CZM Rewind: What Can You Do? Mutual Aid Along the Migrant Journey

Summary

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Podcast Summary

It Could Happen Here – CZM Rewind: What Can You Do? Mutual Aid Along the Migrant Journey

Host: James Stout (Cool Zone Media)
Date: January 2, 2026

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Main Theme

This episode is a deeply personal, ground-level exploration of the journey migrants undertake through the Darién Gap and across the southern border of the United States, with a focus on the critical role of mutual aid, solidarity, and grassroots support in the face of systemic cruelty and indifference. Host James Stout shares firsthand reporting, translated interviews with migrants and aid workers, and reflections from the front lines—urging listeners to move beyond electoral politics and consider practical ways of supporting migrants in their own communities.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Harsh Reality of the Migrant Journey

• Personal Testimonies: Translated interviews from migrants recount the life-threatening dangers of crossing the Darién Gap and the emotional, psychological, and physical toll it takes.
  • “Just you finding yourself there and seeing how the environment looks like you feel like you should give up. I cried... It's not really an easy situation. At least it's just the grace of God for us surviving.” (Migrant Interviewee, 02:53)
• Mutual Support: Migrants often only survive thanks to acts of solidarity among strangers—forming human chains to cross rivers, helping the sick and exhausted, and rescuing those in mortal danger.
  • “You meet your brother, you give a lifting hand. It's not really an easy thing.” (Migrant Interviewee, 03:41)

2. Solidarity and Mutual Aid—On the Trail and at the Border

• Resourcefulness Amid Deprivation: When possible, those with strength share it. Acts of kindness, especially in moments of dire need, are precious but rare.
  • “There are very few people who are able to help you... You must help yourself before you can help another person.” (Migrant Interviewee, 04:48)
• Refugee Camps and Human Spirit: Despite bleak conditions, migrants and refugees maintain pockets of joy, organizing activities for children, cracking jokes, and supporting each other.
  • “Kids don't stop playing the moment they become refugees, nor do adults stop laughing. In fact, these things become even more important.” (James Stout, 05:33)

3. Faith-Based and Grassroots Aid—Contradictions and Shared Struggles

• Faith-Based Organizations: Feature on a Jesuit-run shelter in Panama City (“Fe y Alegria”) and the complex position faith groups find themselves in—sometimes hamstrung by new Panamanian laws or hostile public narratives.
  • “We had to stop that service because the state literally prohibited us as agencies from providing shelter... They could consider us as human traffickers.” (Father Elias, 07:23)
• Critique of Media Narratives: Father Elias (Jesuit priest) passionately criticizes the dehumanizing, sensationalist framing of migrants—turning them into pariahs, beggars, or objects of suspicion.
  • “Unfortunately, much of the media narrative...is insulting to the dignity of the person.” (Father Elias, 08:36)

4. Political Context and Systemic Indifference

• Changing Border Policies and Anti-Migrant Rhetoric: Political discourse in the US and Central America both demonizes and invisibilizes migrants, creating a dangerous environment for them and for those who seek to help.
  • “Trump wants to deport millions more people. Harris wants to pass a bill that will kill more people. You can't pass your commitments off to someone whose box you tick every four years. You have to take them on for yourself.” (James Stout, 40:32)

5. What Mutual Aid Looks Like—Real Life, Real Stakes

• Border Mutual Aid in Action: James recounts water drops near the border with the organization Border Kindness—placing vital supplies in treacherous terrain, encountering destroyed caches left by hostile actors, and reflecting on the necessity and meaning of these efforts.
  • “There weren't any TV pundits or big money donors on our water drop, just a few of us everyday people...all humans are brothers, and none of us want our brothers or sisters to die in the mountains, whatever their passport might say.” (James Stout, 19:44)
• Constant Challenges: Volunteers deal with not just dangerous desert conditions and the indifference of authorities, but also outright sabotage—from slashed water bottles to hostile anti-migrant vigilantes.

6. Why Individual Action Matters

• Scaling Help to Any Community: While water drops at the border are dramatic, James reminds listeners that migrants are present in communities across the country. Examples include Maryland welcome committees, Sikh groups on the West coast, and grassroots aid everywhere.
  • “Without a ton of fanfare, people all over this country are making space in their homes and their hearts for strangers, feeding them, housing them, and helping them get set up in a new place.” (James Stout, 29:18)
• Dropping Water as Joy and Resistance: For James, mutual aid is not only life-saving but also personally rewarding, a way to connect with community, land, and one’s own moral agency.

7. Media’s Complicity in Dehumanization

• Numbers, Not People: Both left and right mainstream media outlets frame migration mostly around “crisis” and statistics, rarely centering the lived stories or voices of migrants.
  • “Two minutes into this report and we haven't actually heard from a single migrant. All we hear is numbers.” (James Stout, 27:32)
• Language Barriers and Sensationalism: Journalists’ lack of language ability (and willingness to learn) further distances audiences from migrant realities.

8. Small Acts, Big Impact

• Light in the Darkness: James recalls giving glow sticks to children scared of the dark in camps as a practical, inexpensive way to make them feel safer—gestures that continue to send hope after he’s left.
  • “Nearly a month later, I sometimes get a message on my phone with a photo of a little tiny glow stick and a note of thanks.” (James Stout, 35:20)
• Sponsoring and Community Support: He encourages everyone who can to directly sponsor migrants (housing, legal help, basic support) or join existing mutual aid projects.

9. The Personal, the Political, and the Ethical

• Anarchism as Practice: James describes how his commitments to mutual aid and desire for a just world have supplanted his early hopes for benevolent government action.
  • “I wasn't really an anarchist until 2018, when I watched the state…abandon thousands of migrants in Tijuana, and climbed a fence with my friends to take care of them…” (James Stout, 37:17)

10. Calls to Action: What You Can Do

• Concrete Steps for Listeners:
  • Volunteer for or donate to migrant-aid organizations (Border Kindness, Border Angels, etc.)
  • Sponsor a migrant family; provide translation, legal or logistical support
  • Create welcoming spaces for migrants in your own community
  • Change the narrative—challenge dehumanizing rhetoric in your circles
  • “The way we change things is in the way we do things every day, every week, not once, every four years.” (James Stout, 41:06)

11. Migrant Testimony—A Final Word

• “It is not easy to leave our parents, our friends, our relatives, our grandparents, and we do not know if we will ever return or if we will ever see them again...But those who help us, we want to say thank you. They have opened many doors for many Venezuelans and, well, we hope in faith that they will open them for us.” (Migrant Speaker, 41:11)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "I almost drowned in some part. I was drowning by the grace of God. I was rescued."
  – Migrant Interviewee, 04:03

• “Sometimes the horrible circumstances of the migration trail bring out the best in people.”
  – James Stout, 05:33

• “They [the media] victimize and ridicule people in family groups and turn them into pariahs and beggars, then that is insulting to the dignity of the person.”
  – Father Elias, 08:36

• "How are we going to accompany this flow? How are we going to accompany these lives? And in what way can let these people's lives impact us?"
  – Father Elias, 10:35

• "There weren't any TV pundits or big money donors on our water drop, just a few of us everyday people."
  – James Stout, 19:44

• “The way we change things is in the way we do things every day, every week, not once, every four years.”
  – James Stout, 41:06

• "Please excuse us because we know that we are knocking on that door. There are a lot of us, but we are desperate...But those who help us, we want to say thank you."
  – Migrant Speaker, 41:11

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Key Timestamps

• 02:53 – Migrants describe the ordeal of the journey
• 05:33 – Reflections on resilience and mutual aid in camps
• 07:23 – Faith-based shelters barred by new laws
• 08:36 – Media’s dehumanizing narrative discussed
• 10:35 – Will migration routes ever “close” and what should we do?
• 19:44 – Water drops with Border Kindness and mutual aid in action
• 23:10 – Sabotage and destroyed supplies on the border
• 27:32 – Mainstream media’s focus on numbers, not people
• 29:18 – Mutual aid everywhere, not just at the border
• 35:20 – Giving glow sticks to children—a small act with large impacts
• 37:17 – Becoming an anarchist through mutual aid
• 41:06 – The meaning of everyday action over electoral fixes
• 41:11 – A migrant mother’s message to Americans

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Conclusion

James Stout closes with thanks to those who helped and trusted him, encouragement for listeners to step up and fill in the cracks left by an uncaring system, and an unflinching reminder: small acts of support, and refusing to turn away, can genuinely save lives and restore dignity in an inhumane world.

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For links to organizations or to get involved, check the episode’s description for resources mentioned throughout the show.

Transcript

[James Cordero]

This is an iHeart podcast.

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[James Cordero]

I'm Ashley Raifld, the host of the podcast. Good Luck with that. Good Luck with that is a skateboarding podcast about the past, present and future of women and gender. Expansive skateboarding. In our show, we'll talk with skaters like Bobby Delfino on pushing style, culture and the conversation forward.

[Migrant Interviewee]

You break down the door sick now.

[Father Elias]

Like hold the door for everyone.

[Migrant Interviewee]

I believe in that solely.

[James Cordero]

So listen to Good Luck with that on iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast.

[Kelly and Telma]

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[James Cordero]

It's me, James. And before we listen to this episode today, I just did want to make you aware that I conducted these interviews in French and Spanish, mostly Spanish, and then transcribed and translated them. So what you're hearing is a translated interview that's been edited for brevity and content. Hope you enjoy the episode.

[Migrant Interviewee]

Just you finding yourself there and seeing how the environment looks like you feel like you should give up. I cried the grace of God for you to actually stand by and say, no, I'll keep on struggling. There are a lot of people who give up. A lot of posts. Someone died. We met people who were crying. We met people who were crying. They didn't know how they could continue. It's not an easy situation. It's not really an easy situation. At least it's just the grace of God for us surviving. Because I can't say it's by my strength. It's actually the grace of God because what we actually went through, we met people who even collapsed. We had to help them. You meet your brother, you give a lifting hand. It's not really an easy thing. It's not something that if we are fine tomorrow, can advise any of our family members to go through. Because it's so deadly. It's risky if your family member is in there and it's not out. It takes the grace of God for you to even lie on your bed and close all your eyes. I, for once, I survived by the grace of God. I almost drowned in some part. I was drowning by the grace of God. I was rescued.

[James Cordero]

Yeah, he rescued you?

[Migrant Interviewee]

Yes, some guys, they rescued me. I was already. I was gone. I was gone. I was drinking water.

[James Cordero]

All throughout their journey north, migrants have little choice but to rely on one another and the solidarity of strangers. I heard dozens of stories like the one you've just heard in my time in the Daddy Inn. Total strangers who saved each other's lives and risked their own in the process. Rivers that could only be crossed if people from three different continents joined arms to form a human chain that children and smaller people could hold onto to avoid being swept downstream. Not everyone can help. Just surviving the Dalian takes all of what many people have. But for the people who are in a position to. Even in desperate times, there's mutual support among the migrants.

[Migrant Interviewee]

There are very few people who are able to help you. There are very few people. Only people who are kind can actually help. There are people who pass you by, other people who if you have lost your strength, it's not easy for another person to actually help break dough. We can really appreciate those who help because, yeah, having your strength is another. You must help yourself before you can help another person.

[James Cordero]

Yeah, right.

[Migrant Interviewee]

So if you can't really have the strength, it will be difficult for you to help another. So we don't really condemn them, but at least we are praying. We are, we are pleading on our brothers who are still behind that if they meet people, if they have the ability to help, they should do so because it's not really an easy something now. People gave up, gave up there.

[James Cordero]

Sometimes reporting on these places can paint them as bleak, unwelcoming, or just miserable. And certainly very sad things happen in the jungle and in the camps, in human things. But just like war or a natural disaster, sometimes the horrible circumstances of the migration trail bring out the best in people. As I've said before in this series, I'm comfortable in the refugee camps, at least in part because people there are looking out for one another. Kids don't stop playing the moment they become refugees, nor do adults stop laughing. In fact, these things become even more important. They're how we keep our humanity in a system that's inherently dehumanizing. And people don't stop organizing or caring about one another either. It's not just the migrants, of course. One of the families who've been stuck in Bajo Chiquito for almost a month was given some money by a local centre front member to take a bus. In Mexico, those who don't have enough money to take buses will hop onto freight trains. And as they speed through towns and rail yards at night, local people will throw plastic bags of food, water and clothing to them. In Panama City, I visited a Jesuit run shelter for migrants called Fe y Alegria.

[Father Elias]

Alberto went down to Darien recently, and we know from firsthand experience that the difficulty they have is moving. So some don't go through the stations, but they stay. So they appear here in the city, and so they arrive here. And some decide to stay and forego all the difficulty of moving forward.

[James Cordero]

Despite having been set up as a refuge. Recent changes to Panamanian law had made that work difficult.

[Father Elias]

We had to stop that service because the state literally prohibited us as agencies from providing shelter. And under the premise that if we gave them shelter without them asking for it, they could consider us as human traffickers. So what we do now is we give them food. If they decide to stay well, we help them with certain processes that we can call humanitarian aid. For sustainability.

[James Cordero]

I've seen a wide variety of faith based aid in my time at the border and much of it has been fantastic. But with more than a decade of refugee camps and resource poor settings, I've also learned to be a bit wary of faith based charity. But something Elias said early in our talk gave me a great deal of respect for him. It's not just that he said it, but he took the time to address his comments to me as a journalist because he saw this as a problem in part created by the media. And for what it's worth, I think he's right. It's something that as we try and help migrants on their difficult journey, we must always keep in mind he might come from a very different background than my mutual aid group, but we do seem to share the same belief in solidarity with the migrants.

[Father Elias]

Unfortunately, much of the media narrative, what they do is they victimize and ridicule people in family groups and turn them into pariahs and beggars, then that is insulting to the dignity of the person. So the way they portray migration is shameful in some cases. And this is very difficult. Well, for this, yes, I think that's very important.

[James Cordero]

After this, I figured I'd address the issue head on. And asking about the many churches and Christians I see preaching hate against people coming to the southern border of the U.S.

[Father Elias]

There is a sector in the Catholic Church and the evangelical church that opposes it and is more closely linked. And they are, in fact, they are, they're benefactors of Trump's campaign. So this one and this one are there. Well, well, those are like groups that are rejecting, let's say, the basic principle of the church, which is that we must welcome migrants and refugees. So they fundamentally reject it. So they invent all these narratives that Haitians practice voodoo and they eat pets and this and that or that, and it's shameful, mean or like the Venezuelans, that the majority of them are from Trende Aragua gang, or that they come from areas that are what you call problematic or chovanista and that they are infuriating or that or that. All the same narrative that was created when, when the Maritos left Cuba. And. And it's not that the Cuban government is sending all the prisoners on the Mariel boats to invade the United States. It's the same narrative.

[James Cordero]

Then I asked what he thought of the government's plans to close the Darien and if they could even do that.

[Father Elias]

People ask me, do you think the Darien gap is going to close and that migration is going to disappear. And I say, ask the Mexicans and the North Americans if the Sonora Desert has stopped being a corridor for people after Trump, because there was a time when all the media was focused on the migration that passed through the Sonora, and everything continues to happen, but then it became invisible and ceased to exist for them. But people continue to pass through and people continue to die. So, as you say, this, this is going to continue. Maybe not a half a million people, but the flow is going to continue. It's going to continue. And then the question we should ask ourselves is, what are we going to do? Or how are we going to accompany this flow? How are we going to accompany these lives? And in what way can let these people's lives impact us?

[James Cordero]

But like so many of us who work along the border, he says he is constantly fighting against negative messaging that encourages people not to follow their natural impulse to help and take care of one another.

[Father Elias]

So it's not a question of how. I always say, and sometimes they tell me, oh, that you always speak so badly of Panama, but it's not speaking badly of Panama. I love my country, and I feel that we, in general, the Panamanian communities, are very welcoming and very affectionate with the migrants. The problem is the narrative that is created, and then it generates stimuli that end up with a situation where are not seen so positively. And consequently, last week we had a meeting, perhaps on national reality, and we touched on the subject of immigrants. And the first reaction was, no, it's not the state that pays the fare of the migrants. It's not that. I mean, they pay their own fare.

[James Cordero]

After a week of my interview request being declined by NGOs and government offices, I found my talk with Father Goliath refreshing. It's nice to know that you're not the only one who sees a system as it is, which is fundamentally flawed and entirely propped up by misinformation, hatred and ignorance. But I don't want to get bogged down on that. Father Elias told me that when he sees migrants, he sees God in them and that he experiences his faith by helping others. My early experience with religion came in high school from a priest who was a teacher who had been part of the anti apartheid movement in South Africa. I'm not a religious person in myself, but I can understand how seeing God and other people is not that far from my own politics. If it's seeing God and other people that impels people to stand up against apartheid or to dedicate their lives to helping migrants, then I respect that. So after we come back I want to try and answer the question that Padre Elias ask what can you do?

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[Kelly and Telma]

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[Brad Palumbo]

The social media trend that's landing some gen zers in jail. The progressive media darling who's public meltdown got her fired.

[Border Kindness Volunteer]

I'm going to take Francesca off the network entirely.

[Brad Palumbo]

The massive TikTok boycott against Target? That makes no actual sense.

[Julia Ainsley]

I will continue getting stuff from Target and I will continue to not pay for it.

[Brad Palumbo]

And the MAGA influencers whose trip to the White House ended in embarrassment.

[Father Elias]

So refreshing to have a press secretary after the last few years who's both intelligent and articulate.

[Brad Palumbo]

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[Border Kindness Volunteer]

Like, if we're on the air here.

[James Cordero]

And I literally have my contract here and I'm looking at, you know, as.

[Border Kindness Volunteer]

Soon as I sign this, I'm gonna.

[Father Elias]

Get a seven figure check.

[Border Kindness Volunteer]

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[Father Elias]

The thing I love about Atlanta is.

[Border Kindness Volunteer]

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[Josh Whalen]

I really just had never experienced anything like what was going on in the city as far as like, you know, seeing so many young, black, affluent creatives.

[Father Elias]

In all walks of life.

[James Cordero]

The church had dwindled almost to nothing. And God said, this is your assignment. And that's like how, you know, like, okay, oh, you from Atlanta for real. I ain't got to say too much. I'm Grady, baby. Shut up.

[Border Kindness Volunteer]

Listen to Atlanta is on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Cash. Had like, heart condition.

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We got some food.

[Border Kindness Volunteer]

She almost died on us up at the top of the hill when we ran into them.

[James Cordero]

Yeah. After getting back from the daddy in and hearing the migrants share their struggles as they waited in Mexico for an app that's designed to delay and discourage them. I really struggled to come to terms with everything I'd seen and was hearing. I've been to plenty of dangerous places and seen war, state violence and terrorism. I know the tragedy of death and violence. But the slow and deliberate suffering inflicted on migrants by people who lie to us every day on television is particularly hard to bear for me. As I mentioned at the start of this series, I seen the grim reality of our migration system on my first day in Bajo Chiquito. Little girl's head hanging limply from a makeshift stretcher. A stranger's carried her into town. It's all so cruel, so deliberate and so unnecessary. And it felt so disempowering. But that doesn't mean there's nothing you can do. It doesn't mean there's nothing I can do.

[Border Kindness Volunteer]

So basically what we're gonna be doing is we're gonna go this way. I mean, we're gonna start. We're gonna go down into this, but we're gonna go that way and see where the light break is on the hill in between those hills. Running cut up.

[Kelly and Telma]

Awesome.

[Border Kindness Volunteer]

Go up in that area.

[James Cordero]

That's James Cordero of border kindness sitting at the roof of a group of five of us sit out on a water drop in the mountains east of Okumba. It's an area called valley of the moon, where boulders the size of trucks stack up against each other where people have been crossing the border for decades. This is a remote area, and not unlike the Dalien. Much of it is nearly impossible to access in a car. To get water out here, we have to walk. And if you run out of water or injure yourself so you can't walk out of here, it's possible you'll die just like the migrants do in the jungle. People get robbed here, just like in the Dalian. And if it wasn't for the five of us with our backpacks full of water, people could die of thirst here, just like they do in the jungle. As I was packing water bottles into my frame pack, I thought about little kids I'd met in Bajo Chiquito. This isn't a place for children either, but over the last 18 months, I've met hundreds of them out here. I've given them my jackets and hats, warmed up milk for babies in my camping stove, and even wrapped a little girl up in a mylar blanket with me to warm her up last year. Just like the Darien, the suffering here is out of sight and out of mind for most Americans. And in a year where we're constantly being told democracy is under threat, I think it bears mentioning that migrants are treated as humans without rights even when they're inside this country. And that their lives are seen as dispensable so long as whoever is in office can look, quote, tough on migration and make TV pundits and big money donors happy. There weren't any TV pundits or big money donors on our water drop, just a few of us everyday people. Some people come out here because their family members across the desert. Some come out because everyone who crosses a desert is part of our family. Like Bonillo said in Bajo Chiquito, all humans are brothers, and none of us want our brothers or sisters to die in the mountains, whatever their passport might say. And so nearly every weekend, people all along the border load up heavy bags for supplies on this drop. Each of Us filled our packs with water, cans of tuna, pineapple soup, some warm clothing, and in this case, an audio recorder recording.

[Border Kindness Volunteer]

Recording in progress.

[James Cordero]

Crying of course, this gave me an opportunity to discuss my life's calling. Ensuring the correct fit of backpack harness systems.

[Border Kindness Volunteer]

Yeah, you can release those.

[James Cordero]

It just doesn't wrap though. Like the straps, you either have to drop the weight belt or these have adjustable frames so you can make them fit. Not too bad. With everyone suitably adjusted and ergonomically optimized, we switched on the audio recorders, I'd attached the straps of our packs and set off. I just feel bad for you because there's going to be a lot of dumb shit.

[Migrant Interviewee]

What are my dumb speeches? Shut up.

[James Cordero]

From the edge of the dirt road, we took our first steps into the desert.

[Border Kindness Volunteer]

This first part is going to be a little slippery. You eat shits, okay? Don't be embarrassed. It happens.

[James Cordero]

This part of the border isn't that far from Hakumba, where this time last year, James and I spent a freezing night trying to keep people alive, running our camping stoves on full blast, giving away our own jackets to people who needed them more than us. At that time, I just returned from a trip to north and East Syria, which was stressful in its own way, and seeing both what people are leaving and how we treat them when they arrive here really pissed me off. A year later, with bags full of water, James and I spoke about things and how they got so much worse in the last two years. But press coverage and more importantly, donations have been way lower. It's the same story up and down the border. Record deaths, newer and harder migration routes, different migration patterns, and the people who cried outside eyes detention centers in Trump's first term, cheering for more walls and bigger DHS budgets. Meanwhile, unlike the Trump era, we don't have the support of thousands of liberal people in California's big cities. After the Democrats cynically used migrant suffering in their 2020 campaign, they abandoned them upon acquiring power and their supporters have mostly followed them. So that left five of us this particular morning to load up bags and do the life saving work of dropping water. On top of all the state violence, there's been more and more interference with water drops. As we got further into our route, we made the increasingly common discovery that someone had taken it upon themselves to destroy our supplies.

[Border Kindness Volunteer]

SM of ice.

[James Cordero]

That's probably the.

[Border Kindness Volunteer]

Oh, these ones are slashed.

[Kelly and Telma]

Slashed, Yep.

[Border Kindness Volunteer]

Sorry about the person drinking a Smirnoff Ice. Yeah, these are all.

[James Cordero]

Yeah, they all fly.

[Border Kindness Volunteer]

I mean, I'm assuming it's the person who brought the Smirnoff Ice because it seems like a Smirnoff Ice activity. I don't see a BP agent rolling through with the Smirnoff Ice.

[James Cordero]

This isn't unique to border kindness. Someone has been shooting supplies left by Borderlands Relief Collective half an hour west of here recently up and down the border. The combination of total liberal inattention and xenophobic right wing hate whipped up by streamers who I won't name and pseudo journalistic grifters who I will name like Bill Mullugan. Mullugan, of course, was previously famous for claiming that a cop had a tampon dropped in his coffee in 2020. Spoiler alert. If you're not familiar, this wasn't true. Milugan now works as a quote unquote border reporter for Fox News.

[Brad Palumbo]

Dana, good morning to you. We are in San Ysidro, a part of San Diego right now where hundreds of illegal immigrants have just been Mass street released from Border patrol custody. This bus you see right here, it is apparently an NGO or volunteer organization bus. They've all just gotten off a border patrol bus. Two of them, actually. They're now waiting to board this bus. I've talked to several of them from Peru, from India, from Colombia. The group from Peru told me they are here to work. They are going to Atlanta and Minneapolis. Let's see if we can talk to some of them real quick. Hola, espanol. De donde son. Ecuador. New York. Going to New York. They don't list on Costa Rica. Atlanta, Atlanta, New Jersey. Don't they?

[James Cordero]

New Jersey.

[Brad Palumbo]

New Jersey.

[James Cordero]

Chicago.

[Brad Palumbo]

Chicago.

[James Cordero]

Colombia. Colombia.

[Brad Palumbo]

Querentra. No, no. Asilo say yes. They say they want asylum. They don't want to work. Where are you from?

[James Cordero]

Senegal. Senegal. Africa.

[Brad Palumbo]

Senegal. From Senegal. We saw a lot of Senegalese in Lukeville, Arizona. Where in the US do you want to go to? What city?

[James Cordero]

Francis.

[Father Elias]

Francis.

[James Cordero]

Francis. Francis. Francis speak Francis.

[Brad Palumbo]

Oh, he says he speaks French. I obviously do not speak French.

[James Cordero]

Milligan's lack of language competency isn't the only issue here. It's a whole ecosystem of media built up of voyeuristically filming migrants without giving them a chance to humanize themselves. And it's not just a right wing issue. This week, each day has been marked.

[Josh Whalen]

By new daily records of migrants both.

[James Cordero]

Crossing the southern border and landing in custody.

[Josh Whalen]

The federal government is struggling to keep up. Three Homeland Security officials say Customs and Border Protection is holding about 27,000 migrants.

[James Cordero]

In processing facilities as of yesterday.

[Josh Whalen]

President Biden spoke with Mexico's president president about the issue earlier today.

[James Cordero]

And NBC News Homeland Security correspondent Julia.

[Josh Whalen]

Ainslie joins me now to dig into this trend. So, Julia, first, just give us some perspective here.

[James Cordero]

How is Customs and Border Protection operating right now?

[Josh Whalen]

And what are your sources saying about this historic rise in migrants at the border?

[Julia Ainsley]

Well, in some ways, there's actually a small victory here, Sinclair, when you look at the fact that CBP is seeing a record number of migrants. They've been at a record high now for three days in a row. They broke the record of 12,000, maintained that. And there are now almost 27,000 migrants in CBP custody. When we got to just about 20,000 in 2019 under the Trump administration, there were migrants who were there for weeks and couldn't lie down to sleep because they were so overcrowded. Now, because of the technology, they're actually able to not even hold people past 72 hours and very quickly release them. But the tragedy comes after that. There are a lot of migrants who are being released on the streets without being taken to nonprofits, and some of them don't exactly know where they're supposed to go. Even though CBP does try to coordinate with the cities where they are released. That's definitely happening in the Tucson, Arizona, area and Eagle Pass, Texas. Even though they are scrambling as fast as they can to release migrants, there are still thousands who remain in the field, a lot of them crowded under a bridge in Eagle Pass just waiting for CBP to take them in. The reason? A lot of people can give you different reasons why. One, perhaps Mexico is interdicting as many migrants as they were earlier in the year. They're now lower on funds because of these record highs. Another reason, sometimes migrants will say that they're worried about a future Republican administration or a future Trump administration. That might be harder. And so they think now is the time to come.

[James Cordero]

Two minutes into this report and we haven't actually heard from a single migrant. All we hear is numbers. We also haven't heard about outdoor detention, which at the time this was released was at its peak. Again, it's just numbers and CBP statements. I should also point out that lots of people are held for more than 72 hours or three days. The Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General report published in November 2023, a month before the news segment that you just heard said that 56% of people were held for longer than that, with some people being held for more than a month. This information is publicly available. It even had a press release. I Found it very quickly, and I reported on at the time, but NBC chose not to. Seeing migrants as a, quote, homeland security issue, not as people, is fundamentally the problem, and the way we fix that is showing up as people to help. Despite the massive media focus on the border in the last year, I very rarely see other journalists actually at the border. To give him credit, Maluguan does sometimes show up, but he doesn't stay long, and he doesn't really have the capacity to interview migrants even if he wanted to. The border's vast and mostly empty. It's a place I've come to know and come to love in my time dropping water and recreating and doing other mutual aid projects out here. Now that I have a better understanding of the journeys people go through to get here, I'm even more determined to make this small part of their trip less dangerous. And besides, I get to see cool rocks.

[Border Kindness Volunteer]

Oh, sideways, Mr.

[James Cordero]

Potato Head. Yeah, it looks like he's dying off.

[Border Kindness Volunteer]

Yes. Oh, okay, okay. No, I see that. Well, now that you say it like.

[Kelly and Telma]

That.

[Border Kindness Volunteer]

It looks very. Yeah, the eyes are real close to each other. Yeah, it looks like a melting potato.

[James Cordero]

Among the cool rocks. Last weekend, I found a Minnie Mouse doll. It reminded me of Noemi, the little girl I'd met in Bao Chikito. I give my number to hundreds of people before leaving Panama and heard from dozens. But up until then, I hadn't heard from Noemi and her mom. I'd heard of people being kidnapped, robbed, raped, and ransomed in Mexico. Some of them had been caught by authorities and pushed back to Chiapas, and others had been unable to leave Tapachula after having all their money stolen. I wondered which of any of these fates had befallen Noemi and if she was still having a Peppa Pig adventure. Sadly, between where I met her and where I found the Minnie Mouse doll, there's nothing else I can do. But here in the mountains outside San Diego, where the wind blows so strong sometimes you can barely stand up, I can do something without the ability to do something. Something which I know is meaningful. I don't know how I'd manage to stay on this beat. It's just too heartbreaking to meet good people, share meals and laughter and deep conversations with them, and then see them fed into a teeth of a machine that robs, brutalizes, and kills them so that Joe Biden can stand on a podium and say that border crossings are down. This month. They are down, and that's largely due to enforcement in Mexico. But I want to make sure that everyone who does cross the border can do so safely and they don't have to die on US soil after fighting so hard to make it here. This hasn't been the case for everyone this year. My friends up and down the border have carried far too many little memorial crosses into the mountains. And depending on the election results next week, what we're doing might be illegal soon. But that'll never make it wrong. Since early September, nine people have died in a little part of Southern California alone. My friends have searched for them sometimes found their remains and undertaken the thankless task of sharing the bad news with their families, then constructed memorials in their memory. This is just one of the many dangerous parts of the migration route north, but it's the one that I can help with if you're nearby or visiting for a while. There are several organizations dropping water on the border, Border Angels, Border Kindness and Borderlands Relief Collective here in San Diego. Ajo Samaritans, Nomas Muertes in Arizona, groups you search and rescue as well. Obviously not everyone lives here at the USA's southern border, but more than half of the population does live within 100 miles of a border. Even if you don't live in the usa, or maybe you do, but you don't live anywhere near the border, I guarantee there are migrants in your community. In the last year, I've worked with migrant welcome committees in Maryland, church groups in the rural South, Sikhs on the west coast, and Kurds on the east coast, to name just a few. Without a ton of fanfare, people all over this country are making space in their homes and their hearts for strangers, feeding them, housing them, and helping them get set up in a new place. For the most part, it doesn't get coverage under a Democratic administration. It doesn't get much public support either, but that doesn't mean it isn't necessary. Aside from all the reasons it's important, dropping water on the border is also fun for me. It's helped me learn more about where I live. I appreciate the desert and make new friends who generally share my outlook on the world. I love being outdoors, and I'd be outdoors anyway. But this way my hiker is about much more than myself. Yeah. What's that mean when you get somewhere with signal? Yeah, please. To all of you, please share it. Like I'd like to follow your journey, if that's okay. And maybe we can talk again when you're in America. Yeah. I gave my number to hundreds of people in the Dalian, as well as some websites they might find useful ones are NGOs, explained the CBP1 app, or the ones that might direct them to resources along their route. Last Sunday night, as I was absent mind least farming through a shotgun reloading manual in my living room, as I love to do, my phone started buzzing. It's done this so many times in the last month. Mostly it's a photo of someone I met updating me on their journey, or one of the little wooden animals that I give to children which has made its way to Mexico and hopefully given them some comfort along the way. Often it's less positive news. Someone's been robbed or simply run out of money and they need help. But I got two messages this Sunday which lifted my spirits. Noemi, the little girl who had an adventure like Peppa Pig in the jungle, wanted to know how I was doing and she sent me a photo of the tiny stone bear that I'd given her. She also wanted to know if we could still go to see Minnie Mouse as she came to America, which I assured her we could. I think it'd be quite apt to visit a place which bills itself as the happiest place on earth with someone I met in one of the most desperate parts of the planet. The second message was from one of the migrants I'd met in the jungle, telling me she'd made it to America. Not just to America, but to a part of the border where I'd been dropping water with my friends. Just a few weeks before I left for Panama, she sent me a photo of a rock with a message on it, one with which I'm very familiar. She told me about her walk, one which I've made myself. She taught me how hard it was. I said I knew, but really I don't know because I wasn't carrying months of trauma with me on the mountain. She's the only person out of a Hundred Sun I met who's made it here. Most of them are in Mexico now, and most of them will remain there or maybe get sent back home. Or maybe they'll make a desperate attempt to cross this week as you hear this before the election, it made me so happy to see someone safely here. One person out of hundreds. For so many of the migrants I met, America was a dream and the journey was a nightmare. Since this series began airing, I've seen videos of people I care about clinging to freight trains, their bruised bodies after being beaten. I've helped them find health care after they were sexually assaulted and tried to find room at overcrowded shelters. I've helped Trans ladies navigate all of this and transphobia and misogyny, and tried to find resources in French and English and Portuguese for non Spanish speakers. I'd hoped that I'd finish this series with a single good story, a story of someone who made it, who is living the American dream that people died for in the jungle. But I can't, because even the people who made it here are here temporarily, and broadcasting anything about their journey would put them at risk whoever wins the election next week. So instead I want to end with how you can make a difference. And I'll start with a story and how little things can make big differences. One day in Baja Chiquito, I was sitting around with a few Venezuelan kids, probably 4 to 8 years old, ripping pages out of my right in the rain notebook to make paper airplanes. Before I interviewed their parents, I asked them about the jungle. They said it was scary and they had nightmares. Now I often find kids in these places get scared of the dark, and I used to bring these crappy little electric lights for them, but they're bulky and they're not very good. Recently I've been carrying little packets of fishing glow sticks instead. They cost about 10 bucks for maybe 100 of the little green lights. So I pulled out my glow sticks, cut my hands and snapped one. The children were amazed at the little glowing rod, so I gave them the rest of the packet and told them they could keep them for any time. They were scared of the duck. Nearly a month later, I sometimes get a message on my phone with a photo of a little tiny glow stick and a note of thanks. One thing that Father Elias said that really impacted me is that when he meets migrants, he asks what he sees of God in them, and his work for them is where he finds what there is of God in himself. I think I've struggled so much with this series, in part because I have seen so much of the best of other people, and indeed the best of myself, in such hard places. I always struggle a little to readjust after trips like this, but this one's been particularly hard. In the jungle, I saw people helping, and in a sense, we were all in it together. When it rained, we all got wet, and when it got hot, we all huddled together in the shade. We shared bottles of water. We sat at the same tables and ate together. I can't really begin to experience a full Verian experience, because I've been lucky enough never to have anything that bad to run away from. But I have experienced the incredible solidarity and kindness of the people who went through it, I've also experienced the incredible indifference of people at home and indeed of the states and governments of the world. The Colombian friends I met in Lajas Blancas and Bajo Chiquito, who are handcuffs and deported and ripped from their families, have already invited me to come and stay in their homes in Colombia. But if their families make it here, they won't encounter that kind of hospitality. Just last week, I helped translate for a Venezuelan family living on the street in San Diego. Some of my friends do sponsor migrants, and that's something anyone can do if you're able to. It's an incredible thing you can do to change someone's life, and I can't encourage you enough to do so. I really do see the best of myself, of my friends, and of humanity in our work to help migrants. I would say that, on reflection, I wasn't really an anarchist until 2018, when I watched the state to the world, abandoned thousands of migrants in Tijuana, and climbed a fence with my friends to take care of them and specifically to distribute three huge backpacks full of waffles another friend had sent from his waffle factory. I'd stopped believing in the benevolence of the state a long time before, but it wasn't really until then that I really understood the power of people organizing horizontally to provide each other with dignity. Ever since then, I've drawn a lot of hope for humanity in the same places I despair for people. Maybe that's why I keep going back. Since then, at the border, I've seen people die. I've held crying babies and crying parents. I've also shared meals with people from around the world, made friends for life, and learned Kurdish disco songs about killing people. I've danced around campfires with people I couldn't have imagined meeting. When I first made my own journey here last Christmas, when I'd normally be at the bar with my friends, I sat on a rock in the desert, eating a cold Vegan MRE with an Ecuadorian family. Some of my friends, in all the Christmases I can remember, I never felt so much like I was in the right place, doing the right thing with the right people. While I've seen a lot of terrible things at the border, in the jungle, and I'll never forget those. More importantly, I've seen that together we can do incredible things and we can make the state irrelevant, especially in the places it's chosen to be absent. I don't think we should make demands of the state anymore. It's simply not in its nature. To care. But I do think we should make demands of ourselves. I don't believe in God, and I've written a whole dissertation about people who burn churches. But I think I see something that's just as special to me in the experience of mutual aid. And in a way, it fulfills not only people's material needs, but also our human desire for dignity and mutual respect. When I drop water at the border or carry someone's bags in the jungle, I see myself in them, and I hope they see themselves a little bit in me. But right now, our sign up system is so broken that very few people even make it far enough to drink the water. I leave at the border. And despite the border featuring heavily in this year's election, there seems to be no national concern about the way our tax dollars brutalize people across the continent. So I want to end by asking you what you can do. It might be coming down here to drop water. It might be sending some money to one of the links I'll include in the description. It might be offering to translate for asylum seekers. I might just be talking to people and helping to change the narrative. You can vote or not next week, but there isn't a box you can tick that will change the things I saw in the jungle. Trump wants to deport millions more people. Harris wants to pass a bill that will kill more people. You can't pass your commitments off to someone whose box you tick every four years. You have to take them on for yourself. The way we change things is in the way we do things every day, every week, not once, every four years. I want to end with Noemi's mum and her message to the American people. I also want to ask if anyone knows how to get cheap tickets to Disneyland, because I've just looked that up and I cannot stress enough how unable I am to afford it.

[Migrant Speaker]

Please excuse us because we know that we are knocking on that door. There are a lot of us, but we are desperate because complaining about the president we have is not helping us. No, he's doing almost nothing. So our children have no future and our country won't support us. It's not easy to leave our parents, our friends, our relatives, our grandparents, and we do not know if we will ever return or if we will ever see them again. It is not easy, but we also think about a future for our children. And I do not know what has happened, but we feel like living in a dictatorship. We are living something very unpleasant and we do not get any help. But those who help us, we want to say thank you. They opened that door for us. They have opened many doors for many Venezuelans and, well, we hope in faith that they will open them for us.

[James Cordero]

I want to take this opportunity to thank a few people who made this possible. Firstly, Darianella Bruce, my fixer. She was incredible. Secondly, I want to thank iheart for paying for this. Like I said, it's been nearly a decade that I've been asking to do this story, and I'm just really happy that they trusted me to do it. Thirdly, I want to thank everyone who trusted me with their stories, everybody who stayed in touch as they've come north. I want to thank Border Kindness and Borderlands Relief Collective, who have both welcomed me on their drops. And it's not always easy to be around a journalist. It's not easy to let someone record everything you're doing out there. And there are inherent risks to that. And I really appreciate them trusting me. I want to thank Dutch Wear Hammocks, who Rush shipped me a hammock when my old one tore right before I left. And I think most of all, I want to thank all of you for listening, taking the time to and all the listeners who have reached out to say they're listening to the series, people who've reached out to ask how they can help. I would love to organize a way to help the people I've spoken to. I spoke to someone just this morning who's still stuck in Tapachula because she was robbed and her and her daughter are 500 bucks short for the bus to ride north to Tijuana. I don't have the capacity to organize that right now, but if someone else does, they should reach out to me. Because I would really like to help these people who have become my friends and who I care about and who are right now stuck in a very dangerous place because someone in Washington, D.C. has made a choice to treat them with cruelty and not kindness. So if that's you, if you're the person who could administer that, please let me know. Thanks and I hope you enjoyed the series.

[Migrant Speaker]

It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, Visit our website, coolzonemedia.com or or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts, you can now find sources for It Could Happen here, listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.

[James Cordero]

This is an iHeart podcast.

[Father Elias]

Guaranteed Human.