Speaker 1: Hey, this is Bridget and this is Annie, and you're
Speaker 1: listening to stuff mom never told you. Now today we're
Speaker 1: going to dive into a topic that I've sort of
Speaker 1: been to admit kind of tuning out a little bit
Speaker 1: um for my own kind of mental health. I found
Speaker 1: myself sort of tuning out the news because it's massively,
Speaker 1: massively depressing. But you know what, that is a huge privilege.
Speaker 1: Not everyone has the ability to just sort of tune
Speaker 1: out news, but it does not necessarily affect them personally.
Speaker 1: And I kind of checked back in and everything is
Speaker 1: on fire and things are horrible. That's a pretty accurate statement. Yes,
Speaker 1: So we wanted to dive into one of those topics,
Speaker 1: which is the crisis at our borders, which is really quickly.
Speaker 1: One thing to know is that we're recording this on Wednesday,
Speaker 1: and while we were putting together notes, there was sort
Speaker 1: of breaking news on that front just really early this morning.
Speaker 1: So by the time you listen to this, things could
Speaker 1: be different. It's very much a situation that's in flux.
Speaker 1: So if you listen to this and say, oh, they
Speaker 1: didn't mention this new thing that happened, it probably happened
Speaker 1: after we've recorded So the first thing to know about
Speaker 1: this situation is that it is hella confusing, and I
Speaker 1: feel like that's probably by design. Yeah, I would agree.
Speaker 1: Press and lawmakers are having a hard time getting access
Speaker 1: to detention centers and thus are having a hard time
Speaker 1: reporting on it. When CNN went there, they were not
Speaker 1: allowed to take pictures or bring camera and the only
Speaker 1: images that were allowed were the ones provided by the
Speaker 1: Department of Homeland Security. Yeah, so you can imagine what
Speaker 1: that's not necessarily providing the full picture of what's happening.
Speaker 1: And you've actually seen interesting cases of folks who have
Speaker 1: worked for these centers and for DHS who are leaking
Speaker 1: video from inside or audio from inside. On the Rachel
Speaker 1: matt Ol Show, a former employee end up getting this
Speaker 1: audio of one of the officials at one of these
Speaker 1: centers telling a bunch of children in Spanish. You know,
Speaker 1: don't talk to reporters about your situation. We're trying to
Speaker 1: help you. We really want to unite you with your family.
Speaker 1: If you talk to reporters about what's going on, you
Speaker 1: could be on the news, and who knows how long
Speaker 1: you'll be here, you know, which is a pretty thing
Speaker 1: to tell a bunch of kids who one are really
Speaker 1: confused already and too aren't with their parents if they're
Speaker 1: miners that are really not able to be, you know,
Speaker 1: making these kinds of decisions kind of stuff. Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: Another thing making it confusing is that the administration is
Speaker 1: being super unclear about everything to the point of downright
Speaker 1: lying and gas lighting. Yes, if you listen to our
Speaker 1: episode on gas lighting, you know that myself had plenty
Speaker 1: of others feel like they're being gaslighted by this administration.
Speaker 1: This is a situation where it's a very clear like
Speaker 1: when you actually sit down and look at all of
Speaker 1: the things different high ranking people and this one administration
Speaker 1: have said that our contradictory that are flat out untrue.
Speaker 1: When you look at all of them side by side,
Speaker 1: you feel like you're losing your mind. You feel like
Speaker 1: where it's one of those situations where you are we
Speaker 1: are really being gasolt on a national scale. There's no
Speaker 1: other way to put it. So here are just some
Speaker 1: of the things that this one administration have said so
Speaker 1: far about this policy. Trump blamed Democrats on the policy
Speaker 1: of separating families at the border. He tweeted, separating families
Speaker 1: at the border is the fault of bad legislation passed
Speaker 1: by the Democrats. Border security laws should be changed, but
Speaker 1: the Dams can't get their act together. So he's saying, Okay,
Speaker 1: this policy exists, but it's the Democrats fault. They have
Speaker 1: maintained that there was no policy of separating families at
Speaker 1: the border. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristen Nielsen tweeted, we
Speaker 1: do not have a policy of separating families at the border. Period.
Speaker 1: This misreporting by members, press and advocacy groups must stop.
Speaker 1: It is irresponsible and unproductive. So you know what policy,
Speaker 1: policy does not exist, and Democrats did it right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So they said that they were using separating families at
Speaker 1: the border as a way of deterring immigrants from coming
Speaker 1: to America. White House Chief of Staff John Kelly has
Speaker 1: said this, and Jeff Sessions have said this. They've started
Speaker 1: on vid you, so you know they've sat it, We've
Speaker 1: seen it with our eyes. They've maintained that separating families
Speaker 1: at the border is actually biblically mandated. Jeff Sessions said
Speaker 1: this during a speech. According to The Hill, Session cited
Speaker 1: scripture while defending this policy, saying I would cite to
Speaker 1: you the Apostle paud is clear and wise command in
Speaker 1: Romans thirteen to obey the laws of the government because
Speaker 1: God was ordained them for the purpose of order. Um.
Speaker 1: He said this at a speech in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
Speaker 1: Stephen Colbert did a piece on this on that specifically
Speaker 1: where he went on to read Romans ten, which it continues,
Speaker 1: love your neighbor as yourself. Love does no harm to
Speaker 1: a neighbor. Therefore, love is the fulfillment of the law. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but that particular piece of scripture does not justify intense cruelty.
Speaker 1: So you just didn't ignore it, right, Yeah, And other
Speaker 1: people have pointed out that scripture was also used to
Speaker 1: justify slavery. Yeah, we should like, what are we using
Speaker 1: the scripture to justify I mean, yeah, the whole the
Speaker 1: whole thing is a farce. Yeah. Separating families at the
Speaker 1: border is be use as a negotiation tool. Trump tweeted
Speaker 1: Democrats can fix their forced family break up at the
Speaker 1: border by working with Republicans on new legislation. It seems
Speaker 1: to be what he's suggesting there is that these children
Speaker 1: are being used as a kind of bargaining chip to
Speaker 1: get his wall, which is pretty disgusting. Another thing that
Speaker 1: he has said is that his hands were tied and
Speaker 1: that he could not overturn this policy by an executive order,
Speaker 1: that he needed Democrats and Congress to get their act
Speaker 1: together to do anything at all. His hands were tied.
Speaker 1: He said, I hate the children are being taken away.
Speaker 1: Trump told reporters on June fifteen, the Democrats have to
Speaker 1: change their law. It's their law. When he was pressed
Speaker 1: on using executive action, he said, I can't do it
Speaker 1: through executive order. But obviously that was a lie, because
Speaker 1: on June he did exactly that, signing an executive order
Speaker 1: to keep parents and children together in detention. More on
Speaker 1: that later, but pretty clearly that's there's just a lie.
Speaker 1: There's like, there's like no other way to put it.
Speaker 1: He said one thing, and then his own behavior illustrated
Speaker 1: that thing, that he was on camera saying it was
Speaker 1: not true. The Washington Post has a great video rundown
Speaker 1: of just a slice of some of the contradictory statements
Speaker 1: coming out of this administration. I want to focus on
Speaker 1: the American families who have been permanently separated from their
Speaker 1: children because of the sanctuary cities and open borders that
Speaker 1: Hillary Clinton so strongly supports our Department of Homeland Security
Speaker 1: personnel going to separate the children from their moms and dads. Yes,
Speaker 1: I am considering in auder to deter I am considering
Speaker 1: exactly that. I hate it, but that's a Democrat bill
Speaker 1: that we're enforcing. If I included things from just you know,
Speaker 1: spokespeople who are not in the administration, this whole segment
Speaker 1: would be about showing how much they lie. But I
Speaker 1: only specifically chose statements public statements from actual Trump administration officials.
Speaker 1: And this is how unclear it's being. And so when
Speaker 1: I was just compiling this, by the end of it,
Speaker 1: I felt dizzy. It was like, what is our policy?
Speaker 1: Is there a policy? It? Like? Is it? Basically you're
Speaker 1: saying there is no policy, But if there is, it's
Speaker 1: a Democrats fault and it would be a really good
Speaker 1: bargaining tool if there was, And actually it would be
Speaker 1: biblically mandated if we had one, but we don't have one.
Speaker 1: And if we did have one, Trump could not get
Speaker 1: rid of it by executive order, but he did, so
Speaker 1: you can get a sense of why this is a
Speaker 1: dizzying situation. Yeah, it reminds me of the narcissist prayer
Speaker 1: that you brought up in the guest. Yeah, pains me
Speaker 1: to say this. This is such a good example of
Speaker 1: gas lighting from our administration. I mean, I'm someone who
Speaker 1: pays pretty careful attention to the news generally when I'm
Speaker 1: not making a conscious effort to check out of it,
Speaker 1: and I feel like I don't have a lot of
Speaker 1: clarity about what's going on. And so imagine your average
Speaker 1: person who is, you know, a casual observer of the news.
Speaker 1: We don't have a situation where it's easy to understand
Speaker 1: what's going on in your own country, and that's a problem. Yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: So what's really going on? There are a couple of
Speaker 1: things that we can we can tell you. These are
Speaker 1: are sort of if we go back to the aus
Speaker 1: lighting up the stud this is my gas light where
Speaker 1: I know this is a number because I saw it
Speaker 1: on an official statement. You know, I know this is
Speaker 1: happening because I saw a picture of it, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: your facts that you can refer back to your journal entry. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we know that at least two thousand two children were
Speaker 1: separated from their parents between May five and June nine
Speaker 1: as a result of Trump's policy exactly. So one question
Speaker 1: that I've seen sort of floating around a lot is
Speaker 1: why is this happening? And I want to make it
Speaker 1: clear that a lot of folks have this narrative of
Speaker 1: people who cross our borders they're doing so because they're
Speaker 1: fleeing economic oppression. And so for a long time that
Speaker 1: was definitely true that your average person crossing the border
Speaker 1: was a man who was looking to find work to
Speaker 1: send money back home. But because of really really violent
Speaker 1: situations in Central America, places like Hondores, places like a Salvador,
Speaker 1: now you have people who are fleeing with their entire family.
Speaker 1: So the situation is really really changed. Many people are
Speaker 1: fleeing intense violence, gangs, and political turmoil in Central America.
Speaker 1: And this is really sounds like a terrible situation for
Speaker 1: people who have children, boys of a certain age when
Speaker 1: they become you know, tan eleven twelve, a lot of
Speaker 1: them are really targeted and pressured by gangs to join
Speaker 1: their gang, and if they don't, it could have really
Speaker 1: really violent outcomes. And parents sometimes have to work extra
Speaker 1: to get money to provide security for their kids if
Speaker 1: they want this to be a situation their kids avoid.
Speaker 1: It's also bad for girls and places like call Salvador
Speaker 1: and on Honduras, because they're targeted at an early age
Speaker 1: to either be sexually abused or to become gang members.
Speaker 1: According to the Atlantic, the eventual fate of a girl,
Speaker 1: whether she's left alone, harassed into joining a gang, or
Speaker 1: forced into becoming a sex slave, depends entirely on local
Speaker 1: leaders or palabrero's who run the local cells or clicks
Speaker 1: of two of the largest gangs, MS thirteen and Barrio eighteen.
Speaker 1: And it really just sounds like a terrifying situation for
Speaker 1: people who have children. I'm reminded of this really beautiful
Speaker 1: um worse on Shire, a poem she writes, no one
Speaker 1: puts their children on a boat unless the water is
Speaker 1: safer than the land. And that just really hits home
Speaker 1: for me, because I think we need to remember that
Speaker 1: fleeing economic oppression, to me is valid. But a lot
Speaker 1: of times people are fleeing really serious life or death situations.
Speaker 1: They're not coming here for fun. When you talk to
Speaker 1: so many of them, they say, if if I could
Speaker 1: have the choice to stay home, you don't think I would. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: of course they would. You know, people are coming with
Speaker 1: very young children, and they know that they're making a
Speaker 1: very dangerous and tough decision to cross our borders, and
Speaker 1: no one would do that with a baby, with a
Speaker 1: baby under five unless they didn't have a choice. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I read that. People have been trying to figure out,
Speaker 1: I mean, whether this works at all as a deterrent
Speaker 1: separating families of the border, and most everyone that they've
Speaker 1: talked to is said, that doesn't even factor into your
Speaker 1: mind when you make the decision I have to flee
Speaker 1: from my life, in my family's life. You're not thinking
Speaker 1: beyond that. You're thinking, this is a dangerous situation and
Speaker 1: I have to get out of it. And no one
Speaker 1: is going to make that. Yeah, no one's going to
Speaker 1: make that choice, that dangerous choice, unless they feel like
Speaker 1: there is no other option. Right. I know there's someone
Speaker 1: out there thinking, why don't they just call the police?
Speaker 1: What don't they just do that? That's not an option
Speaker 1: in a lot of these places. All these places they
Speaker 1: have such political turmoil that there really isn't a lot
Speaker 1: of action or recourse you could take. Right if a
Speaker 1: local gang is saying you need to pay me x
Speaker 1: amount of money every week or I'm going to kill
Speaker 1: you in your family, and you don't have that money,
Speaker 1: you don't have options to to do anything else, and
Speaker 1: so it just seems unimaginably cruel and not compassionate to
Speaker 1: not allow folks who are fleeing very serious life or
Speaker 1: death situations to do so. Sign Note I would also
Speaker 1: add that some of these places, I would argue, the
Speaker 1: reason why they have such political turboil and distabilities actually
Speaker 1: because of US foreign policy intervention. And so it's kind
Speaker 1: of like, oh, you're gonna make it so that my
Speaker 1: country is not a stable or safe place to live
Speaker 1: and then bar me from getting out of that situation,
Speaker 1: which to me is just unfathomable. Yeah, and to make
Speaker 1: matters worse, earlier this month, Jeff Sessions barred domestic violence
Speaker 1: and gang violence as reasons to seek legal asylum in
Speaker 1: the United States. So previously, if you were actually fleeing,
Speaker 1: you know, violence, incredibly you could come to the United States.
Speaker 1: That was that was how we did business. And honestly,
Speaker 1: Jeff Sessions, this move of barring domestic violence victims from
Speaker 1: speaking legal asylum in the United States just let's be clear.
Speaker 1: People will die at the hands of their abusers because
Speaker 1: of that choice. Like there's no other way to say it.
Speaker 1: People will die, and it will be. That policy is
Speaker 1: going to get people killed for sure, no doubt about it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know, I heard a report from someone. It already has.
Speaker 1: They've some reporters have like followed back to see what
Speaker 1: happened to people who are turned away, and it already has.
Speaker 1: Here's a good summary based on a box piece. Let's
Speaker 1: say you're fleeing a dangerous country like Honduras. You could
Speaker 1: go to a U s port of entry like a
Speaker 1: border checkpoint and claim asylum, which is legal. But if
Speaker 1: you cross the border not at a point of entry,
Speaker 1: it's a misdemeanor. If you're caught doing this, officials interview
Speaker 1: you to make sure you have quote credible fear if
Speaker 1: sent back to your home country. This is to determine
Speaker 1: whether you are eligible to go in front of a
Speaker 1: judge and seek asylum. About three and four people are
Speaker 1: deemed credible. So before Trump's zero tolerance policy, those who
Speaker 1: were deemed to have a credible fear would be put
Speaker 1: on a track to seed immigration judge who would figure
Speaker 1: out whether or not they could be granted asylum. Again,
Speaker 1: it used to be if you were fleeing violence, domestic
Speaker 1: violence or gang violence, that kind of thing. You could
Speaker 1: be granted asylum in the United States at that point
Speaker 1: if you actually are fleeing violence. The US has to
Speaker 1: keep asylum seekers because federal international law says they can't
Speaker 1: just support people back to places where they would face danger.
Speaker 1: And before Trump's zero tolerance policy, families generally would be
Speaker 1: kept in detention together while they waited for the results
Speaker 1: of these proceedings. Now, some families were released and told
Speaker 1: to come back for a court date. Others were kept
Speaker 1: waiting at attention for up to twenty days, and if
Speaker 1: they had not seen a judge by then, they were
Speaker 1: released and told to return for a court date at
Speaker 1: some point during the future. If you recall, during the
Speaker 1: Obama administration, this was sometimes called catch and release. It
Speaker 1: was a policy of sort of okay, come back, we'll
Speaker 1: figure it out later. And Trump really vowed to sort
Speaker 1: of end this this policy. Yeah, and here are some
Speaker 1: of the things that are different about Trump's approach. Instead
Speaker 1: of first figuring out whether you should be granted asylum,
Speaker 1: the administration's first step is now to deal with the
Speaker 1: other matter at hand, the misdemeanor for a legal entry.
Speaker 1: Upon being apprehended by border patrol, you are set aside
Speaker 1: to be detained by U. S. Marshals and sent to
Speaker 1: a federal jail to await trial. And this is where
Speaker 1: the separation happens. Because a child can't go with you
Speaker 1: to federal jail, he or she is taken from you
Speaker 1: and put under the supervision of the Department of Health
Speaker 1: and Human Services. And this is where you have those awful,
Speaker 1: awful pictures of children in cages. And for a while,
Speaker 1: there was no set process for how these kids would
Speaker 1: be reunited with their parents. Now, just early this morning,
Speaker 1: a couple of hours before we were in the studio,
Speaker 1: eight judge sort of made a ruling that families had
Speaker 1: to be reunited after thirty days. It's just a brand
Speaker 1: new thing. We'll talk more about that in just a bit,
Speaker 1: But for the majority of this conversation, there was not
Speaker 1: a process in place for how kids would be reunited
Speaker 1: with their parents. In detention centers, a lot of immigrants
Speaker 1: don't have phone access, and sometimes it's taken parents months
Speaker 1: to track down their kids. Additionally, some parents are being
Speaker 1: deported without their children, and advocates say that some children
Speaker 1: are being deported without their parents, and it just sounds
Speaker 1: like a really convoluted situation where parents are not being
Speaker 1: kept abreast of what's happening with their kids and vice versa. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and a common refrain that you'll hear when this this
Speaker 1: whole thing comes up, is well, Obama and Bush separated
Speaker 1: families too, and that's awful. But Trump's zero tolerance policy
Speaker 1: is what makes it different. While past policy also attempted
Speaker 1: to dissuade illegal border crossing, the zero tolerance part of
Speaker 1: this is new. The Obama policy made exceptions for families
Speaker 1: crossing the border with children to avoid separating them. According
Speaker 1: to figures obtained by The Washington Post, only about cases
Speaker 1: between two thousand ten and two thousand and sixteen were
Speaker 1: referred for federal prosecution per CNN. Under both Obama and
Speaker 1: his predecessor, President George W. Bush, tens of thousands of
Speaker 1: illegal immigrants were prosecuted via operations streamline, so as Politofacts reports,
Speaker 1: most parents traveling with children were exempted. So yeah, that's
Speaker 1: really a key difference, which is that there were exceptions made.
Speaker 1: You know, I don't. I want to be clear. I
Speaker 1: was a big, big, vocal critic of Obama's immigration policies,
Speaker 1: and I think a lot of people on the left
Speaker 1: were and so, but I do know that Obama's administration
Speaker 1: was legitimately facing an increase of immigrants coming through our borders,
Speaker 1: and so I think they implemented policies that I was
Speaker 1: very vocally against in order to deal with that. The
Speaker 1: Trump administration is dealing with no such influx of immigrants,
Speaker 1: and they are really kind of running wild with this
Speaker 1: immigration apparatus that the Obama administration really did set up.
Speaker 1: And so, to be clear, Obama's immigration policies are what
Speaker 1: helped create the roadmap for where we are today, and
Speaker 1: Trump is really sort of running with that. I've heard
Speaker 1: people say things like Obama built this apparatus and then
Speaker 1: gave the keys to a madman who was Trump. During
Speaker 1: the Obama administration, a federal judge in California ruled that
Speaker 1: Obama was violating a twenty year old case known as
Speaker 1: Flores when it kept families detained for longer than twenty days.
Speaker 1: The Trump administration has used the Florest settlement as the
Speaker 1: backbone for separation policies today. So that's our a lot.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's infuriating, that's a lot it is, but
Speaker 1: that's sort of what's going down. Yeah, let's get more
Speaker 1: into the conditions and what they're like for the kids
Speaker 1: who are being detained. But first let's take a quick
Speaker 1: break for a word from our sponsor, and we're back.
Speaker 1: Thank you sponsor. So to me, one of the saddest things.
Speaker 1: I don't know why this this particular nugget really stuck
Speaker 1: with me, but one of the saddest things I found
Speaker 1: about the situation is that parents a lot of times
Speaker 1: are being sort of missed lead about what's going on
Speaker 1: with their kids, and they don't find out until it's
Speaker 1: too late. According to federal defenders, some border patrol agents
Speaker 1: are straight up lying to families about how long they're
Speaker 1: being separated and why. A federal defender told Washington Posts
Speaker 1: Michael E. Miller that parents were told their children were
Speaker 1: just being taken away briefly for questioning. Liz Goodwin of
Speaker 1: the Boston Globe sites a defender saying that in several cases,
Speaker 1: children were taken by border patrol agents who said they
Speaker 1: were going to give them a bath. As the hours passed,
Speaker 1: it's suddenly dawn on the mothers that the kids were
Speaker 1: not coming back. I can't imagine what that would be like, having,
Speaker 1: first of all, a stranger taking my kid and saying
Speaker 1: I'm gonna give your kid a bath. Already that would
Speaker 1: be bad enough, but then waiting as these hours go by,
Speaker 1: and realizing I might not see her again, she might
Speaker 1: not be coming back. Yeah, it reminds me, and I
Speaker 1: do hate when people just bring up the Nazis all
Speaker 1: the time. But I did visit Auschwitz when I was
Speaker 1: in Germany, and you kind of have this expectation, you
Speaker 1: know it's gonna be miserable, you know, the kind of
Speaker 1: kinds of things you're gonna see. But the room that
Speaker 1: I broke john and started crying in was the room
Speaker 1: where it had all of the suitcases children had packed.
Speaker 1: Then they were excited because they were told like, you're
Speaker 1: going to kind of go to this fun like you're
Speaker 1: gonna get away and go to somewhere nice, and just
Speaker 1: suitcases as far as you could see of kids who packed,
Speaker 1: and it's just horrendous, heartbreaking, it is. Yeah. So so
Speaker 1: I want to say two things about that. Artists have
Speaker 1: done a photography series of photographing all of the things
Speaker 1: these kids bring. Because when you show up at these centers,
Speaker 1: they take your belongings. So if you come with like
Speaker 1: a teddy bear or like a doll. They take that
Speaker 1: from you. And there's something so heartbreaking about the things
Speaker 1: a migrant child brings when they're making this dangerous journey
Speaker 1: for their lives and then knowing that someone took that
Speaker 1: from them. You know, it's something something about that is
Speaker 1: so powerful to me. And again, what you said about
Speaker 1: this idea that the kids were excited, that reminds me
Speaker 1: so much of all of these gig holes in the
Speaker 1: media saying things like, oh, it's basically a summer camp.
Speaker 1: It's no different than when you go to boarding school.
Speaker 1: It's like people saying, oh, they get to watch movies,
Speaker 1: they get to play games. They're not what their parents
Speaker 1: their kids like. You could take me from my parents
Speaker 1: and take put me on a Caribbean cruise. If I'm
Speaker 1: not with my mom and I'm a kid, that's that's
Speaker 1: a problem. And the fact of the matter is if
Speaker 1: it's a summer camp and send your kids there, That's
Speaker 1: what I want to say. If it's a summer camp,
Speaker 1: then I would like Laura Ingram to send her daughter there.
Speaker 1: If it's if it's so nice, I'm such a nice experience. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And just the uncertainty and not knowing it would be
Speaker 1: so scary. You don't know what's going on. You're just
Speaker 1: you're just in this place without your parents, and very
Speaker 1: young babies are being taken from their parents. Three centers
Speaker 1: in Combs, Raymondville, and Brownsville in southern Texas called tender
Speaker 1: age centers, which have been repurposed to house the youngest migrants,
Speaker 1: including those younger than five. The Associated Press reported within
Speaker 1: three days, the children are supposed to be transferred from
Speaker 1: immigration detention to the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which is
Speaker 1: part of the Department of Health and Human Services. The
Speaker 1: CEO of Southwest Key, which operates twenty six o r
Speaker 1: R shelters, tells NPR the children at his facilities range
Speaker 1: from ages zero to seventeen. Babies babies, So here's why
Speaker 1: that's so bad. One former detention center worker who recently
Speaker 1: quit because of all of these conditions, he has been
Speaker 1: really vocal about speaking out about what's happening. He basically
Speaker 1: said that the most part before this policy, young people
Speaker 1: who crossed the border eight percent of the time, they
Speaker 1: were teenagers who were doing it alone, and they sort
Speaker 1: of knew the drill, They knew what to expect. Usually
Speaker 1: they'd be detained for a while and then they would
Speaker 1: go live with the family mem but or sometimes their
Speaker 1: own parents. And so these were older kids who sort
Speaker 1: of knew the drill. Now it's very young babies who
Speaker 1: are basically traumatized. This worker says, ad e quit because
Speaker 1: the shelter where he worked in Tucuna, Arizona, which previously
Speaker 1: had been pretty well run and well organized and was
Speaker 1: able to provide a at least some sort of structure
Speaker 1: for these kids, is now just overwhelm, helmed by an
Speaker 1: influx of younger, more traumatized, really babies, which is sort
Speaker 1: of a change from how things had been up until
Speaker 1: that point. Yeah, and when you think of just the
Speaker 1: logistics of it, a baby is not going to be
Speaker 1: able to speak, to tell you the names of his
Speaker 1: or her parents exactly. Yeah. I read a I read
Speaker 1: a really troubling and report that a girl was being
Speaker 1: detained with a baby, and that she didn't know this baby,
Speaker 1: it wasn't a relative of hers, and she was changing
Speaker 1: the baby's diaper because it was just such a chaotic
Speaker 1: situation that you had, like a young girl taken care
Speaker 1: of an even younger girl because the detention center was
Speaker 1: just that ill equipped to handle it. So this worker
Speaker 1: who quit, He actually says that his breaking point came
Speaker 1: when he had to tell two siblings, ages six and ten,
Speaker 1: they couldn't hug each other. They called me over the
Speaker 1: radio and they wanted me to translate to these kids
Speaker 1: that the rule of the shelter is that they were
Speaker 1: not allowed to hug, he says. And these kids had
Speaker 1: just been separated from their mom, basically just huddling and
Speaker 1: hugging each other in a desperate attempt to remain together.
Speaker 1: He had to say, you can't hug. That would break me.
Speaker 1: I would quit too. I would not I would not
Speaker 1: be able to do that. Yeah, that's like villain movie
Speaker 1: villain level of barbaric, like no hugging Southwest. Key says,
Speaker 1: it as a clear policy that allows touching and hugging
Speaker 1: in certain circumstances. So who knows, I mean. The American
Speaker 1: Academy of Pediatrics has said the practice of separating children
Speaker 1: from their parents at the border can cause the children
Speaker 1: quote irreparable harm, which, of course it's traumatic. Babies, particularly
Speaker 1: baby babies, like every kid I think to be with
Speaker 1: their parents, but babies being taken and put in a shelter,
Speaker 1: I mean, baby jails. How will we come to this? Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you haven't heard it already, Propablica obtained this audio
Speaker 1: of baby's wailing and it's just unbearable. Let's take a
Speaker 1: quick listen. If that doesn't kind of move you to
Speaker 1: wanna take action and help these kids, Yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: it's almost hard to talk about for me. Someone who
Speaker 1: was seemingly unmoved by this. This audio is Homeland Security
Speaker 1: Secretary Kristin Nielsen. Protesters in d C stood outside of
Speaker 1: her house and played this audio very loudly to sort
Speaker 1: of drive home the message that hey, this is what
Speaker 1: you're this is what you're doing. The Associated Press visited
Speaker 1: one site and described a large, dark facility with separate
Speaker 1: wings for children, adults, and families inside an old warehouse
Speaker 1: in South Texas. Hundreds of children weight in a series
Speaker 1: of cages created by metal fencing. One cage had twenty
Speaker 1: children inside scattered about our bottles of water, bags of chips,
Speaker 1: and large foil sheets intended to serve as blankets. That
Speaker 1: doesn't sound like a summer camp to me. Yeah, there
Speaker 1: was no situation like that in any of the summer
Speaker 1: camps that I went to. I'm very curious what kind
Speaker 1: of summer camps. Laura Ingram went to that this sounds like, yeah, yeah, seriously,
Speaker 1: this turned into a whole other, frankly silly debate about
Speaker 1: whether or not the kids were being kept in cages.
Speaker 1: It is not in dispute that children are being kept
Speaker 1: in chain link structures, but the administration bristled at the
Speaker 1: word cages because we're in that much of an Orwellian
Speaker 1: nightmare right now. Yeah, that whole debate that was a
Speaker 1: blip in the new cycle of well are they cages
Speaker 1: or are they chain link structures? I could give a Like,
Speaker 1: I was so horrified. Some of the conversations that have
Speaker 1: dominated the new cycle on this issue have made me nauseated.
Speaker 1: Me are they actually cages? Is it civil to kick
Speaker 1: somebody out of a restaurant? I could give a Kids
Speaker 1: are in real, real bad situations. The fact that we've
Speaker 1: kind of even allowed this conversation to even be slightly
Speaker 1: dominated by these frankly the silliness is in enrages me
Speaker 1: to know, and it makes it boils my blood. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Another thing that boils my blood of the policies, especially
Speaker 1: cruel to children's special needs and when Abundant on Fox
Speaker 1: News bought up a ten year old girl with Down
Speaker 1: syndrome who was taken from her mother at the border.
Speaker 1: Former Donald Trump campaign chief Korey Lewandowski said, wo wom Literally,
Speaker 1: here's the clip I read today about a ten year
Speaker 1: old girl with Down syndrome who was taken from her
Speaker 1: mother and put in a cage. I read about a
Speaker 1: they just they want want to a ten year old
Speaker 1: with Down syndrome. Anything you worked out, but the bottom
Speaker 1: line is when you cra absolutely can you imagine being
Speaker 1: this much of a toll? I mean, when I saw this,
Speaker 1: I was I just thought, I hate to say, oh,
Speaker 1: such and such as a monster, because I think when
Speaker 1: we demonize people who make bad laws and me say
Speaker 1: they're monsters, it divorces us from the idea that they're
Speaker 1: just like us. They're people who are responsible for really
Speaker 1: bad policy, but it sort of like allows us to
Speaker 1: remove ourselves from them. But when I saw this, I thought,
Speaker 1: this guy is a monster. This guy is an whole
Speaker 1: and a monster, and I hate him, Like I was
Speaker 1: so enraged when I saw this clip, so enraged. And
Speaker 1: he also refused to apologize for it. So another, this
Speaker 1: guy sounds like a real gem. So already, quick break
Speaker 1: because I'm getting a little a little heated. But I'm
Speaker 1: gonna talk more about where we're at with this situation
Speaker 1: and sort of what can be done about it. After
Speaker 1: a quick break, and we're back, Thank you sponsor. So,
Speaker 1: after much outcry, Trump signed an executive order, even though
Speaker 1: he specifically said that he had no power to do
Speaker 1: this earlier because he's a liar and an hole, he
Speaker 1: did sign on an executive order that made some movement
Speaker 1: on this policy. So basically, his order said that families
Speaker 1: will be kept together while awaiting proceedings. To be clear,
Speaker 1: it does not end his zero talents policy or include
Speaker 1: any plan for how the children who were already separated
Speaker 1: from their parents will be reunited. And so there was
Speaker 1: a lot of you know, well done Trump, blah blah
Speaker 1: blah that because it really didn't do that much at all.
Speaker 1: And again, I have a hard time taking this seriously
Speaker 1: because just days after he was sort of cajoled into
Speaker 1: signing this order, he was joined by what he called
Speaker 1: angel families, people who have lost loved ones at the
Speaker 1: hands of undocumented immigrants, in an attempt to shift the
Speaker 1: focus of his horrible policies. These families held poster sized
Speaker 1: photos of their slain offspring that Trump decided was an
Speaker 1: appropriate thing to actually autograph, which to me seems a
Speaker 1: little bit tactless, but whatever. I guess I'm not president now.
Speaker 1: Trump actually tried to make this really I think unfair
Speaker 1: rhetorical point that we're all up in arms about kids
Speaker 1: who are being separated from families temporarily quote unquote, when
Speaker 1: we've got families who are separated permanently because of quote
Speaker 1: the violence of undocumented immigrants. He said, these are American
Speaker 1: citizens permanently separated from their loved ones, the word permanently
Speaker 1: being the word that you have to think about. Permanently.
Speaker 1: They're not separated for a day or two days, permanent separated.
Speaker 1: Trump said, basically, you know, I know that it's very,
Speaker 1: very tragic to lose a loved one, um, and I
Speaker 1: think that people who have lost loved ones to violence
Speaker 1: or the actions of undocumented immigrants should, you know, speak
Speaker 1: up about that. I'm not saying they shouldn't, and I
Speaker 1: feel for them, but using that to make the case
Speaker 1: for his atrocious policies at our border is just it's
Speaker 1: not fair. Because he's sort of going off with this
Speaker 1: idea that undocumented immigrants are responsible for crime, which is
Speaker 1: just a lie. There's no truth to it. According to
Speaker 1: a report from the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank,
Speaker 1: one point five three percent of Native born Americans are incarcerated.
Speaker 1: Now compare that with the point eight five percent of
Speaker 1: undocumented immigrants and the point or seven percent of legal immigrants.
Speaker 1: The Martial Project and did an analysis of data from
Speaker 1: two hundred metropolitan areas over the last few decades. They've
Speaker 1: found that crime has actually fallen despite immigrant populations increasing,
Speaker 1: and other studies of much agreed that immigration has really
Speaker 1: no effect on crime. So Trump kind of saying that, oh,
Speaker 1: the reason I'm doing this is because there's all of
Speaker 1: these immigrants are coming into our country and covening crimes.
Speaker 1: That's just actually not a correct statement, even if he
Speaker 1: gets on a stage and says otherwise. Yeah. And on
Speaker 1: Tuesday night, a judge ruled that families had to be
Speaker 1: reunified in thirty days. A judge in California on Tuesday
Speaker 1: ordered US border authorities to reunite separated families within the
Speaker 1: thirty days, setting a hard deadline and a process that
Speaker 1: has so far yielded uncertainty about when children might see
Speaker 1: their parents. If children are younger than five, they must
Speaker 1: be reunified within fourteen days of the order issued tuesday
Speaker 1: by US District Judge Dana Sapra in San Diego. Sabra
Speaker 1: and appointee of President George W. Bush, also issued a
Speaker 1: nationwide injunction on future family separations unless the parent is
Speaker 1: deemed unfit or doesn't want to be with a child.
Speaker 1: It also requires the government to provide phone contact between
Speaker 1: parents and their children within ten days. So I'm glad
Speaker 1: we have a little bit of clarity on this situation,
Speaker 1: which so far has been very unclear for these kids.
Speaker 1: So I know this is a heartbreaking cluster of just awful, awful,
Speaker 1: but what can be done? So here's some things that
Speaker 1: you should know. One, if you're thinking this sounds like
Speaker 1: a nightmare, something that you should know is there's a
Speaker 1: growing chorus of folks on the left who are actually
Speaker 1: talking seriously about abolishing ice. So you might be thinking
Speaker 1: that sounds wild, we need ice. But actually, even though
Speaker 1: ice seems like a very big part of our political
Speaker 1: system now, it's really only been a thing since two
Speaker 1: thousand three. It was created in response to nine eleven
Speaker 1: under the Bush administration, which combined twenty two different federal
Speaker 1: agencies into a new cabinet level department. Now, for decades,
Speaker 1: the Immigration and Naturalization Service or I and S had
Speaker 1: handled legal immigration and the enforcement of immigration laws, but
Speaker 1: under the massive government restructuring in two thousand three, those
Speaker 1: tasks were split among three new agencies. Now, we should
Speaker 1: do a long follow up episode on the awful racist
Speaker 1: failures of ICE as an organization, but Tina Vasquest has
Speaker 1: a really good piece on rewire dot com called the
Speaker 1: New Ice Age An Agency Unleashed that will link to
Speaker 1: in the show notes, and she basically charts how horrible
Speaker 1: ICE is and how we got to this situation, and
Speaker 1: basically it just sounds like something needs to be done
Speaker 1: about ICE. She's a really telling quote from a former
Speaker 1: ICE official. The American public needs to begin wrapping its
Speaker 1: head around the disproportionate political power that ICE wields. The
Speaker 1: most extreme environment isn't extreme enough for them. Under Trump,
Speaker 1: ICE can do more damage than we've ever seen. So
Speaker 1: it really sounds like this is an agency that could
Speaker 1: use some oversight, could use some restructuring, could use something
Speaker 1: because it's not it's not working now. And actually you
Speaker 1: have lawmakers on the left who are formally getting behind
Speaker 1: this idea of abolishing ice. Congressman Mark Pecan out of
Speaker 1: Wisconsin announced that he would introduce a bill to abolish
Speaker 1: ICE and cracked down on the agency's blanket directive target
Speaker 1: and around up individuals and families and New York givenntorial
Speaker 1: candidate Cynthia Nixon called for ice to be abolished last week,
Speaker 1: and a number of congressional candidates, including deb Holland, who
Speaker 1: won her primary New Mexico earlier this month, of done
Speaker 1: the same. This week. Three Democratic members of Congress have
Speaker 1: joined them. So that's something to keep in mind. I
Speaker 1: think we should do an entire episode on this concept
Speaker 1: of abolishing ice, which I would love to do. But
Speaker 1: you know, if that's something that you think, oh gee,
Speaker 1: that sounds like a good idea, definitely do some more,
Speaker 1: some more digging into this this growing chorus of folks
Speaker 1: that are calling for us to be abolished. Another thing
Speaker 1: that you can do is reach out to your lawmakers,
Speaker 1: even if they've already heard from you, they need to
Speaker 1: note that you will not stand for families being separated
Speaker 1: at the borders. You can donate to the Refugee and
Speaker 1: Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services are AI c
Speaker 1: e S. It is a five oh one C three
Speaker 1: nonprofit that promotes justice by providing free and low cost
Speaker 1: legal services to underserved immigrants, children, families, and refugees and
Speaker 1: Central and South Texas. R A i c e S
Speaker 1: is the largest immigration nonprofit in Texas, with offices in Austin, Corpus, Dallas,
Speaker 1: Fort Worth, Houston, and San Antonio. And you may have
Speaker 1: actually seen this viral donation campaign going around Facebook where
Speaker 1: they actually raised a record breaking twenty million dollars for
Speaker 1: the organ So that's great. And another thing you can
Speaker 1: do is show up to a rally. There's going to
Speaker 1: be huge rallies and protests all over the country tomorrow.
Speaker 1: If you're listening to this on Friday tomorrow, j you
Speaker 1: can go to Families Belong Together dot org to find
Speaker 1: a rally near you. I'll be at the one in
Speaker 1: d C. So if you come, be sure to tweet
Speaker 1: at me say hello, I'll be there. I'll be very angry,
Speaker 1: but I'll be there. Um. Yeah, I think if you're
Speaker 1: if this is an issue that breaks your heart like
Speaker 1: it breaks my heart show up for it. Absolutely, we
Speaker 1: would love to hear from you. In the meantime. You
Speaker 1: can email us at mom Stuff at how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com. You can find us at mom Stuff Podcast,
Speaker 1: on Twitter at or on Instagram at stuff I've Never
Speaker 1: Told You Thinks. As always, who are producer Dylan Fagan
Speaker 1: and Cathleen Quilliad And thanks to you for listening.