Life Will Be the Death of Me with Chelsea Handler - U.S. Border: How You Can Help

Episode Date: July 25, 2019

Chelsea is joined in studio by advocates, Shannon Camacho and Archana Sahgal to discuss what is actually happening at the U.S. Border and how to help.Credits:Host: Chelsea HandlerGuests: Shannon Camacho and Archana SahgalExecutive Producer: Conal Byrne Producers: Sophie Lichterman, Jack O’Brien Writers: Jamie Loftus, Anna Hossnieh & Sophie Lichterman  Consulting Producers: Nick Stumpf, Miles Gray, & Anna HossniehThis episode was Engineered, Mixed & Edited by: Danl Goodman Music by: KingsburyOrder: "Life Will Be the Death of Me"Available in stores and online now Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human. Get Bell Pure Fiber Internet with Crave, Netflix, and Disney Plus from $94 a month. Price guaranteed for two years on internet with a two-year term and auto pay credit. Visit bell.ca for details and to check availability. Bell. Connection is everything. I survived nine months in captivity, and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them.

I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are The Survivor Files. Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable, abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced. These are stories about what it takes to make it out alive. Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.

Pro Society is a weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse. Each week, we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and pop culture with your favorite writers, book talk creators, and plenty of overthought opinions. I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed. Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Chelsea Handler. Welcome to Life Will Be the Death of Me, a production of iHeartRadio. Okay, hi everybody. Hello, Brandon. Hello, Chelsea.

Hello, again. You weren't at home this morning, actually, Brandon. You had to get yourself ready. Yes, I did, and here I am, and I already left Bernice in the car once. So, we're going to do a different podcast this week. This is not going to be thematically linked with Life Will Be the Death of Me. This is about the border and our crisis at the border and what's happening to innocent children at the border. And I know that I feel so frustrated about not doing more and feel like I need to be more educated about how I can help and how everybody can help and what you can do just to make people's lives more humane down there.

Since we're not legally allowed to donate. Right. Is that correct? We're not allowed to donate. We're not. Well, it is correct. We're not allowed to make monetary donations. We can't we can't send anything. So that doesn't seem normal or right. So there are ways to go around that, and there are ways to help these people. So today we have two special guests that are here and that have done a lot of work on the ground and are very familiar with what's going on at the border, and they work with two different organizations. Let's start with you, Shannon. Thank you.

My name is Shannon Camacho, and I work with the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, which is a nonprofit organization here in Los Angeles that helps community members, specifically immigrant community members access legal services. We also do advocacy to influence legislation at the local, state, and federal level. And then we do organizing. And I think that's really the cornerstone of our organization is that we organize the community to fight for their rights and to make sure that conditions are better for immigrants in Los Angeles. It's called CHIRLA, your organization for short, right? The acronym. And are people allowed to donate financially to that? Absolutely. I think it's when people think about the ways to help,

One of the biggest things that folks need, for example, people that are in detention are immigration attorneys. And so it's very important that we do the fundraising and we get donations in order to get more immigration attorneys to go out to the detention centers and meet with clients. Immigrants are not guaranteed. They're not given an immigration attorney by the federal government, unlike the criminal justice system for citizens. And so it's very important that we do raise money to have those kinds of services available for the community. And also to know that you can actually help legally aid somebody. Exactly. I'll reference an article that I read this morning that a friend sent me about actually

being able to post bail for an immigrant so that they can start the legal process. And to make a difference in one person's life, I think, is what a lot of people are interested in doing. If you can't help everybody, just help one person. So a lot of us can do that. Let's talk to you, Archana Sagal. Sagal. Sagal.

Archana Sagal. Where do you work and what do you do? So my name is Archana and I work at the National Immigration Law Center. We are one of the main organizations working to defend and advance the rights of low-income immigrants in the United States. In terms of what we do, we do everything from suing Donald Trump. We have a huge legal advocacy strategy. We do communications work.

We also do advocacy. We do lobbying on Capitol Hill, as well as some of the work that we're doing right now to influence what all of the candidates, the presidential candidates are saying about the 2020 election and immigration. And is this a public organization or is it a private organization? The National Immigration Law Center is a nonprofit organization. So, okay. And so how do you guys operate that? I mean, how do you zoom in on who needs your attention the most and what the most pressing cases are? Or does it even work that way? That's right. So we get donations from the incredible public that support our body of work.

And then we have strategies to ensure what's going to be the most effective way to ensure that we're fighting for the soul of this country, to ensure that we all have the opportunity to thrive and to be here and seek opportunity. Yeah. I think that the hardest thing to see, I mean, it's all very hard to see, and comparing it to concentration camps that people are saying it's not a concentration camp, you can't say that. I don't see why you can't say that.

What we're doing is traumatizing little children. we're traumatizing them and that thing and we're turning people into animals so you know I know that there's a pressing need for people to want to act but it feels so hopeless in a sense and I know that it's not it has to not be hopeless because there's always something you can do that's right we think that the detention camps are absolutely horrible places and they're entirely unnecessary so we at the National Immigration Law Center have an ongoing lawsuit to force the government to provide the basics to mostly women and children in these ICE centers. But frankly, the conversation shouldn't be about toothbrushes. It should be about pursuing policies and programs

that help immigrants navigate the immigration system without putting them in these camps, without putting them in jail. And it seems like it may be horrible, but there's everyday things that every single person can be doing. And we're going to get to all of that. I'm going to give you guys a list of places that you can get involved in, places you can volunteer, because what are the three Ts? Time, talent, and treasure. Right. So I have a lot of treasure. I'm willing to share that. Some people just have time, and some people just have talent. And whatever you have to contribute is worthwhile. So nothing is insurmountable, I would say. I would say that we can always do something a little bit more than we're doing. So tell us about the situation at

the camps. Why is it so exaggerated now? Why does Donald Trump keep blaming Obama for these camps when Obama never had a baby in a cage. That just never happened under any leader in the history, well, actually not in this country, but okay, for what we're talking about. Right. So I think there's a very big difference between the Obama administration and the Trump administration. Although we do know that during the Obama administration there were many deportations of individuals,

especially Central American immigrants, one of the biggest differences during this administration is the fact that Trump is not respecting the international right to apply for asylum. And that has been an attack since the very beginning in 2016, not allowing these Central American migrants to come request asylum, which is a universal right, and so many other countries respect that. And then instead, really making it difficult and putting more and more barriers for them to achieve that asylum. And so folks are then sent to detention centers and families are held together and for longer periods of time,

instead of looking into alternatives to detention, and instead of investing money in programs to integrate these new arriving immigrants. He stopped the education, right? He stopped ESL for these children. He doesn't want them to learn. Exactly. And that is super intentional. This is part of a strategy to really deter migration. And that's something that we keep at CHERLA, we keep telling the community is this is not an accident. This is not something that he's trying to achieve just for himself. He's really trying to show the rest of the folks that are trying to come here, we don't want you. We don't want you in this country. And that's something very, very heartbreaking. Because so many of these people are coming with families literally just

looking for a better life, literally coming here to escape violence and persecution. And to know that this government does not respect that and is not trying to help them is just something very unbelievable. Or for people to prematurely be calling these people criminals. Exactly. Before these people are fighting for their lives, they don't deserve to be here because they became here illegally. If you came here illegally on that journey, you had no other choice. No one wants to put their children's lives at risk. No one. I'm not a mother and I know that. I don't want to put any child's life at risk. So we've had seven children die. Right. Yeah. And it's the very, very difficult thing about that is that we know that there have been people that are unnamed,

unidentified, that had died while crossing the border in the past recent months and years. And folks are dying in the detention centers as well. And we don't know, we really just don't know the extent to how people are suffering in all these different places, because there is no transparency from the Department of Homeland Security, which is the agency that oversees these detention centers. There is no effort to highlight the conditions on their part. There's no effort to improve the conditions on their part. And so there are just people all over the country at the southern border, but also all over the country that are experiencing absolutely inhumane conditions. And that is something that we're really trying to highlight through our work.

Do you guys know what a regular day in the life of somebody in one of the insane Clint, the one on the Texan border, right? It's just hell. It's hell on earth. And what's so painful is that everything that we're seeing, the images that we're seeing daily on the television about the border quote unquote crisis was created by Trump. We know that there is zero migration, net migration from Mexico. So building something like a wall, which is incredibly expensive and ineffective. But it also fits Trump's narrative, which creates fear and disdain for immigrants. And we know that as part of his political theater, Trump has used a mix of cruelty and inefficiency to create a bottleneck of moms and dads and kids coming from Central America who are seeking safety in our country. And they're seeking asylum, which we know is their legal right under both U.S. law and international law.

But the reality is that fastest growing undocumented migration comes from people who overstay their visas. And unless we look at root causes, which we know is violence against women and girls in Central America, visa backlogs even in our own system, we won't solve the problem. So we know that the wall is bad policy. We know that these detention centers, these camps are bad policy. And he's using these ideas to divide and distract us with a super racist narrative that riles up his base. And just to clarify, how long have these camps existed in the United States? So since the Department of Homeland Security was created in 2003,

And I'm not sure what the INS, the Immigration Naturalization Services, did before that. But ever since 2003, the Department of Homeland Security has operated these kinds of detention centers, either at the southern border or in the interior of the United States. So I think it's important to remind people in the United States that when folks are arrested by ICE inside the country, for example, in Los Angeles, they are sent to a detention center. And the closest detention center here is Adelanto. And so these detention centers all operate very similarly in the way that they have horrible conditions, that there is just no respect for the folks that are inside and that the conditions are so horrible that there have been numerous reports written about them. And so it's really important that we talk about those, too. OK, we're going to take a quick break and we'll be right back. Visit bell.ca for details and to check availability.

Bell. Connection is everything. When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and held captive for nine months. I survived, and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are the Survivor Files. I just remember this low, taunting voice next to my ear saying, shut up, don't say anything. every week i'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable i knew if he woke up without a doubt he was going to hurt me i started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed and i just started screaming they are abducted stalked controlled and nearly silenced but these aren't

stories about what's taken from them they're stories about what it takes to make it out alive Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home. This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse. I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having. I'm going to have to look up this story. I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed. From best-selling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments,

nothing is off the table. It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters, then that is a Trojan horse. Whether you're looking for literary deep dives, smart pop culture conversations, or a community of readers who love to think a little too much, you're in the right place. Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

See you between the pages. And I've heard and read that 90% of these children have family members to go to, but are still being detained just out of cruelty and red tape. But there was no plan in place to reunite any of these kids with their families initially. Right. That infrastructure that was not was nonexistent. So essentially what this government did is they separated families with absolutely no plan to reunite them. Which is not what Obama did.

Right. It's just unbelievable. It's such a new level of cruelty. And we're now just finding out about that. And it's just absolutely, it's going to take so much work to heal the trauma with all the people that have experienced that separation and create policies that make it so that that never happens again. But it's just unbelievable that this was never the plan. It was never the plan to reunite these families. This was just something, again, to show the rest of the world that the United States is not willing to accept asylum seekers and refugees. Well, brown ones, mostly. Yes, exactly.

And that's a very important point, like Arkana was saying. It's very important to highlight the racism of this. Trump is not having this kind of attitude towards European people coming here and overstaying their visas. He doesn't highlight those folks. He's highlighting specifically Central American immigrants that are coming. And one of the reasons why they're coming to the United States is because the conditions in their countries are so horrible. And a lot of that is due to U.S. intervention. So a lot of these problems are very connected.

And it does not make sense to shun refugees and asylum seekers. Instead, it makes sense to integrate folks that are literally running for their lives, trying to make a better place for themselves in this country. Migration is not going to stop. It's not going to get less. There are going to be more and more and more people coming to the United States, especially given that we have climate change and global crisis. We're going to have more people migrating to the United States for the conditions. And so we really have to, as a country, accept that our current policies are not sufficient enough. We need to change it so that we can integrate folks and give them services instead of shunning them. Yeah, to build a fuller society, you know, to build a fair and equal society so people feel like they can get here the same way all of our ancestors got here.

So, yes, what I was saying before, the Trump administration announced last month that they would no longer provide legal aid, English classes and recreational programs for unaccompanied minors in government custody. So that's one thing. And then I wanted to talk a little bit about what this Julie Sharon did. Do you know her? Yes, I do. So then you know what she did. She was looking for ways to contribute. And she had a bank account that her grandparents, who spent years in Nazi camps, had left for her. And she decided that she wanted to use that money to bail out an asylum seeker. So she called a friend who ran a volunteer organization called Immigrant Families Together,

which are dedicated to providing food, clothing, airline tickets, and other necessities to migrants as they come out of detention. And then she said, I need to know I got one person out. And she did get one person out. And then a lot of people followed suit and did what she did. The airline tickets. People can donate their miles. That's right.

So how does somebody go about doing that? Right. Immigrant Families Together is a great organization. We've partnered with them a couple of times. And I think one way is to go on the website to see the different ways that you can donate. There's also another organization called Miles for Migrants, and that's another place where folks can donate their miles, airline miles, so that people can have plane tickets to their final destination in the United States.

Additionally, also, one way to really help, and I think Immigrant Families also does this, is through bond money, collecting enough bond money so that folks can be bailed out of detention centers. And at CHIRLA, we also have a bond fund. If you go on CHIRLA.org, you can donate to that bond fund. And that directly goes to folks that are in detention. We try to get them bonded out so that their family doesn't have to worry about providing that additional money, because it's one thing to be separated from your family member, but it's a whole other thing to lose thousands of dollars because they're in detention. And so that just puts an enormous long-term strain on the family. And that's something that we really don't want folks to

have to deal with. So we really try to raise a lot of money for that bond fund for our immigration attorneys. Yes. And there are some also local organizations. There's Las Americas and El Paso, and they provide legal services to migrants. A lot of these local organizations really need the support. So if you're somebody who can donate like $100 or $150, anything at all, then it's good to support these local agencies because they are on the ground and they know what needs immediate attention. And then in Mexico, there's one called Altrolado, which provides legal services in Tijuana. And they're both small organizations doing incredible work. So this is another place you can give. One of the things that's so incredible about Julie Sharon's story

is that she's an everyday person. And everyday people can be heroes. That includes giving your time. It includes giving your money. It includes spending a little bit of time calling your elected official and demanding that they close the camps. And I just think that there's a whole bunch of things that can be happening. And despite the pain and the cruelty, the chaos and the trauma that the Trump administration is creating, there's all these bright spots that are happening. I mean, look at you. You're having us to have a conversation about immigration. And so I just think that there's little things that you can be doing by donating $5. There's medium things that you can be doing by going to protectimmigrantandfamilies.org. And then there's bigger

things that you can doing, which is to like bail out women, moms, kids out of detention centers. Is there a way to sponsor an adult? Yes, I think there are a couple of different ways. And I would defer maybe if you're an attorney to go into more detail. But we do have folks, for example, through our LA Rates Rapid Response Network, that volunteer to sponsor individuals once they're released from detention. So that means like giving them a place to stay. How does one do that? So I think it's a pretty complicated process, I believe, and they're, well, not complicated, but there does need to be paperwork done and you do need to work with the attorney, for example, that is representing the asylum seeker in order to make everything a smooth transition. But I recommend if folks are interested in becoming sponsors, definitely reaching out to organizations like CHIRLA, other legal organizations that provide support to immigrants in detention. Those attorneys will be able to guide you into the process to become a sponsor.

They will give you every single step, and that is a really big need because after someone is released from detention, it doesn't just end there. They need a place to stay. They need support with food, with transportation, and so becoming a sponsor is a great way to support individuals. And I know people personally who have done it, and it's just such a beautiful thing to see. And does NILC help with that too? Is that something? So the National Immigration Law Center, one of the things that we do is we do lots of Know Your Rights trainings, and we make sure that everyone has an understanding of what their rights are.

So there are, in the words of Mr. Rogers, look for the helpers. There are so many opportunities to help. And so perhaps what might be helpful is if we put together a list for you that you might be able to share. We're going to link to all the organizations that we've discussed on the show in the podcast or on the podcast and on all platforms. So don't worry. I know most of you are driving. Well, I would like to go back and kind of hear.

So once either someone has been detained at the border or arrested and sent to a detention center, they're placed in the facility for X amount of time. This is what I think a lot of people have a hard time understanding is they're there. How long are they there for? What is the process to, so they're applying for asylum once they're in the center and then they have to receive bond or pay bond to be released. Correct. Am I on the right path? So, and I'll preface this by, I'm not, I'm not an immigration attorney. So you can help me out then. But in terms of just very generally, and we have a lot of immigration attorneys that we work with and folks that have actually gone down to Tijuana and have sort of like observed

the situation. But I think what's important to understand is that CBP, which is the Customs and Border Patrol, they're actually holding people for longer than they should. And I think that's supposed to be in a cell for like 20 or something like 42 hours, 70 hours, whatever it is, they're holding them way beyond that. That's supposed to be the maximum amount of time they're supposed to be held like that. And I think that's the takeaway. That's the takeaway that folks need to understand is that this agency is not operating the way that it should be. And what is really painful to hear is that this agency, specifically Border Patrol, constantly says, we need more money. We need more money to have better conditions. We need more money so we can release people on time. The fact

is the Department of Homeland Security gets so much money, billions of dollars every year. Their budget has been increasing. And most recently, they received $4.6 billion. Congress approved that. and without any accountability mechanisms or oversight mechanisms. And so they're getting so much money, but the money is not going into better conditions. And I think that's very important for people to realize. They're not using that to make sure that people are let out on time. Instead, what they're using that for is more space and really just enforcement as well. And profit.

Because the money goes to that. Exactly. And profit. And private companies operate the detention centers within the interior of the United States. Adelanto is operated by the GEO Group, which is a private company, which makes it even harder to get information and even harder to have transparency. And that's just something, that's literally where the money is going. And we really want people to understand that. And we actually, like Arkana was saying, we do have the opportunity to change that. In California, half of California House Democrats voted to give $4.6 billion to the Department of Homeland Security.

Half of California Democrats. And so this is an issue on both sides of the aisle. And us as constituents really have to urge our members of Congress and the Democrats not to support any additional funding, especially when there's no accountability attached to it. And that was something very, very difficult to see is that this money, $4.6 billion, essentially can be transferred within the Department of Homeland Security to enforcement operations. So recently we heard about the threats of ICE coming into these cities like Los Angeles and arresting hundreds of people.

That is only possible with the money that they're getting. If we really defund the Department of Homeland Security, these kinds of massive operations and threats are no longer possible. And that's something all of us can do to change. OK, so what I mean, but how how do we defund the DHS? Right. So we know that I believe it's 24, 24 House Democrats that voted to give more money. What we're doing through our rapid response network is we're going to be meeting with congressional members throughout the month of August because the budget fight happens in August. And we're going to have people meet with them first to thank the folks that did not vote for the four point six billion.

But then at the same time, to keep the people who did accountable and to really explain the education needs to be done, that this is where the money is going. The money is going not to the border, not to make sure conditions are better, but instead to make enforcement larger and to have more detention centers. And so all of us can call our members of Congress. There's a list of the people that did vote for that $4.6 billion. And so I urge everybody that's listening to really afterwards look up to see if your Congress member did actually vote for the 4.6 supplemental request and give them a call and tell them that's unacceptable. And explain why. It's because that money is not going to better conditions. That money is literally going to these threats, to these ICE raids.

And so that's something everybody can do. One of the things I think is really important is for all of us to really educate ourselves. And for so long, Americans have seen immigration as a domestic policy issue. And I think Donald Trump wants us to see the manufactured crisis on the border as a domestic policy issue. But I think it's really important for us to better understand that it's a foreign policy issue, as you shared. And we have to understand why people migrate, which is predominantly because of climate change, economic inequality and violence, especially in Central America. And so I think that we're not going to address root causes of why people migrate through detention camps. We're not going to address the root causes through a wall, and we're not going to address root causes through raids, which is purely performative.

And at the end of the day, I think we need a broad menu of policies that improve the lives of immigrants and deep investment into Central America, like the Marshall Plan. After World War II, the United States did a huge investment back into Western Europe and specifically Germany. And so there are incredible policy opportunities to get involved. There's ways to activate your own community by bailing out folks, by donating your miles, to being a helper and serving as, yeah, just serving as like a really excellent person that doesn't perpetuate bad information as well and racist information as well. So I guess the first thing is don't be a racist. Try not to be a racist. Let's everybody start there. Well, I think that's what's really hard for someone.

I've had to totally tune out the news because there's so much information that you don't know. I'm on the treadmill at the gym and there's Fox News, MSNBC, CNN and you're watching. They're all saying conflicting things. The music they put to the news now, it sounds like a shooting spree. It's so it's like Fox News, MSNBC. It's all

too much. It's just too much stimuli. And it's unpleasant. It's just harsh and it's dark. And there's great things happening in the world. There's everything from Julie Sharon bailing out immigrants and there's also wonderful things that are happening at the state and local level. Our Governor Newsom is doing

incredible work to improve the lives of of immigrants right now but yeah and i just i want to be i want to be a person that's part of the solution you know what i mean i want to be doing something and i want to be do more and i had a group of friends over last week to discuss you know like actionable things we can do boycotts what do we do do we boycott amazon do we does everybody commit not to buy gas for a day until these babies are out of cages and reunited with their families what do we do what will have an impact and you know what we kept kept coming back to is first of all how can any mother be okay with this happening in your country that's right like we're supposed to be looking out for other people's kids not just our own and then the second

part is religion how can they co-opt religion and and do this in the name of religion and pretend that this is a christian way this is not christianity this isn't any religion and what we were thinking what has been a lot of people have said uh had this idea is to you know really magnify that with images, with having all different sorts of religious leaders go down to the border, have a big event, have a huge concert and have them standing there with toothbrushes and blankets and all the things that babies need, not being allowed to go in and being denied to help these little innocent children who have nothing, have done nothing wrong. And I think that's powerful.

So, I mean, there's so many organizations on the ground. If you're one and you're listening, please get in touch with me. Everybody knows how to get in touch with me because we want to align with other groups that are doing stuff and we want to create a big movement or whether it's a social media movement. I know a lot of people are already working on this. So it would be great to join forces with somebody who's got a great idea and just needs more amplification because so many people just can't move about their day in a normal way because of this. OK, well, this sounds like a good time to take a break. get bell pure fiber internet with crave netflix and disney plus from 94 a month price guaranteed for two years on internet with a two-year term and auto pay credit visit bell.ca for details

and to check availability bell connection is everything when i was 14 years old i was kidnapped and held captive for nine months i survived and i've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them i'm elizabeth smart and these are the survivor files i just remember this low taunting voice next to my ear saying shut up don't say anything every week i'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable i knew if he woke up without a doubt he was going to hurt me i started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed and i just started screaming. They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced. But these aren't stories about what's taken from them. They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive.

Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home. This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse. I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having. I'm going to have to look up this story. I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed. from best-selling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments

nothing is off the table it's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters and that is the trojan horse whether you're looking for literary deep dives smart pop culture conversations or a community of readers who love to think a little too much you're in the right place listen to pro society on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. See you between the pages. Well, so we've covered a lot of ways that people can help and like Chelsea said, we'll link to all those, but is there an outlet or a resource that people can use to get the most accurate information? Because like I said, there's so much that on the television that you're watching or so many tweets that you see, like what is a very digestible

either website or outlet that people can look to for accurate information of what's going on at the border camps. Right. So actually NILC, the National Immigration Law Center, is amazing. It has an amazing website with a bunch of resources explaining the different policy changes and the legal background of all these policies. And it's just very helpful, I think, for folks to go on that website and then learn a little bit more about the background and what this means. What is the result of, for example, like Trump restricting asylum? Like recently last week, he mentioned that he's going to make it even harder for folks to apply for asylum. How is that going to affect people? What's the legal background for that? I think NILC is a really

good source of that. Also, the ILRC, which is the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, is a very great resource. I use it all the time when I'm trying to really understand policies and changes in the law. And so I recommend those two specific places. Absolutely agree. And NILC's Twitter handle is at NILC, which stands for the National Immigration Law Center. We have a huge team that is making sure that everyone that wants to be updated and informed can be updated and informed. Great. Thank you. Brandon, do you have anything else? Thank you. I think like one of the common questions for people who are not politically savvy is how do we address what people on both sides of the aisle say that we need border control,

anyone should be able to get in. How do we do that appropriately? Like what is the response to that? There are other countries that have systems where when someone does migrate there, it's not a matter of them being detained, but rather they are integrated into a case management system where they're given the resources and the information to properly live in that country, meaning that they're getting information on where to get food, where to go to school. all of that is being facilitated by caseworkers. And I think that that's something that we should really, as a country, dedicate our money to. Because what we're doing currently is really dehumanizing people that are coming here, making them feel that they're not wanted, that they shouldn't have come here. And I think the answer to that could be to have a very robust case management system where we are really trying to provide as much social services and information to people that are coming here so they can live their lives, they can get a foot in

the door. And I think that is absolutely possible. I think, of course, looking at the way things are now, it seems very unlikely that that's going to happen sometime in the future. But I think us as a country, we really need to start looking at putting our money into systems that really integrate people. And I think that there are many ways to do it. I'm sure there are policymakers that have been fiddling with those ideas for a long time. And so I'd be interested to see the next presidential candidate, the next person that takes office, really try to employ those kinds of strategies of integration into the border. I'd be interested to see that. And just in terms of the election, I really think that because we're in the fight for the soul of our country, Americans

are really hungry for an inclusive vision of our country. And that's rooted in our cherished values of belonging and thriving and the opportunity to get ahead. And so I'm really excited about Yes, but people believe that that only belongs to the people that are already in this country. And some people believe that is only a white person's privilege. That's right, which is what we have to organize. We have to get the word out and we have to call our members of Congress because they work for us. And we have to boot Donald Trump out of office in November 2020. Well, to your point about the election, are there specific candidates that you've seen who have policy in place or could have policy in place for the immigration issue?

Who are those candidates that people should be looking to? Personally, I think. Yes. Start there. That's a given. I think personally it's been very great. It's been really great to see Julian Castro really highlight immigration as a priority in his policy platform. And I really recommend people to go to his website and to really look and read the policy platform that he has for immigration because it is all about reducing our dependence on detaining folks.

It's really about that integration process and trying to provide resources to immigrants instead of treating them like criminals and trying to make the system so difficult for folks to get a foot in the door. So I think it's been really great to see him really highlight that during the debates and within his policy platform. So I'm interested to see where that goes moving forward. I agree. And I also think that all the 2020 candidates can go further to advance a bold vision. At the end of the day, I think that Americans really want to be done with this, the Trump's vision of distraction and hate. And so we're just looking for someone with an alternative. Change is super possible. When we get loud and we get organized, things change.

When we organize, we win. And so I just feel really strongly that when we come together. So about last summer, an organization called Hand in Hand organized these playdate protests where a whole bunch of parents and their kids went to ICE offices around the country. There's one in downtown LA, and I took my daughter to. And then we did another protest on Valentine's Day. Poor kid. She's always like, happy Valentine's Day.

Are we going to a protest? I'm like, yes, kiddo. Yes, we are. It's better than celebrating Valentine's Day. I think so. I think so. But what's fascinating is that moms, parents, aunts, they came together and it was getting really, really, we were getting loud. And then you see the effects of us getting loud. And then Donald Trump will shift his behavior. So I just think that when we get together and we

organize and we show up, we show up at these ICE centers, we show up at our Congress members offices, when we show up together at the protests, people are listening and people really care. And And when I mean people, I mean the elected officials that we pay. Because right now the numbers at around 50,000, is that accurate? For the folks that are detained? It actually fluctuates even above 50,000. The last average daily population that I've heard of was actually 54,000. And the thing is, I think, again, this is another very specific thing we need to highlight,

is that DHS is not supposed to be detaining that many people. They only have money to detain around 44,000 people. That was the money that Congress allocated to them for the last fiscal year. And so it just shows that this agency is not even obeying the rules set forth by Congress. It's not detaining the number of people that it should be detaining. It's actually detaining more. And so that's very worrisome. But that goes to their argument for needing more funds, which you said we don't want to give them.

Right, right. But the problem is that they're asking for more funds. They're getting more detention space. And the conditions are just horrible. And honestly, getting worse and worse and worse. We're seeing more reports, more pictures, more news about just how horrible life is inside those detention centers. So when they use that argument, to me, it's just a matter of trying to place the blame on something else. They're not using this money to make the conditions better or to fix the solution, to really get to the core root of the problem and fix the solution, to make integration possible.

Instead, they're just using this as a way to get more and more money. One of the things that's been terrible is that when everyone is paying attention to Donald Trump's Twitter, his minions are quietly taking a wrecking ball to the legal, entirely lawful immigration system, and it's going almost entirely unnoticed. And so the Trump administration is actually in its final stages of changing our immigration rules in a way that will affect millions of lawfully residents and their families by imposing a wealth test to make the road to citizenship impossible for anyone that struggles to make ends meet. So the story about so many of our families, not all, but so many of our families that have come over with $5 in their pocket, that's going to absolutely change. If you only have $5 in your pocket, if you're the next entrepreneur, you're going to be blocked from coming to this country because of this racial wealth test. And so this regulation change, it's going to impact 26 million people. And we actually think that this regulation change, which is called public charge, but

it really is the linchpin in Trump's very xenophobic agenda. And he's using this backdoor regulatory approach because he couldn't get it done in Congress. And so that's the one thing I wanted to just like pay attention. And what can we do about that? I am so excited because there's this incredible website that allows you to take action called protectimmigrantfamilies.org. Okay, well, that's a good one. And what do they do? Obviously, protect immigrant families.

Exactly. That's the best part when a website is actually indicative of what we're trying to do. So there's opportunities to like when the rule is going to come out, there's going to be an opportunity to really push and let members of Congress know. And are you allowed to, I mean, is that something where you can actually go in and help one family know that you've done it instead of giving to an organization that's distributing it at their own accord? Or is that, what kind of organization is it? So Protect Immigrant Families is a campaign to rescind that rule that's going to impact 26 million people. But the other organizations that we talked about, including Immigrant Families Together, are places that you can go to sponsor a person, to help an individual. and then if you want create a kind of a bond and a relationship with them or you can just be like

here's some money yeah i would like that i would like i mean i'd have some someone stay in my house for sure you're amazing no but i would i have a big house i don't know she's done it and i've never and i'm never there so it's perfect i mean there's always someone there let's get you set up yeah no i want to i saw kirsten bell did you see her she um she bailed out an asylum seeker for her birthday last year and she was just recently released and so let's get you set up yeah i want to do that for sure okay we're gonna make it happen when's your birthday my birthday we don't have to do it for my birthday we could just do it but sure my birthday is february 25th everyone should know that anyway right brandon right mine's coming up so number 13 so maybe we'll get you a

a new roommate oh yeah dual birthday gifts or well for you and for me okay we're gonna do what we can on our end and i will keep everybody posted if there is some something that you can be part of that i start and uh thank you ladies thank you for coming in today i really appreciate it thank you life will be the death of me as a production of iheart radio for more podcasts from iheart radio visit the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows i survived nine months in captivity and i've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them i'm elizabeth smart and these are the survivor files every week i'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable abducted stalked controlled and

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