It Could Happen Here - Title 42 pt 2: Migrant Stories

Episode Date: May 31, 2023

James returns with part 2 of his series on title 42, in this episode we hear from asylum seekers in San Ysidro and learn about the human impact of CBP’s inhumane detention practices.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadowbride. Join me, Danny Trejo, and step into the flames of fright. 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, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech

brought to you by an industry veteran with nothing to lose. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts from. On Thanksgiving Day 1999, five-year-old Cuban boy Elian Gonzalez was found off the coast of Florida. And the question was, should the boy go back to his father in Cuba? Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or stay with his relatives in Miami? Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Scoring off nuff, going like a clean hell, I see Aim for the sky that I pray

Mama says, son, push for your glory For them, say, my smile, they don't know my story They're going to talk and watch me Man grateful, man grateful All when nothing has gone, man, I smile One's serious life God alone gives you everything for survive, yeah. No sacrifice.

Pick up the drum here, because we are going to do it and come back home. See? Yeah, man. That's it. One love. Peace. Out.

On the 11th of May this year, Title 42 finally ended. I actually began to write this episode the day before on the 10th of May. But it was that day that DHS announced that Title 42 would be enforced until 8.59pm Pacific or midnight Eastern. They kept Title 42 in place for every single minute they could. And that same day, 500 active duty troops arrived in El Paso, and a thousand more set off for other border towns to join the 2,500 troops

already deployed to the border. According to a press release from the Department of Homeland Security, CBP and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement are further expanding detention capacity, ramping up removal flights, and shifting agents and officers to high-priority regions along the southwest border. This week, CBP opened two new holding facilities, along the southwest border. This week, CBP opened two new holding facilities, and the Department of Health and Human Services is increasing its bed capacity to prepare for a potential increase in unaccompanied children. DHS also launched targeted enforcement operations in high-priority regions along the border, including El Paso, to quickly process migrants and place them in removal

proceedings. DHS last week also announced over $250 million in additional assistance for communities receiving migrants. On the ground, this assistance and planning didn't exactly meet the task at hand. Albeit, the specific call-out of El Paso does suggest that they saw their task as not looking bad in the right-wing media. Here's some audio recorded after a couple of hours walking around talking to people at San Ysidro, where Customs and Border Protection had detained around 500 people in between the two 30-foot fences that make up the border between San Ysidro and Tijuana.

I'm just, for people familiar with San Diego, like in the Tijuana River Valley Park by International Hill, where Border Patrol are holding people in between the two border fences uh for those who thought we didn't have a border wall or weren't having a border wall we have at least two sometimes three uh but right here we have two um people are being put in between these fences by border patrol so i just spoke to some young colombian women who had crossed uh about 50 miles east of here and then been been relocated here and they're in between these border walls they don't have running water uh what food and water they have appears to be being supplied by volunteers on the northern side they've just been given space blankets but a lot of people

are literally sleeping under bin bags right now on blankets. It's pretty brief. There's one poor toilet sort of thing that we can see about 500 people. So it kind of gives you an idea of the conditions. Obviously those don't live up to the detention conditions that Border Patrol are supposed to hold people under. But here we are, I guess. Border Patrol have just said that they're calling an ambulance. There have been a number of medical emergencies that nearly always are in these situations because you're holding people, old people, young people, sick people, and they're in the sun all day, they're in the cold all night. If it rains they get wet, if it's hot they get hot, if it's cold they get cold.

Their little children were just asking me for a blanket a minute ago, which is always a pretty bleak thing. If you've not been here, you'd be forgiven for not knowing that we have a double layer of walls separating us from our neighbours in Tijuana. Both sections are now the Trump era design, but we're standing in a place where not so very long ago Nancy Reagan stood and said she hoped that there wouldn't be a fence here for very long. Now there are two towering walls, and there are little children stuck walls, and their little children

stuck sleeping in the dust between them. All the aid to these people had to go through the wall too, and that meant no hot meals because the gaps are smaller than a plate. Someone tried to bring tents, but they wouldn't fit. Everything from food to clothes to medical supplies had to go through the gaps in the wall. Hamara Yousefi, a volunteer from the Partnership for the Advancement of New Americans, described to me what she saw that night. I see about 500 beautiful, smiling faces of people who are desperately trying to get to safety, and they're confused, they don't know what's going on,

they don't know how long it will take them um you know they they many of them are aware that something is happening today many of them are asking does this mean that i'll be turned back what is going on i see i see um you know people who don't even have, many kids don't have shoes. They don't have, I talked to individuals who lost everything on them. They don't have jackets. They're trying to cover themselves with any kind of covering that they have. Some of them using trash bags, others using scarves and other types of things to cover themselves from the sun.

We are in San Diego, so it's quite sunny here. The first thing I noticed on arrival was the dozens of hands sticking through the wall, holding phones and chargers. That's because people need to use the CBP One app to interact with border enforcement. But they've been detained by the same border enforcement in between two walls in an open field where there obviously isn't any electricity. They also need their phones to stay in touch with their families, to let them know they survived a difficult and dangerous journey, and that they're now technically inside the USA. Here's the advert a CBP broadcast in Spanish to encourage asylum

seekers to download the app before they put them in a place they couldn't charge their phones. download the app before they put them in a place they couldn't charge their phones. Attention migrants in Mexico City or further north in the country. Why do you need to download CBP-1? It's a free and legal way to get an appointment guaranteed at a port of entry. It's a clear way to solicit asylum and you have the possibility to work while your case is being processed. If you present without an appointment, you can be prohibited from entering the U.S. for five years. You will be subject to expedited deportation unless you comply with the strict requirements of the asylum process. In the majority of cases, it is assumed that migrants do not comply with the requirements for asylum, and you won't have the right to work unless you comply with the strict requirements.

Again, if you are now in Mexico City or further north, download CBP1. As we heard yesterday, CBP1 has been an unmitigated disaster and has shown a very clear bias towards certain types of wealthy and white asylum seekers. Despite that, it seems to have been the only plan in place at the end of Title 42. The hundreds of people detained in between defences presumably didn't have appointments, and with no way to charge their phones, they couldn't make them. It's not clear if making them would have helped, as it seems that they were already being detained and thus they would have to file defensive asylum claims, effectively stopping the repatriation process by claiming that they couldn't safely be sent back to their country of origin.

This is opposed to making an affirmative asylum claim that people should have been able to make at the border with a CBP1 appointment. These would not have to be argued with the threat of repatriation hanging over the person making the claim. Volunteers, local people, a mosque group and a church group all showed up soon after CBP began dumping more people in between the fences. An hour after my own arrival, I'd given away all the charge cables that I had in my truck, which is a lot more charge cables than I thought I had in my truck, and all my charge bricks accrued over six years of getting free shit at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Later, I came back with a massive solar generator that I like to use when I'm living off-grid, but I still need to write stuff.

Even all my home electronics ephemera, and the combined efforts of non-profits, religious and mutual aid groups, couldn't really make much difference to the 500 people from around the world, mostly families with children, being held between the two fences. When it got hot, they got hot. When it got cold, they got hot. When it got cold, they got cold. When the wind blew, they got dust in their eyes, and everything was constantly dirty. The only hot food volunteers could get to them was pizza. Some of the detained people had cash, and they were able to order DoorDash on the Tijuana side, but again the meals had to fit through a hole barely wider than my arm. fit through a hole barely wider than my arm. The only way to get clean was with wet wipes, and there was only one bathroom. There was no shade or shelter either, and the only way people could construct shelters was through tying tarps to the border wall itself. I'll let Kaba, one of

the volunteers who came to help, describe what they saw when participating in Mutual Aid a couple of days after. But it was it definitely was I don't think it really struck me until you know, after after everything, and you know, if I left several hours later, but kind of, I mean, I read about the situation at the border, but the kind of matter of factness of there's just several 100 people, including children, just kind of between this fence. And they're just stuck there with nothing. And the sort of matter-of-factness of that all was, I think, the part that struck me the most.

And it's been the most challenging to process. In the days before the end of Title 42, confusion had reigned at the border. A lot of people I talked to mentioned that they thought they had to cross before the end of Title 42 or they would be ejected and not able to apply for five years under Title VIII. This misunderstanding might, in part,

be due to some of the misleading rhetoric put out by Mayorkas and others, which focused on the harsh penalties for crossing between ports of entry in an attempt to appear strong on the border to their colleagues in DC. They didn't place as much emphasis on the right to present and claim asylum at a port of entry. But, as we saw yesterday, it's virtually impossible to actually do that, and Tijuana is already full of thousands of people trying to do that exact thing. Given a set of circumstances, it makes sense that many people took the days before the

end of Title 42 as the final chance to cross. Before Title 42 ended, I spoke to Diana Rodriguez from Colombia about her understanding of what was going to happen later that night. Diana was with two friends, all of them wearing little daisies in their hair and sharing a tarp shelter they'd made by tying a blue tarp against the wall so they could get some shade and privacy. I asked her where the flowers had come from. You'll hear the rest of the interview voiced by Shireen.

Oh, the flowers. The flowers, well, there are these little flowers, flowers that are growing here like in a garden. So when we went and took a walk over there and we found them, we put them on and they're pretty. We call these the little yellow flowers of hope and they match the color of our bracelets. We picked them on the day we arrived and we knew that we needed a little bit of encouragement.

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

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

In Jucumba, volunteers estimated that two-thirds of the people corralled under the desert sun were from Colombia. Of course, in recent years, there has been instability and violence there, which also drives migration. One of my sources also mentioned that a lot of Colombian people had seen misleading information about immigration law on TikTok. Two days had passed since Diana arrived. She came with one of the girls she was now sharing a tarp with, and met another when they were all dumped in the camp together. In the days before they were detained here, they had crossed three countries on their way to what they hoped was a better life for young women like them.

I asked them to describe that journey for me. Eight days, eight days more or less, walking from Colombia, from El Salvador to Guatemala, then Mexico to here. All that time, walking and taking the bus. There's a part 15 or 20 minutes from here where the wall ends, and we cross there. There was a Mexican patrol, and when they changed shifts, we ran. And here we are on American soil. We arrived on foot, and the police brought us here. They opened

the gate and dropped us here. Along the way, she said, they'd run into a lot of people. The migrant journey north is such a common trek that people living along the way have found a way to make a buck, but also a way to make a difference. It's not uncommon for migrants to be extorted, robbed, or threatened. It's also not uncommon for them to be fed by strangers, perhaps handing off bags with food in them to passing trains or buses, or perhaps given a place to sleep for the night by someone they might never see again. There were parts where we were extorted. They took all the money we brought. They robbed us, they stole our passports, they stole our documents. So it's always quite dangerous. ports, they stole our documents. So it's always quite dangerous. Let's say that it's dangerous to take this journey. Yes, just as we have met some bad people along the way, we have also met

some very good people. People who have given us a hand, people who have helped us, people who have collaborated with us in ways you least expect. I asked Diana what she hoped for, now she was technically inside the USA. Yes, let's say the hope is that they will listen to our case, listen to our case and let us fight the case inside. Yes, because we want to be able to explain the conditions we are in and the reasons that those of us who are here came here. Things like extortion, kidnapping, and because our lives are in danger in Colombia. So we wish that they at least listen

to our case and let us plead our cause. Before we started recording, Deanna asked what network I was with. I thought that was an astute question. Networks like Fox show up at the border, although I didn't see any Fox national reporters on my trip. Certainly local news channel KUSI was there, but their reporting on the ground differed from their xenophobic and outright incorrect online coverage. I asked Diana what she'd want to say to folks who might have had their perspective influenced by the constant demonization of migrants by right-wing media.

There are many people who, let's say, are in a mindset of not wanting migrants and they view them with contempt. Because where xenophobia exists, it's hard for us, because we suffer along the way. We would like you to change your way of seeing things and your way of thinking, so that you don't look at us with contempt. We have a saying in Colombia that says that he who is born in a golden cradle never suffers or never sees what he does not know. a golden cradle never suffers or never sees what he does not know. So it's hard when you're born in a golden cradle and you don't see beyond what you have. So there are people that in our case,

in my case, I lived a very hard life where you see the war between armed groups. They exist outside the law and they can control an area and you see the kidnapping, you see the rape of girls, and they can control an area, and you see the kidnapping, you see the rape of girls, recruitment, extortion, death. Yes, so it's hard when we experience that, and people say things like, these migrants are coming to invade our country. We also ask them to treat us as people, because if we are here, it is not because we want to invade a territory. It is because we want to come to fight for a better future for our children without stepping on anyone. Nobody wants this. But where we come from, we receive travelers with open arms. And it's hard when one is a migrant, when one lives the experience of being a migrant. It is a very hard thing to be a migrant,

having to endure cold, hunger, rain, sun, that is, all these things, and then arriving here and seeing faces of contempt. It's hard. It is very hard. So, yes, the important thing is that people must know that being an immigrant is not easy that being an immigrant is not easy. Being an immigrant is not easy. One of her friends who she was sharing a tarp with leaned over to give an example.

Everyone despairs because everyone wants to leave. So everyone sees each other as enemies. So let's say, for example for example right now when they are sending cars to collect people to process, so everyone there thinks I hope they take me. Then when they don't it gets to a point where yes, where you despair. I mean it's desperate but well everyone, everyone is in the fight together. All in the fight. 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. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America

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We're talking real conversations with our Latin stars, from actors and artists to musicians and creators, sharing their stories, struggles, and successes. You know it's going to be filled with chisme laughs and all the vibes that you love. Each week, we'll explore everything from music and pop culture to deeper topics like identity, community, and breaking down barriers in all sorts of industries. Don't miss out on the fun,

el té caliente, and life stories. Join me for Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get into todo lo actual y viral. Listen to Gracias Come Again 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 how tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech

from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel-winning economists to leading journalists in the field, and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though.

I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. After yet another dusting down from a CBP agent who really liked to razz his quad bike past the mutual aid tables,

I spoke to a man from Angola. I'll leave his name out, as he preferred for me not to share it. He'd been in Tijuana for three days, he said, and was waiting his chance to plead his case for asylum. It's just me and my sister. We suffered a lot. There were bandits. We came here to be safe.

It's no way to live. People broke into our house to violate women, to look for people, and I was injured then. Yeah, why did I leave to come here? Over there, they're not the means to live. women to look for people. And I was injured then. Yeah, why did I leave to come here? Over there, they're not the means to live. We didn't get a chance to talk for long and some of the recording I got wasn't very good. He was waiting in line for food. And to be quite honest, I don't like prodding people to share their trauma. But with so many journalists crowding the border, asking them to do just that, it tends to be what people offer.

Lots of African migrants can be quite cautious of the media, because talking to the media at home could get them in trouble. I spoke to a friend of mine, himself a migrant from Africa. He said that if migrants don't speak English or Spanish, it can be very hard for them to get information. And there aren't as many non-profits set up to serve them as there are for Spanish-speaking people, for example. They can often end up isolated and alone. I did get a better chance to talk to a Jamaican man called Joseph. It's his singing you've heard at the start of this episode. Mostly, we talked about things in America,

about how he lost his phone on his journey – we got him another one at Walmart – and about things like football and music. I didn't record all of that because sometimes it's nice to just talk to people. Hopefully it makes their day a bit brighter and gives them some information maybe that could help. He did let me record a bit of an interview and some of him singing. He was pretty guarded on the recording but as you can hear in this clip we had a good time when we weren't recording. This one? Yeah Hold on, hold on, hold on He gave his mouse up He's got a limber up He gave my mouse up

He gave my mouse up Here we go He gave my mouse up You know it's a legend isn't it? I don't want to be a legend like Bob Marley Scoring off is not going to be likely And I'll miss him Aim for the sky that I pray pray Mama say sun push for your glory

For them say my smile, them not know my story Be a gonna talk and a watch me Man grateful, man grateful All when nothing a go and man a smile Once there is life God alone give you everything for survival. Enough sacrifice. Pick up the drum here,

because we've got to do it and come back home. See? Yeah, man, that's it. One love. Peace out. That was beautiful. Yeah, I'm Joseph. I asked him about some of the stuff we spoke about before,

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

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

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

It's not like I'm giving away my home. My home is a good place. Yeah, yeah. life for his son. Of course, this perspective is very common, and it's one that often gets left out of reporting. Coming to the USA is a very hopeful act. It's not abandoning your family or your home. It's trying to make their lives better and your life livable. Joseph was quite guarded with this story, and that's fine. It's his to share as much or as little as he wants. I came to the USA without having to get persecuted or hurt, and people who don't look like me should have that same right as well. Sadly, coming to the USA is also scary and confusing. Even for me, with three university degrees and all the intersectional privilege I have and 15 years living here and a recently minted US passport now, I worried for years that maybe

I'd made a mistake on a form or missed some kind of deadline. Speaking of deadlines, what none of the migrants could tell us, what they all wanted to ask about was exactly what was happening to them as Title 42 expired. A Congolese lady asked me if her passport would be confiscated. A lady from Senegal asked if she needed to pay a bribe like the one she'd paid in Mexico. It wasn't really clear at first if these people were being detained and under what process they were being received. Would they be sent back to Mexico under Title 42? Repatriated under Biden's interpretation of Title 8? Or given the right to plead their case if international and US law suggests they should be able to. CBP made people sit in lines all day with no indication of when they would be taken to the port of entry for processing.

Sometimes I heard people saying if everyone didn't sit down, there would be nobody processed that day. But the only food, water and medical attention available to the migrants was that which could be passed through the wall. And they had to get out of their lines to receive this aid. I'll let Kaba describe what this looked like. They had people waiting in lines, the whole thing, they had to sit in a line, in a specific assigned spot. But it wasn't always clear how those lines actually worked because they would kind of take people from lots of places. I think they might have been prioritizing families with children or people with some kind of medical needs or something like that.

But you would never know when they were going to come, and we didn't seem to know also who they were going to choose to take. We didn't know exactly where they were taking them, but we assumed they were taking the port of entry in San Ezequiel, which is about a mile away. And so what would always happen when they come and get a group is like three or four people from that group would sprint over to the wall because we still had their phones. And CDP wasn't going to wait for us to get the phones. One thing a lot of people we talked to shared was that there was another camp, which we later found housed as many as 800 single men. It's fairly usual to keep single men apart from families, but keeping them in an inaccessible place without adequate food or water is not usual.

The camp was further west, and despite repeated requests from myself and others, including those delivering aid, we were not allowed to access it. One pair of Jamaican twins, both young men, told me they had walked up there and that things were very bad. People were only given one small water bottle and a granola bar every day, they said. One person told me they'd heard people were eating grass. I asked CBP's press office for information on this, but they didn't respond. Here's one clip of a man trying to explain how bad things were there. It's hard to communicate across language barriers, and with a war between you it's even harder, but I could tell he was very concerned for the folks that we couldn't

get to. Despite myself and others trying, and me addressing this issue directly in emails to CBP, I never got any response on why people were not allowed to help the single men in the other camp. Just not helping. One water. Yeah, what little water? One chocolate. Finish. Nothing else?

No food, no water, blanket, clothes? Dollar. Nothing? Money, finish. I'll go try and go up there. Even with these camps being pretty tight, the camp is still a bit of a challenge. The camp is a bit of a challenge. The camp is a bit of a challenge.

The camp is a bit of a challenge. The camp is a bit of a challenge. The camp is a bit of a challenge. The camp is a bit of a challenge. The camp is a bit of a challenge. The camp is a bit of a challenge. The camp is a bit of a challenge. The camp is a bit of a challenge. The camp is a bit of a challenge. The camp is a bit of a challenge. I think... Money, finish. I'll go try and go up there. Even with these camps being pretty desperate places,

folks look after one another. We spoke a lot with one lady who spoke English. She was there with her own family, but she was also looking after two Tajik children who'd come alone. Their mother spoke a little English, so she relayed news to the children by calling their mother and having her translate it for her children. Other folks took it upon themselves to try and walk to the camp for single men with water, and people constantly helped us find the owners of phones by wandering through the rows of people sheltering under tarps and space blankets to look for people who had left us their devices to charge.

to look for people who had left us their devices to charge. In Okumba, a town an hour or so east of San Diego, things were worse. Okumba's home to a cute hotel, a lovely lake, a hot spring and an awful lot of big rags. When the border wall was being built in earnest before the 2020 election, they skipped some of the harder areas. Perhaps they figured it would be too hard to cross there. It's not. Perhaps they wanted to maximise the mileage before election day. Well, it didn't help much. But either way, for some reason, the wall just takes a little break in Okumba, and this makes crossing marginally easier there. However, the bolder fields, scorching hot days and cold nights make it anything but easy.

On Thursday night, the 11th of May, locals in Okumba became aware that CBP were holding people on a dirt road in the open desert just a few miles east of town, and a few hundred feet from the wall. The people held they didn't have access to toilets, running water or shelter. With every hour that went past, the number of people grew. The biggest camp soon held over a thousand people, desperately trying to scratch out a little shade in the desert. Other, smaller camps popped up. One was apparently in someone's yard, and the people of this tiny desert town said about helping as best they could.

Soon, they were joined by volunteers from all over the county. Katie was one of those volunteers. She doesn't live in Okumba, but her friends do, and her family sometimes spends time there. Once she heard about what was happening, she knew she had to help. I let her describe her feelings after she saw the posts online and then drove out to Okumba

to see what she could do to help. At first I was just super touched by the activation and the caring and my son was asleep comfortable in his car seat you know in our Mercedes van and my husband is still trying to get citizenship after being here since he was two years old. So, and we're married, and he pays taxes. And when I saw our friends activating, I just told him, tomorrow is Mother's Day, and I need to come back here. And it's not safe for you here. So when I first arrived, I thought it was kind of odd that everything was organized around a random road that has a gate.

And there were only five border patrol at the time. And about, that was a larger camp. So I want to say at least 800 people, maybe a thousand. I didn't see them all because many of them received their donations and the assistance and went back to their shelters. A few days after the migrants arrived, I camped out in Hukumba. I was cold in my sleeping bag at night and dizzy in the sun in the day. It's not a place where you'd want to be stuck outside for long, but it's a place where 1,500 or so people were held for days, little more than the shelters they built out of creosote and mesquite

to protect their families from the elements. They slept on the dirt or in cardboard boxes left over from the food volunteers fed them, and under whatever folks in tiny desert town could find to give them. By the time I arrived, the migrants were gone and volunteers were cleaning up. The landscape was dotted with impressively constructed brush shelters. Volunteers from Hakumba set up tables to distribute food, blankets, water and clothing.

Other volunteers stayed away from the camp itself and spent time packing things into individual sizes, perhaps combining hats and socks and maybe a toy for a child in one bag, or breaking down Costco packages of snacks into individual portions. It's not necessarily the most rewarding task, but it's an important one. I asked Marissa, another volunteer who had previously worked in San Diego for the Forest Service, what she felt when we were cleaning out some of those shelters together a couple of days later. I don't know the best way to say this, but a couple of days later.

I don't know the best way to say this, but what hit me deeper was when, this might seem strange, but when I saw women's sanitary napkins or the diapers or the babies, it was kind of like a fabric padded crib bassinet type thing. That suddenly hit me on a deeper level would make me emotional because it's like then you start to realize like wow what if that was me and my child or I'm not a mother but I can only imagine what that must

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

being able to support in whatever way I can, that was the way that I felt like I could serve and be a support. Katie hadn't expected to meet migrants at the camp when she first showed up. She knew it was important not to flood the camp with volunteers, and their help was needed packaging and preparing aid drops, which she was happy to do. But in the end, she traveled up to the camp with a friend who spoke Portuguese, so they could help translate and distribute supplies. I asked her what it was like to see the supplies she'd purchased a few hours before end up in the hands of people who desperately needed them. They don't even have a grocery store in Hakamba they have one mini mart with um nothing in it and that was sold out the first day

um so these people who we would look at without a lot of resources passing the abundance of what they actually have passing the abundance of what they actually have. I saw a lot of families. I could tell that there were leaders within the group because they were helping organize as much as the volunteers were. And unfortunately, there was language barriers. And so those that could speak multiple languages whether they were border crossers or volunteers were together in it and or and that was part of that organization

that I'm talking about you know and and it was actually a very calm scene. When we first came up, I saw my son's hat that I donated and a little boy hugging this jaguar stuffed animal. And the jaguar was really significant to my friend and I when we found it. significant to my friend and I when we found it so it was really touching just to like see see the things that we were bringing being literally being distributed like sometimes when you think you're helping I worked for a door-to-door campaign when I was in my teens and I got 50% of what I raised. So, and it was like disheartening and you're like, oh, this is how it works. And in this case, money that I directly spent on resources that were needed was going directly to the people. In all likelihood, people crossed in a specific

spot because someone dropped them there, telling them it would be easy. In fact, it was anything but. People die crossing around here. In the dirt around Jucumba, I found discarded flight itineraries and documents from Turkey, Nicaragua, Colombia, Mexico.

There were also little children's toys, shoes, and hundreds of empty water bottles which we diligently picked up. But none of the more than 1,000 people who the border patrol held in this camp had planned for what they got, which was several days being detained in the desert by CBP with insufficient water, no shelter, and very little food, and no information on what was happening or how long they could expect to be there. Sadly, I didn't get there in time to speak to any of them.

I was in Arizona looking for border vigilantes and wondering what CBP had been doing to migrants there, where they have the full support of local law enforcement and a large percentage of the aging population. To my surprise, I didn't find much. It seemed like most people had crossed in the San Diego County area. Many had flown or walked to Tijuana. Of course, migrants just like us have access to the news and to weather forecast and maps. Crossing in Arizona, a place known for cruelty and very hot weather, doesn't make any sense when California offers a better political and weather climate. And with the mixed messages coming out about immigration law, these folks may not have been intending to evade Border Patrol, but to come to the USA and stake their

legal right to claim asylum. I spoke to Sam, a volunteer with extensive on-the-ground experience in humanitarian crises, about what he'd seen at the camp. Oh, my name is Sam Schultz. He said many of the people who found themselves in Okumba had likely been told, by people-smugglers, that this was an easy way into the US. In the end, it was anything but. smugglers, that this was an easy way into the US. In the end, it was anything but.

I mean, I know they didn't expect that they were just waltz across the border at a normal check station, but they thought it was going to be, they were sold a bill of goods. Right, like a tough night of walking. Yes, that's it. And so, I mean, I feel sorry for anybody who's taken advantage of it like that, but most of the people that I met, again, who are not Colombians, were of the wealthier side on their countries. I met some Uzbekis, some Kazakhis, a bunch of people from India, a couple of Pakistani guys. I mean, they didn't get here cheap. The wall behind the people in Hukumba cost $25 million a mile on average. The Border Patrol agents drove around in F-150 Raptor trucks that start at $80,000, and each make a starting salary of over $60,000 in their first year.

Surveillance towers that dot the desert, including one which provided a tiny scrap of shade to migrants resting under its solar panels, can cost a million dollars apiece, but people in Okumba received only one small water bottle each day, despite the punishing weather. Although Customs and Border Protection did not seem to make any plan to shelter migrants in Okumba, they did plan to have contractors paid $40 an hour to take them away. I found a job advert for a Southwest Border Transportation and Security Officer

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

affirmative one. They have to plead why they shouldn't be deported rather than why they have a right to stay. Many of the people will have been trying to cross before the end of Title 42, like Diana, because they felt they would face a less serious penalty. Many of them flew to Tijuana or walked from further south in Mexico or even in Central America and likely spent their entire savings on a trip to the gap in the wall near Jucumba that ended with them being held by Border Patrol on the open desert with next to nothing in the way of shelter, sanitation or sustenance. As a way to quantify this, I want to reference a UCSD, US Immigration Policy Centre, report. It apparently had some pretty problematic practices,

but anyway, these are results from its survey. When asked whether Border Patrol gave them enough water for the day, over half of the asylum seekers that we interviewed, approximately 53%, said no. Border Patrol distributed one water bottle to each migrant in the morning. When asked whether Border Patrol gave them enough food for the day, all of the asylum seekers said no. Border Patrol did not distribute any food. When asked whether Border Patrol provided adequate sanitation, such as toilets, all of the asylum seekers that we

interviewed, meaning 100%, said no, Border Patrol provided one port-a-body for the entire encampment. When asked whether Border Patrol provided adequate shelter, such as shade, to protect them from the sun, all of the asylum seekers that we interviewed said no. Border Patrol did not provide any shelter. When asked whether Border Patrol provided blankets to keep them warm at night, all but one of the asylum seekers we interviewed said no. Border Patrol provided blankets to some migrants, but the overwhelming majority did not receive blankets. Altogether, two-thirds of the asylum seekers we interviewed said that they agree or strongly agree with the

statement, if I did not receive food and water from volunteers, I would not get enough food and water from Border Patrol to survive. These aren't exaggerations. As we'll see, several migrants did come very close to losing their lives in the five or more days that CBP detained people out in the open along the border. Welcome, I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me as the fire and dare enter? Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows, presented by I Heart and Sonorum, 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. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how Tex Elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, better offline is your unvarnished and at times

unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel winning economists to leading journalists in the field and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things

that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. Hola mi gente, it's Honey German,

and I'm bringing you Gracias, Come Again, the podcast where we dive deep into the world of Latin culture, musica, peliculas, and entertainment with some of the biggest names in the game. If you love hearing real conversations with your favorite Latin celebrities, artists, and culture shifters, this is the podcast for you. We're talking real conversations with our Latin stars, from actors and artists to musicians and creators,

sharing their stories, struggles, and successes. You know it's going to be filled with chisme, laughs, and all the vibes that you love. Each week, we'll explore everything from music and pop culture to deeper topics like identity, community, and breaking down barriers in all sorts of industries.

Don't miss out on the fun, el té caliente, and life stories. Join me for Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get into todo lo actual y viral. Listen to Gracias Come Again

on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Medical incidents in this kind of detention are far from uncommon. A lawsuit filed against Customs and Border Protection by the Southern Border Communities Coalition regarding their actions this week stated that, quote, Many migrants have fallen into medical distress because of the conditions, and CBP has been slow to provide access to medical attention, often only responding at the insistence of advocates.

As a result, one woman suffered life-threatening allergies, a child suffered an epileptic seizure, and a man suffered an unattended infection on his leg. Medical attention was slow to arrive, and when it did arrive, it was often insufficient. I'll let Kaber describe the conditions they saw a couple of days after the end of Title 42. That's really the part that is hard to understate. The conditions there were not safe or sanitary.

I guess this is sort of related to the medical issues, but there was, it's been, you know, to their credit, this aspect has been reported in the media, but there was a single portable toilet for anywhere from, I guess there's probably 200 to 400 people there. I heard a couple different citations of how often this toilet is serviced and cleaned and the waste removed, anywhere from once or twice a week to once every week or two weeks. Either way, that's not remotely sufficient for 400 people using the bathroom multiple times a day in this single portable, like just a construction site toilet. It was right next to the phone charging station on the other side of the wall. And I would just feel sick if I got too close to it. It was really vile. It was not safe.

It is not a way for people to be healthy. I do know, I think a lot of, thankfully, people stop using it, but then they don't have a privacy, or that's still not a sanitary situation to be in, since they don't have a huge amount of space where they were. So that's definitely one of the ways that people are being neglected in terms of their health and safety.

Here's Humaira, who will hear more from tomorrow, describing another medical incident. And the call that I got this morning was of a woman who was rushed out because she had an emergency situation taken to the hospital. The hospital didn't know what to do with her. So they sent her right back here in the middle of the night, in the middle of the night. And they brought her here. She doesn't have any documents. CBP didn't get a chance to process her yet. So she doesn't even have any proof that she actually came to the port of entry and tried to seek asylum. And she was just sleeping right here. And she has burns all over her body, has an infection.

I read the seven medications that they gave her. And she speaks Dari. She's from Afghanistan. Her husband got taken by the Taliban and she escaped running for her life. And she's here and she has sunburns all over her face. And she has nowhere to go she thought she was still detained she actually thought she was still detained she was just trying to get back to the other side of the border she thought she was still in Mexico no one explained anything to

her they brought her back here in the middle of the night and she was freezing and so we brought that's why I came out here I talked to her The other folks who were out here didn't know why. She was just sleeping here. And I came out and tried and translated. And now we have her at a hotel. Cable witnessed one of the emergencies described in the Southern Border Community's coalition lawsuit when they visited the camp.

Here's them describing it. In terms of, you know, medical care as well. Like I said, one the um parts of the the operation that was going on was was people I think there's a combination both of people who were were you know and then street medicine as well as people who were like nurses volunteering their time and things like that um and and mostly taking care of just kind of retained first aid for the most part. There was a situation where someone was having an allergic reaction, a fairly severe one, and I happened to carry an EpiPen, so I simply gave that to one of the street medics. And then they eventually did pull this person.

The reaction got severe enough that it was an hour or so later that 911 was called, I assume by one of the volunteers and ambulance and border patrol came to open the gate and bring this person to the country. They did eventually treat her,

but it was a very, it was a long time after the onset of symptoms, which is someone, as someone who has anaphylaxis reactions to food, and I've said that happened many times in their life, that is an absolutely terrifying, I cannot imagine how terrifying it would be to be experiencing a life-threatening situation when you are trapped and there's no authority that really cares that you're there. And I don't know if she would have been able to get help if there hadn't been volunteers on the other side of the wall, especially ones with medical training.

Where volunteers weren't, things were worse. In Texas, Anadis Tanev Reyes-Alvarez, an eight-year-old girl born in Panama to Honduran parents, died in CBP custody. Rosel Reyes, the girl's father, told NBC News that they gave authorities documents about the girl's medical conditions, congenital heart disease and sickle cell anemia, while they were in immigration custody. They said that a doctor there examined Anadith and that she had contracted the flu. Alvarez, her mother, said she spoke to both detention authorities and medical personnel at the station multiple times

to explain her daughter was complaining of pain and shortness of breath and that she was getting worse. I'll quote the next part directly from the NBC story. They never listened to me, she said. Reyes said his daughter was in a lot of pain, a lot of pain. I begged them to call an ambulance, Alvarez said, adding that authorities told her the girl's condition wasn't serious enough to warrant calling an ambulance. Alvarez said her daughter begged authorities as well, telling them she could not breathe from her nose or mouth. Alvarez says that eventually her daughter lost consciousness

and died in my arms. She said authorities took the girl from her arms and put her on the floor, trying to revive her. My daughter died there, in the station, she said. Avra said she feels authorities did not do enough to help her little girl. My daughter is a human being. They had to take care of her, she said. Despite what you might have heard on the network news, the asylum process is anything but easy. I've had several visas, a green card, and a US passport, and I can confidently tell you the only easy way I've ever seen to come here is to be very rich. But even among the convoluted bureaucratic mess

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

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

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

Okay. So if you're going to set up, it has to be on this side of the line because we have a lot to stay in touch via WhatsApp and share the hotel rules with us. They were pretty strict. Migrants are confined to their rooms, they can't have visitors, and they can't even order food delivery. From the hotel, where they're hosted by Catholic charities, migrants need to get to their sponsor in the United States if they have one. If they don't have one, they can be sent just about anywhere. I've heard of East African folks having ended up in Alaska, for example. Once they get to where they're going to be, they check in with US Customs and Immigration Services

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

Even if they do find work, on less than minimum wage, it can be very hard to save up $5,000 for a lawyer, and migrants who can't find non-profit help are at a significant disadvantage when it comes to their asylum hearings. Again, private security contractors, this time from Allied, were transporting migrants to the hotel and guarding it. Like CBP, the private contractors who guard, transport, and incarcerate migrants all rely on the broker-minimum immigration system to make money. Unlike CBP, the agents themselves aren't well paid. $19 an hour is the going rate for Allied, not much higher than San Diego's $16.30 minimum wage. But the company itself is huge. It's the third largest private employer in North

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

And sometimes their lives when they cross our southern border. Tomorrow, we'll hear from some of the people who made no money and looked after the migrants and will continue to support them through the asylum process. 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.

Thanks for listening. You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadowlands. Join me, Danny Trejo, and step into the flames of fright. 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, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search,

Better Offline is your unvarnished and, at times, unhinged look at the underbelly of tech brought to you by an industry veteran with nothing to lose. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts from. On Thanksgiving Day 1999, five-year-old Cuban boy Elian Gonzalez was found off the coast of Florida. And the question was, should the boy go back to his father in Cuba? Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home, and he wanted to take his son with him. Or stay with his relatives in Miami? Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.