Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to the Texas Tribune trib Cast for
Speaker 1: March twenty fourth. I'm Eleanor Klibanoff, just back from a
Speaker 1: week long vacation, thrilled to be here, starting back with
Speaker 1: a tribe cast, as I always dreamed would be the case.
Speaker 1: I am not joined by Matthew Watkins this week. He
Speaker 1: is at a board meeting, or like a board meeting, probably,
Speaker 1: which is a joke that's better in writing, I'm realizing
Speaker 1: as I say it out loud. But that's all right.
Speaker 1: We're trying our best here. I am joined in studio
Speaker 1: by my colleague on the politics team, Alejandro Serrano.
Speaker 2: Howdy, what did I miss.
Speaker 3: While I was gone?
Speaker 2: Nothing?
Speaker 1: Absolutely nothing, quiet week in Texas News, and joined on
Speaker 1: zoom by the Tribune Star Investigative reporter Lomi Kreole.
Speaker 3: Thanks for being here.
Speaker 4: Star Wow. Eleanor.
Speaker 2: Thanks.
Speaker 4: I'll try to live up to it.
Speaker 1: Yes, I'm promoting you up to Star investigative reporter. Today
Speaker 1: we are going to be talking about an issue that
Speaker 1: has really dominated the headlines in recent weeks here in Texas,
Speaker 1: I mean nationally, but especially in Texas, which is the
Speaker 1: state and status of ice detentions as of last month,
Speaker 1: almost twenty thousand people were detained in ICE facilities here
Speaker 1: in Texas, more than in any other state. We have
Speaker 1: the largest ice detention center, Camp East Montana, a sprawling
Speaker 1: tent city on the edge of Fort Bliss in El Paso,
Speaker 1: which is being seen as a model for the Trump
Speaker 1: administration's broader immigration detention plans. We've also seen a really
Speaker 1: staggering number of deaths in ice custody here in Texas
Speaker 1: and nationally. Last year, in twenty twenty five, there were
Speaker 1: thirty two people who died in ice custody, surpassing the
Speaker 1: previous high from two thousand and five of twenty According
Speaker 1: to federal data, nearly a quarter of last year's deaths
Speaker 1: occurred in Texas, and federal data shows that most current
Speaker 1: ICE attainees are not accused of crimes beyond civil immigration offenses.
Speaker 1: This is something let me, you have been reporting on extensively,
Speaker 1: certainly not a new area of reporting for you. You
Speaker 1: were deeply involved in reporting on immigration enforcement during the
Speaker 1: first Trump administration as well as during the Biden administration
Speaker 1: and allhandro you as well have been covering this lo
Speaker 1: I mean, maybe you can just sort of start and
Speaker 1: give us sort of the lay of the land in
Speaker 1: terms of you know, why we're seeing this huge surge
Speaker 1: in you know, this push to detain so many undocumented immigrants.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So, I mean it's not as surprise, right, Like,
Speaker 5: this is what President Trump and pained on. That was
Speaker 5: one of his main platforms, and his administration sees it
Speaker 5: as a mandate.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 5: His top advisor, Stephen Miller, has pushed to arrest three.
Speaker 4: Thousand undocumented immigrants a day.
Speaker 5: And I think it's important to understand that this is
Speaker 5: actually much harder than it sounds. You know, typically in
Speaker 5: the past administrations which sort of arrest immigrants when they
Speaker 5: cross pass with the criminal justice system. But in order
Speaker 5: to reach that three thousand number, you really have to
Speaker 5: go much broader than that, which is why we're seeing
Speaker 5: some of these efforts like sharing text information from immigrants
Speaker 5: with ICE, right. And so, I mean that's what the
Speaker 5: administration has.
Speaker 4: Seen as its mandate.
Speaker 5: And I think now after some of these actions, particularly
Speaker 5: in Minneapolis, it seems like there might be some doubt
Speaker 5: about are they going too far?
Speaker 1: And I mean you mentioned sort of sharing tax information.
Speaker 1: We're also seeing I mean we're recording this on Monday,
Speaker 1: so this news was breaking this morning. By the time
Speaker 1: this air is on Tuesday, it may have evolved beyond this.
Speaker 1: But you know, we're seeing ICE agents at airports. We're
Speaker 1: seeing ICE agents showing up at places where previously maybe
Speaker 1: they were not. I mean I started this by saying that,
Speaker 1: you know, most current detainees are not accused of crimes
Speaker 1: beyond civil immigration offenses. Can you sort of explain how
Speaker 1: much of a departure that is from before when it
Speaker 1: was maybe more like if you're facing additional criminal charges,
Speaker 1: will make efforts to detain and deport you.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean that Bomber administration actually deported more people
Speaker 5: than the first ROUNP administration.
Speaker 4: I mean, you know, I think in general.
Speaker 5: What previously happened is that when there was any interaction
Speaker 5: with the criminal justice system, you would you know, be
Speaker 5: targeted for deportation or if you had already a removal order.
Speaker 4: But what we're seeing.
Speaker 5: Right now is the Trump administration is, for example, reevaluating
Speaker 5: whether refugees who are legally vetted and have a status
Speaker 5: in the United States whether they should be deported. So
Speaker 5: it is very much a departure from both Republican and
Speaker 5: democratic administrations.
Speaker 4: What the expanse of it.
Speaker 5: In order to reach that number that Stephen Miller has
Speaker 5: been pushing, you cannot just do sort of the typical
Speaker 5: going after criminal immigrants.
Speaker 6: You know, you know way in here, I think when
Speaker 6: one thing that kind of I guess Didlumi's point. It's
Speaker 6: like it just seems like now more than certainly pass administrations,
Speaker 6: like immigration enforcement has gotten really random, and there's like
Speaker 6: this certain element to it that, like any cop can really.
Speaker 2: Just help bikes, like shoes to help them.
Speaker 6: And obviously there's some departments in Texas that are more
Speaker 6: eager to do that. And I think that's kind of
Speaker 6: like the outsized role of Texas has played for years
Speaker 6: now because our leader state leaders are politically marching in
Speaker 6: lockstep with Trump, so we end up helping the administration
Speaker 6: a lot more.
Speaker 1: And I mean a big reason I think, in at
Speaker 1: least in our sort of collective imaginations, that Texas plays
Speaker 1: such a huge role in all of this is that
Speaker 1: we have the longest stretch of border in the country.
Speaker 1: But all hundred things have really changed at the border
Speaker 1: right in recent Yeah.
Speaker 6: No, it's totally quiet. I mean, I think perhaps changed
Speaker 6: too much. I was just working on a story a
Speaker 6: couple of weeks ago and interviewing people down in the valley,
Speaker 6: the Rio Grande Valley and congressional candidate by Pulito and Dejano.
Speaker 6: Star's telling me that, you know, he keeps hearing from
Speaker 6: people that like bridge traffic is down because Mexican tourists
Speaker 6: don't want to come. That's like really common in border communities,
Speaker 6: you know, the cross traffic like I'm going to go
Speaker 6: to Walmart and like.
Speaker 2: Americans go have lunch or whatever.
Speaker 6: He said, people are not crossing as much in that
Speaker 6: effects city budgets because they collect tolls from that also retail,
Speaker 6: he said, it's down, And I think that is also
Speaker 6: like it's almost like goding, like too quiet, because when
Speaker 6: in legal immigration has tanked, but now it's also like
Speaker 6: everything else is tanking.
Speaker 2: And I think that's what we're hearing.
Speaker 6: And also obviously like the enforcement element effects communities right,
Speaker 6: like we're hearing from you know, business owners who are
Speaker 6: not seeing their employee show up because they're scared, or
Speaker 6: projects are not getting done.
Speaker 2: What have you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, let's talk more about the let me do something dad.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I just want to say, you know, Jacob Monty
Speaker 5: is actually a huge immigration lawyer in Houston. He was
Speaker 5: on the Trump administration's first like border security Council.
Speaker 4: He posted something.
Speaker 5: The other day that you know, they do kind of
Speaker 5: these free legal clinics, and people were not showing up
Speaker 5: to these free it's like free legal advice from this
Speaker 5: guy who was, you know, on Trump's.
Speaker 4: Advisory council in the first administration.
Speaker 5: And people are not coming because they are so fearful
Speaker 5: that any interaction that aligns them with like possibly being
Speaker 5: undocumented will result in enforcement. So, just to Alejandra's point,
Speaker 5: this is having sort of really dramatic consequences beyond what
Speaker 5: we've seen before.
Speaker 6: I think it's also interesting in Texas because it hasn't
Speaker 6: happened with a lot of the backlash and fanfare is
Speaker 6: a poor word for that, but kind of like Chicago,
Speaker 6: like Los Angeles, like Minnesota. But it's like ice is
Speaker 6: really active here all the same.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, I think that it's we have not seen
Speaker 1: that same backlash in Texas. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: as you both have reported on, I mean, this really
Speaker 1: is the epicenter and sort of the blueprint in a
Speaker 1: lot of ways for a lot of what's going to
Speaker 1: happen in the rest of the country and as love
Speaker 1: one of your sources hed in one of your stories.
Speaker 1: Like in many for many people, it's like the beginning, middle,
Speaker 1: and end of their immigration journeys. You know, maybe they
Speaker 1: originally crossed in Texas, went on somewhere else, started a life,
Speaker 1: lived maybe here for a long time, and now we're
Speaker 1: ending up back in the detention center in Texas. Let me,
Speaker 1: let's talk about these detention camps or you know, these
Speaker 1: sort of detention facilities. I mean, we can start by
Speaker 1: talking about the ElGamal family, which is a mother and
Speaker 1: five children who have been stuck at the Dilly detention
Speaker 1: facility outside San Antonio for about nine months, which advocates
Speaker 1: and lawyers believe is longer than any other family.
Speaker 3: Tell us a little bit about who.
Speaker 1: They are, how they ended up there, and what their
Speaker 1: experience has been.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so, I guess I first just quickly wanted to
Speaker 5: step back. Like so, family detention is long controversial, right,
Speaker 5: and it actually started just north of Austin in Hodow,
Speaker 5: which was the first family detentions are in.
Speaker 4: The country, and it was shut down in two.
Speaker 5: Thousand and nine after multiple problems, and then the Obama
Speaker 5: administration opened Dilly in twenty fourteen with the intention that
Speaker 5: it would be more humane, but it's also been plagued
Speaker 5: with legal problems, and the Biden administration shut it and
Speaker 5: then the Trump administration opened it again. So this is
Speaker 5: you know, the concept of family detention is really controversial,
Speaker 5: and medical experts say.
Speaker 4: That this is not good for kids.
Speaker 5: Right, So the Algamol family has been detained there for
Speaker 5: nine months. There the father was accused of an anti
Speaker 5: Semitic attack in Colorado, but the family has maintained that
Speaker 5: they had no knowledge of that. They have not importantly
Speaker 5: been charged with any crimes, but they've been detained at
Speaker 5: Dilly ever since. And that includes the youngest kids, who
Speaker 5: are five year old twins. So what they have described
Speaker 5: in kind of pretty heartbreaking letters and drawings is just
Speaker 5: I mean, there are you know, essentially in a prison.
Speaker 5: The lights are on at all hours, the food is
Speaker 5: you know, lacking. One of the kids described losing about
Speaker 5: twenty pounds. There's almost no schooling. And this is a
Speaker 5: little bit of a departure because the eldest girl in
Speaker 5: this family actually was recognized as one of the best
Speaker 5: and brightest students in the state of Colorado. She wanted
Speaker 5: to go to Harvard Medical School, and you know, the
Speaker 5: medical care is lacking. The mom has a history of cancer,
Speaker 5: she's not been able to see a doctor. One of
Speaker 5: the kids has these has not been able.
Speaker 4: To see a dentist.
Speaker 5: But overwhelmingly, what they just describe is being detained with
Speaker 5: no end.
Speaker 4: And I think what stood out.
Speaker 5: Me from the conversation with the lawyer and from seeing
Speaker 5: kind of their their notes and their their pictures is
Speaker 5: the lawyer said, every day I worry that I'm going
Speaker 5: to get a call that one of these kids has
Speaker 5: has self harmed, because in fact, that did happen to
Speaker 5: one of their friends who tried to you know, tried
Speaker 5: to kill herself, but then she was deported. So I think,
Speaker 5: you know, this is these are diary straits here for
Speaker 5: for these kids.
Speaker 1: And what is sort of like the end game for
Speaker 1: I'm saying, like the Trump administration's goal in many cases
Speaker 1: is to get people to deport, like self deport or
Speaker 1: agree to leave the country. You know, why aren't they
Speaker 1: doing that? And what sort of is what is what
Speaker 1: does an alternative resolution look like?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean it's not actually despite what we all
Speaker 5: I think maybe want to think, it's not that easy
Speaker 5: to just support people right there, there's you have to coordinate.
Speaker 4: With countries that have to accept people back.
Speaker 5: People also have legal rights to seek asylum to undergo
Speaker 5: their deportation proceedings. So in this case, you know, the
Speaker 5: families from Egypt, they have an active asylum claim. The
Speaker 5: Trump administration cannot simply deport them while they're undergoing those proceedings,
Speaker 5: and so what they're doing is detaining them. They could
Speaker 5: release them on a bond. In this case, the family
Speaker 5: has a very strong support system in Colorado Springs that
Speaker 5: has raised money for them, that have argued that they
Speaker 5: would vouch for them. So you know that is the alternative,
Speaker 5: but the Trump administration is choosing not.
Speaker 3: To do that, right. I mean, I think this is
Speaker 3: I mean the photos.
Speaker 1: I really recommend people checking out Lem's story online because
Speaker 1: you obtained these like drawings that the children and letters
Speaker 1: that the children are writing, and I think it's very
Speaker 1: like you said, family detention is not sort of our
Speaker 1: like typical protocol necessarily across the board.
Speaker 3: And seeing this.
Speaker 1: The family, these children who are sort of just stuck
Speaker 1: there waiting for this to resolve itself, or waiting for
Speaker 1: their legal process to resolve.
Speaker 3: Is pretty shocking.
Speaker 1: Like, these are sort of the cases I think that
Speaker 1: have stood out of you know, these high profile moments,
Speaker 1: particularly involving children, where sort of national attention centers on them.
Speaker 1: So Dilly sort of came into the national consciousness, I
Speaker 1: think most recently after photographs of five year old Liam
Speaker 1: Conheo Ramos.
Speaker 3: Sort of went viral. This like little five.
Speaker 1: Year old kid who was detained in Minneapolis and sent
Speaker 1: to Dilly. There was like a lot of public outcry
Speaker 1: around that, a lot of attention. But there's a lot
Speaker 1: of cases that never get that attention, right, they're just
Speaker 1: families in Dilly that don't you know, sort of capture
Speaker 1: our national imagination. Can you tell us a little bit
Speaker 1: more about like what are some of the cases you've
Speaker 1: heard about, both like I think the concerning medical concerns
Speaker 1: things like that, but also just sort of the standard
Speaker 1: like what life is like in Dillian.
Speaker 3: Who's there?
Speaker 5: Yeah, well, you know, I think what's really different this
Speaker 5: time around is that because they're all of no people
Speaker 5: can cross the border.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 5: These are generally families that have been detained from the
Speaker 5: interior of the country, and many of them have lived here.
Speaker 4: For a long time.
Speaker 5: So that is in and of itself a significant difference
Speaker 5: from any previous administration because because typically Dailly was used
Speaker 5: to how you know, people who were recent border crossers,
Speaker 5: So that is a huge change.
Speaker 4: And then what we're also seeing is just this ramping.
Speaker 5: Up of detention that is overwhelming capacity. In the case
Speaker 5: of Dalli, that has meant, you know, there was a
Speaker 5: child with leukemia, for example, who was only released after
Speaker 5: help from Columbia Law School and multiple habeas petitions, So
Speaker 5: you know, there are people and children there with severe
Speaker 5: medical conditions that are not they say, getting the care
Speaker 5: that they need. The Courcivic, which is a private prison company,
Speaker 5: maintains that they're doing, you know, everything possible and giving
Speaker 5: the best healthcare, but that is not what we're here
Speaker 5: from the families there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I would mention another case been reported on publicly
Speaker 1: where a two month old boy was detained for three weeks.
Speaker 1: He had bronchitis, he was unresponsive, he'd been hospitalized in
Speaker 1: the past couple of days. And then you know, even
Speaker 1: as Congressman Joaquin Castro from San Antonio was sort of
Speaker 1: took up his case and was pushing it, raised a
Speaker 1: lot of awareness about it. The young boy and his
Speaker 1: family were suddenly deported. I mean, these cases are resolving
Speaker 1: or sometimes are like moving faster even than the public
Speaker 1: attention can grab them.
Speaker 3: It seems like, Yeah, I mean I.
Speaker 5: Think and I think that you're going to go to
Speaker 5: al Hondro to speak about another.
Speaker 4: Case here shortly.
Speaker 5: But I mean I think that the cases that are
Speaker 5: getting publicity are so few and far between, right like
Speaker 5: the majority. For example, this Colombian thirteen year old girl
Speaker 5: who try to harm herself at daily was deported back
Speaker 5: to Colombia. She had grown up here her entire life.
Speaker 5: So yeah, I mean a lot most of these cases
Speaker 5: are not getting public attention.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: One other thing that has sort of been reported on
Speaker 1: is like the challenges that detainees are facing and just
Speaker 1: getting their basic medical care. Especially many are now dealing
Speaker 1: with new medical issues sort of stemming from their detention.
Speaker 1: Can you just talk a little bit lower me about
Speaker 1: what that, what those challenges are and some of these
Speaker 1: issues around like are we paying government, are we paying
Speaker 1: our medical providers?
Speaker 3: What's going on there?
Speaker 4: Yeah? So, I mean, look, I don't think he is
Speaker 4: a secret.
Speaker 5: Medical care and ice, just like medical care and jails
Speaker 5: and prisons, has never been great. The difference now is
Speaker 5: both like the number of people that are being detained,
Speaker 5: which is overwhelming capacity. In addition, there is a bureaucratic
Speaker 5: change that the Trump administration made in terms of how
Speaker 5: they pay specialty medical providers that is taking some time
Speaker 5: to institute and means that basically since October, a lot
Speaker 5: of the specialty medical providers have not been paid. In addition,
Speaker 5: we have seen reports of a lot of ICE healthcore
Speaker 5: or medical providers who work with ICE are really concerned
Speaker 5: reportedly that they may be violating their hypocritic oath and
Speaker 5: are actually leaving the agency intros and because they feel
Speaker 5: that maybe they can't give the best medical care under
Speaker 5: these circumstances.
Speaker 1: And then, I mean sort of it sounds like through
Speaker 1: a combination of factors, some of which is sort of
Speaker 1: the mental health issues you talked about, others sort of
Speaker 1: the inadequate training of ICE officials inside these facilities, and
Speaker 1: then also the inadequate medical care, we have seen this
Speaker 1: unprecedented surge in deaths within these ICE attention facilities all hundred.
Speaker 1: Maybe you can talk about the of Mohammad Nazir Paktiawal
Speaker 1: who died in ICE custody here in Texas.
Speaker 6: Yeah, he was an Afghan man, forty one year old
Speaker 6: man who had helped the American military in Afghanistan starting
Speaker 6: two thousand and five, and then when the US withdrew
Speaker 6: in twenty twenty one, he came with like a special
Speaker 6: program that the Biden administration had started. So he comes
Speaker 6: to Texas, relocates, and a couple of weeks ago, he
Speaker 6: was taking his kids to school and got pulled over
Speaker 6: by unmarked agents and they detayed him and told him
Speaker 6: he was in the country illegally, presumably, and within a
Speaker 6: day he died. And it's not clear what happened. He
Speaker 6: called his brother late at night and said he wasn't
Speaker 6: feeling well, and then ICE called the family and said
Speaker 6: that they were taking him to a hospital, and then
Speaker 6: within hours he was dead. His family is obviously pretty
Speaker 6: pretty devastated, but also confused, and a group that helps
Speaker 6: a lot of these veterans called AFGHANIVAC, it's really trying
Speaker 6: to raise awareness to get answers, but so far there
Speaker 6: have been very little information from DHS or ICE. They
Speaker 6: accused him of not having any provided his military background.
Speaker 2: Afghanivak hause his certificate.
Speaker 6: And the medical examiner has not yet ruled on his
Speaker 6: matter of death, so it's not clear yet, but that
Speaker 6: is going to be an important I guess the termination
Speaker 6: once it's done.
Speaker 1: And we've seen this on a couple of other cases
Speaker 1: right where there's sort of this disagreement maybe between the
Speaker 1: initial reports and then what the medical examiner ultimately concludes.
Speaker 3: I know, let me.
Speaker 1: You wrote about the case of Haraldo Luna's compos who
Speaker 1: died at Camp East, Montana. He was originally his death
Speaker 1: was originally attributed to medical distress, but the medical examiner
Speaker 1: ruled it a homicide, saying he was suffocated and became
Speaker 1: unresponsive while being physically restricted by law enforcement.
Speaker 3: I mean, what is sort.
Speaker 1: Of the I mean, the the system in under which
Speaker 1: these deaths are being scrutinized are are being looked at.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I know there's some oversight,
Speaker 6: but I think it kind of seems like medical examiners
Speaker 6: are playing an increasingly more important role when there is
Speaker 6: a suspicious death. I think the case you just highlighted
Speaker 6: that Lowemi wrote about is like just like underscorees to
Speaker 6: the point of why forensic pathology is important. Like across
Speaker 6: the board, right, Like, it's just it's kind of like
Speaker 6: a factual establishment of facts, right, you look at a body,
Speaker 6: you determine what happened. As far as like internal investigations,
Speaker 6: I don't think we've seen any internal repercussions in DHS
Speaker 6: or ICE for any of the uses of force. We
Speaker 6: haven't even talked about the Americans who have been killed
Speaker 6: as part of this crackdown.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I mean, what's your sense of sort of
Speaker 1: how these deaths are being scrutinized and being you know,
Speaker 1: looked at as a sign of whether anything needs to change.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, I think what Alejandro said is right
Speaker 5: that you know, there's doesn't seem to me a lot
Speaker 5: of at least publicly, right, we don't know what is
Speaker 5: going on here, and DHS has really not been very transparent.
Speaker 4: So in that case of Compass, as you mentioned, I
Speaker 4: just want to.
Speaker 5: Underscore that it is pretty shocking and experts said that
Speaker 5: to us repeatedly. To have staff accused of a homicide
Speaker 5: in the case of a detainee, that is I don't
Speaker 5: want to say unprecedented, but you know, maybe so what
Speaker 5: happened in that case is we didn't learn the truth
Speaker 5: until days or weeks later, and there's another case at
Speaker 5: that same facility in Camp East Montana and Alpaso, where
Speaker 5: we have not been able to get the autopsy because
Speaker 5: they're sending it to the they're deferring to the military
Speaker 5: since it's occurring on Fort Bliss. So you know, I
Speaker 5: think that there are many questions around the circumstances of
Speaker 5: these deaths and what if anything DHS and ICE is
Speaker 5: doing to hold people accountable.
Speaker 6: And also aggressive pushback to accountability, right, like we see
Speaker 6: this with the masking, like officers don't want their identities revealed.
Speaker 6: And then another I guess element of oversight is Congress,
Speaker 6: and we've seen members of Congress turned away from detention
Speaker 6: facilities not really get answers when they have simple lines
Speaker 6: of inquiry into these major like I don't know if
Speaker 6: we call them catastrophic events, but obviously there's been a
Speaker 6: bunch of these like one off incidents that really capture
Speaker 6: the national tension, and even then it's hard to get information.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that that's like, I mean, just as journalists,
Speaker 1: I think our personal like bone to pick right is
Speaker 1: like what is available to the public and when and
Speaker 1: sort of how accessible is that?
Speaker 3: Let me.
Speaker 1: I want to talk a little bit more about Camp
Speaker 1: East Montana, which is where three of these deaths were
Speaker 1: recorded in a very short period of time. The camp
Speaker 1: has it's sort of, as I said at the beginning,
Speaker 1: this model in some ways of what the Trump administration
Speaker 1: wants to do. Build these like huge deportation or these
Speaker 1: huge detention facilities. This one is on the edge of
Speaker 1: Fort Bliss, was built in two months with a one
Speaker 1: point two billion dollar contract and just has faced so
Speaker 1: many issues since it started, medical neglect, spoiled insufficient food,
Speaker 1: unsanitary conditions, and advocacy groups on a letter from more
Speaker 1: than forty five people detaining alleged abuse and serious injuries,
Speaker 1: and ICE's own inspectors found at least sixty violations at
Speaker 1: the facility shortly after it opened. We should say that
Speaker 1: DHS has said the Tribune that any claimed that there
Speaker 1: are inhumane conditions at ICED attention centers.
Speaker 3: Are categorically false.
Speaker 1: But it does seem like, you know, you talked to
Speaker 1: some experts who said, like, we were struggling with far
Speaker 1: fewer detainees to provide adequate care, adequate medical Like what
Speaker 1: are we seeing in terms of the feasibility of building
Speaker 1: and maintaining these sort of mass detention facilities.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I think that's exactly the problem and encapsulated by Camp
Speaker 5: East Montana, And in fact, the Trump administration just recently
Speaker 5: ended that contract with the previous contractor and is giving
Speaker 5: it to someone else that Camp Beat Montana because of
Speaker 5: all of the problems. I mean, the issue at Camp
Speaker 5: East Montana was that there were you know, these were
Speaker 5: like sixty seventy people held in sort of a ton
Speaker 5: camp in a pod. It seemed that the people that
Speaker 5: were working there had very according to Representative of Roan Kascobar,
Speaker 5: who's the congressional resentative from Alpasa, you know, these are
Speaker 5: people working there who had very little training. There's been
Speaker 5: multiple measles and tuberculosis outbreaks there, and people have not
Speaker 5: been able to get not only basic medical care, but
Speaker 5: even basic access to their attorneys. And part of the
Speaker 5: problem is, as you say that, this is just this
Speaker 5: like ramping up when you have so many people, and
Speaker 5: when you perhaps have contractors who, in this case Acquisition Logistics,
Speaker 5: had no record of detention capacity of business, so you
Speaker 5: know you are going to run into problems.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is just I mean, this is like a
Speaker 1: sort of an aside. Like I remember this when during COVID,
Speaker 1: when like we were looking at I was not here
Speaker 1: in Texas yet, but looking at like, oh, we're going.
Speaker 3: To build these sort of field hospitals.
Speaker 1: We're going to staff up, but it's hugely logistically complicated.
Speaker 1: Like it's out great to be like we're turning the
Speaker 1: fairgrounds into a hospital, and then it's like, oh, this
Speaker 1: is hard to do. And that's for a really limited
Speaker 1: set of like responsibilities versus like maintaining people's you know,
Speaker 1: like keeping people alive for indeterminate amounts of time.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Also, like when you think of these like highly contagious
Speaker 6: disease like measles, like what like two people get it
Speaker 6: and you're all confined in this tent, you know it
Speaker 6: secluded from it's a community like it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is high risk for we're all involved.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and like that does not stay necessarily limited to
Speaker 1: the migrants who are in the camp. I mean we're
Speaker 1: starting to see this spread to the communities around that inevitably. Right,
Speaker 1: people go to work and come home and bring and
Speaker 1: bring things like measles or other diseases. So yeah, really
Speaker 1: sort of the ripple effects. I think we're starting to see.
Speaker 1: We talked a little bit about sort of the way
Speaker 1: that these cases get national attention, and we can see
Speaker 1: sort of some individual case reversals.
Speaker 3: I want to talk about the games Quaar family.
Speaker 1: They were you know, this sort of got It was
Speaker 1: such an interesting story because they are award the children
Speaker 1: were award winning high school Mariachi students. They were invited
Speaker 1: to the White House, they were really lauded by Congresswoman
Speaker 1: Monica de la Cruz, a Republican from Edinburgh, and then
Speaker 1: they ended up in one of these detention facilities because
Speaker 1: they were you know, going They were detained as part
Speaker 1: of a routine check in with immigration officials.
Speaker 3: Got huge national attention.
Speaker 1: We should say that Representive de la Cruz is in
Speaker 1: the middle of a very contentious re election campaign and
Speaker 1: she ended up intervening. Antonio Gamez Quaar was detained at
Speaker 1: the elval Y, a detention center in Raymondville, and then
Speaker 1: the rest of the family were detained at Dilly, including
Speaker 1: a fourteen year old and a.
Speaker 3: Twelve year old son.
Speaker 1: You know, Representive de la Cruz took steps to secure his,
Speaker 1: you know, the whole family's release. Lem Me, what do
Speaker 1: you make of these sort of one off interventions from lawmakers,
Speaker 1: particularly Republicans who are maybe you know, sort of part
Speaker 1: of the party that is supporting this crackdown generally, but
Speaker 1: then intervening on these individual cases.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think this.
Speaker 5: Case was really interesting because we actually haven't seen Republicans
Speaker 5: generally get that involved, right, And as you mentioned, the
Speaker 5: congresswoman is in a in a contested.
Speaker 4: Re election campaign. Uh.
Speaker 5: I think, you know, it's unfortunate because there are, like
Speaker 5: we said, just like some like this family was was
Speaker 5: a very compelling family. I mean, in part of the
Speaker 5: fact that the congresswoman sort of highlighted them was because
Speaker 5: she had invited them to the White House to play
Speaker 5: Mariacci and like they had gone security clearance, right, and
Speaker 5: and then they were being placed in deportation proceedings. So
Speaker 5: so I mean, I guess in some ways it would
Speaker 5: have been difficult for her.
Speaker 4: Not to intervene there. But you know, they are the minority.
Speaker 5: The vast majority of people are not getting this attention.
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, our colleague Baronice was like outside the
Speaker 1: facility when they were being released and talking to other
Speaker 1: people who were like, you know, well, like my loved
Speaker 1: one is inside my fiancees inside my you know, family
Speaker 1: members inside, and they're not getting sort of the same attention.
Speaker 1: So I do think those one off cases are really
Speaker 1: really interesting.
Speaker 3: Do you have anything to add to that?
Speaker 2: No, it just sent me as an observer.
Speaker 6: It just seems like like the golden ticket to the
Speaker 6: Willy Wonka factory, like to make a I guess silly reference,
Speaker 6: but yeah, it's just and it's also interesting the case
Speaker 6: is that get attention, but nothing happens right, Like there
Speaker 6: have been numerous like just chroniclings of going on around
Speaker 6: the country that captivate people's ten and then like still
Speaker 6: nothing happens, right, And if I.
Speaker 5: Can jump in, like for example, like you know, Liam,
Speaker 5: the little five year old from in Yeapolis, his family,
Speaker 5: he and his father were just ordered support it. So
Speaker 5: despite that national attention, that still happened. And then you know,
Speaker 5: in the case of the Alcamal family that you know
Speaker 5: we wrote about, it's been really interesting in it and
Speaker 5: I think there's multiple dynamics going on here. But it
Speaker 5: seems that Congress is hustan to get involved because the
Speaker 5: father is accused of these anti Semitic crimes, even though
Speaker 5: the family isn't explicitly not so, you know, I think
Speaker 5: it starts to become a little bit of like, you know,
Speaker 5: a favoritism system, which.
Speaker 4: Is really sad.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I think it's always kind of been like that.
Speaker 6: Now it's just what we see seeing witnessing is how
Speaker 6: much the politics have changed. Like well, I mean I
Speaker 6: have a shared friend who used to cover immigration for many,
Speaker 6: many years, and then she left because she just couldn't
Speaker 6: take anywhere. She was like you'd literally right about the
Speaker 6: most devastating things and often nothing changes. But now I
Speaker 6: think it's interesting to see how Democrats are changing there.
Speaker 6: They're tune and talking about like you know, securing the border,
Speaker 6: look enforcing the law humanly because of how much overwhelming
Speaker 6: support Trump court it that it just feels like the
Speaker 6: needle has moved so much that they're not letting up
Speaker 6: the throttle at all. Like I mean, like Liam's Family
Speaker 6: or Killer Market, We're going to see one of the
Speaker 6: first big prominent cases, like they're still trying to deport
Speaker 6: him now. It's like it's becoming an ears long effort, expensive,
Speaker 6: arduous process to remove this one man.
Speaker 2: And it's just yeah, it just seems like a lot
Speaker 2: has changed in recent years.
Speaker 1: Yeah, sort of the Overton window shifted pretty sharply. I mean,
Speaker 1: do you want to talk about story of the political response, Alejandro.
Speaker 1: You have written about sort of we saw in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four Republicans swing very sharply, especially in border communities
Speaker 1: for Republicans. And now we've just had a recent election.
Speaker 1: You know, what are the tea leaves saying about what
Speaker 1: Latino voters are are going to do this election? And
Speaker 1: then we can talk about what that says about all
Speaker 1: of this.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean it's hard to make swooping statements, right Like,
Speaker 6: I think we have a bunch of individual data points
Speaker 6: that Democrats are finding hope in and the midterms is
Speaker 6: another example of that. In the Valley in particular, the
Speaker 6: four counties that make up the Valley, they saw turnout
Speaker 6: surge massively. Yeah, Democratic Party did, but so the Republicans
Speaker 6: and Republicans have been making gains there for years and
Speaker 6: part of that is an investment that they have treated
Speaker 6: Latinos like swing voters they think, longer than Democrats have.
Speaker 6: But what it means, I don't know. It means to
Speaker 6: be seen. I think it also depends who's at the
Speaker 6: top of the ticket. I think the hope for Democrats
Speaker 6: is that they could win back Latino support and even
Speaker 6: just a little bit like ten fifteen percent in some
Speaker 6: of these counties could flip seats like and that's kind
Speaker 6: of what they're banking on here. And other data points
Speaker 6: include like the like the Senate District Texas Senate District
Speaker 6: nine special election we had, which was like, I know,
Speaker 6: one off the end of January on a Saturday, after
Speaker 6: a freeze. But again they saw like Democrat, the Democrat
Speaker 6: Center Taylor Remont who won, saw a lot of turnout
Speaker 6: in the Hispanic precincts and felt that that helped propel
Speaker 6: him to victory, paired with his message of you know,
Speaker 6: kitchen table issues.
Speaker 3: Do we have any sense.
Speaker 1: Of how these you know, immigration enforcement actions are playing
Speaker 1: with Latino voters and whether that's going to influence.
Speaker 2: Yeah, polling is mixed.
Speaker 6: I mean, I think there's like there's disapproval among Latinos
Speaker 6: written large, but I think Latino Republicans are it's like
Speaker 6: a little murkier And I don't know. I subscribe to
Speaker 6: the school of anyone who says they know exactly what's
Speaker 6: gonna happen, is it?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, it'll be interesting to see again, like
Speaker 1: you're never gonna be able to like parse out exactly
Speaker 1: what led to what. But I do think certainly, if
Speaker 1: you know, Democrats managed to hold some of those seats
Speaker 1: or regain some of that lost ground with Latinos, particularly
Speaker 1: in the Valley, I think they at least will be
Speaker 1: reading the tea leaves to say like this is an
Speaker 1: indictment of President Trump's immigration.
Speaker 2: Totally, totally.
Speaker 6: But I think it's also it's going to be interesting
Speaker 6: to see how that affects us at the in Texas
Speaker 6: and at the state House as we had into twenty
Speaker 6: twenty seven, because Republicans here are not letting any pressure
Speaker 6: off the throttle either. I mean, just let me brought
Speaker 6: up Stephen Miller at the beginning of the conversation. He
Speaker 6: talked to a cohort of state lawmakers Friday AND's grilling
Speaker 6: them about what we haven't done.
Speaker 2: And this is the state that has done the most.
Speaker 6: We had our own immigration crackdown for years that people
Speaker 6: don't even like talk about now. And you know, they're
Speaker 6: talking about like overturning like legal precedent that grants undocumented
Speaker 6: kids access to school, like talking about like ways to
Speaker 6: ensure that people who crue, medical debt, or cost the state.
Speaker 6: Anything can get deported, and just like really doubling down
Speaker 6: on immigration crackdown.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, let me.
Speaker 1: I guess that's sort of my final question to you,
Speaker 1: which is in terms of we are certainly we hear
Speaker 1: backlash to this really you know, increased ramp up of
Speaker 1: immigration enforcement. We hear a lot of backlash to the
Speaker 1: reports of these poor conditions of detainees and the deaths
Speaker 1: and some of these families that are being sort of
Speaker 1: separated or families that are being detained. What is your
Speaker 1: sense of how much that affects the policy of the
Speaker 1: federal government going forward, whether there is there sort of
Speaker 1: a tipping point in which they say, like there's too
Speaker 1: much backlash, we have to back off from this, or
Speaker 1: do you think this is kind of what we're going
Speaker 1: to be looking at for the next couple of years
Speaker 1: the Trump administration.
Speaker 5: I think it's fluid, right, And what we've seen is,
Speaker 5: you know, the Department of Homeland Security Secretary Christinome was
Speaker 5: fired or left, depending on your perspective. So that was
Speaker 5: seen in any case as some sort of indictment of
Speaker 5: the very extreme tactics that was used in Minneapolis in particular,
Speaker 5: but you know, followed Chicago and Los Angeles and the
Speaker 5: kind of border of twelve person in charge of some
Speaker 5: of this is also was sort of moved and is
Speaker 5: also leaving. And then there have been reports that Republicans
Speaker 5: are sort of internally saying, like, look, this isn't polling well,
Speaker 5: we need to like dial down the rhetoric a little bit.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 5: It's a bit of an internal battle, I think because
Speaker 5: on the one hand, you have Stephen Miller, who is
Speaker 5: very influential in pushing this, and then you have kind of,
Speaker 5: you know, maybe some more moderate Republicans who are saying,
Speaker 5: look like for example, Congressmen Dela Cruz like perhaps saying
Speaker 5: like this is not working.
Speaker 4: For me in my district or reelection.
Speaker 5: So I don't know exactly right, Like, I don't I
Speaker 5: think we've seen it kind of dial down a little
Speaker 5: bit because we've not seen another Minneapolis, right and there's
Speaker 5: been there's high level departures.
Speaker 4: There's also been they've been.
Speaker 5: Releasing more families from Dilley, for example, on Pond. But
Speaker 5: I don't think that they're backing down entirely because this
Speaker 5: is partly their mandate, So I think it remains to be.
Speaker 4: Seen exactly how they straddle what is a difficult line.
Speaker 6: Now we also only talk about like the most I
Speaker 6: guess we often focus on unenforcemently, you know, like the
Speaker 6: resting someone, putting them in a car and taking them
Speaker 6: away to deport them. But they'll changing, like so many
Speaker 6: like the administration is changing so many aspects of migrating
Speaker 6: to America, and like even coming here legally has gotten
Speaker 6: more difficult, and also like most of the staff has
Speaker 6: been directed to the deportation efforts.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I mean we're hearing political candidates in Texas
Speaker 1: saying like we should be looking at legal immigrants too,
Speaker 1: we should be looking at legal immigration, and like do
Speaker 1: we need all of these citizenship and excistionenship I mean,
Speaker 1: like basically blocking the H one B visa program. I mean,
Speaker 1: all sorts of things are changing, like you said, but
Speaker 1: certainly sort of. I think the the human conditions in
Speaker 1: these detention facilities getting a lot of that attention. Well,
Speaker 1: as let me said, it's a very fluid situation, and
Speaker 1: as Alejandro said, anyone who says they know where this
Speaker 1: is going is deeply untrustworthy.
Speaker 3: So we will continue to cover this.
Speaker 1: You know at the Texas Tribune, monitor the situation, monitoring
Speaker 1: the situation. We've got a lot of great reporters on this,
Speaker 1: obviously Low I mean Alejandro, also Colleen de Goes Mon
Speaker 1: and Bernice Garcia in the Valley and many others putting
Speaker 1: their heads on this, so stay tuned to that coverage.
Speaker 1: Are That is it for the Trip cast this week.
Speaker 1: Our producers are Rob and Chris. You can get us
Speaker 1: anywhere you get your podcasts, and we will see you
Speaker 1: next week.