The Daily - Dispatches From the Border, Part 1

Episode Date: January 14, 2019

As the shutdown continues over the president’s demand for a border wall, Annie Brown from “The Daily” joined Azam Ahmed, a New York Times reporter, and Meridith Kohut, a photojournalist, on their endeavor to drive the entire length of the U.S.-Mexico border. Here’s what they saw on the first part of that journey. Guests: Annie Brown, a producer for “The Daily”; Azam Ahmed, the New York Times bureau chief for Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean; and Meridith Kohut, a photojournalist who covers Latin America. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.

I love that. We're at 1.3 miles, and then we're going to test the two-wheel drive X-Trail. Asim, when we took off last week for this trip, what was your thinking around it? I'm going to get stuck in the sand, Mayor. So, last week, amid the government shutdown, this crisis being discussed along the border, the idea of $5 billion to build a wall, I just wanted to get to the border and see it. I thought, what if we just drive the entire border from one side to the other in search of just what we find? Almost treat it like a character, trying to understand its nature.

find. Almost treat it like a character, trying to understand its nature. Okay, right now we are on the eastern edge of Texas, Boca Chica Beach. It is where Texas comes to an end, and if you drive south along the beach, you'll get to where the Rio Grande feeds into the Gulf of Mexico, which is the end of the border. And to do that, you have to pick one end to start on, and we essentially decided to start on the easternmost edge at Boca Chica State Park. A couple of fishermen. Oh, this is where... Is this where the Rio Grande dumps in? As we were driving, we were looking for some kind of designation

that we'd reach the border, that we'd reach the end of the United States. Oh, this is the border this is the river we're there because look if you look here but there's kind of nothing marking generally yeah this is the where the rio grande feeds in yeah nice Nice. It's actually stunning. It's open sand, relatively barren. But the strangest thing is there's no beginning of the border.

There's no checkpoint. So basically to cross, you just have to ford the Rio Grande, which is, you know, like 40 feet across maybe. Sort of surreal that with all this talk about border security, the very beginning of the border is nothing more than, you know, a glorified stream. So we stuffed my audio equipment in a dry bag, and we weighed out. I put one foot into the water, and I basically step in, sort of expecting there to be a sandy floor right under me, and it was a lot deeper than I thought it was going to be and I sort of just plunged all the way in.

Suddenly start getting sucked down the river. Immediately you feel the pull of the current and it starts to drag you quickly out towards the ocean. So I started swimming as fast as I could and then after maybe 30 seconds I wound up on the other side. Okay, we are officially on the Mexico side of the border. We wound up getting a little bit swept out because it was deeper than we thought at first. And now we're walking around in Mexico. So technically, was this an illegal border crossing? Yeah, I think so. I mean, I don't know. I didn't. So yeah, I assume I crossed illegally.

It's a few different fishermen hanging out. So on the other side, kind of walked around, sort of surveyed the area. And I noticed this super sketchy looking van. It was one of those old vans your friend's mom had in high school with like the curtains on the windows and like big plush velvet seats. But this thing was like super rusted out and corroded. And I thought that's way too obvious. There's no way that that's like some narco or smugglers van sitting here. It's just like central castings idea of what a smuggler would be driving. central castings idea of what a smuggler would be driving. But it pulled up, and even before anybody got out,

I looked at the driver, and I could just tell. And another guy jumped out of the car, and he asked us, who crossed you? Quien te cruzaron? What do you think he meant when he said who crossed you? I think he meant to ask, like, on whose permission are you crossing? Why are you here? This was an area he clearly felt belonged to him and the people he was with.

And us crossing into it was crossing into their space, potentially conflicting with their interests. And he wanted to know, on whose authority had we done that? Were we associated with somebody? Did we have permission? And otherwise, just to let us know, like, no, you can't be here. And then we swam back across. It was time to go. Yeah, it was time to go. It was interesting, all this time we're looking for some sign of the border, some presence that is going to be monitoring us, and it turned out there was. It just wasn't who we thought it was going to be.

And I'm still not exactly sure who they are. What I do know is they were not the Mexican authorities. They were not the U.S. authorities. But they definitely felt like authorities. I'm just going to get in wet because we don't know. These guys, I mean, I'm sure there are people on this side, you know. We'll continue to have a smoke attack. Okay, let's get out of here.

So yeah, thus begins a trip from one end of the border to the other, the east end to the west end. We're starting in Brownsville slash Matamoros and we're going to end in San Diego slash Tijuana, hopefully within the next week and a half. Let's do it. Yeah, let's do it. Yeah, let's do it. From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today, as the shutdown continues over the president's border wall, The Daily's Annie Brown joined reporter Asim Ahmed and photojournalist Meredith Kohut on their endeavor to drive the entire length of the southern border. Part one of that journey. It's Monday, January 14th. Thank you. Yeah.

So where are we heading? And right now we are driving from Brownsville, Texas, into Matamoros, Tamaulipas, which is in Mexico. Much longer line going the other way. Oh, yeah. Whoa. So due to some of the president's policies, a lot of asylum seekers who would normally have crossed over

and asked for asylum in the U.S. are being made to wait on the Mexican side. This has become one of the prongs of the crisis, one of the things that some people argue is the real crisis. So we wanted to go to the Mexican side to see the reality of these policies when you tighten them on the ground in Mexico with the people who were actually affected by them most. Okay, this does not look like the migrant shelter.

Oh, it's here. Ah, here we go. Carlos Daniel Herrera. Maybe you could describe what's going on here. So I think, periodically, especially as new migrants come in, they hire a group of people to come in and basically cut hair. So now you've got a crew of migrants lining up to get haircuts from three ladies who are actually doing a pretty good job. They're all getting the same haircut. They're all getting like a high and tight fade. They do look good.

They do look good. What do you want to say? So we sit down and start chatting with a few of these guys. And I ask them, you know, so where are you guys from? Assuming they're going to tell me their country of origin. Almost all of them actually, like, oh, you know, North Carolina. And it turned out these guys had been in North Carolina more than half of their lives. One of the guys I focused in on had a wife and children in North Carolina.

He'd been working there for 15 years as an electrician. Electrician. Electrician. Yeah. And how did they catch you? What charges? I asked him, you know, how did they catch you, essentially? No driving license.

That's the only charge you have? You don't have any other criminal record? It's almost always for driving without a proper license. Most of these guys were deported yesterday. Maybe go back soon to USA. He say immigration, he say maybe I got to go meet a lawyer. And the lawyer, he go take my charges off. And most of them talked about maybe hiring a lawyer or something else.

And I kind of just asked the guy, well, what if that doesn't work? What if there is no way to get across legally? What are you going to do? And he looked at me and sort of offered this wry smile and said, well, we're Mexicans. We've been crossing legally forever. I'll just cross however I can. So we thank those guys. And excused ourselves from the table and began looking around for people who were heading in the other direction,

people who weren't supportive but were rather looking to migrate into the United States. And I saw a young man, sort of a bookish-looking guy with square glasses and a round face, who had a baby on his lap, and I thought, well, that's potentially an interesting story. I went over and asked him who he was and where he was from, and he told me his name was Ert, he was from El Salvador, and that actually wasn't his child. He told me it was the child of one of the families that lived there. He just really got along with the kid. They'd spent a few days together now,

and he basically was taking care of him while his parents were busy with other things. So I asked him why he was applying for asylum, and he said that he was being chased out of the country by the gangs. And I asked him how old he was applying for asylum. And he said that he was being chased out of the country by the gangs. And I asked him how old he was. He said he was 23. And, you know, Salvador definitely has a massive gang problem. And forced conscription happens. But it usually doesn't happen when you're 23.

That's a bit old, that process. If the gangs are coming after you, it's in your teens, it's much earlier. He's like, yeah, but they're still after me and I there was something strange there so I asked him again I was like but

why did they leave you alone for all those years and then suddenly at age 23 decide to come after you and suddenly at age 23, decide to come after you. And then he sort of, his voice cracked, and he said, well, I had a little bit of protection during those years. It turned out his father was a member of MS-13.

And that as long as his dad was a member of the gang and sort of good standing with him, his son didn't have to be. But at some point, his father was imprisoned. And while he was in prison, his father decided to leave the gang and become a faithful Christian. Only in this circumstance, when his father left the gang,

the gang went to Evert and said, well, your father's gone now, but his bill hasn't been paid. You have to come and join us now. And Evert's 23, he hasn't grown up as a member of this gang. He has no desire to be a part of this gang. Everything his father, who was a gang member, told him is to not join this gang. And so he flees. He leaves Salvador, winds up in southern Mexico, and basically starts working his way through

the country. Six months in one place, two or three months in another place, until he gets to Reynosa, the closest crossing if you're coming north from Central America. It's far closer than, say, Tijuana or Juarez. And he winds up at a shelter and he plans on asking for asylum, but he sort of runs into reality pretty quickly. And a pastor there tells him, like, nobody's crossing the bridge. It's just not possible. Nobody's asking for asylum because nobody's even getting access to it. And he said, you know, if I were you, I'd maybe go to Matamoros because some people are getting across and there are people on the bridge.

It's not an efficient system. It's not working well. It's not impossible. It's not impossible. So he shows up at the bridge. His name was put down on a notebook and he was given a number. And presumably one just waits until their number is called and then they cross over, apply for asylum, their case is accepted, rejected. And this is the metering system. So basically since the summer, the Trump administration has limited the number of people who can cross over and ask for asylum.

They claim it's a capacity issue. But because he doesn't have legal documentation to be in Mexico, a Mexican migration official kicks him off the bridge and threatens him with deportation. And so he just runs away and he finds himself at this shelter where we met him. So now he's kind of in this stasis where he's like living with this terror that his number has been called and he's quite sure it has. He can't stay at the migrant shelter much longer because they have time limits on how long you can be there. There's so much demand. There's so many people coming through. He's been back now a few times to the bridge to see,

and every time he runs into the same migration agents. And he flees because he doesn't want to get deported because he has a very real fear of what will happen to him if he is. It's hard to know what he's going to do. And you talked to Everett about crossing illegally. The thing is, he didn't have the money. It's too expensive for him. Since it got harder to file for asylum, the rates of smugglers have gone way up. It's economics, right? More demand. The price goes up because there's a finite supply of

smugglers and people that can ferry you across. So now some of these guys were saying it was going to cost them anywhere from $5,000 to $7,000 just to get across the river with no guarantee to get to the state where they wanted to go to their ultimate destination. And throughout Tamaulipas and these various shelters that sort of line the border, what you find are people like Everett are looking for alternative options, which means essentially falling directly into the hands of the smugglers. People who are waiting to either save up money by working or wait for family members to send them funds so that they can pay these exorbitant rates. The desperation doesn't disappear just because you close your doors to it. It finds other ways to come in and to manifest itself.

And in this case, it's basically playing to the hands of organized crime. So we said our goodbyes to Everett and... To the bridge. ...jumped in the car and decided to head to the bridge. This thing that had sort of frozen Evert in fear, and we wanted to see what was happening on the bridge, why and if people were being stopped, and what the process was. As we walk up to the bridge, there's this flock of older American women.

What are you guys doing here? She's a mayor from the U.S. here. Yeah. Mayor of which town? Rancho Viejo. I wanted to see in person the situation of the migrants who are waiting to cross over. What do your constituents think about that? They're pretty conservative, and they are mostly Trump supporters.

Are they for a border wall, the people in your constituency? I think many believe that the border wall has a role. And I believe the border wall has a role, but I think we've mostly built it. Now we just have to consider the funneling places where people are coming through. I think that we definitely do not need something along the lines of the Great Wall of China. I don't think it's a reasonable thing

to shut down the government over. Punto. That means period. I think I've gone as far as I can. Okay, thank you so much. You're welcome. So we arrive, and right before you even start to cross, there is a little encampment that's been set up with sort of a porous tarp stretched over a few metal beams and people living on cots and blankets. One woman was there with her teenage son. They'd fled Honduras.

They arrived here three months ago and have been waiting in this sort of makeshift shelter for the last three months. Most of them are afraid to leave, because if they leave, they lose their place in line, and that's three months lost. You sleep in a cold, when it rains, it leaks. It's a canopy. And look at it. Yeah. We talked to a Ghanaian man who had literally traversed half of the globe. What route did you take? Ghana, South Africa, Ecuador, Colombia, Panama.

So you passed the Darien Gap. Yeah. Did you pass it on foot? Yes. Wow, you passed the Darien Gap on foot. Yes. That's a really serious trip. To the Darien Gap, which is one of the most treacherous migrant crossing in the world.

Through the waters and then the jungle. You see a whole lot of dead bodies, you know. People are dying on the way. When your food is finished, the strength is down, you know. So he made it through all of this, and then he finally made his way into Mexico. He made it all the way up from Mexico to this bridge in Matamoros. How long have you been here?

I've been here almost eight weeks now. Eight weeks. Yes. And then nothing. Just sitting there, waiting. I mean, all this momentum leading up to this grand sort of wait. You know, irrespective of what the government, whatever, we know we're going to cross.

We know we're going to cross. Yeah. Thank you, guys. Thank you. It's lovely to talk. So we decided to leave. And as we were walking out, a woman called over to us and asked us if she could talk to us for a minute.

So she said, listen, I'm here with my son in these sorts of conditions because I want to do it the right way. I don't want to violate the laws of the United States. I have respect for the United States. That's where I want to do it the right way. I don't want to violate the laws of the United States. I have respect for the United States. That's where I want to go. Look at the conditions we're in and what we're willing to suffer just so we don't violate those laws. We're not the people you guys are scared of.

We're not the people who are going to do things in the United States that don't make our countries proud. Look, we're trying to do it the right way. We are putting up with inhumane conditions, total uncertainty, and a deep-seated fear of being sent back to our country in order to do it the right way. And it struck me that in doing it the right way,

she'd sort of been pushed to this limit. There's no benefit to following the rules, is kind of what she was saying. We left the encampment, got in our car, and went back onto the bridge. Very different. Is this the crossing? I think we're heading into the crossing. I realize my passport's at the top of my orange bag there.

It's really small, so you can just grab it. Driving with our U.S. passports to cross into the United States. To our left is a long line of traffic passing into Mexico. We're stuck in traffic crossing into the U.S., and to our right, we pass the encampment, which is basically just sitting there. People on their phones

outside, children running around, but not moving. And then we cross into the U.S. Over the weekend, President Trump backed away from his threat to declare a national emergency to build his proposed border wall, amid growing resistance to the idea from leaders of his own party. Instead, the shutdown is expected to continue for a fourth week, with neither the president nor Democrats willing to meaningfully negotiate. Over the next couple of weeks, the Daily will continue to follow Azam and Annie as they

report from the border. Here's what else you need to know today. President Trump reacted with fury to a report in The Times over the weekend that the FBI had opened an investigation in the spring of 2017 into whether Trump was acting on behalf of Russia when he fired FBI Director James Comey. The Times said that the FBI investigation was prompted by Trump's own remarks

linking Comey's firing to Russia. The investigation has since been taken over by special counsel Robert Mueller, but it's unclear whether he is still pursuing the question. Are you now or have you ever worked for Russia, Mr. President? On Saturday night, Trump was asked about the FBI investigation by Fox News host Jeanine Pirro. I think it's the most insulting thing I've ever been asked. I think it's the most insulting thing I've ever been asked.

I think it's the most insulting article I've ever had written. And if you read the article, you'd see that they found absolutely nothing. But the headline of that article, it's called the failing New York Times for a reason. The president did not directly answer her question. Meanwhile, on Sunday, the Washington Post reported that Trump has gone to extraordinary lengths to conceal details of his conversations with Russian President Vladimir Putin, once taking possession of his interpreter's notes

and instructing a linguist not to discuss his talks with Putin with anyone else in the administration. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.