Radiolab - Border Trilogy Part 1: Hole in the Fence

Episode Date: October 13, 2023

While scouring the Sonoran Desert for objects left behind by migrants crossing into the United States, anthropologist Jason De León happened upon something he didn't expect to get left behind: a human arm, stripped of flesh. This macabre discovery sent him reeling, needing to know what exactly happened to the body, and how many migrants die that way in the wilderness. In researching border-crosser deaths in the Arizona desert, he noticed something surprising. Sometime in the late-1990s, the number of migrant deaths shot up dramatically and have stayed high since. Jason traced this increase to a Border Patrol policy still in effect, called “Prevention Through Deterrence.” In a series first aired back in 2018, over three episodes, Radiolab investigates this policy, its surprising origins, and the people whose lives were changed forever because of it.We begin one afternoon in May 1992, when a student named Albert stumbled in late for history class at Bowie High School in El Paso, Texas. His excuse: Border Patrol. Soon more stories of students getting stopped and harassed by Border Patrol started pouring in. So begins the unlikely story of how a handful of Mexican-American high schoolers in one of the poorest neighborhoods in the country stood up to what is today the country’s largest federal law enforcement agency. They had no way of knowing at the time, but what would follow was a chain of events that would drastically change the US-Mexico border. Special thanks to Centro de Salud Familiar La Fe, Estela Reyes López, Barbara Hines, Lynn M. Morgan, Mallory Falk, Francesca Begos and Nancy Wiese from Hachette Book Group, Professor Michael Olivas at the University of Houston Law Center, and Josiah McC. Heyman at the Center for Interamerican and Border Studies. EPISODE CREDITS:  Reported by - Latif Nasser, Tracie HunteProduced by - Matt Kieltywith help from - Bethel Habte, Tracie Hunte, Latf NasserCITATIONSBooksJason De Léon’s book The Land of Open Graves here (https://zpr.io/vZbTarDzGQWK)  Timothy Dunn’s book Blockading the Border and Human Rights here (https://zpr.io/VTPWNJPusaCn)  Our newsletter comes out every Wednesday. It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)!   Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today.   Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing [e-mail]. Leadership support for Radiolab’s science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Hey, I'm Louis Miller. And I'm Lotha Fnaasser. This is Radio Lab. And last week, White House is waving more than two dozen federal law. You might have seen in the news that the Biden administration is going to resume construction of a wall along the southern border. This despite promising not to build another foot of the wall if elected. Also, Democratic mayors have been basically complaining about the waves of migrants coming to their cities and states.

We'll destroy New York City. Mayor Eric Adams escalating his frustration during a town war. Which all kind of feels a little upside down. And that reminded me of a series of stories we did a few years ago that helped me to realize just how complicated the debate around the border is and how that sort of feeling of upside downness, it's that's kind of more a continuity than a change.

Anyway, all of that news just made me think we need to play this. Yeah, and as someone who was not here when this piece was made, who had nothing to do with making it, I am allowed to say, I truly think it is one of the best things we've ever made. It's called the Border Trilogy. Which obviously means that it's three parts. We're going to play them over three weeks.

We're also going to update it to talk to this current moment. And then later this fall, after that, we are gonna hit you with a bunch of brand new episodes. We've got one about a secret inside the human body, one about a secret inside the sky, one where a lot of talks to a guy whose biology completely rearranges his world. So really good stuff coming, but in the meantime. The first episode in this series is called The Whole in the Fence and it begins with me telling our original host, Chad and Robert, about a guy named Jason Delayone. Oh, and one more thing, this episode does contain graphic descriptions that may not be suitable for our younger

or more sensitive listeners. Yeah, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait Why? I think the best place to begin it sounds like is in 2008 I think that sounds about right. So this is Jason De Leon. I'm an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Michigan I direct the undocumented migration project, but back in 2008 Jason had actually just finished grad school and my doctoral dissertation was on ancient stone tools. Elific industries of San Lorenzo and Noche Titlan, an economic and technological study, about as far removed as you can be from the stuff that I'm doing right now. Using obsidian technological data from 11 domestic and non-domestic contexts. Just to explain, Jason was on his way to being an archaeologist, so he would go out into

the field, do these digs, and do parts of Mexico, and find these little fragments of old stone tools, dating back to about a thousand BC. An industry that has often been ignored in Mesoamerican lithic analyses. And then he would write these papers, and evaluate these models by comparing differences in the frequencies of various tool types. You know, it means journals that just at really just a handful of people would read. But like many academics, and I can say this because I was in academic, this study also finds that the introduction and adoption of prismatic blade technology,

he had this moment where he just kind of hit the wall. It's like, okay, this is enough. I'm not doing this. I won nothing to do with this anymore. You know, when I finished my dissertation, I had really become kind of disillusioned with the work that I was doing

and I had no idea what I was gonna do. I remember telling my wife at one point, I feel really bad. I feel like I've wasted the last 10 years in my life doing archeology. And to make matters worse. I had taken this job at University of Washington. He just got in this job where he was supposed to teach

the very thing he was now sick of. Yeah, just like, just a full-blown crisis. But then, fate stepped in. Well, Jason was preparing for one of his freshman classes. Someone handed him a book. By a writer named Luis Alberto Rea, called the Devil's Highway. Five men stumbled out of the mountain pass.

So sunstruck, they didn't know their own names. Couldn't remember where they'd come from. Had forgotten how long they'd been lost. One of them wandered back up a beak. One of them was barefoot. They were burned nearly black. Their lips huge and cracking. So the devil's highway is actually, well, it's a true story. It's the story of 26 men who came to the US hiking their way through the Arizona desert.

Fourteen of them died along the way. And so I started reading it and visions of home flooded through their minds, soft green bushes, waterfalls, chill green. It just shocked me. I mean, I knew a lot about the border, at least I thought I did. I'd grown up, you know, in South Texas,

my parents were immigrants, but just I couldn't believe that this was, this is somebody's world. They were drunk from having their brains baked in the pan. They were seeing God and devils. Days and days of walking, running out of food. And they were dizzy from drinking their own urine, dying of thirst. The poisons clogging their systems.

And at a certain point, Jason comes across this passage where the author is describing the things that were in these men's pockets belt buckle with a fighting cock in late one wallet in the right front pocket of his genos some change some keys a silver belt buckle Fakes silver watch one comb You know these personal effects green handkerchief and he's trying to reconstruct the story about who these men were that died from Exposure John doe number 42 fewer, colored piece of paper and pocket. Jason says when he read that book, a light bulb went on. As I bought a plane ticket a month later, I was in the Arizona desert.

Jason gets out to Tucson, Arizona and he manages to convince someone from a local NGO to basically like show him around and be his guide. When I said I want to look at the stuff that migrants are leaving in the desert, I was like alright you want to see this stuff, I'm going to take you real deep into the desert and see what you're made of. This guy just ran me through the ringer. That part of the Sonoran Desert, it's hilly, covered in sagebrush, cacti everywhere, red sand, and Jason says that at a certain point a few hours into the hike, they walked up this incline and got to this ridge where they could kind of look out over this huge expanse.

Just imagine like a ravine or a wash. And Jason says he suddenly noticed that the desert ground below them was just covered in stuff. Over a thousand backpacks and water bottles. I mean, just, what? That much? Well, what ends up happening is,

stuff gets left behind for a couple of different reasons. If you're in route, you might throw something down because you get so tired in your bag, just get so heavy. And those things are kind of sprinkled across these migrant trails. But once you get to the end, past the checkpoint,

your smuggler says, okay, we're safe now, we've got to a new road where you can get picked up, someone else will show up in a truck. And then they will say, all right, the 30 of you get into this van, leave everything behind, change your clothes, so it doesn't look like you've just walked for two weeks through this desert.

And so when groups were moving really big, you would see things the size of like football fields, of just stuff everywhere, gatorade bottles, bibles, photographs, toys, the kind of random things that you might throw on your bag and say, I'm leaving my home forever. And these are the things I want to take with me. You know, you see things like a diaper bag or a baby bottle, and you wonder, my God, who just came through this, and what's happened to them? So, for the next several years,

Jason just keeps going back to this stretch of this Norton desert. Ripped clothes, fragments of clothes and bushes. Gathering whatever he could find. Dirty socks. And like an archeologist, fragments of clothes and bushes. Gathering whatever he could find. Dirty socks. And, you know, like an archaeologist, he would collect this stuff. Bandages.

Itemize it. Categorize it. Cocktail dresses, high heel shoes. Trying to figure out who it came from. Why it was there. Baby bottles, hair curlers, toys, wrappers. He did this year. Sneakers, photographs.

After a year, socks. Picking up this. Shoes, dresses. Picking up that. Backpacks, bibles, bottles. And then one day, a human arm, he finds an arm.

Way between some rocks, like an entire arm up to the shoulder. Just sort of sticking out between two rocks. I mean, there was no flesh other than the things that were holding the joint together. Oh, wow. Yeah. Jason and his guide, the folks he was there with,

they began to search the surrounding areas for other parts of the body. I mean, really, the goal is to try to find the skull. Because in terms of, you know, identification, I mean, your best luck is gonna be if you can get the pieces of the skull. Because if you can find pieces of the skull, maybe you can ID the body. And if you can find pieces of the skull,

maybe you can ID the body. And if you can ID the body, maybe you can tell the family, here's what happened to your loved one. And so we were out there basically digging around for other parts of this person. We come across a human tooth. Some little tiny bits of rib bones. But we never find the skull.

And I realized that nobody's ever gonna identify this person. There's just not enough left of them and this is not likely to be a case that will be solved. Now Jason says he knew, of course, that people were dying in the desert, but to see this. The fragments of a person. It would basically be an erased. You know, it's very...

It would basically be an erased. You know, it's very... I mean, it's kind of, it just, it sort of just kills you. Eventually, he began to have these nightmares. Snakes coming out of the eyes. About the missing skull. Birds sweeping down and pecking out the eyes. Coyotes playing soccer with this person's skull. And for weeks, he couldn't shake the simple question. You know, what, what did this to this person's skull. And for weeks he couldn't shake the simple question.

You know what, what did this to this person? And how many other bodies like this might be out here? How did it get to be like this? And those questions... would end up sending Jason down a sort of rabbit hole, digging in a library to forensic papers, decomposing flesh, missing persons reports, hikers who had gone missing,

historical trends, sociology papers, demography papers, government documents, illustrations, and the figures that are buried in these appendices. And over the next several years, Jason would end up putting together this truly startling

portrait of lost stories, hidden statistics, little-known policy decisions along our southern border that completely upended how I think about this issue. The immigration issue poses real problems and challenges that we're constantly fighting about. We will build a great wall along the southern border. But still never quite. Sing it. This is part one of a three-part series on our southern border.

We'll be doing it today, a man next week and the week after. Part one, a hole in the fence. next week and the week after. Part one, a hole in the fence. All right, so I thought I'd start us off with Jason's question. How did it get to be like this? How did it get to be that so many people cross into America through the desert?

Like that's the classic image you have is someone walking through the desert. Why, out of all the places along the border that you could cross, why is it that so many people are crossing in the hottest and most unforgiving place imaginable? And one of the things that Jason ended up telling us about that we found most striking was simply the numbers, the yearly numbers of migrant deaths in the desert. And I mean, it is shocking. If you look at the data, there's a very stark moment when things shift.

It turns out that if you're looking at the number of people dying in the Sonoran desert, the numbers are a bit tough to pin down, but in the early 90s, it's single digits, five bodies one, you're six bodies, another you're seven bodies, another. And then all of a sudden, overnight in the late 90s, you go from five to 10 bodies to hundreds. I mean, it used to be that if you wanted to cross

the US-Mexico border, you'd go down to Sanis to Tijuana at dusk, a place called the Sockerfield, you would hop the fence with about 100 other people, and you would just bum rush the border patrol and Halfie would get by would make it into the US and the other have a get caught sent back and people would do it again the next day That was a system for a long time. I mean the so what changed well in the mid 90s There was a lot of pushback up against the visibility of fence hopping and it it all kind of starts with this little known story.

There's a great book by this guy Timothy Dunn called Blockhead in the Border and it's about these Latino high school students in Texas right on the US Mexico border. We ended up calling the author he mentioned Timothy Dunn and then getting so interested in a story that Dunn laid out for us that we're going to Jason behind for a while and we're gonna go on a little trip. Yes. That by the way is co-reporter Tracy Hunt? Yes. Alright, well so where are we gonna go?

We're gonna go to El Paso. El Paso, Texas. Oh wow. So. Yeah, so Tracy and I went to El Paso a while back. I don't know how to do everything. How many of you have been told you different if you've just born somewhere else? Of course you thought that. So yeah, so Tracy and I went to El Paso a while back Born somewhere else of course you thought that if I was born somewhere else. Yeah, of course. I mean I think about that I feel like

I guess I got distracted at that point we didn't finish the conversation but anyway Two flags lying the American flag and the Texan flag. We went down to Alpasso to visit a high school. Called Bui High School. Home with the Bui Bears. Go to your love, guys, the bell rang. Go go circle. Well, thank you guys so much to me. You know, in many respects, it's just, you know, your typical American high school.

Good, why you been here? Yeah, maybe half a day. You got your taco Tuesdays. It's a big, big, big, big, big typical American high school. You've got your Taco Tuesdays. It's 9th to 12th grade. About 1200 students. Because it's Texas, you know, football is a big deal. And on their campus, they have this huge football stadium with those big, you know, Friday night lights.

They've got a marching band, the Pride of the South Side. It's, yeah, your typical Texas high school. Yeah, but there is something a little different about it, and that is that almost all the students here, Jennifer's here, Eduardo's here, Jose, our Mexican American. Jocela Oscar. And, you know, we actually talk to one former teacher.

This is one cyber-coronato. I was a teacher at Bowie High School in the 1980s and 1990s. And when did you teach? I taught history. And he said that in all his years teaching at Bowie High School in the 1980s and 1990s. And when did you teach? I taught history. And he said that in all his years teaching at Bowie. I taught there for 21 years and never had a single, anglist student. Really?

Really? Yeah. Never taught a single white student. But the reason we went to Bowie High School is because something happened there in the early 90s, something that it sort of in a kind of roundabout and totally unforeseeable way completely changed the way we think about the US-Mexico border. So we're we're going to start the story is actually in one of one

cyber cornados classes. The class was immediately after lunch and on this particular day that we're going to have a debate in class and one of the debaters, one of the kids who was gonna be part of the debate, was late. Yes. His name was Albert. Albert often came late to class,

and so we'd been waiting and waiting and waiting for him. 10 minutes went by 15, 20. And eventually he showed up being dragged in by this cap security guy. This is school security guard. And I thought you know, the security guard brought him in because he was, you know, out doing some miscreant stuff like Smokin' Pot again.

And so I kind of lay into Albert for being late again and for, you know, not holding up his responsibilities to his class. But Albert's like, no, no, no, no, no, no. Albert says that he had been at the handball court playing with his friends. And then when it was time to go from the court back to class, these two Border Patrol agents

just came out of nowhere in their green uniforms, demanding to see his papers. Like, who are you, where are you from? Let me see your ID. Yeah. And he, Albert, tries to give them his school ID, but they wouldn't take it. And they actually told him

that he needed a federal ID of some sort for them to believe it all that he was a United States citizen or belong on the campus. And one's just standing there like, mm-hmm, uh-huh, border patrol, really. You know, I was harranging the kid obviously. But then three or four other students in class just kind of stepped in and said no what Albert's telling you is true Not only is Albert telling the truth but in the last couple of weeks Border Patrol had been on the handball courts and on the playing fields repeatedly stopping students harassing students and I was quite frankly shocked

One says of course he knew that the Border Patrol was around because of where the school is situated, which we'll talk about in a second, but he just never understood how present they were in his students' lives. I was having a hard time processing this. So over the next few weeks, Juan started asking around different students, being like, hey, have you had anything happen with Border Patrol at school? And I got literally hundreds of stories. I was walking home from school and, you know, I had my backpack on.

This is Nidia Rodriguez, who was a freshman at the time. With all of a sudden, I saw this truck, the Border Patrol truck, and it was feeding my way. A couple of agents got out of the truck and started questioning her. Where am I from or where am I going? Basically we were all rounded up. Our nested minions remember is walking to school with a bunch of kids. We were searched in our backpacks. And again you know a couple of agents got out started asking him questions. Now where we were born our date of birth, what classes we were taking. We stopped and they get out of the truck. Marcella

Dillion who was walking with a friend near school. And they go, what do you have in the bag? And I go books. You know, what else would I have in my bag? They're like, well, let us see. I was walking, the yelled at me, hey, get over here. Record of Yama. They sped up to me and they stopped in front of me.

They asked me, you know, what's in the bag? It was like books. One of them ripped the bag out for my hands as I was trying to pull it away from them. The other one grabbed me and pushed me up against the truck. Forcibly took the bag away, rifled through it, pushed me off of the, or they pulled me away from the truck, threw my bag at me and told me to get out of here.

As these stories came out, it became clear that even the staff had had its run-ins with the Border Patrol. We talked to the assistant football coach Ben Moreo. He told us there was this moment he was driving with two of his football players. They got pulled over by the Border Patrol and one of them actually pointed a gun at his head. Never had a gun pulled on me.

So I thought, okay, my life is over. And I identified myself. My name is Coach Ben Murillo. Coach at Bowie High School. I have two of my football players. I would really appreciate if you'd holster your gun. And the guy barked at me. I appreciate if you shut your mouth and get out of the car. Eventually the agent did holster the gun. Ben did get out of the car. Everything was fine. What was that like having that right near? One of the scariest things in my life Wow, why was the border patrol on the grounds of the school did they have some I was there some reason to be there. Well, that's I mean, that's a really good question and I will answer it after the break. Oh

and I will answer it after the break. Oh. All right, three, two, one. I'm Chad. I'm Robert. I'm Lotha. I'm Tracy. This is Radio Lab. And today we are bringing you the first of three stories

that we will air over the next few weeks on border crossings at the US Mexico border. When we last were with you just before the break, we were talking to a bunch of former high school students that attended Bowie High School. And really, these are students who You just before the break, we were talking to a bunch of former high school students that attended Bowie High School. And really these are students who know they're on the Mexican border because they have been interrogated by police.

Some of the teachers were harassed. They're stopping them to, board of parole, stop them to search their bags, demand papers, even in one incident, pulling a gun on the football coach. And I think to understand what was going on at Bui High School, you have to understand something else. The legend of El Paso. You have to understand El Paso. There's a spirit, a flavor.

So come on, Amigo. See it for yourself. From 30,000 feet above the desert floor, I see it there below right on the border of Texas, Mexico, and New Mexico. It's right there. It's right there. It's also the biggest city. That shares a border with Mexico too. And the other thing to know about it is that it's like it kind of has a mirror city on the other side of the border, which is war-esque.

War-esque. See you, Dad, what is? The largest city on the US, Mexico border. So the two cities are separated by this little sliver of the Rio Grande, but they were essentially the same city up until 1848 when the US invaded Mexico and annexed half the country. And even now, according to Juan, this mythical division between these two cities, it just doesn't exist for most of us.

I mean, I go to the dentist over there, I buy cigarettes over there, okay, I smoke, yes. Okay, okay. Well, almost everybody in El Paso knows people who live in the sea of that waters. People in the sea of that waters know people who have family members who live in El Paso. I mean, this is literally one community.

But the thing is, when everything was going down at Buie in the early 90s, it was a community in crisis. So, come on, Megalind. The night shoot, you should. The peso crisis has spilled across the Rio Grande. In the 80s, the Mexican peso crashed. A dramatically devalued peso is causing havoc

at prices and wages. And so people in Juarez started flocking to El Paso because, well, that's where the jobs were, like jobs in construction. Or childcare, gardening. Though you had tons of people getting these permits to come into El Paso legally, but then you had all these other people.

Workers who can't get permits required by US law, couldn't get permits, but they still needed to work. Simply respond to the laws of supply and demand. And so they started coming too. Making illegal dashes across the border to the United States at unprecedented numbers. I mean, it was as high as like 10,000 people a day. A day.

Coming back and forth illegally, basically, for their commute to work. It was chaos. It was a mess here. We spoke to this foreign board patrol agent, guy named David Ham. Antosmuggling Special Agent. He told us that when he was on that job, before dawn, you could go down to certain parts of the Rio Grande.

You'd have 100 and 200 people lined up. Waiting on the river's edge. Sun come up and here they come. It's morning in America and the rush hour has begun. The rush to cross the Rio Grande into El Paso. And there are videos where you can see this. You see people waiting into the shallow parts of the river to cross over to El Paso.

If they don't want to get wet, they can pay a young entrepreneur a small fee and raft across. And so for people like David, these Border Patrol agents, OK, here comes about 100. It becomes this cat and mouse game where, probably the way we had always done business, they come in, you chase them, catch them and send them back. Day and night and day and night, it was, it was,

a never ending job. And it was something, you know, you'd catch was, it was, it was, it was chaos. Obviously, we're not accomplishing 100% of our mission. And this is actually kind of hilarious. So like, around this time in 1992, there was this television interview. And Dale Musigade's, he's the sector chief of the Border Patrol in El Paso. He's wearing his green hat with his green uniform, with the gold shield on his chest. If we were not here, and there did not keep a lid on this situation, and in the shot behind

him, there would be just an absolute free info from other countries. You can see people climbing up the banks of the Rio Grande and just walking into El Paso. That's like having wire and herb standing in front of three bank robbers robbing the bank. Yeah, exactly. And like so, okay, how many entries? All right, so it was reported at the time that for every one migrant, the Border Patrol caught, they were at least three to five who snuck in and didn't get caught. And the Border Patrol said that this was because they just didn't have the resources.

They didn't have the money or the agents to apprehend all these people that are coming in. Which finally brings us back. Tobooe High School. Okay, all right. Okay, yeah, let's try it. which finally brings us back. So we've been in the half-deck of big. To Booy High School. Okay, all right. Okay, yeah, let's try it. Because there's two important things about Booy.

Okay, I'm counting my steps actually here. Okay, from the sidewalk. One, one, two. Booy is right, right, four, five, six, right on the border. 49. But basically it's 50. That was 50 steps. 50 steps from the Booy campus into Mexico. 49. But basically it's 50. That was 50 steps. 50 steps from the

Buoy campus into Mexico. Yeah. And two, the former assistant football coach and teacher Ben Morillo, he showed me. What is that? This fence. Part of the old fence. That's part of the old fence, you think? El Paso in the 70s put up a bunch of fencing on the border to curb illegal immigration. So it's like, it's not much taller than us. But it was pretty flimsy, they called it to Tortilla Curtain and right at this spot,

across from Bowie High School, there was a hole in the fence. Yeah. And David Ham, former bourbon troll agent, told us that what that meant was that you had migrants, you had a lot of migrants who would be coming through that hole in the fence. Through Bortertro, he had a school. And he claimed that it wasn't just people looking for work, it was also people bringing in

drugs. And the way I know that, because our anti-smugning meeting with watch them come through. And so Border Patrol agents had taken to just sort of hanging out around the school on the school's property, on the football field, across the street from the school. Like just, they were just there all the time. There were even rumors that Border Patrol agents

would go undercover as students and that they would wander the halls, that they would go into the locker rooms. I'd notice the suburban's parked on the Booy campus. Yeah. Again, former Booy teacher, one cyber coordinator. But the whole reason, you know, that I thought that there was the chain link is cut and they need to stop people from entering into a high school. Instead of realizing that what they're doing is they're using the high school as a hunting ground.

And so to one, when he started hearing about all these stories of these 14, 15, 16-year-old kids getting stopped and shaken down, it wasn't about Border Patrol trying to stop migrants from coming in or trying to stop drugs from coming across the border. It was the Border Patrol simply stopping people because they were brown. And that really, this is radio angered me. But for most of these kids, it was nothing like out of the ordinary. You know, kids like Ernesto Munoz, Ricardo Vielma, that was just day-to-day. Talked it even to some of the community members, Tony Santos. It told me the way I bought it.

Growing up in this poor neighborhood, right next to the border, that's just a way of life here in South South Paso. It wasn't like a concern, like, oh no, you got stopped. You go to the park and shoot some basketball. You tell your schoolmates, you know, you guess what happened after school? It was like, you know, hey, you happened after school? He was like, you know, how you got stopped, you know, it's probably because of your hair

cat or probably because of, you know, how your dress or whatever. So the students were more likely to laugh about it than be angry, but in his US history class that year, one started teaching his kids about civil rights, actually getting them to debate the different ways of thinking about civil rights. Talking about stuff like The activities which have taken place in Birmingham over the last few days. Letter from the Birmingham jail And to my mind, mark the non-violent movement coming of age.

And This is Liberty or Dead. Malcolm X's ballot for the bullet. This freedom for everybody or freedom for nobody. and Malcolm X's ballot for the bullet. And so these students are learning about... Farm workers' strikes in California in the 1960s. We learn about Cesar Chavez. We learn about $1,000,000, Regis López di Jérina.

And it was like, okay, I'm bringing the book and then I look outside the window and there they are. Border Patrol agents, and SUVs on the parking lot stopping students. I think that's when we were like, wait, just kind of like, it felt not okay. I mean, I didn't fully know exactly the letter of the law. That's Nidia Rodriguez again,

but I knew that's what they were doing was wrong and eventually some of these students started to get together. That's and talked. Like do you think this is right? What do you think this is about telling each other you know that? This is wrong. We talked about how we wanted things to be different. Let's see what we can do about it because this has to stop. see what we can do about it because this has to stop. All right. All right. That's what's up. Coming up, Juan and his students fight back.

We'll continue in just a moment. Let's do it some more warm-ups! Let's do... Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, Chad Robert, Lotha Tracy, and Ricardo and Tony. Okay. Alright, so some of these kids at Bowie High School, they actually belong to this group. Mecha. Movimiento estudiantil chicano de Aslan. Which is a Chicano civil rights group. Dejas bin a round for Hoda, que es el 1960's.

It was a college group, but these kids at Buuwei actually petitioned them to have a chapter at the high school. And, uh, and Metchis said, sure. We were the first ones to get a collegiate group. And they asked Juan if he could, you know, supervise. We would meet about once a week, and our meetings tended to be 30, 40, 50 kids packed into a classroom. And for one of these meetings, Juan brought in one of his friends, a woman named Susan

Kern. She worked for the Border Rights Coalition. And so she comes in and these students start telling her, you know, what's been going on. And they ask her, do we have any rights here? She tells them absolutely you do because according to the U.S. Constitution, the Border Patrol, or really any officer of the the law they cannot stop you without reasonable cause They have to have seen you cross the border or when you saw them you started acting fidgety or you ran away or something

They can't just arbitrarily stop you question you just because of the color of your skin That's not enough to stop you because if that's the only reason they have to stop you, then they're violating your fourth amendment right. The right to be protected from unreasonable searches and seizures. Exactly. They just said, you know what, you're getting, your rights are getting stomped all over. Let's see what we can do about this because it needs to stop. After Susan explained that the rights were being violated, the conversation turned to, what are we gonna do about it? We had a lot of students who were suggesting things that were probably, you know, slightly inappropriate.

Like, how about we just curse them out? Which I thought, well, maybe that's not a bad approach, but apparently... According to one's friend Susan. Off was not the right response. That can maybe get you in trouble. Can be considered assault and so... Another student said, well, what if we just run away from them? No.

Another kid was like, what if we fight back? Oh God. Definitely don't do that. But... Finally... One of the students... Who's been watching law and order. Debbie Mason, you're under arrest.

The attempted murder of your mother. No, this is a mistake. Who's new all about saying... You have the right to remain silent. The right to remain silent. Carol Lentana, you have the right to remain silent. Carol Lentana, you have the right to remain silent. You're under arrest for the attempted murder of your mother. No, this is a mistake. Who's new all about saying, You have the right to remain silent. The right to remain silent? Colonel Turner, you have the right to remain silent. He was like, that's a thing.

It's your fifth amendment constitutional right. And is something that you typically hear? I have, however, been instructed by my counsel, not to testify based on my fifth amendment constitutional rights. When rich white dudes get in trouble. On the advice of counsel, I invoke my fifth amendment constitutional rights. When rich white dudes get in trouble. On the advice of council, I invoke my fifth amendment privilege and respectfully decline to answer your question. But this one buoy match a student was like,

why don't we do that? And that's exactly what our students started doing. After that, when Board of Petriela agents would stop students and say, hey, give me your papers, some of these students would say, no. I want to use my Fifth Amendment right. I want to take the Fifth Amendment. Fifth Amendment right to remain silent.

Simple as that. I have the right not to incriminate my students. To remain silent. I do not want to answer your questions. Sorry, I had a burn. Are you ready? I have a Fifth Amendment right to remain silent. I don't want you to go through any of my stuff.

Right to remain silent. You're not going through my backpack. I'm not talking to you. I want to use my Fifth Amendment right. And the message started spreading around right to remain silent. Remain silent. Silent.

Silent. That we really don't need to answer these people's questions. To remind silent? Yeah. That is perfect. You nailed it. I'm not. It makes me feel like I was just kidding.

I'm not kidding. Well, I'm kind of trying to imagine myself being you and giving advice to these students. And on the one hand, obviously, this is their legal right not to provide this information. On the other hand, I can imagine that, you know, I've heard that there are these sport or patrol abuses, there are, you know, these, there are times when this doesn't go well and

I'm telling these students to go out and basically, you know, stonewall these agents and they could put them in harm's way. And it did frequently. Students were harassed for this. Students were the most notorious case is the case of David Renthida. And the way I started was, I joined the third. So this is David Renteria from a documentary that was made in the 90s about Bowie High School.

Yeah, so David Renteria, he was a senior at Bowie, a legally blind student who was coming home from graduation practice. And this one day, he and his friend are just walking on the street and a board of patrol rules truck rolls up. They start the nexus first, they're the children I respond, you know, you're a citizen, This friend are just walking on the street of this night said if we didn't stop, we're going to beat us up a little bit forward to the point that we're going to be able to hold. So this board of patrol agent gets out of the truck, comes up to David. And started threatened to break his arm if he tried to walk away.

So this hand on my arm left elbow, he jerked it back, he jerked it, I turned and faced him. And I looked at it and I took it and I took it and I turned the face to him. I looked at him and I took him to the settlement. I exercised at the right, I made silence. And he got me, slammed me and gets a fence. And he put his left arm in the back of my neck. And he kicked my legs. Slat them in his face apparently. And you know, David wasn't physically injured after that.

He was freaked out. But the reason that Juan called this particular incident notorious is because... Immediately after, the local news in El Paso picked it up and started doing a lot more reporting on... on Border Patrol, on Bowie, and so did... From the El Paso, Texas. Good morning, America! National Texas. Good morning, everyone. National news. Good morning, freaking America.

You know what I mean? That's pretty huge. The daily invasion has strained the relationship between the border patrol and some people at Bui high school. And then we're talking to us. We all have rights. And then our rights daily on a day-to-day course are being violated.

Why are they arrested? Because we're Hispanic, because the color of our course are being violated. Why on the earth? Because we're Hispanic, because the color of our skin, because we live right on the border end, because while we live in a really poor neighborhood, that's the only reason. And as this news started to grow, the Border Patrol sector chief Dale Musigades decided he was going to come to Buie to talk to the students. Is that something you remember him showing up? Oh yeah, Mr. Musigades. I think guy was kind of doing damage control at that point.

When Agent Dale Musigades met with about 40 students to discuss the alleged harassment, he kept us out. We tried to contact Dale Musigades multiple times for this story, but he did not reply to our voice mails or emails. But... They passed to, I think, Wednesday morning. We were able to get footage of that meeting Musigades kept good morning America out of because one of the students taped this and then we managed to get our hands on it.

So it's like 30, 40 kids from Mecha in this classroom and Dale Musigades. He was sitting in front of us, wearing a suit and tie, trying to put things in a perspective. He started telling the students, like, look, the holes in the fence, we keep patching them up, they keep getting cut out. And he told the students they'd busted some people who had brought drugs through Booy. I now have another case to investigate.

So Musigates is like we're essentially trying to stop the flow of drugs here. Why are you guys complaining so much? But eventually, these students started speaking up. One student stands up and says, A, you're harassing us and that's why we're upset. And B, your strategy for capturing boardacrossers seems to be to herd them all into the school where they're penned in. You're trying to convince my cattle but you're going to be running into a place where they can get out and they circle them in. Get your hand in my cattle and that goes.

Those people will not stop or will not obey the law. So you have to do it somehow or another apprehend. I don't know. You know, I don't know a better way to do it. I'm not at the sacrifice of a right. It's a little hard to hear but he, not at the sacrifice of our rights. No, yeah. What do you mean the sacrifice of the rights?

They're all right. But they're human beings. They're human beings. They have rights. They do not have rights to come into United States illegal. What did it feel like to be sitting in that meeting? I mean, it felt bizarre. I mean, that somebody is denying what everybody sees with their own eyes

there was no face value to what what he said you know because that when we were sitting uh... cynical about the whole situation and you know you can't undo the stuff that was already done so the meeting goes poorly uh... and a bunch of the students and some of the staff, including Ben Mario, the assistant football coach, who had a gun pointed in his face, they all together decide that they want to sue the Border Patrol. The phone rings one day. And eventually they call up this guy.

He said, we're getting ready to sue the Border Patrol. Will you be our local council? And I said, not only yes, but hell yes. Alpaso Civil Rights lawyer, Albert Armandara's junior. Will you be our local council? And I said, not only yes, but hell yes. Yeah. Alpasso Civil Rights lawyer Albert Armandara's junior. Were you optimistic? I mean, it's never an easy job. So the government is not easy.

When you live on the border and work in Saguñan the body, you are never optimistic that a governmental system is going to work for you. So October 23, 1992, the trial that a governmental system is going to work for you. So... October 23, 1992, the trial between Buie High School and the Border Patrol begins. And apparently the courtroom was pretty much divided in half. On one half you had the Border Patrol, like a ton of agents in full uniform sitting there. On the other half you had these Buie students. Dressed in their finest.

Sydney dresses, slacks, shirts. Those kids were little troopers and they all got up in the stand and told their stories. And then eventually, Bordeaux-Pertotel's Secretary Chief Dale Musigates testifies. Do you remember what the defense his argument was? Well they had lots of arguments., we can't verify the specifics of what happened in the courtroom because a lot of the court documents have been destroyed, but Musigade's got up there, and his basic argument was that if you look at the U.S. Code of Federal Regulation Section 1357, powers of immigration officers and employees, number one, officers have the power to interrogate any alien or person believed to be an alien as to his right to be or to remain in the United States, and they can do that without

a warrant. And then, skipping down a bit from that, they can do that, quote, within a reasonable distance from any external boundary of the United States. What's a reasonable distance? Well, this is what's nuts is, I don't know exactly what went into the determination of what that is, but the distance is 100 miles. Really? Yeah, in that 100 mile zone, Border Patrol has the power to interrogate, has the power

to arrest without warrant, and they can also, and I'm quoting here, quote, search for aliens in any railway car, aircraft, conveyance, or vehicle within that distance. And then on top of that, within a narrower distance of 25 miles from the border, they can go right onto private property whenever they want. It's like this little zone that's designed to prevent border patrol officers from being charged with trespass when patrolling the border. I crossed exam and she was engaged.

And so... What, Musigades' arguing is that if they have all this power and if they can go on private property right up on the border and you got this high school on the border, then there's no question that they can be on school property and do their jobs. That's how they read that. What they couldn't understand is they were doing it in a way that violated the Constitution and that is against the Supreme Law of the Land. This was Albert's argument that no matter what powers you have, you can't violate somebody's

fourth amendment, right? You have to have a legitimate reason to stop somebody. So what did the quick, what ultimately happened? Okay, before this court, finding, so findings of facts and conclusions of law, Bunton, comma senior district judge, before this court, it's plaintiff's motion for temporary restraining, order, and preliminary injunction and memorandum of law in support, pursuant to rules. I don't, does that sound like anything to you? Yeah, he's saying here's what we got in front of me here.

All right. So we do the next paragraph down. We got jurisdiction in venue. OK, that means keep the next meeting. Findings of fact, the litigation, the name individual plaintiffs. I mean, very, very bot. Last paragraph. Is it?

Is it I hear by order? The court hereby enjoins the immigration and national naturalization service, the INS, which is above, at the time, was above the Border Patrol. From stopping and questioning an individual as to his or her right to be or remain in the United States, unless the agent has reasonable suspicion based on specific, articulable facts involving more than the mere appearance

of the individual being a Hispanic descent. Okay, that's a fancy way of saying, stop judging people by their looks. Sign the judge. Yes. So they won. They won. It was just absolute elation.

There was a big celebratory school assembly. What a whole school. Tony Santos was there. But we were there. Yeah, we were all happy. There were all these parties. People who gave us plaques, I think I may even have some on the wall out there. It was pretty awesome.

Again, former student Ricardo Vielma. It was crazy to see the least. The final ruling holds that the Porta Patrol did violate constitutional rights. You just don't see the agents on our campus anymore. That's the assistant football coach Ben Maria, who ended up being the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit. After treating us like people, not like second-class citizens, not like we have to be submissive simply because they're federal agents. You know, we couldn't believe that we took on the federal government at one.

That was one of the first times that I was really proud of what our government you know stands for. And Ricardo said coming out of federal court that day, it was like him and seven other students and they came out, and there was a bunch of other students and faculty from the school there. Everybody was like, cool, let's go back to school, hop in the car, I was like, no, we kind of want to bask in this. So we walked from the federal courthouse downtown to bully high school.

And you know, when we were getting there, we were all just kind of tearing up. We were proud, we were just happy. And it's surprised all at once. It was just where we started ourselves. And, you know, we had camera crews and news crews waiting for us as we were walking up, because I guess they got wind that we were just walking back to school.

we're just walking back to school. But in the wake of this victory in the months following, there would be a chain of events that would really drastically change the US-Mexico border forever and take us to really to where we are now. Because you wrote in that essay sort of just sort, you don't see the connection, you don't think there's a connection, but the fact that the connection is being made still sort of ways on you. Of course it was on us, okay, because I mean, because of us, fences were built.

Because the fences were built, maybe 10,000 people have died in the desert. But they didn't know what cactus among them, many before them might hold some hope. Men tore their faces open, chewing cigarros and prickly pears, leaving gutted plants that looked like animals had torn them apart with claws. The green here was gray. They walked west, though they didn't know it. They had no concept anymore of destination. They were in a vast trickery of sand. One of them said, Pinchas, be it us. He said,

This episode was reported by Lattifnasser and Tracy Hunt and produced by Matt Kilti with Bethel Habté, Tracy Hunt, and Lattifnasser. Special thanks to Timothy Dunn for writing the book that really guided our story of Buie High School and to Chris Swan and Kevin Levelle with KVIA for the archival footage they gave us and to Gustavo Revelle's at the El Paso independent school district. To principal Francisco Ordas, Sam Attell Italian Grace Hernandez and the rest of the staff at Bui High School to Maggie Suther Gladstone from Hush Shet for allowing us to use excerpts

from the Devil's Highway to Eric Roblotto and Michael Wells at the Parsons School of Design at the New School and to Susan Kern and Debbie Nathan. Okay, so that was the first of our Border Trilogy series. You'll hear the rest of the series in the next two episodes, updated over the next two weeks. And before we go for today, we wanted to acknowledge that Tracy Hunt, who you heard, co-reporting that story, was one of many people affected by layoffs at WNYC last week. We're gonna miss her so much.

She was not just an incredible reporter and riveting interviewer. She was like a kind of, I don't know, moral compass of this place. And Tracy was not the only person from the Radio Lab family that was let go. We also want to shout some love at Julia Lungoria, who was at Radio Lab for a while. Made the episode Americanesh, but then also hosted the new incarnation of more perfect, as well as Amy Pearl, the Alpha Gal herself. If you remember that episode about her tick bite giving her a meat allergy She was also laid off after you know decades at the station and finally We wanted to say goodbye to Anna Raskwett pause our digital media producer If you receive our newsletter you will have read many of her beautiful essays. We are going to miss all of you and we envy whoever gets to work with you next.

Thanks for all the beautiful stuff you made. Next week is episode two of the Border Shield G. It's called Hold the Line. Catch you then. Radio Lab was created by Chad Abumrad and is edited by Soren Wheeler, Lulu Miller and Lotta Fnasser are our co-hosts. Dylan Keith is our director of sound design. Our staff includes Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Bressler, Rachel Kusik, a Kedi Foster Keys, W Harry Fortuna, David Gable, Maria Paz Gutierrez, Sindu Nyanasambadam, Matt Kilti, Annie McEwen, Alex Nysin, Saurakare,

Alyssa John Perry, Sarah Sambak, Aryan Wack, Pat Walters, and Molly Webster, with help from Timmy Brotterk. Our fact checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger, and Natalie Middleton. Hi, this is Tamara from the Pasadena, California. Leadership Support for Radio Lab Science Programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a science foundation initiative, and the Johns Templeton Foundation. Dundational Support for Radio Lab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. lab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.