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- [00:00]
Sana
Foreign.
- [00:07]
Gus Hossain
Hi, everyone. Welcome to the Tech Pill, a podcast that looks at how technology is reshaping our lives every day and exploring the different ways that governments and companies use tech to increase their power. My name is Gus Hossain, and I am the executive Director at Privacy International.
- [00:21]
Caitlin
And I'm Caitlin. And I'm PI's campaigns coordinator. Hi.
- [00:26]
Gus Hossain
As you're listening to this, we hope you're thinking about slowing down for the end of the year, maybe seeing friends and family or even trying traveling. So it's quite appropriate that this final edition of the tech pill for 2025 is about borders. But of course, this is PI's podcast, so this is not going to be a happy, cuddly discussion of borders. It's going to get dark, and it's going to get dark pretty fast. Caitlin and one of our colleagues, Sana, interviewed two amazing guests for this podcast who spoke about their noble work and ultimately about border violence. To give some context as to what we're talking about, over the last, say, 25 years, governments have worked incredibly hard to make borders inhospitable places. And nowadays, they're throwing immense amount of money and tech at this problem that they've created. And it's not just at the border. They have learned to extend the border to other places. So when you travel, say you're traveling around the holidays, look around and ask, what has your government done to other countries to extend their border? For instance, whenever Caitlin and I are flying back to the UK from anywhere, you notice that traveling to the uk, the people queuing up the airport have to go through a little bit more, have to get searched, that one extra time, get their identity checked one extra time. And that's because the UK Government has a requirement that airlines check people before they get on their planes to the United Kingdom. The US implemented similar measures after 9 11. You can see facial recognition across airports, fingerprints across airports around the world. That is all an element of border externalization. When you hear about governments collecting travel data even before you get to the airport to travel to the country, that is border externalization. That's them essentially extending their reach across borders, into lives, and into databases. Today, we're looking at the externalization of the EU border and the externalization of the US border into Mexico.
- [02:41]
Caitlin
Yes, they're slightly different. So border externalization is quite a broad term. And in the eu, as Sana will very eloquently explain, border externalization is largely taken by the shape of extending the border or extending the buffer zone in front of the border, protecting in Inverted commas, the border into third countries, where third party border control are an extension of EU border control that's through funding. And what it's intended to do is to keep people away from these actual specific borders. Whereas in the US the form it has taken is moving the border functionally into Mexico, so that if you're trying to cross that border, you never actually necessarily make it onto U.S. soil. Both border externalization, but slightly different forms, which also shapes the enforcement of those borders and the experience of people who arrive at them.
- [03:37]
Gus Hossain
And so money and tech flow, because these two governments do not want people to just show up at the border and demand their rights. And in this edition, you're going to hear from our two guests talking about what that actually looks like, what the experience of people is as a result of these policies. And Sana is now going to introduce herself and how PI approaches this.
- [04:05]
Sana
Hi, I'm Sana. I'm an advocacy officer at PI. I work on our Drivers of Surveillance project that hosts most of our border externalization work. I wanted to give a bit of context of why we really wanted to do this podcast. So last year, our project did a really interesting report called When Spiders Share Webs. And it was about the tens of millions of euros the EU has spent on border externalization practices through Interpol's West African Police Information System. I think at the time it had received around 58 million euros. And their aim was to strengthen information exchange and coordination among the region's law enforcement agencies. So it's a really great report that contains a lot of detail on the types of surveillance tech that's passing from the EU to African countries to prevent people on the move who are really just trying to seek safety from getting out of their terrible situations and kind of pushing that responsibility onto the third countries. And it documents some of the money involved, some of the tech transfers involved, and the data governance issues that arise, the human rights concerns that happen. But I think the little piece of that that is missing on a personal level as well is I want to know what happens to people on the ground. Even though I work in human rights and we all work in this area, I feel really disconnected from what happens to the affected communities. And if people like us feel disconnected from the lived experiences of individuals, it's impossible that the people who make these policies that change the realities of all these individuals, they know what's really going on. So the first person we spoke to is Dan from the Border Violence Monitoring Network. And this is an independent, self organized network of NGOs who's been working with PI in the past as well to provide us information about the lived realities of people affected by border externalization. And Dan was able to share with us what his experience has been of recording testimonies of people and how that documentation has improved the situation for some of these refugees and people on the move in the past, mostly through the border externalization policies in Europe. And we also wanted to make sure we understand more about what's happening on the other side of the world. And for that, we were really lucky to be joined by Kathy from Al Otro Lado, which is an organization that provides holistic legal and humanitarian support to people on the move on both sides of the US Mexico border.
- [06:28]
Caitlin
Like heads up, there are going to be some swears. We normally bleep them. We're not going to this time. So if that's not for you, then fair enough. And the other thing that's really important is our conversation with Kathy you may find quite upsetting in particular if you have sensitivities around either suicide or vulnerable kids. So just something to consider. She's an amazing speaker and definitely worth hearing from. But if that's something that is not going to be for you this episode, it might not be for you. But yes, it's a hard conversation, but it's a worthwhile conversation.
- [07:12]
Dan
My name is Dan. I work as part of the research and investigations team at bvmn, which stands for Border Violence Monitoring Network. BVMN is like built up for various member organizations which are usually grassroots NGOs based on various different borders historically and traditionally in the Balkans, but there's also members now in Calais and on the Poland Belarusian border as well. I used to be involved on the ground, so to speak, in Serbia with a member organization and a big part of this work is collecting testimonies on border violence. This is predominantly pushbacks, but also things like evictions of informal settlements, harassments, fingerprints being taken in violent ways, for example.
- [08:01]
Caitlin
Do you mind explaining briefly what pushbacks kind of are if people don't know
- [08:05]
Dan
essentially when someone is forcibly removed from one border to another without being given the opportunity to claim asylum after crossing the border initially, we understand them to be a de facto part of Europe's border regime, both on EU external borders and how the EU externalizes its border management on non EU borders. And pushbacks are often really violent processes in the sense that border police after apprehension frequently beat people do all kinds of violent things which in frequent cases can account to torture, including fast and dressy and Freezing temperatures, things like this. And yes, it's obviously something which is illegal in international law, domestic law, it violates human rights. But is yet systematically an element of Europe's border regime?
- [09:02]
Sana
Recording testimony for something so difficult and which is so painful for so many people. What has that experience been like for you?
- [09:10]
Dan
Yeah, I think I found from, from being in the field that people do want to speak about these instances because they know it's illegal. But people are scared to speak because of the fear of repercussions, even if there is none unnecessarily. There's the element of fear there. Yeah, I mean it's, you know, when speaking to people about pushbacks, it's not just hearing the testimony from, you know, the person saying that. It's also in seeing the evidence on the bodies of the people who've been pushed back and subjected to this violence. You know, lots of injuries sustained directly from border personnel. Yeah.
- [09:48]
Sana
And why do you think recording this testimony and this evidence is important?
- [09:52]
Dan
Yeah, I think it's hugely important. This is, you know, violations of people's fundamental rights. Yeah, pushbacks and these kind of border violence is the sort of physical manifestations of the policies which we see go down in Brussels. And the European Union uses candidacy mechanisms to. For countries which are pre assession nations such as Serbia or Bosnia, for example. And a key feature of these is pressure for countries like Serbia and Bosnia to adopt, I guess like the wishes of the EU and. Yeah, and I guess like the thinking behind this on the EU's part, I suppose is to make it harder and harder for people to reach the European Union and they can sort of instrumentalize their relationships with countries on the European periphery.
- [10:36]
Sana
And how is some of the evidence and testimony you collect use to help some of the people that you're working with?
- [10:43]
Dan
So testimonies as the cause of methodology and evidence we use at bbmn. So whenever there's the opportunity, so it presents itself, we have this archive of evidence to use for advocacy reasons.
- [10:58]
Sana
And you mentioned people often fear repercussions and sometimes there aren't any. Could you speak to that a bit more? What types of repercussions are people fearing? And when you engage with people, how are you able to convince them to take on this task?
- [11:13]
Dan
People are scared of anything which will affect their asylum claim, essentially. So like an example of that might be when fingerprints are taken in Serbia. People are very worried what will happen to these fingerprints. And I guess people are already on such like a risky, treacherous journey, you know, why risk anything else? But Then at the same time people want to share their stories. Like I say, it's like it's obviously wrong what people are being subjected to and they see the uniforms of the people who are subjecting this violence and they know which countries are affiliated and people want to speak out about this.
- [11:49]
Caitlin
Is there like a story or an example that's really stuck with you, like a particular person or a case that you kind of come back to a lot?
- [11:57]
Dan
I mean, I guess it's easy to talk about one which a heavily sort of publicized pushback which was actually like picked up even by the Guardian in like winter 2023. This is a pushback from Serbia to North Master. And yeah, it was rare that you get footage of these pushbacks, but on this case there was footage someone had filmed a group of sort of 12 adult looking men walking across the border from Serbia into North Macedonia. And they were, most people were stripped down to just their underwear and most didn't have shoes on and temperatures were well below zero. These kind of things account for torture and I guess like, you know, it's tragic, but it's like Benom. And I've spoken to people in Serbia describing a pushback, but they had maybe from Serbia to Bulgaria and been like, well actually Serbian police are good compared to Bulgarian police because the Serbian police didn't let dogs on us, for example. And you know, I guess that's a really damning statement.
- [13:05]
Sana
We're aware that these aren't just mass numbers of faceless people, but individuals who are being harmed. And how could we make sure that we either platform their stories or keep in touch with what BBMN is doing?
- [13:18]
Dan
Yeah, I mean it's all about keeping this sort of events which are happening, misinformation into the public eye. And I think people really need to understand that the kind of politics we're seeing go through Europe, go through the UK arise in the far right, that this sort of violence happening to real people, you know, on borders far away, it's directly a result of this kinds of politics and this kind of thinking. And it would be great for more people to be aware about what's happening on these borders and, and how the EU is facilitating that. And also the likes of the iom, they're deeply complicit in this kind of violence. Supplying border personnel with surveillance equipment which facilitates these pushbacks. Also the UK with sort of fantasy of offshoring migration management. They're looking at the western Balkans to do this. And recently in government announcements have talked about providing drones and whatnot to Serbia, similar to the eu. So it's, you know, it's an ideology shared in both EU and UK politics post Brexit. And yeah, people should know that this is what it looks like on the ground.
- [14:30]
Caitlin
You mentioned a couple of times the iom, which I think is the UN body, right. International Organization for Migration providing technology. Obviously drones are part of that. But what kind of technologies have you been seeing? Like, it's pretty an unreasonable question asking how expensive they are, but you know, given the context of money coming from the eu, the iom, the uk. Yeah. How expensive are they?
- [14:53]
Dan
Yeah, mainly drones are reported used and it's in the context of a drone was heard overhead. I've seen overheads and then like 20, 30 minutes later the police apprehended. But drones of a mass reported tech. And I think this is just because of their visibility. There's heaps of other tech available which we see through like European tenders and IOM tenders, things like fixed surveillance systems in some cases you can obviously just see them with your eyes on the borders, but then also things like sensor lines, there's mobile surveillance systems which should essentially vans with like thermal imaging cameras on top, things like this. So this is a. The kind of tech and you know, I can't really tell you how much like a mobile surveillance system costs compared to a drone or a sensor line etc, but it is big business and there's like, there's lots of companies making a lot of money from this and it's hard to as well say how much IPA funding is used specifically on surveillance tech as well, because the reporting of this sort of in EU documents, they kind of use quite vague language and it's like equipment to support, you know, migration management or something like this. And some of that could be tech use, some of that could be like cars or something like. Yeah. So specifically what's been on tech is hard to say though. From EU IPA funded tenders on the behalf of Serbia in 2023 and 2024, I think it was 7 million was spent on just a few lots of drones. Two fixed surveillance systems, one on Serbia Bulgaria border, one on the Serbia North Macedonia border, and a few mobile surveillance systems, vehicles with the sort of cameras on top. And then plus there was also his company Comp Optics, who are a Bulgarian surveillance tech provider and a big profiteer on this sort of border industrial complex which is developing. And in September, I think it was around like 10 million euros a worth of tenders they won in, in that month. This is not necessarily, I Guess like externalization in the sense it wasn't for tech used in third countries, it was mainly used in Bulgaria and also trainings. It was also important to remember. But these companies make money from the tech, but also from the trainings and the maintenance.
- [17:22]
Caitlin
So when it comes to EU IPA funding, that's the money that countries who want to be part of the EU but aren't part of the EU, but are in the process of potentially becoming part of the EU get as part of the process to become like EU worthy or EU compliant or I don't know what the right wording would be.
- [17:40]
Dan
Yeah, it's for pre accession nations. So I guess on paper it's countries which want to join the European Union and whether or not this is the case, you know, maybe not necessarily like Serbia, for example, sits in a pretty interesting geopolitical position between the EU and Russia, for example, like it suits them to be in this position. And one of those things is because they can get money from the eu, like significant money through these sort of pre assession mechanisms and a way to sort of legitimize this money. Like it's not just money for Barda, quote unquote, management also, you know, infrastructural stuff, social stuff, useful money for Serbia, but they can sort of play good soldier for the EU as someone located geographically on the periphery and the Serbia's external borders can act as European Union's external borders paid for by. There's IPA funding. Yeah, there's lots of recipients of IPA funding, including Bosnia, Albania, Turkey.
- [18:42]
Caitlin
So if you were an EU taxpayer or an mep, like what information comes back to the EU about those pushbacks and particularly the kind of violence involved in them? If, you know, you send that money to Serbia, how much information do you get back about the kind of really horrific versions of things, or is it still quite vague and kind of difficult to follow even as an EU taxpayer or an MEP or someone at that level?
- [19:10]
Dan
Yeah, I guess I'm actually not an EU taxpayer, so I don't know necessarily. But in terms of the reporting on how like the spending is going, it's interesting in like a not nice way, but like pushbacks are acknowledged to happen consistently, but also, you know, the violence is not acknowledged and the successes are reported on a lot. So for example, in winter of 2023 and on the Serbian Hungarian border, there was a big policing operation blocking movement through this border, which at that time was a lot of movement. A lot of people were entering the EU via the Serbian Hungarian border. This operation Was like, really violent and destroyed loads of all the informal living sites on that border and affected the. The pattern of migration through Serbia. This was reported on as, like, success in the sense that migration was slowed down, the less people, less crossings were recorded. But in reality, what this meant was that, you know, people were still transiting through Serbia to the eu. Just people were using routes through Bosnia, crossing Katrina River, Marsa, which is a really geographically treacherous crossing compared to the Serbian, Hungarian one, which involves crossing mountains and a dangerous river. And know, this is a. This is a place on Serbia's borders where most people die. And on top of that as well, the routes people took through Serbia became more hidden. And as a result, it gave gangs who facilitate this movement more power over the people they were helping to transit. I guess my point is that any kind of like, military intervention on a border just makes the vulnerable people more and more vulnerable and bestows more power on the gangs, which these, like, border interventions are starting to tackle, for example. And what may be reported on as a success to a European taxpayer in reality is probably bestowing more power to gangs and violence to individuals.
- [21:18]
Caitlin
Do you think the EU have gotten the master on, even on their own kind of terms, of what border externalization is or isn't doing for them, like its own stated aims?
- [21:28]
Dan
You know, I think they're only interested in reducing the amount of crossings recorded, whether that means increasing the amount of pushbacks, for example. I don't think that sort of stat is. Is maybe that interesting because effectively, you know, Europe and European, you know, border guards on the European periphery have gotten away with pushbacks for years. You know, it's not new, have been recorded for, like almost a decade at this point. So I think it's really not that worried about, I think probably, but. And that they know that this sort of investment increases violence, potential for violence.
- [22:09]
Caitlin
Do you think if people who want to decrease, you know, the rate of migration or whatever have had been kind of where you've been and talking to the people you've been talking in that think the same way about pushbacks?
- [22:21]
Dan
I think not. Yeah, I think it's completely different if you see the violence up close, but I think that's so far away from people who are pushing these politics, you know, their agenda. But yeah, I mean, that's it. I guess that's the point of doing advocacy and collecting this evidence and trying to push it into the agenda of politicians and more into a public sphere is, yeah, if more people were aware of what's going on on borders, less people Might be keen to push politics, which enables that.
- [22:59]
Sana
You mentioned a few times the types of tech that are used at the border. So how aware do you think people on the move are of the types of tech being used? And is there a sense of fear created by just the uncertainty of what sort of surveillance technology might be used against them?
- [23:15]
Dan
Yeah, for sure. I think in some cases, yes. Like with like drones and stuff, which tech which is more visible and seeing the cameras on fences, you know, people are aware of this. But then there's also tech which is a lot more hidden, like these remote sensor lines which are essentially like sort of lasers which are invisible and go off and will notify a sort of command center where police will be. People might not be as aware of these things by design, you know, and a lot of this tech is designed to be hidden also. But, yeah, in terms of the fear, yeah, certainly people have mentioned the anxiety and the sort of paranoia instilled by hearing drones and then what might happen afterwards. But then again, it's relative, you know, like people are crossing like a border fence, like they have to interact with smuggling gangs, which can be a dangerous thing in itself because there are no safe and legal routes to asylum, really. And, yes, people are scared of these things. I think more simply, people are scared of their asylum claim, getting affected and being subjected to physical violence. So I think it is. It's relative. And it felt that way when speaking to people and. And it seems strange when receiving a test. We need to ask, did you also hear a drone whilst you were getting beaten? It's relative.
- [24:39]
Caitlin
Do you know if any of the drones have MC catchers or stingrays or. For the listener, they're a kind of technology which imitates a cell phone tower to capture kind of information that normally would pass between you and the cell phone tower that you're using. It's like a way of pretending to be that cell phone tower to make phones in a particular area connect to it. That's a really bad example. But do you know if IMSI catches are used on borders?
- [25:02]
Dan
Yeah, they are. I can't say I know much about them or have heard about their use on Serbian borders, like in what's been bought through EU tensions there, especially on drones. Don't quote me on this, but I feel like I've seen reports in them. Their use on the Bulgaria Turkish border, which is very much the frontier of Europe's militarization and kind of testing ground for what tech can the EU get away with on the Bulgaria Turkish border? So, yeah, in terms of land borders, this is as well, which is all I can claim to be able to talk about at all. I think, in terms of what's at the cutting edge of tech being used for detection on physical borders, whatever's happening on the Bulgaria Turkey border is likely to be at the forefront of that, in my opinion.
- [25:54]
Caitlin
Do you know how much of that data gets used in actual, like, asylum processing? Or is it kind of more to do with finding where people are?
- [26:02]
Dan
Yeah, so I guess there's kind of two uses of surveillance tech. There's like the tech which is used, yeah. For detection deterrence on the physical borders, which then can be used to facilitate pushbacks, et cetera, and as a deterrent to stop people wanting to use that border and push them to more dangerous routes. And then there's the other use of tech, which is sort of biometric data collection, like fingerprinting and facial recognition technology. So fingerprinting happens a lot for people on the move. In Serbia, for example, it's a prerequisite to gaining registration for father reception camps, which are run by the state agency for refugees in Serbia. And also fingerprints are often taken after people have been apprehended once they've crossed into Serbia. There's even been accounts of people have crossed into Serbia, had their fingerprints taken and then been pushed back. And obviously this is like worrying in itself. It's total violation. And, you know, there's no translations happening in the. In the first languages of the people whose fingerprints are getting taken in most cases, and people are forced to give these fingerprints. But also, Serbia's biometric database is compatible with Eurodac, the European Union's biometric database. And this is something which has been pushed far over the years in these EU candidacy mechanisms, for example, to enable the IPA funding. So just because the database systems are compatible doesn't mean that the fingerprints are getting passed from Serbia to the European Union. But they could, and it could be in the agenda of the European Union in the future. So that's a worry, obviously. And yeah, on top of that, facial recognition. Yeah. Similarly, it's all of concerns about what can be done in the future, like various drones which have spot checking capability, which basically can use facial recognition within drones. And this is. Yeah, I worry that sort of software is being used and faces are getting registered doing an illegal crossing, then this could be used against an asylum claim that they've crossed illegally, for example. I'm definitely not saying that this is happening, but the European Unions like leaving the door open for the possibility of these kind of things in the future by really pushing for Eurodac compatibility in third countries. And the AI act was left open for use on security, including border security. So tech provided by the EU and the likes of Serbia, which could have AI powered facial recognition software, the possibility for that has all been left wide open through these apps.
- [28:48]
Caitlin
I think it's also true. Facial recognition has been proved pretty consistently to be pretty inconsistent in how well it works. And so it's pretty disturbing that it would be used in such a sensitive context. And obviously it isn't necessarily all the time and it isn't being used everywhere. But there is a whiff of experimentation in a lot of the texts that we see get used at borders.
- [29:10]
Kathy
Right.
- [29:10]
Caitlin
It's like there are less safeguards and so there is more options to kind of just slap things on that don't necessarily make a huge amount of sense, practically. That's not really a question, that's a
- [29:24]
Dan
bit of a rant, but I think it's really true. Yeah. Border areas are a huge site of experimentation. I mean, even the fact that there's so many EU Horizon projects, which is the RNI branch of the eu, which are focused on developing border surveillance technologies. In particular, it's no secret that they're testing out tech on these borders and they're also like surveillance tech which can be used for military purposes. There was a project called ROW Border, which was tested on the Serbian Hungarian Bordeaux, ended in 2021. And that was for, like, autonomous swarms of drones, which, you know, the specific development would be that they had long flight durations and could withstand, like, strong winds and stuff like this. But this was tested on the Serbian Hungarian border and they specifically didn't exclude military use as an outcome of the project. Yeah. And also what's funny about these EU Horizon projects, as they often say, like AI, we have, you know, we have these like, funny names like Robota, like it sounds ridiculous. And then also ones which include AI in the name or in their brief. But when you look into it, it actually isn't AI in the tech. It's sort of like a marketing thing. Like, you know, the border guards and politicians who are speaking about the border, they want to be saying, we've got the highest tech available, we've got got AI, etc, but might actually not be the case. And sometimes, you know, you might have the most high tech, but if your cars are breaking down, then, you know, you can't use it, which. Which can be the case in third countries when all the money goes to, like, high Tech, because that's what politicians and maybe police chiefs feel like they need. But the reality is the fundamentals out there to use the tech. So yeah, it's definitely a case of there's always tech outbound. How much has actually been used and how much is. Is there even any point in being used. We have like lots of testimonies where tech has facilitated pushback, but the majority, the overwhelming majority are not tech facilitated. You know, it's like old fashioned policing, so to speak. It's equally as effective in creating the goal of Fortress Europe.
- [31:37]
Caitlin
I think the military points are really interesting one because it kind of brings us neatly to how we started, which is to say that the language of the military and the ultimate military usage of some of this technology is being used not on opposing armed forces, but on unarmed, very vulnerable people with nowhere else to go, desperately seeking safety. I think that is a particularly disturbing kind of image.
- [32:04]
Dan
Yeah, this is like technology's been tested and developed on unarmed people by the global north, on people from the global South. And this is, you know, a direct parallel in sort of colonial histories and colonial logics whereby in like India and in Kenya, the British Empire, you know, they pioneered fingerprinting and the use of photo IDs which are now widespread. And it's just, you know, it's a similar thing of these sort of power dynamics where tech is getting tested and sort of motivations and ideologies behind the use.
- [32:41]
Caitlin
The technology is new, but the pattern is old.
- [32:43]
Dan
Yeah, exactly.
- [32:45]
Caitlin
Well, it's been really wonderful to speak with you and we'll include some links in the description to Border Violence Monitoring Network's work and their reports that you've been working on. And yeah, thank you for speaking to us.
- [32:56]
Dan
Thank you.
- [33:00]
Sana
Thank you so much, Dan, for helping us understand what's going on on the EU side of things. We're going to hear next from Kathy who's talking about what's going on on the US Mexico border. So the US has agreements with Mexico and other Central American countries to process migrants as they try to access the US and this has lots of varying impacts on the ground. So we're going to hear more from Kathy about that.
- [33:28]
Kathy
Kathy, I'm a Mexican attorney. I've done border work for maybe six years, seven years. Also my background, I used to work with indigenous communities since I'm from Guerrero. But I focus more on the border because that's where I grew up. And I used to work at a shelter. So I also know what's happening on shelters. Right. Then I contracted for Some US law firms. And then I got offered a position in El Otolado. This year, I started supervising the Border Rights Project. So I looked at a lot of parts in the Mexican side and the U.S. side. Right. The U.S. side is more focused on advocacy, on class action lawsuits, on litigation, I guess these policies. And the Mexican side focus more on. On face to face, more in ground work with victims of further displacement and over migrants, asylum seekers. In the Mexican side, we also provide humanitarian aid. Before this Trump 2.0, we used to also help extremely vulnerable cases get them pulled in. And I also used to coordinate the uncompanied minors program, which was minors getting to the border. We will accompany them to make sure that their right to seek asylum and a port of entry was not denied.
- [34:57]
Caitlin
So you do a lot of work with people, people who have experienced displacement and who are trying to claim their human right to seek asylum?
- [35:05]
Kathy
Yes. And part of our staff also. It's part of the breach that we're trying to tear down. I wasn't a companion miner myself back then. Our LGBT coordinator, she's a migrant, she was deported, and she used to live in a shelter. So we work on that sense. Right.
- [35:23]
Caitlin
So it's a very personal issue to the people who work at Electron Ladder.
- [35:27]
Kathy
Yes. At least in my experience. I lost my brother to suicide after everything he suffered in the system. Being a migrant child, being an accompanying minor on the system. And that was my passion, you know, to stop from any other little brother to have to decide to go. And maybe if I would have gotten a Cathy in helping me, helping my brother, and we wouldn't be. Because we got separated. I was a little bit older, so they decided that I was of age, which I wasn't, and my brother was put away on the system or R and everything eventually. And then I was offered the accompanimentals program. And that's when I was like, okay, now this is personal. For around two years, we help almost 600 kids to present. So it's 600 kids that they will not be stranded here in the border because nobody listened to them, that they needed protection. Surely enough for the last cases that we presented. Personally, I felt I was taking them from one mouth of a wolf and putting them to another. Right. Because of what's happening right now, the witch hunt, however, I mean, we're trying to class action lawsuits. We are fighting back. So we make sure that none of these kids and none of other people that we've helped are in danger.
- [37:03]
Caitlin
That's amazing. 600 kids is a huge number. And I Mean, what's it like for like kids on the move?
- [37:10]
Kathy
So most of them were Haitian and Mexicans. In the Mexican population, maybe 30% or 40% were indigenous. Most of them from the same state that I was born in, Guerrero. We worked a lot with La Chinola, which is a justice center in the high mountain of Guerrero, that they would refer kids to us that they were here in the border. The common factor of all the kids is that they're victims of the systems in their countries or in their communities. And all of them were victims of. For displacement. And it's sad to know that, that right now, because of the border shutdown, the kids are not coming to the border because they've seen news and all the kids, I mean, it's not that they're not running away or it's not that they're in danger anymore. The fact that they haven't reached the border. It's just that they got trapped in the web net, you know, from the Mexican kids, especially the older ones, the teens, they were running away from the cartels, from force recruitment, or they were the sole survivors in the community. Because all the men, they've already been killed from. They used to work in the ranch with their families and neither their parents were killed because they didn't pay the extortion or, you know, and it hurts now to see like why those kids haven't reached the border, you know, because they got stranded. Because kids and accompanying minors are the least of the priorities, you know, of the people that should and can do something. In alotrolada, we focus on linguistically isolated, medical, vulnerable, disabled. And kids, you know, all of those are on the other side of the tech divide. And that's what bring us to this subject. The border externalization is like. It prolongs the period of people that are in danger of deportation or in danger because they're stranded. If you didn't sign up for this job, you gonna get to hear and witness a lot of things that if you can't prepare yourself enough and self care, there's no way of coming back from that. A kid that has lost their parents and was a sole survivor of massacre in Oaxaca, for example, that luckily some good people got her away from there. And that's very same day that they got here. We helped them present kids that are trafficked, and it's a lot that we've witnessed. Also right now there is a witch hunt for organizations that are helping, that are aiding unaccompanied minors. They lost funding. Of course. The government is not going to be that stupid enough to target directly the kids. Because we heard what happened in 1.0, that they were being put in cages with these aluminum blankets. No, they are not touching them because they're not that stupid. We wish they were, but they're targeting the legal service providers. They're so coward that they're targeting the only people that is there to help them, including us. You know, it's just like I could even be accused of child trafficking because I accompany these kids. You know, that's how ridiculous it is. And by outsourcing immigration enforcement to Mexico and other countries, those kids from Russia, from Guatemala, from El Salvador, whatever, they're not getting to the border because that outsourcing of immigration and force policies are being adopted by Mexico and other governments. Mexico used to give a lot of temporary humanitarian permits to stay. Now that's not an option. You gotta seek asylum here. And if you get asylum here or refugee like it is, if whenever you try to go to the US you're gonna lose your case because you know, this third country law, et cetera. So that's how it is. That's. Does the externalization of the borders, you
- [42:02]
Caitlin
know, or kids who make it to the border, like what happens at the border, I guess is my question.
- [42:11]
Kathy
The kids that got to the border, they usually get rejected straight forward or they're. They're not even let pass certain filters that you get to the CBP officers, right? Or they come with a group of adults. And some of them, they're maybe like the third cousin or the acquaintance of their neighborhood that they decided to help and come with them seeking asylum. And that's when we detected the kids. And I did an intake and pass it through my U.S. attorney supervisors. And we decided if it was a case that could have a potential relief in the U.S. right? And we present the kids, we walk up the kids to the port of entry. Also. It was also that they could have my WhatsApp number for AOL and they will message me, hey, Kati, I was given this number. Can you help me? I'm here in the border. Or family members of my nephew in Tijuana, et cetera. And then they entered, CBP will put them in an office and then they will call rr, the Office of Refugee and Resettlement. They are the office in charge of combatant minors that will place them in kind of like foster homes. And they will work with legal service providers to get them released to their family members. Before that, there was no requirement of, of you having a legal status. And most of the family, Mexican families didn't have a legal status or something like that. And as long as you could accredit that you were the parent, et cetera, the kids will be released to you. Now it's so cowardly have changed that CBP is coercing them to sign their expedited removal. You know, telling them cowardly, scaring them. You're going to be put in cages if you have a parent because they're illegal, because of you, they're going to get detected and deported. What happens is that the kids ended up signing their voluntary departure. And when they're being put to or there's almost nothing that a legal service provider can do because they're already have signed their deportation and there's nothing much that they can do. And they're sending the kids back or they're sending them to the mouth of the wolf again. Or if the kids didn't sign because maybe they're too young, now they're requesting for an government ID or a state ID which like sometimes if you do not have legal status, you cannot get. So the kids are stranded there until they're all of age to be out and released. And some of the kids that have aged out, we've known that they're being put on on removal proceedings or suffered so much like my brother that he decided to unalive himself, you know, so that's how it is.
- [45:24]
Caitlin
I have absolutely no idea what the hiring process must be to hire people who are completely okay with bullying kids who are so vulnerable.
- [45:34]
Kathy
The word for them is cowards. Cowards, Yes.
- [45:50]
Sana
I know you already been helping navigate the apps that are being required, but what type of tech do you see on the ground? Is there more that you see that's on the rise?
- [46:00]
Kathy
Well, the fact that people were required to use a CVP1 app, which we also did litigation against, we've had cases not only for kids, but for vulnerable people linguistically isolated. The app was only in English, Spanish, bad Creole and bad Russian. So what about indigenous communities that they're running away from? The cartels? What about the medical vulnerable people that can't see, you know, they're blind. We had kids on a shelter helping other people because they're more tech savvy, holding their phone for someone that is, you know, blind. What about disabled people, you know, is not only kids, it's those vulnerable. They are entitled first and foremost to international protection. The use of the technology for purposes of stopping people to reach safety is one of the most coward things that a system can do, because it's not rejecting them and denying them their right to seek asylum directly.
- [47:16]
Caitlin
So this is the app that lets you request asylum?
- [47:19]
Kathy
Yes, it was an app. One of the first things that Trump did was to stop that use of the app. So the law says that a person can go to a port of entry and request the right to seek asylum, and the person should be let in. And the practice that doesn't happen, you always get rejected. Or this outsourcing immigration enforcement in Mexico makes the Mexican authorities stop from reaching to the officer, right to the CBP officer at the port of entry. So what happens is that, okay, I'm not denying you the right to seek asylum. You're just going to have to enter. This was before. This is not happening anymore. Okay, but this was before. And then you get an app on a phone that needs to be good enough. If you are a person running from your. Running away from your life, maybe you can't afford a phone, a phone that needs to have that technology features that it's required, right? Or access to the Internet to connect to hotspot or something that you could get access to. Right. Every day you had to request an appointment. Those appointments, in the beginning, they were short period of time of waiting, but then some of them were months or even more than a year. And your life will be dependent your safety of a phone with good Internet connection. That's a death sentence, you know, because people stranded in the border, which happened right now after Trump started, stranded in the border, they're subjected to human trafficking. And right now, who controls who will gets to enter and who controls who gets to enter legally? Is the organized crime, is it is the cartels. You will pay the cartel or you will pay to the coyote and the coyote will have to notify the cartel or whatever to let them through. But now the US by stopping the right to seek asylum at the port of entry is directly. And the governments are directly collaborating or putting everything in their hands of the cartels, including human trafficking. Because people will still need to migrate, people will still need to reach safety. Mexico, we've seen the news, is not safe for Mexicans. And of course it's not going to be safe for other people from other nationalities. Right? They still need to flee and reach safety. And the same system is not allowing it, but people still need to migrate. You know, unfortunately, we haven't been able either to get people paroled in medical vulnerable cases, extremely urgent cases. So people are stranded here. So what we've done is try to reach the gap, you know, and help them navigate the system of health here, which of course is oversaturated. Try to get other orgs to help us, like midwives or health promoters, and legally accompany them on the processes as well. If they wanted to seek refugee here, or if they suffer human rights violation by an authority, that's where we step in as well.
- [50:39]
Sana
As you've seen border externalization become more widespread, do you notice policies that are being developed on one side, like you mentioned, getting to Mexico and not being able to then seek asylum elsewhere. How do you feel that the expansion of border externalization is impacting how each country is making those decisions?
- [50:58]
Kathy
Well, we see the human cost every day. Families torn apart, survivors retraumatized, and people forced to choose between prolonged danger in Mexico or risk of crossing regularly. Something that I also would like to point out is that the policies right now of the border shut down, like I said, it's giving the cartels, the human traffickers, everything in their hands very easily to work. Also the scammers, because we've seen a lot of people victim of scams that the only money that they could have to survive, they give it to a scammer saying that they were lawyers or that there's this new app that will get you in, you know, and they're victim of scams on social media especially, which we also try to bridge the gap. Having or not your rights or border updates on TikTok, etc. But even in Mexico, when you request a refugee or asylum that's through an office called comar, the Mexican Commission for Refugees, while you're in the process, before you're granted refugee, you're entitled to get a temporary residency card, like a physical card to the Mexican Immigration Institute. And the Mexican Immigration Institute says that they don't have the resources, that their cameras are broken, that the little machine to make the cards that they're out of the cards. You know, stuff like that. Stupid pretexts, coward pretexts, because they know that if people that are seeking protection, they're walking in a Mexican street, if they get detained by a corrupt officer, they're going to be extorted because they couldn't get a card that will say, yes, I'm in the process. You know, we've also fight back that we've companioned people to the Immigration Institute with documents saying, okay, you need to give me in writing that you're denying me that even why we should get to the extent of Javier's corpus to get them those cards. That's part of this externalization of the borders, the outsourcing of immigration enforcement, it pushes people to the start of the border and it's turning Mexican cities into de facto waiting rooms where thousands of displaced people are stranded. They were able to escape from the mouth of a wolf and they got to the border. And because of the policies, there's externalization and this border, they got into the mouth of a fucking dragon that's going to eat them full. You know, we witness this every day. I mean, policies such as metering and remaining Mexico, the MPP protocols and the current asylum ban, it's denying the people to the right to seek asylum, and it's exposing people to wait and just. It's a matter of time for them to become victims or just numbers of people stranded in the water and disappear in the water.
- [54:21]
Caitlin
You know, do you think the policies that both Trump and Mexico fit in place by funneling money and business to cartels have made anyone safer, or have they made everyone less safe?
- [54:35]
Kathy
It's not like that Shane Bound or Trump are sitting in the table with the cartels is that indirectly, thanks to their policies of indifference, of the policies of power are putting everything and the table for the cartels to enjoy or to take advantage of. We say in Spanish, toden charola platar. So everything in the same table. So the only way to enter the US Safely is through the routes that the coyotes for a lot of years have made. You know, the same routes that a migrant is crossing through is the same route that the cartels are using. So of course, indirectly, by shutting down the border, they're giving the organized crime all the tools to take advantage of people that are trying to reach safety. We heard cases that people try to get through a coyote and they got kidnapped. And the information, this is a Mexican case, the information that they were running away from a cartel in Michoacan, well, descoyotes reach out to that cartel, saying, I have this person here. And then they asked the person, I have them on the other line of the phone, if you give me money, I'll let you go. Because if you can't give me the money that I'm requesting, I'm going to let them come for you. That's how it is, this remote surveillance and enforcement. And I mean, using the technology or training other countries to strengthen their immigration forces to intercept migrants as far away from the actual water. That's one of the ways, you know, that this water is externalizing the agreements with other governments, pressuring other countries to block or detain and receive migrants offshoring asylum processing and why they do it is just to prevent the asylum seekers from reaching their territory, which reduces their legal obligations under international refugee law. Well, if a person does not reach to the port of entry to a CBP officer, that's it. I don't have an obligation. Right. That's the logic. They're blocking them from reaching safety and they're stuck in dangerous third countries and they face long waits, exploitation, trauma, and it becomes harder to access the asylum process at all. We are fighting this in court. Last year, we won a seven year long lawsuit against Trump for the right to seek assault asylum. You know, I mean, we're not crossing our hands and, you know, just waiting for everything to change. We're actually daring to try to go change it, even if that puts us on the spot.
- [57:44]
Sana
I would love to hear maybe a success story or something that just makes you feel hopeful when you're working in. In a space that's full of so many difficult things.
- [57:54]
Kathy
So I had an accompanying minor that she was pregnant. And it was so odd because she was born the same day as me, May the 23rd. And her mom was also called Sylvia. I mean, she didn't have a mom anymore, and I don't have a mom anymore. So I have a tattoo that says Sylvia and says, oh, Sylvia, you're sometimes. No, my name is Kathy. Sylvia was my mom. Oh. And my mom too. And then when she entered and she delivered a baby girl, she never. Sylvia. She told me, like, it was after my mom and her mom, because she said that if her mom wouldn't have had her, she wouldn't have had her kid. And if my mom wouldn't have had me, I wouldn't have been able to help her. You know, that's one thing. And a funny or odd story is that one of our. Not ours, like, not from a lot of. But it's the hashtag fuck your wall or chinga tomorrow. Right? Which we have on shirts. But I also have it tattooed. So when I was presenting a kid, I got to be in front of the CBP officers and not be afraid of them because I know the law and I know what's the right of people. And I was delivering this officer that paperwork, you know, like giving him a paperwork with my hands. And I have a lot of tattoos, but it's very visible. It says chinga tomoro. And that officer spoke Spanish and he grabbed my hand, my wrist, and. Let me see your tattoo. What? It says Chuck your wall.
- [59:34]
Caitlin
Oh, man.
- [59:35]
Kathy
Why you have that? Because I can. Because I want it and because I'm in my country. And he was like, oh, okay, whatever. Then I was like, okay, I'm gonna get shirts made with that logo. And then I put it on the back, it says your wall. So that became a uniform. And I presented the kids with that logo or the sweatshirt and even take pictures with me like on the port of entry with that, like, you know what? It's. Knowledge is power. One of the most powerful weapons that the human can possess is knowledge. And when you share that knowledge, it's even more powerful because you get to change lives. That's what we do at lotroledo. So the knowledge of me wearing a shirt that's expressing my feelings towards a wall, it makes me just wear it, that damn shirt. That's the least I can do, right? So not something funny that I can say. Of course I don't have Visa, I don't cross, I don't need it, you know, But I know the system very damn well, which is what comes definitely.
- [60:56]
Caitlin
And I really enjoy that image. And I imagine soda.
- [61:00]
Kathy
And we started selling them. We started selling them online to get funding.
- [61:04]
Caitlin
Nice.
- [61:05]
Kathy
So we even get money for expressing ourselves.
- [61:09]
Caitlin
You know my link in the description. So you can get your. Fuck your wall shit.
- [61:14]
Kathy
No.
- [61:14]
Caitlin
That's awesome. Is there anything that you wanted to make sure that you said that you haven't had a chance to say, you
- [61:19]
Kathy
know, this situation, this administration is not only affecting our silo seekers, it's affecting its own people. There's gonna be a whirlwind, there's gonna be a snowball that they not gonna be able to stop. Is affecting economically, it's affecting the most vulnerable of their own as well. So I will invite people that have the power to decide that they should make a better choice next time because sure, if you don't care about migrants, that's fine. I don't give a fuck that you don't care about migrants, but care about your own people that are suffering the consequences of having that person in place. There is economic destruction that your guys that made the decision are not going to be able to come back from. There is fundamental rights. They're being taken away from. You sure don't care about migrants. Care about your own. Let me worry. Let us worry and defend migrants. But I will let you to make a better choice next time because otherwise everything's going to crumble even more.
- [62:39]
Sana
I'm really grateful that both speakers could join us. I mean, I think they bring to light some of the real stories of individuals involved. And I think without that aspect of it, it's very hard to make good policy if you don't know what the impact is going to be. And even though sometimes I think we know that the people in those positions are willfully ignoring the impacts that they have, I think we should make it as hard as possible for them to do that. So I really appreciate that we could speak to both Stan and Kathy. Kathy in particular highlighted how much more vulnerable people have become to human trafficking as a result of border externalization policies. So we know that the policy aims that legislators are trying to reach are not being reached. So what can we do at this stage to intervene and change that process? That we've spoken to two people who work on the ground to improve things on an individual level. But what's important is a high level policy reform and an overhaul of these practices.
- [63:42]
Caitlin
I think the thing that we've talked about before has been it's a very short sighted view on national security. Like Ms. Kathy mentioned, if the only way across a border is paying someone and open yourself up to human trafficking and scamming and funneling money to a cartel, then all you're doing is funneling money to a cartel. And that's what the policy is creating. It's not making people safer, it's creating crime. And the same way that Dan talked about, I think the Serbian border, he said the policy showed fewer crossings. At that crossing, it didn't necessarily show overall any particular change, but it pushed people into more dangerous crossings, into more dangerous places that are harder to police but also like harder to track. I think what was interesting to me from both the interviews was the violence. And I think when we look at policies, we think about population scale impact and that's what policy is largely aimed at. But it is hard to justify the amount of money EU gives to some of these third party countries. When Dan talks about people being pushed out, you know, barefoot in the snow and violently and aggressively people having dogs sat on all of that thing, that's not separate from the policy. That is the policy in action. In the same way that when Kathy talks about kids, like young kids, unaccompanied kids on their own, we say unaccompanied minors. We mean children on their own having traveled long distances to get the US border, being stuck in a room with a Customs and border police officer who is trying to get them to sign in their document authorizing their own deportation, which they don't understand, they can't understand, and they don't have any support. They're on their own and that CBP officer bullying that child in that room to sign to authorize their own deportation is not separate from the policy. That is the policy. It's the policy of the Mexican government and it's the policy of the U.S. government. And so when we think about immigration policy, we, yes, want to think about broad population impacts, but populations are made up of people, and those people are having a really extraordinarily difficult time.
- [65:56]
Sana
Yeah. I also want to comment on how ridiculous some of the policy is. It is a ridiculous idea to think that violence will just be contained within borders if we just put off enough physical fences or digital fences that you can prevent that from spreading. So a lot of the training that's being given to security forces in other countries, for example, the EU Emergency Trust Fund for Africa, through some of their training of specialist security surveillance forces, those have later been used. For example, in Senegal in 2024, it was reported that it was used to quash protests within the country. And as if that sort of unrest is not going to continue to have other impacts that spill over and are also global. I think the idea that there will be an overall reduction in violence from doing more violence against the most vulnerable people is an insane policy choice.
- [66:52]
Caitlin
I think it always. How you treat the most vulnerable people and people at borders are always the most vulnerable, like, is a reflection on your society. And at the moment, it's more technology, it's, you know, more aggressive enforcement, and it's dehumanization, and it doesn't look great for us as a society.
- [67:12]
Sana
And actually, as Dan said, even with all of the terrible treatment for the people on the move, it's still a viable choice for them to go through that in order to seek a place of relatively greater safety. So this isn't going to discourage people from trying to survive.
- [67:28]
Caitlin
There's an old. Through the West Wing, so it's really old now, which is depressing. But it's like if your alternative at home is getting shot in the head execution style, versus maybe being detained for a while, like, you know, given we consider ourselves a civilized society, whatever that means. And it's pretty loaded term, Baker. The alternative is worse. And despite all the violence, the alternative remains worse. And, you know, Kathy was talking about people whose whole families have been slaughtered, like, we're not going to do that. So why do we think we can create an alternative that is worse? We can't. We don't want to. But we're drifting in that direction in a way that's.
- [68:11]
Gus Hossain
And it says more about ourselves. Yeah, a Load more and the fall of our own moral character as a result. We're doing this out of fear.
- [68:19]
Caitlin
We were doing it out of political fear. I think, at least in the uk, I would argue we were doing it not out of actual fear, doing out of political fear.
- [68:28]
Gus Hossain
I don't mean to disagree with you, but as somebody whose heart rate naturally increases as I get closer and closer to any border, even the border of the countries that I have the right to live in because I carry the passport and I'm considered a citizen, I get stressed because I know what a border means and I know who a border is there for and who it's there against. And I know the kind of people who want to work at a border. I know the kind of people who want to run a border agency. I know the kind of people who want to set border policy. And they are not our better angels.
- [69:07]
Caitlin
No, not at all. The last thing that Kathy said was in America, even if you're American at the moment, if you're the wrong kind of American, that's not good either. And the immigration policy is now spilling over into policy for citizens. And that happens. We like to think of the border as separate, but it's not. That's a reflection of our policies in our society and doesn't stay separate, you know, and that at the moment looks like ICE in America, deporting anyone who they can get bans on, who looks wrong, who doesn't instantly have access to the right lawyers or the right people. And that is the ultimate slippery slope. You know, that is what that looks like in the extreme.
- [69:46]
Gus Hossain
And that's why I worry about the moral character. Because say we decide tomorrow, mission accomplished, we've gotten rid of them all. Do you think they're going to stop asking people for ID on the streets of your home country? Do you think that they're not going to use the toys that they've been deploying against protests instead? You don't walk back from this. Once you've changed your moral character because of your fear of the other. It's going to take a hell of a lot more than that to repair what has been broken.
- [70:13]
Kathy
Yeah.
- [70:13]
Gus Hossain
So on that cheery note, and especially because it's the holiday season, let's end on a cheery note. Thank you for listening. Remember, you can sign up to be the first to learn more about our work@pvcy.org podsignup and we'll include some links to relevant articles and information in the description, wherever you're listening. Listening. Or on our website@pvcy.org Tech Pill don't forget to rate and subscribe to the podcast on whichever platform you use. Music is courtesy of Sepia. This podcast was produced by Max Bernell for Privacy International.
- [70:58]
Sana
It.