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The New Yorker Radio Hour
Refugees in Limbo, and a Conservative in Washington
00:55:00
At a safe house for refugees in Buffalo, New York, the difficult process of seeking asylum becomes even harder. And an establishment conservative assesses the President’s “casual dishonesty.”
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- [00:08]
Jake Halpern
Sister Beth?
- [00:09]
Sister Beth Nitoprum
Yes.
- [00:10]
Jake Halpern
Hey, it's Jake. Can you, Is this still okay, time to chat with us?
- [00:14]
Sister Beth Nitoprum
Yeah, yeah. I'm trying to keep phone lines open. We're being bombarded right now. I'm trying to find beds.
- [00:22]
David Remnick
This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. For more than a year, contributor Jake Halpern has been visiting a safe house for migrants in Buffalo, New York. People from all over the world are there trying to get refugee status in either Canada or the United States, which was a very difficult process even before the election of Donald Trump. Last week, Jake called for an update.
- [00:44]
Jake Halpern
I had been told that you'd seen an increase in people who were just disappearing in the night and trying to cross the border. Is that the case? Have you seen that?
- [00:53]
Sister Beth Nitoprum
We only had one or two that we knew got across the border. We don't know how they get across the border, but they call back to a friend here. And so we kind of get a third hand but have people on the move.
- [01:08]
Jake Halpern
Wow.
- [01:10]
David Remnick
We'll get to know some of the people whose hopes and dreams are parked at that safe house later in the hour. But we're going to start today. Whether we like it or not, frankly, in Washington, it's going to be sometime years, maybe before we ever get a definitive account of what's going on inside the White House in this first dramatic hundred days of the Trump administration. Whatever they may say about unity or a well oiled machine, there's clearly a struggle going on. Some players trying to keep Trump to a Republican line of a traditional conservative sort, while Steve Bannon and others with a nationalist agenda are determined to satisfy Trump's fans at any cost. So on the one hand, there's the promise of tax cuts, rolling back regulation, the repeal of Obamacare, and on the other, as in the address to Congress the other week, there's this.
- [02:03]
Marshall
Everything that is broken in our country can be fixed. Every problem can be solved in a.
- [02:12]
David Remnick
Way that's a big government vision that's almost a heresy for conservatives. Stephen Hayes is the editor of the Weekly Standard, one of the most prominent conservative magazines out there, and he often appears on Fox News. Hayes, like his predecessor, Bill Kristol, was a die hard, never Trumper in the run up to the election. Were you glad he won as opposed to Hillary Clinton?
- [02:34]
Stephen Hayes
That's a good question. I think Givenlet put it this way. When I woke up the morning after Trump won, I was the bright side was brighter than I had expected. The thought of potentially repealing Obamacare, of putting another conservative on the Supreme Court, I wasn't sure Trump was going to do that. I certainly had my doubts. I was skeptical that he would keep his word. He certainly, over the course of the campaign, was on virtually every side of every issue and thought that it would be hard for a conservative to trust him. And I worried about things like starting a trade war with China. I worried about his ties to Russia or his overt friendliness with Vladimir Putin.
- [03:18]
David Remnick
Michael Kirk, what do you make of that? What do you make of his relation to Russia and the whole complex of situations and pieces of evidence about finance or collusion that we now some people call Russiagate? What do you make of it all?
- [03:35]
Stephen Hayes
Well, I certainly think we need to know more. It's at the very least odd that the one position Donald Trump held throughout the campaign on which he was remarkably consistent was Russia and Vladimir Putin. He wasn't consistent about whether he knew Putin or didn't know Putin.
- [03:53]
David Remnick
But what does that tell you about Trump?
- [03:55]
Stephen Hayes
Well, he's very casual with the truth, to be charitable. I mean, he says things that aren't true all the time.
- [04:02]
David Remnick
Are you saying he's a liar?
- [04:04]
Stephen Hayes
He lies all the time. I don't think there's any doubt about that. I mean, he says things that are untrue all the time, sometimes casual. We've had a phrase that we've thrown around at the Weekly Standard called casual dishonesty. He's dishonest about seemingly meaningless things. And conservatives shouldn't shy away from saying that. When Trump says things that are wrong or misleading, knowingly false, he should be corrected, and he shouldn't just be corrected by the mainstream media. He should be corrected by the conservative media.
- [04:34]
David Remnick
Now, on my side of the ideological fence, that is to say, roughly speaking, people who consider themselves leftist, center or liberals, many of them see this as this isn't just the election of a Republican or a conservative, which we've had, you know, over and over, and we always will have a back and forth. But it's something that's not normal because of the dishonesty, because of the rhetoric, because of conflicts of interest. Do you agree with that?
- [04:58]
Stephen Hayes
Well, I think there are certainly some people on the right who would agree with what you're broadly characterizing as a view of the left. I guess my view is a little bit different. You know, we were raising these questions about Donald Trump throughout the primary. We raised them throughout the general election. After he became president, my view was he needs to succeed. I would like him to succeed, however much I didn't think he was prepared to be the president of the United States.
- [05:30]
David Remnick
Maybe it's a funny question to ask when the Democratic Party is in its worst electoral state since the 1920s. But what does it say about the Republican Party that the entire Republican intelligentsia, the editors of your magazine of the National Review, and so many other conservative intellectuals and writers and political thinkers were anti Trump and he won all the same. What does that say about the situation with conservatism in this country and the Republican Party?
- [05:58]
Stephen Hayes
Well, as I'm reminded every day, we matter less than we thought. People like to point that out every day. Look, I mean, we made what we thought were principled, conservative arguments against Donald Trump, sometimes in favor of the policies advocated by his opponents, both again in the primaries and in the general election. And people didn't care as much as we wish that they had. It stinks to be on the losing end of an argument. But now the question to me is, I mean, as you know, somebody who runs one of these publications, what can we do, given the state of the country, given where we are, what can we do to help the country? Not to help Donald Trump the person, not to help the Republican Party? Lord knows we spend a lot of time criticizing the Republican Party, but this is a big moment for the country. Whether you're talking about threats abroad, whether you're talking about the rising debt, whether you're talking about the problems with Obamacare. These are huge issues. And, you know, what we want to do at the Weekly Standard is spend time proposing solutions. We hope we'll be listened to and trying to correct Donald Trump where he's wrong, trying to challenge him when he says things that are untrue, try to push him in the right direction because it's important for the country. And I realize that that sounds probably a bit Pollyannish, but it's the way that we've chosen to approach this presidency.
- [07:33]
David Remnick
Do you get the sense that you're being listened to? The New Republic, back in the 80s, used to be known as the in flight magazine of Air Force One. Do you have any sense that you're being listened to or even your magazine or collectively the conservative group of magazines is being listened to inside the White House, or is it being dominated by Breitbart and Newsmax and the rest?
- [07:54]
Stephen Hayes
No, I certainly think we're being listened to inside the White House. I mean, the irony of the Trump presidency in some respects is we look across the senior staff of the White House or look at people who are running agencies. In many cases, most cases, these are people that we've dealt with before with whom we have relationships. And I think actually the Weekly Standard is in some respects uniquely positioned to cover the Trump White House. Nobody can accuse us of having been cheerleaders, having been on board, or having been boosters of Trump during the campaign. And yet we are this conservative journal of opinion. We proudly announce that we are the kind of conservatives today that we were 20 years ago. I expect that given the principles that most of us share, we'll be the same kind of conservatives 20 years from now. And what we're going to do is report the hell out of the Trump administration. So you could expect fewer hot takes from the Weekly Standard and much more reporting. We're going to go and we're going to spend time at the White House. We're going to be talking to the people who are making policy or who are hoping to make policy or who are making policy after Donald Trump tweets policy. We're going to be talking to that.
- [09:08]
David Remnick
Recently, the president called a number of publications and really collectively the press as enemies of the American people. Do you feel included in that group?
- [09:17]
Stephen Hayes
Sure, I felt included and I was offended by that. I think it's a horrible thing to say. It was un American of the President of the United States to say that the press plays an absolutely pivotal role in our republic has since the founding. You can go back and read so many of the thoughts of the founders who have articulated exactly the role that they expected the press to play. And look, I have many, many criticisms of the press. I have real criticisms of the way that the media operated during the Obama administration, where I thought he was largely given a pass for things, he should have been checked. The press is biased. The press can do better. I wish there were more conservatives writing for front page articles for the New York Times. But the press is not the enemy of the American people and it's disgraceful to say so.
- [10:11]
David Remnick
Stephen, you're living in the red hot center of Washington. What is this? Is the mood about how long this period of incredible intensity can last? Every day brings some sense that maybe this can't go on in some way or another. Do you think that the Trump presidency goes its normal course of four years or eight years?
- [10:35]
Stephen Hayes
I don't know. I'll tell a brief story. I had to give a speech down in Florida a couple weeks ago, and we had planned this speech out months, six, eight months ago. And the speech was titled now that the Dust has Settled. And I went to the group and said, you know, look around. I read a list of things that had happened in the previous 72 hours. And it included Kellyanne Conway telling people to shop at Nordstrom's or not shop at Nordstrom's. I don't even remember. But, you know, a series of silly things and sometimes crazy things and some positive things. You look at what we've seen over the course of the first six weeks, as you suggest, and there is this. It's beleaguering intensity, and you think it has to stop. And I think one of the reasons the president got such positive reviews for the speech that he gave to the joint session of Congress was because it was, for a little bit, a break from that. He didn't tee off on the news media.
- [11:44]
David Remnick
But to translate that into English, Stephen, I think what you're saying about that speech is that because it wasn't crazy, because it seemed relatively normal, unlike the hour plus press conference, that somehow he seemed presidential. Isn't that grading on a fantastic curve?
- [12:03]
Stephen Hayes
Yes. No, that's actually. You've got me exactly right. That is what I'm saying. That is what I'm saying. I have problems with the speech that he gave. There were things that were in it that I didn't like and things that weren't in it that I thought ought to have been in it. But I was happy, I was relieved that we didn't have these incessant attacks on the news media. And again, I say this as somebody who's often fairly critical of the mainstream media.
- [12:30]
David Remnick
You know, for decades, the Republican Party has been, at least on the surface, at least in rhetoric, been the party of smaller government. We remember, of course, Bill Clinton declaring the end of big government and deficits expanded under Republican presidents. But nevertheless, the rhetoric of the Republican Party was smaller government. And certainly Republicans would charge the Democrats with the opposite. Where will Trump fall out? Where will the Republican Party fall out on this enormous question of the scale of government?
- [13:06]
Stephen Hayes
In some ways, that is the question of the Trump presidency. And I think you can look at both his inaugural, even though there were tonal differences, both his inaugural and his joint address to Congress, and come to the conclusion that Trump will be a big government Republican. He's comfortable with the use of government to do the kinds of things that he, Donald Trump, wants to do, and beyond that, the things that he doesn't want to do, that he's made very clear he has no intention of doing, like reforming entitlements. Donald Trump said repeatedly that he is opposed to any kind of entitlement reform. He criticized Mitt Romney for picking Paul Ryan Precisely because Paul Ryan favored entitlement reform. And there's this great irony now with Republicans controlling the House, the Senate and the White House, and there's no serious talk of entitlement reform whatsoever. So if you want to talk about whether the Trump presidency will be a big government Republican presidency or a small government Republican presidency, we may already know the answer to that question in some respects, because he's not going to tackle that issue. One of the things that I ask myself every day is what will Republicans in Congress do with the Trump presidency? Are they going to go along when he is pursuing policies that contradict everything conservatives have argued for, in some cases decades, maybe centuries, depending on who you're listening to? I mean, if Donald Trump really turns protectionist, are conservatives just going to go along? You know, are conservatives going to vote for policies that Trump proposes on trade? You know, that would have Adam Smith rolling over in his grave. I would hope not. And I think we've seen early indications that that's probably not the case. And the same is true on foreign policy. I mean, what will happen? What if he does pull out of NATO, which is something he had suggested during the campaign because NATO is obsolete. I mean, I would think that conservatives would stand up and howl if that were the case. Certainly we would be.
- [15:22]
David Remnick
Steve. Another never Trump conservative who's getting noticed these days is David Frum, whose article in the Atlantic is called how to Build an Autocracy. Now, how do you view Trump in these terms? Do you think he is a potential autocrat or an autocrat already?
- [15:38]
Stephen Hayes
Well, I don't think he's an autocrat already. And I think to the extent that you see his political opponents get hysterical about everything that he does, it makes people tune out when he does do something that truly is alarming or say something that we all ought to stop and say, wait, this is, you know, the enemy, the enemy of the American people comment that he made about the media that I Think required dial 10 on the outrage meter. But not everything he says and not everything he does requires that kind of outrage. And I think in a sense, his political opponents do him a favor when there are huge fits or in some cases maybe moderate sized controversies, because Kellyanne Conway had her feet on the sofa of the, the White House in the Oval Office. But I guess my advice, my friendly advice to my friends on the left would be wait until it happens or wait until it's imminent. Certainly the Russia questions are legitimate questions, but if every utterance is 10 on the outrage meter, people will tune out quickly. And I think those legitimate, those times where somebody like me and somebody like you might agree on what we ought to be concerned about, those will be lost because we've just been in constant outrage mode.
- [17:05]
David Remnick
Steve, I really appreciate your time. Thank you.
- [17:07]
Stephen Hayes
You bet. Thanks for having me.
- [17:12]
David Remnick
Steven Hayes is the editor in chief of the Weekly Standard, and he's based in Washington. You're listening to the New Yorker Radio Hour. More to welcome back to the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Whatever happens with the new travel restrictions that are coming out of the White House, it's pretty clear that the Trump administration intends to keep immigration on the front burner for refugees. Getting asylum in the United States, which was never an easy feat before, no matter what President Trump may like to say, looks even more difficult now. Contributor Jake Halpern has been visiting a safe house in Buffalo, New York, where hundreds of refugees are waiting, hoping for asylum. Some are there just for a short while, but for some, it becomes a life of limbo when they discover that they can't stay, but they can't go home either.
- [18:23]
Jake Halpern
How many days did it take you to get from when you ran out of your house to when you arrived at Vive?
- [18:31]
Marshall
I think it took me about a week. About a week safely? Yeah, a week.
- [18:36]
Jake Halpern
And all you had was this little.
- [18:38]
Marshall
All I had was a little satchel.
- [18:40]
Jake Halpern
The little satchel, yeah.
- [18:42]
Marshall
And a filthy, very, very dirty jacket that I had problems with the immigrations. When I was, like, changing flights and all, they were looking at me like, are you mad? What is this you're wearing? And they would ask me so many questions, you know.
- [18:59]
Jake Halpern
Marshall ran out the back door of his house in Zimbabwe in the middle of the night. He says he grabbed his wallet, his passport. Meanwhile, hitmen for President Robert Mugabe were at the front door. Marshall is 28. He was part of Zimbabwe's Youth Party, which was running against President Mugabe, who has held on to power since 1980. As the youth Party grew, Marshall says he was arrested and then harassed by the police.
- [19:29]
Marshall
I got persecuted so many times. I got beaten up so many times. I got arrested so many times. But I soldiered on because I believed in my cause. And what I thought was, Mugabe won't kill me. If he kills me, it's going to be an obvious move.
- [19:44]
Jake Halpern
But a friend of his inside the government told Marshall that his name was actually on Mugabe's hit list. That very night, men showed up at Marshall's door and he had to run for it. A few days later, he's sitting in a motel room in New York City with a couple other guys he'd fled with, and they're trying to figure out what's our next move. Then another guy from Zimbabwe, who's already living in Canada, sends him a message. You gotta go to Buffalo, New York. 50 Wyoming Street. There's a house there. They call it Vive.
- [20:19]
Sister Beth Nitoprum
Hello. Hi. Come on in, hon. Okay. This is the entrance way for Vive. 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, the doors are open and they're secured.
- [20:33]
Jake Halpern
This is Sister Beth Nitoprum. She's a social worker at Vive.
- [20:37]
Sister Beth Nitoprum
Yes, I'm a Sister of St. Francis from the Newman communities. About 33 years ago, 34 now, there were six communities of Sisters in this area that saw the need during the 80s when. El Salvador, Nicaragua, basically, when people were.
- [20:59]
Jake Halpern
Fleeing war and violence in Latin America in the 1980s, where they tended to go was Canada. You gotta remember, back then, the Canadian prime Minister was Pierre Trudeau. His son Justin is prime minister now. And they welcomed immigrants. A lot of people came through Buffalo because there's actually a bridge at the edge of town that goes across the Niagara river directly into Canada. And then, like now, migrants often showed up with little money and unprepared for the Buffalo winter.
- [21:27]
Sister Beth Nitoprum
They had to wait to get appointments. So a couple of the sisters saw this, and they said, we have to help these people. They can't stay in the streets. And so we needed to shelter them, so we began to take them into our convents.
- [21:41]
Jake Halpern
The sisters housed and fed people, and as the need grew, they bought this small old Catholic schoolhouse down on the east side of Buffalo. Some 33 years later, Sister Beth says more than 100,000 people have passed through. Vive.
- [21:57]
Sister Beth Nitoprum
I would say what we do is basically take care of the needs of anybody that walks in this door and try to make them feel welcome and safe, and that if there's any medical needs, we'll try to take care of them. To my left is my office, which is a social work office. I think that's somebody getting a shot in the nurse's office. Doctor and nurse are present to us every five, seven days a week.
- [22:25]
Jake Halpern
Really, if it sounds a little bit crazy in the background, that's because it is. People are running everywhere. And Sister Beth is leading us down the old hallway that goes down the center part of the school.
- [22:35]
Sister Beth Nitoprum
This is a living kind of sitting area.
- [22:38]
Jake Halpern
It looks actually like where I went to the Buffalo public schools. It looks like one of those really wide hallways, high ceilings Old, creaky floors.
- [22:46]
Sister Beth Nitoprum
We've painted and tried to upgrade and keep it, but it's 100 and some people that have been using it 20 some years, 30 years almost. So it's been used, but we do try to keep it up.
- [22:58]
Jake Halpern
People from more than 75 countries have passed through Vive in recent years. People from Haiti, Jordan, Malawi, Bangladesh, Qatar, Thailand, Ukraine, Tibet. You get it. They come from all over. This many people in one small house inevitably attracts attention. And it's not exactly a secret. Canadian and American border agencies, they know about vive. In fact, one staff member told me that Border Patrol agents actually circle the outside of the building pretty regularly. As a result, most residents tend to stay inside. There are people everywhere. Sister Beth and I were walking up a stairwell, and tucked away in the little dead end behind it were two girls playing with broken dolls between the door and the radiator. I mean, everywhere you looked, there are people in the nooks and crannies.
- [23:50]
Sister Beth Nitoprum
Hi, Jennifer.
- [23:51]
Jake Halpern
When you walk into the old classrooms, it's just rows of bunk beds all draped with sheets. People trying to scratch out just a little bit of privacy for themselves. There's how many beds right now?
- [24:03]
Sister Beth Nitoprum
Probably 2, 4, 6, 8, 10. About 12.
- [24:07]
Jake Halpern
It's a fairly small room.
- [24:11]
Sister Beth Nitoprum
There's probably almost 300 people waiting either to go to Canada or to get asylum in the U.S. why?
- [24:18]
Jake Halpern
So, I mean, I was here maybe a year ago. What accounts for this?
- [24:22]
Sister Beth Nitoprum
We're not sure if it's a political issue.
- [24:25]
Jake Halpern
Yeah, I mean, I was going to say.
- [24:26]
Sister Beth Nitoprum
Or the amount of people that are just displaced in this world.
- [24:32]
Jake Halpern
On the one hand, Vive is a sanctuary. It's a shelter. It houses, it feeds, it gives medical care to all the people that pass through. But there's another really important part of what it does. It helps people get their information and their documents all arranged and then sets up appointments on the Canadian side of the border with the Refugee Processing Unit.
- [24:53]
Mariah Walker
So your husband has the original marriage.
- [24:55]
Sister Beth Nitoprum
Certificate and he'll bring it to the border?
- [24:58]
Jake Halpern
Yeah, he will bring this. Maria Walker is the Canadian Services manager, and she's the one that makes appointments at the border for all the VIVE clients and helps people figure out whether they're ready to make the crossing.
- [25:09]
Mariah Walker
And what about his birth certificate?
- [25:10]
Sister Beth Nitoprum
Does he have the original?
- [25:11]
Jake Halpern
I think we need to ask him. This is Vicky. Yeah. Do you have his phone number? I'm sitting there with her and Mariah. She and her two kids, Peter and Isaac, left home in Nigeria just 10 days ago, and they're now en Route to meet with Vicky's husband who's already made it to Canada. Hello?
- [25:28]
Mariah Walker
Hi, this is Mariah from vive. How are you?
- [25:31]
Jake Halpern
Good afternoon.
- [25:32]
Mariah Walker
Good afternoon. I'm here with your wife.
- [25:35]
Jake Halpern
Okay. Okay. Okay. So I just.
- [25:38]
Mariah Walker
I wondered if you had your original birth certificate with you in Canada.
- [25:43]
Marshall
No, it's not with me.
- [25:45]
Jake Halpern
Okay.
- [25:45]
Marshall
It's back home. But he asked the photocopy of my birth certificate though.
- [25:50]
Mariah Walker
Yeah, but photocopies don't really have. True. They can't tell if it's real or not.
- [25:55]
Marshall
I will try and get it.
- [25:57]
Mariah Walker
Okay. That would be great.
- [25:58]
Jake Halpern
Okay.
- [25:59]
Marshall
Is she okay now with the kids?
- [26:02]
Jake Halpern
Yeah. You're here.
- [26:02]
Mariah Walker
On speaker. She's here.
- [26:04]
Sister Beth Nitoprum
Hello.
- [26:06]
Jake Halpern
Hello. Are you guys okay? We okay? We are doing well, yeah. Okay.
- [26:10]
Marshall
What of Peter and Isaac?
- [26:13]
Jake Halpern
They are fine.
- [26:13]
Mariah Walker
They are in the children l room.
- [26:17]
Marshall
There they are watching cartoon.
- [26:20]
Jake Halpern
Okay.
- [26:26]
Sister Beth Nitoprum
This is pretty much where all the interviews are held and any intake is made. So this can be a happy or sad place.
- [26:35]
Jake Halpern
Sad in terms of what exactly? In terms of finding out whether they're eligible to go to Canada.
- [26:38]
Sister Beth Nitoprum
Exactly. And whether they're going to be able to meet their relatives or not. And whether they can get into the over the border or not. We try to keep them moving through the process of what it means to either settle in Canada or settle in the United States. And, you know, you're safe here. That's my biggest thing. You're safe.
- [26:59]
Jake Halpern
And part of the reason that people feel safe here is that no one's pushing them to talk. In fact, there's a policy at VIVE not to ask people why they left their home country. If people want to talk about it, they can. But Sister Beth says for a lot of folks, the memories of persecution, imprisonment, torture, they feel too painful or too dangerous to talk about.
- [27:22]
Sister Beth Nitoprum
I mean, that's one of the things that I have to say. I have to build trust. Trust us, that we're trying to help you, even if the truth doesn't feel right to you. When they tell the truth back in their homeland, they get shot. You get shot or hurt or punched or something, or raped. I mean, come on. So why would you tell the truth?
- [27:57]
David Remnick
You're listening to the New Yorker. Radio Hour contributor Jake Halpern has been reporting for over a year on vive, an old school house in Buffalo, New York, where a community group gives housing, meals and legal advice to people hoping for refuge in Canada or the U.S. he was there earlier in the winter.
- [28:23]
Jake Halpern
Most of the people who show up at Vive, they want to go to Canada. They Know that once you're admitted at the border, you get immediate access to a whole bunch of social services in Canada and a decision on your case within 60 days. The U.S. by contrast, offers almost no support, and most applicants wait years for a decision. In 2015, Canada granted asylum to almost 60% of applicants. And all of this is giving Canada a kind of golden reputation among refugees. And Marshall, remember, he was the guy from Zimbabwe who fled his home. He knew about this, too.
- [28:58]
Marshall
We thought, like, you know, the Canadian policy to immigrants is a bit friendly. The police, United States, we believe, is a little bit hostile. You know, it's not that welcoming to immigrants. So that's why we hit Canada on their first priority.
- [29:12]
Jake Halpern
The trick is getting admitted at the border. You either need an anchor relative, a close family member already living there, or you need to be an unaccompanied minor. Marshall had neither of these. And when he gets to Vive, he learns this, and they tell him, but.
- [29:27]
Marshall
Guys, if you don't have relatives in Canada, you cannot cross the border. There is no other way.
- [29:35]
Jake Halpern
Well, that's pretty much true. There is another way, a kind of loophole in the border law which says if you sneak across the border and show up in the interior of Canada and ask for asylum, you can kind of get around the anchor relative requirement. But in the depths of a Canadian winter, passage is very risky.
- [29:54]
Marshall
We try to ask her, is there a wake around, or is there some of the plan that can be made? You know, she was like, if you don't have relatives, you are not entering Canada. And that's it.
- [30:07]
Jake Halpern
Canada's out now for you.
- [30:08]
Marshall
Canada's out. And going back to Africa is a no, no. It was out of the options.
- [30:16]
Jake Halpern
So for Marshall, that means staying at Vive. When I met him, he'd already been there for four months. He'd applied for political asylum in the US but assumed that the wait could be as much as two or three years. Then Trump's executive order threw all the standard US Immigration processes into question. When I talked to Marshall back in December, he was waiting for a work permit so that he could earn money for rent and food and eventually move out of Vive. But he knew the work permit would take at least eight months to come through. Eight months he'd have to spend living in a room at Vive with two dozen other men from around the world. And though the Vive staff and residents do what they can to keep the place clean and organized, the truth is Vive is a small, crowded, rundown schoolhouse that's full to the rafters with people who've carried their trauma with them, you.
- [31:10]
Marshall
Know, in the middle of the night. If you get into some of our hostels, you might think, why are people not asleep in here? They'll be talking in their dreams. Like they'll be talking out loud. Nightmares all over the place, hallucinations. I don't know what you call them, but people will be talking, chanting, singing. You might even say, hi, how you doing? Because you might think that I have actually said hi, but I'll be asleep.
- [31:40]
Jake Halpern
Wow. So at the very least, you're looking at five more months here.
- [31:44]
Marshall
Yeah.
- [31:44]
Jake Halpern
And how do you wrap your head around that? How do you think about that?
- [31:51]
Marshall
Well, in as much as I might want to have opinions on it, I can't do anything about it. You might have positive feelings or negative feelings about it, but at the end of the day, you have nothing to do about it. Just wait patiently and embrace the reality. You know, Patience.
- [32:18]
Jake Halpern
Well, patience and work. Sister Beth tries to keep everyone busy with chores. Long term residents like Marshall often end up in charge of one of the work teams.
- [32:27]
Marshall
Blue team.
- [32:30]
Jake Halpern
Talk us through your day. Like, tell me what your day is like.
- [32:34]
Marshall
Well, basically I wake up in the morning, look on my schedule if I have a chore to do, and then organize my team after that. Probably just look for some entertainment. Sleep. I sleep most of the day.
- [32:50]
Jake Halpern
Really?
- [32:51]
Marshall
Yeah.
- [32:51]
Jake Halpern
Like, how many hours are you sleeping?
- [32:54]
Marshall
Half of the day, probably.
- [33:03]
Jake Halpern
Down on the first floor, right outside where the old principal's office used to be, there's this big bulletin board on the wall. And it's important because this is where each day a list of names is posted. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 names. And these are the names of people who Tomorrow morning at 6:30 are going to go to the border.
- [33:23]
Sister Beth Nitoprum
And this is when they came to Vive. And then what language they need?
- [33:28]
Jake Halpern
Creole, French, Tigrinya, which I think is the language of Eritrea. Arabic. As Sister Beth is showing me this, there's this guy kind of pressing up behind me, trying to get a look over my shoulder. Were you checking the list? Yeah, checking my name. Was your name on the list? It's not there. Not there? Yeah. How many days have you been here?
- [33:49]
Marshall
Last Friday.
- [33:50]
Jake Halpern
Last Friday. So is this every day you're checking? Of course.
- [33:54]
Sister Beth Nitoprum
Where are you from, Hunter?
- [33:55]
Jake Halpern
I'm from Eritrea.
- [33:56]
Sister Beth Nitoprum
Eritrea. I'm Sister Beth. How do you do?
- [33:58]
Jake Halpern
Nice to meet you.
- [33:58]
Sister Beth Nitoprum
And your name?
- [33:59]
Jake Halpern
Adam.
- [33:59]
Sister Beth Nitoprum
Adam. Nice meeting you.
- [34:02]
Jake Halpern
The only people that aren't checking this board are the long Termers Marshall people that can't go to Canada probably because they don't have an anchor relative and they're just stuck here in limbo indefinitely. When we're done looking at the bulletin board, we get to talking with this guy named Ulysses. He's a small, jovial man. I'd seen him everywhere in the building, welcoming people, giving everyone toys. I mean, he was almost like the mayor of Vive. And so tell me your situation now. You're here at Vive, but you have a son. Where is your son?
- [34:37]
Stephen Hayes
My son now is in Canada. Yeah. He is applying for refugee protection in Canada.
- [34:48]
Jake Halpern
He and his 16 year old son, they fled El Salvador because of the rampant gang problems there. But Ulysses, he'd actually been here before he came through Vive alone. Back in 2009, he left his son with some family back in El Salvador and he tried to get refugee status in Canada. When his application was denied in Canada, he was sent back to El Salvador. He spent some time getting money and documents together. And then he tried it again, coming back through Buffalo en route to Canada, this time with his son.
- [35:19]
Stephen Hayes
When I talking with the lawyers and they say, oh, you can't go again because you only have opportunity for your case. But my son don't come in before with me. Yeah. And now.
- [35:36]
Jake Halpern
So your son went by himself?
- [35:38]
Stephen Hayes
Yeah.
- [35:40]
Jake Halpern
Ulysses 16 year old son went to the border alone. He was admitted. He's now applying for asylum and he's living about two hours away in Hamilton, Ontario with another refugee family.
- [35:54]
Stephen Hayes
You know, I love my son. I had only a son. He's all for me, you know, and I am all for him. It's hard, you know, but he working hard. There he is in the school, in the high school. I talking every day with him on the phone. And in a time he said to me, hey dad, my friend invite me for go to the Niagara Falls. And I think, oh, I want to see you.
- [36:26]
Jake Halpern
You know, Niagara Falls is actually only about 20 minutes away. The problem is stepping outside of the building pose a real risk for Ulysses. Border patrol agents, they circle sometimes and the chances that he'd get picked up were real. But he just wanted to see his son.
- [36:45]
Stephen Hayes
And I say, hey, I want to see you. I want to go to for the Niagara's fall in the US side. And he in the Canadian side, I.
- [36:55]
Jake Halpern
Know the spot he's talking about and there are these big metal binoculars. You can put a quarter in and then look across Niagara Falls and kind of just barely make out the cab Canadian side. And that's exactly what Ulyses did. Put in the quarter, looked in the viewfinder and saw the blurry image of his son waving to him in the distance.
- [37:17]
Stephen Hayes
And then we see, you know, Tafar. Yeah. You understand me? Yeah.
- [37:35]
Jake Halpern
At that moment, Sister Beth swoops in, she puts her arm around him and just very tenderly escorts him back to her office. The kind of amazing thing was about 10 minutes later I'm in the hallway and I see Ulysses giving a newly arrived family a tour. He's beaming, he's welcoming, he's pointing things out, he's showing this kind of incredible human resilience. But he's also busy. This is very much Sister Beth's vision for how Vive should work. This is why she assigns tasks to everybody, why she checks in with a 30 some long term residents and every day if she can. Because too much time to think about what they've been through, what they've lost, what they left behind. It's a short road from there to despair.
- [38:36]
Marshall
There comes a time when you have to face the reality. There comes a time when you miss the people that you left.
- [38:42]
Jake Halpern
This is Marshall again. Since he left Zimbabwe, his brother's been beaten up and harassed by the police. His parents home was burned to the ground. In fact, he didn't even know for a week whether his parents survived the fire. He was just left wondering.
- [38:56]
Marshall
There comes a time when you, when you really feel what's going on, you know. So when I feel like I'm in that position, that's when I say I just retired myself to sleep.
- [39:11]
Jake Halpern
Do you feel the sleep restores you or like what's going on?
- [39:18]
Marshall
I usually have like a music speaker by my pillow and every time I sleep I play music on that speaker. So I use music, I use it as a remedy of my soul, you know. So every time I go to sleep, it's not that I'll be like sleeping, I'll be just closing my eyes. I mean, it's just resting the body. But then the brains will be at work. If there was a method or way that, you know, they could flash my memory and remove everything I know and start afresh, I would greatly appreciate that.
- [39:54]
Jake Halpern
But hold on. That blows my mind for real. Like if you could push a button and it was all gone. Everything but the good with the bad. I mean like your memories of your.
- [40:03]
Marshall
Parents, there's more bad than good. So I appreciate that there's more bad than good. So with me then I have just resolved to myself that, well, I have nothing left for me in Africa. I Think that I'm just gonna settle and start a new life in the United States, forget about everything that happened to me in the past and start afresh.
- [40:33]
Jake Halpern
I'm wondering, you see people come and go.
- [40:37]
Marshall
Yeah.
- [40:38]
Jake Halpern
Constantly coming, going, coming, going on to Canada. And I'm wondering if that, in a way, makes it actually harder for you because you see all these other people kind of getting on with their journey.
- [40:50]
Marshall
Well, like, most of the times I work at the security checkpoint there. I see people coming in. We tell them we are fooled up. We don't have space. They would, like, opt to sleep, like, on the floor, like, in the. Like in the corridors. At one point, I might think, am I in a place that I don't deserve to be? How about those guys that are sleeping on the floor? How about those that are going to sleep on the. Like, on the hallways for two weeks? At least I have a bed.
- [41:26]
Jake Halpern
I want to hear your music, man.
- [41:30]
Marshall
I thought you'd forgotten about it, man. Well, it's not much, man. It's not much. It's just, I.
- [41:38]
Jake Halpern
What are some of your favorite songs?
- [41:40]
Marshall
Like, one of my favorite songs from Bob Marley is called Three Little Birds.
- [41:43]
Jake Halpern
Yeah.
- [41:44]
Marshall
Yeah. You know that.
- [41:45]
Jake Halpern
Of course. Yeah.
- [41:47]
Marshall
I like the message. I like the. You know, I like them when they try to convince you that everything is okay in as much as in reality, it is not okay. It's like convincing a hungry kid, you know, to say, don't worry, don't cry. I'm going to buy you some candies. But he is hungry at that moment. So it is that belief, hope, and trust that is going to make him keep quiet or stop crying. It's the message that Bob Marley tells me that every little thing is gonna be okay someday. Somehow, I'm not the first person to be involved in such a predicament, in such challenges. There's things that I'm going through, have been experienced by other people way back in the past, and they went through it. So it's just a phase that I'm in. So I just have to, you know, soldier on. And even if it takes long, it just. It will. It will come to pass someday.
- [42:52]
Jake Halpern
The question is when? And that still remains unclear. I last saw Marshall and Ulysses a couple of months ago, and I decided to call up and see how they were doing. They're both still at Vive. Marshall just started volunteering at a local community farm, a greenhouse. So he's getting out of the building more, which might be a good thing. The mood at Vive, it's tense. Mariah Walker, the staffer who helps people get their papers in order for Canada. She said that Trump's executive orders have people so worried that a few have just up and left in the middle of the night, ran for it in winter, trying to cross the border illegally. She told me she never thought it would be her country that people were running from.
- [43:40]
David Remnick
That's Jake Halpern reporting from Buffalo. His story about Vive in the New Yorker is called the Underground Railroad for Refugees. In a minute, my colleague Ariel Levy talks with the photographer Kathryn Opie. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. Stick around. I'm David Remnick, and this is the New Yorker Radio Hour. Katharine Opie is one of the leading photographers in America right now. Now, some of her pictures would make you think that her work is all about transgression. One picture shows Opie's own back with stick figures, two women in skirts holding hands cut with a blade into her skin, a little picture traced in blood. But that wouldn't begin to give you a full picture of Opie's work. She's also photographed political rallies, mini malls, cityscapes, the Great Lakes and the Los Angeles freeways seemingly empty. Very early one Sunday morning, Opie's photographs of Lake Michigan were in the White House while the Obamas were living there. It always seems to me that she wants to capture everything about life in America today. Opie grew up in Ohio and lives now in Los Angeles. She recently sat down with staff writer Aria Levy.
- [45:18]
Ariel Levy
So your parents bought you a camera when you were in fourth grade. Tell us about what you liked to photograph when you first started.
- [45:25]
Mariah Walker
Well, I predominantly started just kind of walking around my neighborhood and photographing things that probably wouldn't make very good photographs. Stop signs, looking at different houses, my friends on their bikes at the country club. So actually, the first two photographs were mom and dad in the kitchen. Dad's sitting at the table, and it says actually Kodak safety frame one. And he has his army coffee mug in front of him, and he's ready for work. And then the second frame is Kodak safety frame two on the negative, and it's mom in her robe in the kitchen with the kitchen cabinets slightly ajar behind her.
- [46:04]
Ariel Levy
Something that was really interesting to me is that you always took pictures from a very young age, and you always knew that this was something that was extremely important to you. But when you graduated high school, you didn't think, okay, I'm gonna go be a photographer. You thought, I'm gonna go be a teacher. Tell us about that. If you Would.
- [46:25]
Mariah Walker
Well, I think that it didn't seem that I would be able to really sustain a living as a photographer. It was a very male dominated field at that point. And so I probably felt like, okay, well, I need to make a living. And it's, you know, I'm really, really good with kids. It seems a natural fit for me to want to go ahead and be a kindergarten teacher.
- [46:50]
Ariel Levy
And you told me that you might have spent the rest of your life sitting in small chairs being a kindergarten teacher if not for the intervention of an artist named Eleanor. Would you tell us about that and how that affected your past?
- [47:04]
Mariah Walker
Eleanor Schnur, amazing woman, still alive and painting in New York City, constantly working. And my dad was dating her again. It was his high school sweetheart. And then they got back together after my parents divorced for a second time. Yeah. And she was incredible. And she would photograph Wall street making studies to work. And I ended up going out with her and photographing as well. And she just kind of basically said, you know, I understand about the kid thing, but you're really an artist and you really should do it because you're good and you should move to a major city and go to art school and that's what you should be doing with your life, Kathy. And it was a, you know, it just felt very true to me.
- [47:56]
Ariel Levy
It's like it just sounded like the truth.
- [47:58]
Mariah Walker
Yeah. Nobody ever said, you can do this, Kathy, go ahead, you can go ahead and just study art. Why not? You love it. But nobody had ever said that to me before.
- [48:08]
Stephen Hayes
Uh huh.
- [48:09]
Ariel Levy
We're gonna skip way ahead. We're gonna talk about domestic.
- [48:14]
Jake Halpern
Yeah.
- [48:14]
Ariel Levy
Could you describe the project, what you were doing and why you were doing it?
- [48:19]
Mariah Walker
Well, domestic started first out of, I think that I always wanted to obtain a certain idea of domesticity and, you know, not necessarily the institution of marriage. You know, I mean, in some ways it's this other aspect of how we think about an American dream, of this partnership that you end up growing old with somebody. And so I started first in the early 90s. I started going around and photographing various friends who'd been together for 15 years, 20 years, ironically, or maybe not ironically, Months after I would make these photographs, several couples, they broke up.
- [49:01]
Ariel Levy
Oh God.
- [49:02]
Mariah Walker
And so then the body of work became like, oh, God, don't let Kathy photograph you. It's the kiss of death, you know, to your relationship. And I'm like, oh my God, what juju am I bringing into this? You know? And so I put it aside and I was like, okay, I'm not ready to do that yet. And then I got involved with somebody again and we were about ready to move in together. She was going off her residency. I just was like, okay, well, I have some time off here in between teaching. Like, I didn't have a full time gig yet. And so I bought an RV and I traveled around the country for three and a half months, wanting to open it up, not be the kiss of death, but let's really look at, you know, lesbian, domestic. And so it's literally traveling around the country for three and a half months photographing kind of a tableau in a certain tableau way of photography, this domestic setting. So they might be having breakfast and playing with their children, might be mowing the lawn in the backyard. And it also was in conversation with what was happening in terms of contemporary photography, really exploring this idea of dystopia within domesticity. But again, there wasn't the queer voice in it. So I wanted to make work about my own community. And I always believed, in terms of photographing my queer community, that it's about creating history as well. And part of image making is being able to create that history.
- [50:31]
Ariel Levy
Sure. Okay. Something else we're gonna talk about in terms of community. I wanna talk for a minute about your political work, your photographs of Tea Party rallies, of the Obama inauguration. What is it about these Tea Party rallies that made you think, okay, I wanna be there, I wanna take some pictures, I wanna make some photographs at these.
- [50:51]
Mariah Walker
Well, the relationship to democracy really, that if I was only going out and photographing maybe the demonstrations of the left, such as anti war protests that I've done, as well as immigration rallies, May Day rallies. And so to not have the Tea Party within it, I feel would be hypocritical and slightly one sided about the broader demands of democracy in terms of identity in politic.
- [51:24]
Ariel Levy
Sure. And when you shot the Tea Party rallies, was that hard to do? Was it hard to do logistically, was it hard to do emotionally? Or what was it like? What was that experience like for you?
- [51:37]
Mariah Walker
Well, I think that I was really just trying to figure out what it was to face that crowd and photograph them. And in situations like that, even though I'm not a photojournalist, I tend to put a little bit of a photojournalist hat on. So I go in trying to be as free of opinion as possible, just to basically bear witness and then go away from it and begin to edit it.
- [52:13]
Ariel Levy
Right, so you're trying, you know, I feel like you work very hard, or maybe it's not hard. I feel very strongly, let's say that in your photographs, whether they're of football players, tea partiers, this planned community in Valencia where the billboards advertising it look like Ken and Barbie are inviting you to come, you never are dismissive.
- [52:36]
Mariah Walker
No, I'm not snarky. No, no, I'm not snarky. And I'm an optimist in relationship to humanity.
- [52:44]
Ariel Levy
You really are, aren't you?
- [52:45]
Mariah Walker
Yeah, I really am. I really think that we can actually begin to figure out our opposition in relationship to a broader notion of humanity. And it's not, you know, trying to be Buddhist in any way, but if I were to make snarky photographs of communities that I feel disavow me not only as a, you know, a queer woman, but just not really belonging to it, then it doesn't set up an opportunity to examine and create a broader dialogue.
- [53:22]
Stephen Hayes
Sure.
- [53:23]
Ariel Levy
I mean, when I think about you, I can think of so many descriptions of your work and of you that if you isolated any one of them, you would never know the other thing. Like you are a mom from the Midwest and you're a tattooed member of the SM dyke community. That's also a statement of fact. You wouldn't necessarily think those were the same person. But they are. They're Cathy Opie, aren't they?
- [53:50]
Mariah Walker
Yeah. No, I mean, I think that people assume so much on ideas of identity. In the same way that I can go to a Tea Party rally, I might actually end up finding somebody at that Tea Party rally that I'm going to have a really interesting conversation with. And so if we compartmentalize our lives and we don't reach across what is our own comfort zone, we're never going to allow this larger sense of humanity to seep into all of our lives.
- [54:23]
David Remnick
Photographer Kathryn Opie. You can read Ariel Levy's profile of her@newyorkerradio.org and Ari's new memoir is called It's a Terrific One. The rules do Not Apply. And that, friends, is it. Thanks so much for joining me today. I hope you have a great week.
- [54:40]
Jake Halpern
The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co production of WNYC Studios and the New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Meryl Garbus of Tune Yards with additional music by Alexis Cuadrado. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Turina Endowment Fund.