landing to pick up somebody who required rescue. And this is a case that we had been getting updates all night with Armadillos, one of the search groups. And thankfully, this person was found alive and uh border patrol was uh so-called rescuing him uh another

word for arresting him and uh after we witnessed that uh we uh hiked back to our vehicles. And just as we were getting to the trailhead, the exact same location where on March 18th, Emmett and other volunteers had this interaction with the two Border Patrol agents who destroyed the humanitarian aid supplies, the exact same parking spot, we pop out and start walking toward our vehicles and it starts snowing. And two individuals come out of the mist and approach us and start talking to us in Spanish. And talking to these two people, these two men, one young, one middle-aged, in the course of the conversation, you know, sorry, I kind of choke up when I talk about this stuff.

Yeah, it's okay. But yeah, so this is the younger of the two was 16 years old, and the older dude was his father. We encountered them as it was snowing. So of course, first thing we did is got them in our vehicles. One of our volunteers, avid hiker, had his backpacking stove with him and cooked up some tea and some, you know, gave them food and, you know, let them warm up. We gave them literally the, you know, Gore-Tex winter coats off our backs to warm up. And once the, you know, the dad was shivering violently, really, really showing signs of clinical hypothermia and talking to the younger man who was in better physical shape,

he was explaining that the two of them were hiking through the mountains because his mother uh was already living in the usa they were trying to reunite with her and they had been in this mountainous region for the past two days and looking at them, they're wearing hoodies, you know, like, you know, sweatshirts, sweatpants and sneakers. And anybody who lives down here in Southern California, you know, we've had a very unusual winter, lots and lots of rain. So it had been raining heavily over the past two days and nighttime temperatures in the 30s. And these two men had been out there for two days, soaked to the bone. And that's why they approached us, because they were in trouble and they were asking for help. So after they warmed up, we discussed the options.

Of course, you know, we respect their autonomy. You know, they have the option to try to continue going on their way with supplies, or if they felt it was unsafe to do so, we were ready to help them. The heartbreaking thing is, you know, they did ask us, could we let them ride in our vehicles off the mountain? And we had to explain that, you know, we were pretty much guaranteed to encounter Border Patrol agents on that road, and that really, it's not something that we could do because, you know, that, you know, we could be arrested and charged, you know, for federal felony crimes. But we said, look, you know, if you really feel you can't continue, we will help you contact, you know, call 911. But we explained that's 100% going to result in Border Patrol coming.

going to result in border patrol coming. Because as folks may know, you know, you know, in the USA along the border, you know, emergency medical response, search and rescue is unfortunately considered in the domain of law enforcement. So if you are a US citizen, or if you are someone from another country that happened to come here and have a visa or just be considered the good type of foreigner you know you're gonna have a very impressive response with sheriffs uh sheriff's department search and rescue volunteer organizations if there's any hint that you may be a so-called undocumented person, it immediately gets sent to Border Patrol and you have, you know, BORSTAR respond, the Border Patrol Search and Rescue Group, which is a far cry from the civilian search and rescue folks. So we explained to them, if we call 911,

you're going to be apprehended, you're going to be arrested by border patrol. And after thinking about it and discussing, they said, yeah, we cannot continue. We're, you know, this is too dangerous. So we did call 9-1-1 and border patrol did come and fr cuffed them and did arrest them. that's not the only time that too often we have witnessed human beings being arrested by Border Patrol.

Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. I think it's really important to give like faces and names to these things rather than the border patrol will constantly talk about the million whatever encounters right they like to fucking inflate the numbers because it's often the same people but um it's each one of those is a tragedy right every time someone has to make a choice between

risking their life in one place or risking their life coming to another place just so their kids can have a crack at growing up safely or so they can be safe or so they can experience like one-tenth of the things that we take for granted every day like that's an incredible human tragedy and and yeah they happen every single day every hour of every day at our border because of the things that our government does there. It's important to feel that stuff because I think that should provoke in all of us a very strong reaction. It's pretty messed up that it's almost universal bipartisan agreement that it's fine and okay by people who have never been here and don't understand.

by people who have never been here and don't understand. One other thing I want to add, and Emmett, you may have other things. One thing I wanted to really center is something we've referenced several times, the Kumye. This is Kumye land. These are the indigenous people who have lived here since the beginning of time. The archaeological record goes back 10,000 years, but we know people have been here since the beginning of human time, really. And look at the map. This so-called border cuts in half uh traditional kumye territory uh when we do these water drops

out in the desert or in the mountains you know these these paths that that people are using to migrate are often uh or in many many cases uh traditional kumye. And we see evidence of that every time we, you know, do a water drop, especially out in the desert areas where it's a rare water drop that we will not find pottery shards lying in the sand or come across rock shelters, some with pictographs. or come across rock shelters, some with pictographs. And, you know, it's just, you know, very poignant juxtaposition of Kumeyaay cultural artifacts with modern day, you know, shoe covers, discarded water bottles. And of course, many people who do migrate are indigenous themselves. So, yeah, personally, you know, I view all of these border issues through the lens of history, culture, with the core truth that this is indigenous land, this is Kumeyaay land, and it has always been.

And the modern so-called border is a very recent political creation, you know, that, you know, mid-19th century. You know, before that, this was Mexico. And now we call it the USA. But this is all recent. And from my perspective, unless you are a Kumye, I really don't know how anybody can really get on their high horse and really speak with any authority about who belongs here, who belongs here, who doesn't belong here. Because the rest of us, we are all guests on Kumeyaay land. That includes every single border patrol agent.

And that's something I always like to remember. Yeah, yeah. The border is very much like colonialism in action. And it's even, we're going to have some Kumeyaay folks, hopefully in the next couple of weeks, to talk about the desecration of Kumeyaayay burial sites by the border wall which is an ongoing thing like i haven't stopped when the just i can't tell stories about it like i could in 2020 because you know orange man bad isn't a thing anymore but yeah like all across the border right not just here

the yaki the tohonod um all all across border is native land. The whole of the so-called United States is native land. It's not indigenous folks out there trying to kill people in the desert. Is there anything, Emmett, that you wanted to add? Yeah, I just want to say this well.

We're going to ramble forever, so we'll stop rambling in a second. I guess I really want to say, and this is coming from a very skewed white male's perspective, but I just feel like so much of these power structures that we're engaged with and us as a nation trying to find our identity, it's so hypocritical, particularly in this moment where climate and social instability is at its height. I mean, in my lifetime and I think in many of our lifetimes, we see this as a really precarious moment. It just feels so hypocritical to police people's sovereignties to find safety and to be in safety. You know, we have all of these ideals in our country

around respecting each other's freedoms. And also as we are importing and exporting so many goods and also so much culture and so fundamentally intertwined with the lives of people from all over the world, for us to say what is wrong and what is right in this moment and for us to have this this moral authority to to put people in in in prison just for for for seeking safety for many

years and of course i have many people i know and live with who have been in in who went were in detention for for several years um for seeking that, the amount of just how twisted it is that we are comfortable spending our lives as Americans never considering or never really critically engaging with this active pursuit, these actions to limit people's abilities to survive. It feels like it really needs to be centered in this conversation. And again, this is coming from my skewed perspective, but I just, I really want to make the point clear. This is not about, this is not about these lofty ideals of what a country could be or who and who is not justified or useful in our country um we make these arbitrary assessments um of what's

justified or what's legal and not legal and very often those are just continuing the legacy of exploitation of black and brown people, the exploitation of landscapes, the exploitation of labor, the exploitation of people whose voices are not heard politically, economically. And continuing a conversation of in Ota-Meystern Center um the people who are detained are are cleaning their own cells and their their their labor is actually being exploited as well you can't distinguish the fact that there is the history of policing in our country in the history of prisons is specifically a project to continue white supremacy um and you can see particularly the differential policing of immigration currently and the differential way that certain people from certain countries are or are not valid to enter this country and at the very least be treated with respect and dignity in their process and that's what we see cbp uh every single day violating people's basic access to human dignity and access to life which are protected by all

nations in in writing and very often not in practice yeah yeah i think that's well said like it's a very basic human thing it doesn't need to be like shrouded in constitutional law and like you also said a capital flows very freely across across the border um but people aren't allowed to and yeah it's pretty messed up guys where can people if they want to support if they want to just send a kind word where can people find you on the internet? The best way probably is on Instagram. We have an account, Borderlands Relief Collective. Reach out to us.

And I do want to give a shout out to our sister organizations, Border Kindness, their water drop program led by Jacqueline and James has been doing tremendous work for years. Border Angels, which is Eagles of the Desert. Very, very proud to be in this community of people who are trying to help people in the borderlands. Yeah. Thank you very much, guys. It's pretty great. It could happen here as a production of cool zone media for more podcasts from cool zone media,

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