The Nightmare Immigrants Face At The Texas Border

The Nightmare Immigrants Face At The Texas Border

Refuse Fascism Episode 185

Mon, Jan 15, 2024 6:31AM • 47:08

Faisal Al-Juburi 00:00

We are seeing, quite possibly, the most anti immigrant rhetoric paired with some of the most anti immigrant policy and practice at the southern border. We’re putting people into conditions where we are causing potentially irreparable, but certainly long term damage to these individuals to these people, to these children. I really hope that the public doesn’t look away.

Sam Goldman 00:44

Welcome to Episode 185 of the Refuse Fascism podcast, a podcast brought to you by volunteers with Refuse Fascism. I’m Sam Goldman, one of those volunteers and host of the show. Refuse Fascism exposes analyzes, and stands against the very real danger and threat of fascism coming to power in the United States.

Your help is needed as we design our programming for a year where, let’s be real, Refuse Fascism will be needed more than ever. I hope you’ll take a few moments to fill out our survey and contribute your thoughts on what you hope to hear on the pod this year. Along with all your questions and fears that are keeping you up at night. We want to know all about them so that we can provide as many resources to us all as we work together this year to refuse fascism.

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In today’s show, we are sharing an interview with Faisal Al-Juburi, Chief Officer of External Affairs for RAICES Texas, to discuss the nightmare our immigrant siblings face at the Texas border. But first we need to talk about some developments from the past week as they relate to the fascist threat. It should be really a no brainer when abortion is illegal women die. Abortion bans kill those that codify these bands have blood on their hands. The New Yorker spotlighted that reality — even while their headline undercut it — through their investigation into the death of Yennefer Alvarez Estrada Glick caused by SB8, Texas’s abortion ban, scaring into silence doctors who otherwise would be recommending or at least mentioning abortion to a pregnant woman whose life was endangered by her high risk pregnancy; an abortion which would have given her a real chance to survive.

Yeni was an aspiring scientist. She should have been having her baby shower with her family and friends on July 15, 2022. Instead, they gathered for her funeral. Despite her over five visits to Texas hospitals, she died two weeks after Roe was overturned, where Texas’s bounty hunter and forced abortion ban had already hamstrung medical professionals from raising the emergency flag for months. Insisting that this reality be confronted by everyone, refusing to be silent or move on, committing to making all of society pulse with the demand: Abortion on demand and without apology, nationwide, not relenting until that is met. This is how we honor Yeni, her family’s bravery, and all the women whose stories have not yet been heard.

Every week, Trump’s already blatantly fascist rhetoric continues to reach new crescendos. He has begun to refer to those incarcerated for participating in the January 6th coup as “hostages.” At his civil fraud trial in New York, he made an unhinged outburst in the courtroom drenched in threats and delusional self-victimization before the judge compelled Trump’s lawyer to control their client. After a hearing of his case for immunity before the D.C. Court of Appeals, he threatened that if he’s found guilty, “it’ll be bedlam in the country. It’s a very bad thing. It’s a very bad precedent. As we said, It’s the opening of a Pandora’s box.”

All of this has paved the way for his supporters to throw threaten all those they see as less human, anyone who opposes trump, the judges in his criminal and civil cases, and election officials across the country. Just this week, there has been a wave of credible bomb threats and SWATings against officials alongside a mass bomb threat, forcing evacuations and increased security at 18 state capitols.

To drive home the deadly seriousness behind all of these threats, Trump’s lawyer argued in the same D.C. hearings that, if elected, Trump could order the killing of a rival by the U.S. military and be immune from any legal consequences unless Congress votes to impeach and convict him over it. Asked at the press conference if he agreed with his lawyers argument, Trump claimed that if a president’s immunity wasn’t absolute, they “wouldn’t be able to do anything.”

This begs the question if anything he plans to do upon re election would be within the law. It’s telling that on the anniversary of the January 6th insurrection, Mark Esper, Trump’s own former Defense Secretary, made clear that he regard Trump as a “threat to democracy”, going on to describe scenarios in which he would see Trump using the military and the National Guard under command of MAGA governors to quell dissent and advance the fascist agenda.

We have to note that today, January 14, marks one hundred days of war on Gaza. Nearly 24,000 Palestinians murdered, over 10,000 of them children, 2 million Palestinians displaced. This week, in Brussels, we saw South Africa present a compelling evidence based legal case against Israel’s ongoing genocide of the people of Gaza. It was based in sound legal theory, regarding what the Genocide Convention was created to do, and the precedent set by the International Court of Justice. In contrast. The case presented by Israel to defend their action showcased the intellectual side of fascism. Their presentation consisted of glaring lies to support their central thesis that no matter what they do, they are justified by their self proclaimed victimhood.

To top it all off even amidst their attempts at shoring up international legitimacy, Netanyahu has already made clear that if the ICJ rules against them, finding that they are demonstrably committing genocide, Israel will unwaveringly continue on their path. While the U.S. attempted to diminish and sidestep these proceedings, they illustrated Netanyahu’s obstinacy by terrorizing the only nation currently living up to the genocide conventions imperative to take action to stop genocide.

The U.S. and U.K. commenced bombing Yemen in response to the Houthis targeted and bloodless blockade in the Red Sea, showing the world that any effort to follow through on a potential guilty verdict from the IGC will be met with force.

Now, to today’s interview. As we have spoken to on the show before, the attacks on immigrants are a battering ram and linchpin in the whole fascist program. The fascist Republic of Texas under Governor Greg Abbott is fomenting and relying on a xenophobic base that is all too gleeful to see such a show of cruelty for cruelty sake, and Abbott’s overt defiance of federal law. And the limits of its state’s power in immigration is the epicenter of where we see the slow Civil War ratcheting up. Abbott’s operation Lone Star is a multi state agency border militarization project, a model in depravity towards our asylum seeking siblings from the south, with miles of barbed wire fences, systematic terror and incarceration through the mobilization of Texas National Guard troops, state police, the Texas Department of Public Safety, County Sheriff’s departments, and fish and game warden, a wall of buoys lined with wire to cut skin in the Rio Grande.

Texas continues to test the boundaries of how far their terror can go and they keep getting away with it, with barely an outcry, as they define more and more basic human decency. Even as the Biden administration has expelled more immigrants along the border than all of his predecessors, expanded militarization of the border, upheld asylum restrictions, and has expressed willingness to further erode the rights of asylum seekers, none of it is sadistic enough for these fascists. Abbott signed into law Senate Bill 4, which is scheduled to take effect March 5 of this year, preventing immigrants from the southern border from requesting asylum in the U.S., making illegal immigration a state crime in Texas.

If this goes into effect, police can arrest migrants who they suspect have crossed the U.S. Mexico border illegally, and give local judges that authority to order them to leave the country. And if they don’t leave, they could face arrest again under more serious felony charges. The Department of Justice has sued on the grounds that the measure is unconstitutional because the authority to regulate immigration and manage international borders belongs to the federal government. The Texas ACLU and other groups have also separately filed a preliminary injunction.

The Texas National Guard has taken hostage of a two and a half mile stretch of the U.S. Mexico border. In a supreme court filing by the Justice Department as part of their ongoing concertina wire case, they described the escalation of Texas efforts to interfere with federal immigration authorities. They state that armed soldiers and vehicles deployed by the state have repeatedly denied U.S. Border Patrol agents access to the Shelby Park area in Eagle Pass (a main port of entry in Texas), that they have stopped Border Patrol from launching boats to patrol the river, and forced Border Patrol to process migrants on the side of the highway. This fight between Texas and the U.S. federal government is the biggest federal state fight since desegregation.

After my interview [with Faisal Al-Juburi], news broke that on Friday, January 12, Border Patrol observed a woman and two children in distress in the middle of the Rio Grande. Texas troops barred them from taking action and the woman and two children died in this watery death trap, their bodies swept away and found by Mexican authorities on Saturday, January 13. Since this news broke, what has stood out to me the most honestly has been the frightening indifference to our siblings deaths, and, yes, the glee many feel at this outcome. Now is the time to stand with immigrants to come to their defense and to strengthen the movement to refuse fascism in the name of humanity.

To get into this more I want to welcome back on the show Faisal Al-Juburi Chief Officer of External Affairs for RAICES, Texas. Their mission is to defend the rights of immigrants and refugees to empower individuals, families, and communities, and advocating for liberty and justice. For the last couple of years, it is felt as though we’ve been trapped living in an awful Fox News soundbite. Everyone from Fox to Governor Abbott to the whole GOP who made this horrific visit to Eagle Pass, I think last week, to New York Mayor Eric Adams to Joe Biden is talking about the migrant crisis as though people crossing the southern border are a force of nature that must be barricaded against. I was hoping that you could walk us through what the reality is for people who are coming into this country for a better life and what they are facing and perhaps why the number of people, even as certain numbers drop overall, more people are trying to get refuge in this country — this country between the United States.

Faisal Al-Juburi 13:01

I think first thing that I want to address is what you’re touching on by all of our elected officials that you were naming is, bottom line, what we’re seeing is that the fight for immigrant rights is a nonpartisan fight, because it really doesn’t matter where you are on the political spectrum. We are seeing right now, quite possibly, some of the most anti-immigrant rhetoric paired with some of the most anti-immigrant policy and practice at the southern border.

You have different government entities, state and federal government entities, that are simultaneously in conflict, but simultaneously in conflict with compounding severe anti-immigrant actions. So much of what you see the current presidential administration doing is, when they’re fighting against the state of Texas in the courtrooms, is really rooted in sort of technicality of who has jurisdiction, versus fighting what at its core is also a moral/ethical issue for this nation.

For so long, I would take a step back and say we want to end asylum as a nation, that human and legal right that is in ensconced in federal and international law, long standing commitment. If we want to stop that, then that’s a different conversation. But right now, everything that’s coming out makes it feel like: you’re trying to stop it, but you want to still say you have it. And the scary thing is what we’re saying is: No, our elected officials are actually pretty good with starting to have that conversation of whether or not asylum should remain and human and legal, right.

If we’re worried as a nation about some of the larger geo-political crises across the nation, then we also need to be cognizant and aware of some of the displacement that’s going to exist within that. So where do we stand as a nation on that end? The other piece in your very loaded first question and prompt is that what the media is doing to reinforce talking points that, at the end of the day, are using terminology that is rooted in war. It’s that there is this us versus them, there is this, we need to protect ourselves. There is a monolithic enemy and it’s galvanizing the public around, like, a need to fight against.

That’s tough because, even in the most sort of one would assume liberal leaning news outlets, and even if you start to see some of the nuance get sort of unpacked within the depths of the article, we also need to remember that we’re living in a society now that has an attention span of like six seconds. So what is getting seen as the headline, when that is constantly reinforcing this notion that we as American people are at war with this other, then, over time, the American people are going to believe that.

Sam Goldman 16:08

With this situation, where people are hearing, whether it’s Trump that immigrants are poisoning the blood of this country, straight out of Mein Kampf — just garbage doesn’t even articulate it well enough, leaves me speechless, as you can tell — whether it’s that or just the variety of it’s an invasion, or fentanyl crisis brought to you by, apparently, children trying to hold their mom’s hand across the border, whatever that is, my mind hurts because of it.

I think that it’s completely intentional, because if people were to see the real human beings that are being debased, cruelly discarded, whose bodies are stepped over, whose cries for help are ignored, whose bodies are slashed by wires, who are deprived food, who are put in brutally hot or cold, depending on where their point of entry is from, conditions, starving, having gone through an already perilous journey to get here in the first place — if people were to see that and to hear that every day, what people might be led to do is take action and demand more for their human siblings than the passivity, or even the cheerleading that is currently being fostered.

Faisal Al-Juburi 17:27

Something that’s that’s forefront of my mind right now is an audio clip that is circulating of Governor Greg Abbott in Texas…

Sam Goldman 17:35

Is that with that NRA radio, clip?

Faisal Al-Juburi 17:38

Yes. That just is a really great, timely example of how powerful rhetoric is. How, in this case, what we’re seeing is that Governor Greg Abbott of Texas, has said that the state of Texas is doing everything short of shooting immigrant families, children crossing the border, because the Biden administration would charge them with murder. So, therefore implying that is the reason why they’re doing everything stopping short of that, because of what the implications are.

We saw this in 2019, with the white supremacist El Paso Walmart shooting, right. We saw how words matter. We’ve seen it over and over again, how words matter, and how the words of our elected officials matter, because right now, there’s almost this cognitive dissonance of, we’ve been taught, and it’s been ingrained in us that our elected officials are also sort of our guides — the moral exemplars. That’s something that has shifted generationally now, for sure, but there’s still that cognitive dissonance of like: Oh, but wait, if they’re saying, that must mean that it’s okay to say. That must mean it’s okay to think. It grants permission. It brings it into the mainstream. It’s no longer fringe thinking.

I believe that it gets perilously close to enticing people to follow through, and people are more likely to do that at the end of the day, when you’re talking about groups of people who have been wholly dehumanized. The concept of wanting what I want, needing what I want, having the same desires, impulses, instincts as a parent, as a child, as a sibling, as a whatever, all of that’s not easy because you have all of these different multi sort of channel sort of messages at play that are telling you that it’s okay because these are the masters that are taking over.

Even me saying that, I recognize like: Oh, gosh, I’m reinforcing messaging. That, even in itself, to acknowledge that exists is in contradiction to some of the narrative change work that I champion. It’s just so shocking that we have gotten so comfortable with making children and families the national enemy. It’s been jarring to me because immigration has never been perfect in this nation. We’ve never fully fulfilled our ideals as a nation. But where we’ve also started to see, trend wise, how some of the narrative around immigration has really shifted.

Because the bottom line is also, we’re not seeing the record numbers. If you want to go record numbers, we go back to the Bush administration. We’re not talking about right now. But there’s an effort to stoke the flames. Post 9/11 is really where you start to see that shift in the language. It starts off, initially, with, really, the Arab, Muslim male being the enemy writ large, and then slowly creeping, then until we get to the family separation crisis of 2018, and to where, then you’re like: Oh, look at these, these are families, these are infants being torn out of their mother’s hands.

The other scary thing is that there’s a complacency in where we are today. We were speaking earlier about how if the public at large saw some of these reminders, then maybe they’d be driven to action. But no. So much of what is happening today, if it had happened five years ago, people would be out in the streets, decrying, the crimes against humanity. And now, meh. I don’t know if that’s about immigration in particular, or if it’s a larger burnout. Because immigration is one of the most intersectional social justice issues, right? In terms of all the fights for justice in this nation, because being an immigrant in and of itself is not the identity. If you are an immigrant, you’re just the other disenfranchisement that may exist within your life, based upon your identity may just end up being compounded even further.

So I don’t know if it’s just that burnout, or boredom, a: Well, gosh, it doesn’t feel like we can fix it [attitude], and also a very instant gratification sort of mindset of like: Great, we’re going to put all our resources together, we’re going to make a difference, we’re going to change right now, we’re going to protests in the streets, we’re going to donate and record numbers, we’re going to say that this is the change that we want to see, and then not really recognizing that to have gotten to this point where we have so easily as a nation dehumanized “other,” we’re looking at years of systemic change, work that is ahead of us. Those moments of erupting in the streets around any cause, I think people have been faced with the reality that then that’s not the climax, that’s the starting points for change.

Sam Goldman 22:45

I appreciate that, and I think that also that we have a situation where this country — and this is just my personal opinion — creates the conditions for which people from all over the world are forced to come here, whether it be through pouring gasoline on a climate crisis, or whether it be through wars, coups that they’ve supported, or whatever it has been — through the creation of mass sweatshop industries, through the fueling of crime and nations, whatever it is creating these conditions. Then, when people come here, for people like you and I, it’s a humanitarian issue how our human siblings are treated.

In my opinion, for those that are making these decisions, or creating these laws, or creating this hell, they are then faced with a political and logistical, if you will, situation where the need of the people whose lives they have immiserated. So, I wanted to talk a little bit about the on-the-ground work that you’ve seen happen at the hands of Governor Abbott. Last time we spoke was when there was the back and forth legal fight around the buoys — were they going to be removed? They’re not.

Yes, it’s still a case, but not really, because they’re still there. They’re not being removed. Each time that this happens, whether it be like through judges or some other legislative channel where it’s okayed, Abbott goes: Oh, I can do that, awesome — let’s see what else I can do. Correct me if I’m wrong. He’s signed a Senate Bill 4 [SB 4]

Faisal Al-Juburi 24:22

Yeah. He signed it on international migrants day.

Sam Goldman 24:30

Can you tell us what he hopes to do there?

Faisal Al-Juburi 24:33

Essentially, what he had been working through, and had called multiple special sessions for state Congress in order to advance legislation around, specifically, further border militarization, as well as really something that we believe is rife for racial profiling, really empowering the state to be able to detain anyone they deem might be an immigrant.

The question that gets posed is then: What does an immigrant look like? What does an immigrant do that gives kind of that carte blanche? And, actually, we’ve already seen reported in some, the implementation of, even though was set not necessarily to begin until March, the implementation has already gone awry, in terms of, yes, actually resulting in some of the racial profiling that we had feared. What I also look at with Texas is that it is the testing ground for state actions that others can begin to adopt if they see that it is fulfilling a certain objective, and that there’s no recourse that the federal government can take.

That’s the fear of the precedent that the state sets within these actions. The concern really is that — you never speak to someone’s intention, but — we shouldn’t kid ourselves that the success of these legislative acts are defined by a certain metric — the success is based upon how is this ginning up the base? How easily are we able to use human lives as political pawns? You’d said something earlier about how the U.S. creates these situations that then lead to the displacement of individuals that they now fear.

Actually, even the fear itself is disingenuous. It’s not fear, because feelings are not facts. You may feel that there is a migrant crisis — that does not necessarily make it so. You may fear that it is creating all of these negative outcomes within the U.S., or putting the American people at greater risk — not the facts at the end of the day. Personally, I don’t believe that any politician who looks to the data thinks that the migration patterns that we’re seeing at the southern border have anything to do with the fentanyl crisis in the U.S., or that it puts us at greater risk for terrorism, because it doesn’t.

Right now, the greatest risk is, again, from white supremacist groups. White nationalist groups here in the U.S. are the ones that statistically we are at greatest risk of experiencing a terrorist act from, at the hands of. It’s more about: How do we play upon tropes? How do we play upon these stigmatized stereotypes to hold on to power? And what we see again, across the political spectrum, is that doesn’t matter how you identify, but bottom line, if there is fear, the fear is about losing power, period.

Sam Goldman 27:36

And to return to — just so people who may not be following this story kind of have it in their minds, just one more time — the new law that Abbott signed, making the police become basically a federal immigration authority. Sorry to interrupt, but there’s also something about expansion of surveillance?

Faisal Al-Juburi 27:53

In practice, it’s circumventing authority, like federal authority. With that, what we’re seeing this week, just yesterday, is that taking over of a public park in Eagle Pass, that’s a direct conduit to be able to address the needs of those who are claiming asylum, to be able to put them into government custody to then be able to assess — what we call credible fear interviews [SG: right], or asylum interviews. This whole notion of an open border at the hands of any government entity right now is is a farce.

There are so many obstacles, partly aided, right now, by some of the complacency I speak of that was bred out of — I think, you look at behavioral changes — that from the beginning of the pandemic to up until May of last year, one pandemic public health measure, title 42 [SG: right], was invoked in order to the right to even request asylum, kind of: Nah, you don’t even need to honor that.

They [migrants] just get expelled. You’re [migrants] expelled, but not actually legally deported. Then expulsions allow for the opportunity to reenter at a later time, whereas deportations, really what you’re talking about is that you’re very limited, definitely for five years, and then if you try reentry as well, then you may be criminally prosecuted. Even in terms of immigration infractions, most of which end up leading to anyone who is trying to claim asylum here in the U.S., we’re looking at civil infractions, things that do not, by law, require detention.

Detention is imprisonment, period. Detention within ice within ICE or border protection custody. Even advocates and politicians alike will sometimes make mistakes and say that CBP is not like Customs and Border Patrol. No, it’s ‘Protection’. It’s like meant to reinforce that what we’re doing is good [SG: right]. What we see right now with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, detention is run primarily by private prison contractors. That’s who’s benefiting off of this.

You have today, news coming out that they are going to be adhering to a new policy of body cams, similar to some of the concessions that have been made with police departments. That hasn’t really, necessarily yielded the protections one had hoped. There is well documented abuses of power that our attorneys see day in and day out. But basically, what you’re seeing at the border right now is there very few opportunities, and there’s a very high threshold to pass through.

In order to get any type of relief here in the U.S. and to have standing to stay in the U.S. it’s actually pretty dire. To go back to something you were saying about, even something like, climate change issues that we’ve created, COVID-19 and the economic instability, we’re at a point where I think we should be advocating for an expansion of what qualifies for asylum versus the dark reduction that we have seen.

Some of the harrowing stories and the experiences that we have seen with our clients at RAICES: Number one, if you look at the government data for the last 25 years, is that in Texas, maybe about 4% total, I think is the number, that have received any type of relief in immigration court. You’re not looking at a scenario right now, where we have open borders, which also leads me to believe that any of these negotiations right now that are happening between the White House and Congress for budget negotiations, really, at the end of the day, is that it behooves certain individual interests, to always say something is broken.

What’s happening right now is that further and further concessions are being made around asylum — the human legal right to seek asylum — around the rights of children and families — things that actually sort of make me think we might be seeing the final nail in the coffin of asylum as we know it in the U.S., imminently, in order to pass [it] through — so making significant policy changes to yield a temporary budget and secure continued funding for conflicts overseas. What we’re seeing right now is the potential interest for expulsions, for increased expedited removal, for an expansion of the detention system, which is already at some of its highest numbers.

That’s something that, specifically it’s called alternatives to detention, ATD, and really what that does also means — something that has been seen with individuals and with families — has been expanded specifically over families over the last year — it had been piloted and then grown. So, where a member of the family is electronically monitored. That is either an ankle monitor or a wrist monitor. These are also monitors that, when you trace back, it’s still the same private prison contractors that are profiting off of this.

There are very dehumanizing curfew laws. Random things that are not about actually creating, like, a means to an end of ensuring that, gosh, they get to court with their notice to appear. What is actually just happening is that you’re stripping away dignity, agency, all of that. In addition to documented, substantiated issues with the actual physical harms caused by some of these monitoring devices, as well. All of these things to say that it’s the further criminalization — and that’s a federal program. It’s just more of who wants to be in charge, but really, when you’re looking at it from federal and you’re looking at it from state, increasingly, day by day, it’s about: How do we further criminalize this immigrant community? What’s the long term impact and ramifications on us as a nation? I

tend not to get into the conversation around the economic incentivization of immigration, because that’s just further dehumanizing, right. Bottom line… it’s about human life. There’s still the long term infrastructural issues that are going to be caused by this severe resistance to immigration in the U.S. that the nation hasn’t really thought through. But then, also, the pains and the harms that we as a nation are causing these individuals. You don’t leave your ancestral land easily. It’s not like a decision that someone just picks and then go, and especially these long, treacherous, arduous journeys. You don’t go through all of that, you then don’t go through all of the literal, in addition to then, sort of metaphorical, obstacles that end up arising on the journey to seek asylum in the U.S. None of that comes easily but you’re doing it because there’s no other choice.

The stakes are that high because really, instinctively, what ends up getting triggered in us is this desire for safety, security, to be able to live, to be able to provide — that’s what we’re after. What we’re doing, we’re putting people into conditions where we are causing potentially irreparable, but certainly long-term, damage to these individuals, to these people, to these children. We just released a report yesterday from our partners across divisions at Harvard University, looking at the impacts of the mental and physical health impact of detention on children — children, as young as six months old, the median age is about nine years old. What you’re looking at: Widespread malnutrition, stunting, documented trauma. Many of these are individuals who are fleeing for their lives. These are the circumstances that we placed them in.

To cause undue harm that is in opposition to what the federal government itself says are its standards of care. The study is the first of its kind, but I mean, really, it also just confirms what we know, what we have known, and what we have seen. We have seen anecdotally, but it looks at it with a population pool that makes it undeniable. We shouldn’t look away. At RAICES, we aren’t looking away. I really hope that the public doesn’t look away.

Sam Goldman 36:04

Thank you for all of that. Staying on Texas, and as you were talking about, that already hellish journey that people have done, not just because they woke up one morning and thought it would be a good idea, but in many cases, because their life is at stake. They get to Texas, and they have been — not all of them, but thousands, I think something like 65,000 people last year — were put from Texas on buses or planes and dumped in Democrat led cities/states. This was a story, when it first happened, but a lot of people don’t know that this has reached, like, industrial proportions of basically kidnapping people, in my opinion, and dumping them in overwhelmingly cold places, like dumping them in the winter in Chicago with napping. And people don’t even know what’s happening to them.

I just was hoping that you could walk us through a little bit about what is happening here, and what can we learn from how, for instance, Democratic mayors and governors have responded to this. One thing that I’ve been following in particular, is the response of the mayor of New York City, Eric Adams, who has really whipped up his own anti immigrant campaign, which not only goads the Republicans, but it has been very, unfortunately, effective at convincing oppressed people and people who see themselves as enlightened, to buy into what otherwise I believe that they would see it as a thoroughly reactionary agenda, and join in this lynch mob mentality. I just wanted to get your thoughts on what’s happening here.

Faisal Al-Juburi 37:44

The migrant bussing and the planes that started in December, and specifically to circumvent some of the obstacles that had arisen around busing — same objective at the end of the day — has been going on consistently, right now, we’re gonna be going on two years — it would be, I believe it was April ’22 when the first thing happened. It happened under Operational Lonestar, which is what the SB3/SB4 that you were asking about earlier fits under.

We’re looking at a multi agency coordinated effort to militarize the border and criminalize immigrants. It’s a multibillion dollar effort that has been growing. Essentially, it’s like the canopy — these are all the tactics that we are accumulating under what is known as Operation Lonestar, OLS. My understanding is that many who end up transported are picked up around migrant resource centers. They may also be finding out a little bit about it, but, again, there can be these language barriers, there can also just be these conceptual barriers, and there can also be the indications of what benefits that may be in store when going to a new location.

These are false pretenses, I think, in some respects. Anecdotally, from what we have heard of how people have been enticed to travel across state lines, there are certainly attorneys that can speak to this better than I can, the implications around what violations of federal law may or may not be happening within this. Bottom line for states like New York or cities like New York, what is incumbent upon them from a local and statewide capacity is to address the needs of those in need. Just legally speaking, it’s not about whether or not you want immigrants in your community, it’s to how do you leverage the resources available in order to support those needs. Specifically within New York and the the numbers that are being cited, it frames things within this notion of, like, unprecedented. Does anyone know what these words mean anymore? Right. It’s not unprecedented… you just have to look to the early aughts to see similar sort of numbers and patterns within that period of time.

The larger issue here is that it’s not about the humans, their needs. It’s not about them. Those are not being centered. It is about political performance. Immigrants have been a scapegoat for years, for every grievance your voting bloc, your constituency may have with you and your leadership. We just need to remind ourselves of that. But I think what is sad is that what has happened is displacement of individuals, a reinforcement of talking points that at least certain politicians didn’t use to repeat, or maybe taking it, like, one extra, and a self victimization of those who would otherwise say: Oh, yeah, no, I do care, under other circumstances.

But, what we also have is the Obama administration planting the seeds from 2009 onward — just under 15 years — of good versus bad immigrant. This whole notion of, like: Hey, no, I want the good ones — makes it very easy for everyone, even the like humanitarian, like, bleeding hearts, put everyone under the bad. People are not looking at the interconnectedness of so many issues, including the fact that there are individuals, at the end of the day, who also want to be able to provide for themselves.

You had mentioned to me that you noticed our billboard in Times Square, and it’s like: From Texas to New York, we all yearn to be free. And we had the buoys and the barbed wire that were encroaching upon the Statue of Liberty. And really, at the end of the day, is what we’re saying is that we as a nation, we love to love the ideals of what Lady Liberty stands for — also, when you look at the history, is, to rock people’s world, is that even Lady Liberty was initially intended to be an emblem of racial justice, and that was initially conceptualized and inspired by a design for a woman in the hijab. Those are two pieces that get left out of this Statue of Liberty story [chuckles].

We’re saying we love to invoke Lady Liberty, we love to invoke those ideals, we love to tell ourselves that we are that nation. Right now, we are not. Right now, we are probably, practically, in a worse state than we have been in this generation, and this century, for sure. That’s gonna get worse when you’re talking about immigrant rights unless, again, the American people say that they want immigrant rights to be centered as part of our policies on a state level, on a federal level, they want them to be protected, they want them to be preserved, they want them to be strengthened. You can’t cry foul when you’re not making your voice heard.

So, what people can do is: Number one thing I tell people is that to continue to educate themselves, podcast, case in point, to continue to probe, to continue to think critically, to continue to counteract within their own circles. If they hear misinformation, if they hear a reinforcement of stereotypes and stigmas at the family dinner table, with their friend group, at the workplace, as uncomfortable as it is, to resist it. Because that’s how we’re going to start to see the culture shift we need to see in this nation if we are not going to be egregiously, anti human. And I really hope that people take the time to continue to learn, cause the short attention spans are going to bring us down as humankind. So, resist the urge to shut down.

Sam Goldman 43:29

Thank you so much Faisal, for coming on, for sharing your time, perspective, expertise. I know I learned a lot and I know that everyone listening did as well. We will put a link in the show notes so that those listening can support and join the work of RAICES Texas.

Faisal Al-Juburi 43:50

I would encourage you to sign up for our newsletter. I would encourage you, again, to pay attention to the news, and to have an open mind and to have an open heart.

Sam Goldman 43:59

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