EP. 93 — Why is Border Patrol Exempt from the Fourth Amendment? with Todd Miller

Adam: [00:00:22] Hello, everyone, welcome to Factually! I’m Adam Conover. You know, as Americans, we treasure our constitutional rights. We know that the government can’t do anything to interfere with our religion or how we choose to express it. We know that if a soldier wants to quarter themselves in our goddamn attic, we can tell them to buzz off. And we know that we have the right to freedom of speech to protest for whatever the heck it is we believe to sound off in the comments around this great land. We know about these rights and we also believe that the government can’t take our stuff or rifle through it without a warrant. That’s the Fourth Amendment, which protects us against unreasonable searches and seizures. It’s in the Constitution and we believe that it applies to all of us. Well, I’ve got some unfortunate news for you. If you’re one of the nearly two thirds of Americans who lives within 100 miles of a border, that Fourth Amendment is kinda, well, not something that totally applies to you, because courts have ruled that if you are a reasonable distance from the U.S. border, federal law says that Customs and Border Patrol can board busses and boats to demand people show their immigration documents. They can search your property without a warrant. Basically, the Fourth Amendment doesn’t apply to them. And that reasonable distance ends up being about a hundred miles, a hundred miles from the border. You know what’s included within 100 miles of the border, many of the largest cities in America like New York and Los Angeles and even Chicago. That’s right it’s in the Midwest. But it’s a hundred miles from the border. And the southern dangol state of Florida exists entirely within that 100 mile border band. That means that every single person in Florida does not have Fourth Amendment rights when it comes to Customs and Border Patrol. And it’s not like there are just a few Customs and Border Patrol agents. The CPB is one of the largest law enforcement agencies on the planet. There are more Border Patrol agents than FBI agents. Their agency has grown massively in recent decades, and the border that they now, quote, protect has been increasingly militarized over that time. Our border is now traced by wall, surveilled by cameras and drones and patrolled by tens of thousands of agents. So here’s the question. Why is the border out of everything in America so important that it requires us to relinquish our rights and embrace a permanent state of militarized vigilance? What exactly is going on here? I mean, the truth about our border, like all national borders, is that it’s fictional, it doesn’t exist. It wasn’t laid down by whatever deity created North America. We just slap some lines down in the middle of the desert and said that side’s America and that sides Mexico ignoring the fact that a big chunk of the land once was Mexico. And before that it was something else. And way into the future it’ll be something else again. It cuts across geographical features like aquifers, watersheds and animal habitats and natural migration patterns doing incredible damage in the process. And despite our militarized border, despite all of the time and money and infrastructure and lives that we are pouring into this artificial barrier, people are still crossing. When you think about it, the border is one of the most bizarre features of the American landscape. We spend massive resources and empower a huge law enforcement agency to violate the Constitution in order to enforce a boundary that is inherently imaginary. I mean, I don’t care what you think. You got to admit that is weird. Well, to break down exactly how weird it is and to give us a firsthand account of his decades of reporting on the border and the conflicts and contradictions that he has seen there our guest today is journalist Todd Miller. His most recent book is called Build Bridges, Not Walls. He is a fantastic guest. I really hope you enjoy him. Please welcome Todd Miller. [00:04:16][234.6]

Adam: [00:04:19] Todd, thank you so much for being here. [00:04:20][1.5]

Todd: [00:04:21] It is great to be here. Thank you, Adam. [00:04:22][1.3]

Adam: [00:04:23] Last saw you on an episode of Adam Ruins Everything called Adam Ruins a Murder, where you were on to talk about Border Patrol, about America’s borders. Let’s let’s get into it. I mean, the Border Patrol is one of the most massive and powerful, yet poorly understood institutions in American law enforcement. What do most people not realize about it? [00:04:47][23.9]

Todd: [00:04:48] Geez, where do we start with a border patrol? Well, one one thing is just there at their exponential expansion. If you look at the in the last twenty to twenty five years, for example, in the in the mid 1990s, there are four thousand Border Patrol agents and now there’s twenty one thousand Border Patrol agents. In 1995 there wasn’t a Customs and Border Protection, which is the parent agency of the Border Patrol. Now there’s a CBP, CBP is contains the Border Patrol, but it also has a Special Forces unit. It also has what they call field operations. It has a number of different components to it. And it’s the largest federal law enforcement agency at sixty thousand. And so so we’re looking at just this very dramatic expansion of Border Patrol agents. If you just want to take that statistic alone over the last in a very short amount of time because the Border Patrol themselves formed in 1924, it was 1920-. So from 1924 to 1994, there’s basically a group from maybe five hundred agents to four thousand. And then it went from four thousand to twenty one thousand now. Now the reason to look at this, this expansion of the Border Patrol is they don’t only work on the actual border. So you have the international boundary line. If you look at the international boundary line with Mexico, it’s about two thousand miles long. But when you think of the border, you actually have to imagine something much bigger than that. They work in what is known as one hundred mile zone, one hundred mile jurisdiction. So it’s probably better to imagine a band that goes along the two thousand mile US Mexico border, but also up the coast. And then also along the five thousand mile Canadian border and then also down that down the eastern seaboard. Right. [00:06:51][123.3]

Adam: [00:06:52] So you go you go along the entire border of the country in one hundred miles. So like one hundred miles east of Santa Monica, which is the western city here where I live, one hundred miles east of San Francisco, one hundred miles east of Portland, Oregon, one hundred miles south of Milwaukee, or one hundred miles north of El Paso, like one hundred miles west of New York City. Like in a band around you, once you start picturing that, that seems like kind of most of the country or at least a huge amount of maybe a third. That’s a huge area. [00:07:30][38.1]

Todd: [00:07:31] It’s it’s a gigantic area. It’s if you look at the US population, it’s two thirds of the US population. Approximately two hundred million people live in that border jurisdiction. [00:07:44][13.1]

Adam: [00:07:45] I’m like picturing that’s like all of Florida, right? It’s like it. Is it. [00:07:48][3.9]

Todd: [00:07:49] Yeah, it’s Florida. If you’re in Florida, you’re an entire- [00:07:50][1.1]

Adam: [00:07:50] You live on the border zone and the Border Patrol has jurisdiction over where you live. [00:07:58][7.2]

Todd: [00:07:58] And the state of Maine. Many people don’t know that, but the state of Maine is completely in the border zone. [00:08:04][5.9]

Adam: [00:08:06] Yeah, it’s not something that you often think about. People in Maine sitting on their porches, chomping on a corncob pipe and sitting on the border. It’s not like what we picture. And and the Border Patrol has special powers in this zone. [00:08:20][14.3]

Todd: [00:08:21] That is correct. Yeah. So that’s one of the main things to think about when you are looking at this zone. The zone that at first the ACLU ran a report that American Civil Liberties Union ran a report on on this border zone and they first called it a constitution free zone. They since it’s important to mention that they since revised that to say people absolutely do have constitutional rights in these border zones, but it’s a zone where your constitutional rights are mangled and might be might be better set to be called a constitutional mangled zone or something like that, meaning that in in these jurisdictions, Homeland Security forces or Border Patrol, they have the right to search or seize you. In other words, the Fourth Amendment protection not to be searched or seized is mangled or even suspended. [00:09:19][57.3]

Adam: [00:09:21] So so I’m as I sit right now here in Los Angeles, I am inside the zone. And you’re saying that vis a vis the Border Patrol, I actually don’t have Fourth Amendment rights. The Border Patrol could come into my house, search and seize my belongings and even myself, and which I would believe is unconstitutional. But I actually do not I’m not protected by the Fourth Amendment from the Border Patrol, where in this very room. [00:09:47][25.8]

Todd: [00:09:47] Right. It seems quite improbable. Right. [00:09:49][2.0]

Adam: [00:09:51] Yeah what the fuck, Todd? What’s what? [00:09:52][1.1]

Todd: [00:09:53] OK, let’s think of it this way. Well, first, it’s reasonable. They have reasonable suspicion. Right? So that’s not probable cause. It’s reasonable suspicion. So if an agent saw you like walking down the street and saw something that gave the agent through the agent’s criteria, reasonable suspicion, and they were doing a roving patrol, you know, in the neighborhoods in Los Angeles, and they and, yeah, they could come in to your house. And I think actually they wouldn’t in this case- there are rules around going into dwellings like but even those rules are our main goal, I should say, because because they’re not they have to have a warrant to go into to a dwelling, But within twenty five miles of the bar. So there’s one hundred mile zone but there’s a sub zone of twenty five miles and then that twenty five miles zone Border Patrol can go on to private property. It just can’t go into a dwelling. But they do. They are. They do. They’re always people like on the people are talking about what they call home invasions constantly or border patrol goes into their house, they’re looking for somebody. But to go back to your example of the of the L.A. one one one thing that I should mention, so so people wouldn’t think that this is so I mean, it’s very unlikely. But is it? Like they’re so so remember in the summer when and when there were protests every night Black Lives Matter protests. [00:11:24][91.6]

Adam: [00:11:25] Right. [00:11:25][0.0]

Todd: [00:11:25] In Portland. And all of a sudden it was reported that BORTAC and BORTAC, as a special forces unit of the Border Patrol, were on the streets of Portland and they were snatching up activists and putting them into unmarked vehicles. And then driving them off. That is an example of of one hundred miles down, all of a sudden expanding into another region where you wouldn’t necessarily think the Border Patrol would operate and then not even not patrolling the border, per say, but using their special constitutionally mangled powers or extra constitutional powers to then, you know, just arrest people and drive them off and unmarked vehicles. [00:12:11][45.6]

Adam: [00:12:12] So where do these extra constitutional powers come from? I mean, there must be some like the you know, the police can’t do this. The FBI can’t do this. But there’s some legal framework under which the Border Patrol in this zone has special powers. Where do they come from? [00:12:28][16.0]

Todd: [00:12:29] So they come from I believe it it was a there’s a couple rulings that happened in the 1940s and 1950s. One one, I believe it was coming out of one of the first immigration laws that Border Patrol states that Border Patrol could patrol agrees that what they called a reasonable distance from the border and then that reasonable distance was declared to be in a 1950s ruling, one hundred miles. And so that came during a time when this is why the expansion to twenty one thousand that CBP at sixty thousand agents is such a big deal. At that time we’re talking about two hundred three hundred agents. We’re not talking about this gigantic the largest federal law enforcement agency in the United States. [00:13:17][47.7]

Adam: [00:13:18] Yeah, this is literally like guys at toll booths at that point, like just sort of I assume much I don’t know what they were doing, but they were like, yeah, they’re fucking guarding the border. They’re not like roaming around advance. [00:13:29][11.2]

Todd: [00:13:30] Yeah, not necessarily. They’re not. I wrote like I, I go in to interview people on the Tohono O’odham Nation, which is just south of where I live in Tucson, which is it’s in terms of it’s like the second largest indigenous reservation, Native American reservation in the United States. And it’s and the people have been bisected by the border. But they talk about, you know, even before 1990 or before 1995, they hardly ever saw the Border Patrol except for this one guy who would show up every once in a while and who was kind of nice. And that’s how they describe it. And then he would you know, he might hang out in a house for a little bit and then they’d go away. So it’s changed pretty drastically. So I don’t I don’t want to there there are things about the Border Patrol in the past that are very you know, they that doesn’t mean that there haven’t been massive abuses by the Border Patrol. I mean, the Border Patrol rounding up Japanese and Japanese Americans and putting them in internment camps. They were, you know, rounding up Mexican and Mexican Americans in the1930s and deporting them. And they did these massive deportation raids and operations like in the 1950s. So we I don’t want to totally, you know. You know, wash over that. But, but it’s but this but the expansion of it within one hundred mile zones has turned what was a rather small agency into this gigantic force with all these budgets behind it. [00:15:07][96.7]

Adam: [00:15:07] So they had two to three hundred agents. Then there was a ruling that said they have much larger jurisdiction and then that water that caused the agency to expand. Hey, now that we have larger jurisdiction, let’s get more agents and go further inland. Is that what happened or? [00:15:21][13.2]

Todd: [00:15:21] Eventually at first it it didn’t. They didn’t. They were just they didn’t expand hardly at all. They were just growing slowly but surely. They had they probably were very close to the border, sticking close to the border at that point. They do do checkpoints. They were doing checkpoints. One of the main things you can do and the hundred mile zones that police can’t do is put up these checkpoints, really permanent checkpoints where traffic has to stop and then you get interrogated by an agent and they determine whether you can go on or not, just like the Adam and Adam Ruins Everything episode. [00:15:57][35.9]

Adam: [00:15:59] Yeah, this is a become a real flashpoint in the southwest, right. That that the Border Patrol has set up a checkpoint that’s between two American cities, like not not on a route coming from the border or anything like that, just like somewhere in Arizona on a regular old highway. We got a checkpoint and we’re going to stop everybody and ask for what ID or what are you doing? Are going to pop the trunk and and stuff like that. And like to a lot of Americans, we’ve been brought up to say at least white Americans, we’ve been brought up to say, well, this is unconstitutional. Hold on a second, you can’t fucking do this. And then, of course, for non white Americans, it’s like an incredibly potent opportunity for discrimination. [00:16:40][41.2]

Todd: [00:16:41] Yeah, exactly. And it’s true. In Arizona, the checkpoints tend to be from the south north. So any time, any paved road going north from the border, you’re going through a second border, you’re going through the checkpoints. But there’s the one I’m thinking of that really fits what you describe. And there’s several of these is the one between Las Cruces. And if you’re if you know the Interstate 10 and you go through Las Cruces, New Mexico, coming from El Paso, you’re going on the East West Highway. Right. The I10. And then you go through you go through a Border Patrol checkpoint and there it is, you know, on this east west route and yeah, all the. So what the deal is you pull up, if you’re a U.S. citizen, technically, you don’t have to show ID. That’s one of the technicalities. So they’re only they’re supposed to ask your citizenship, but while they’re asking your citizenship, they’ll do a quick visual inspection. And if they then we go back to that reasonable suspicion criteria and within that reasonable suspicion criteria is racial profiling. And they even when it was I think it was in 2015 or 2014 when the Obama administration was trying to get like racial profiling, try to extricate it from all the different departments. And they went to the Department of Homeland Security and an official from the Department of Homeland Security, and I’m paraphrasing, but this is quoted in the New York Times article. He said, We depend on what he said, ethnic profiling. So in other words, if they admit it right, they admit that they do racial profiling at these checkpoints, that it’s part of their reasonable suspicion criteria. And so what happens is you go through there’s a visual visual inspection. If they deem you if they deem something about you suspicious, then you’re put into secondary inspection. And I’ve talked to agents about this. They will look at, you know, do you only have one key on your key ring? Are both of your hands on the steering wheel? Like, what do they look at everything they try to like. It’s, you know, and then and then secondary inspection is really where a lot can happen, including, you know, you’ll get interrogated, questioned, they’ll take you out of your car, they’ll search your entire car from head to toe. They’ll tear apart your seats. They’ll make you sit on the ground. They might even handcuff you. I’ve heard I’ve heard horrific stories. I’ve heard of people being sat on the ground with children with their hands behind their back, and one one person saying, I don’t you know this. We have children here. We’re in the hot sun. It’s a summer in Arizona. And that caused the agents to, like, pull out a baton like they were going to hit. You know, there’s stories of of of these sorts of things happening in these checkpoints, especially when people get pulled over. [00:19:44][182.9]

Adam: [00:19:45] And these are people, again, traveling on a public road in the United States. That’s all they’re doing. Traveling on a public road in the United States. And does this happen to American citizens as well? I mean, it looks like it’s you know, it’s bad enough for it to happen to non American citizens. But we have this classification in America where we say I’m an American citizen in this can’t happen to me. And, you know, I think that’s a little honestly restrictive. I think we should extend empathy and rights to non American citizens as well when they’re in America. There’s many non American citizens who are important to this country. I don’t know. It’s a basic- you know you have human rights whether or not you’re an American citizen. But it’s I think we have an understanding of the egregiousness even more when it’s happening to it, to American citizens. [00:20:35][50.0]

Todd: [00:20:35] Yeah, I would even say in the checkpoints, like non-citizens or people that don’t have papers at all, avoid the checkpoints. They don’t go through the checkpoints. It’s part of it’s part of the scheme that makes people walk around them and go through the desert and that sort of thing. And so when, like, the example I just gave was an American was an American citizen, he’s also a citizen of the Tohono O’odham Nation. So in the tunnel that again, that’s the Native American reservation right on the border, every paved road out of the nation has a Border Patrol checkpoint. So it’s almost like a second layer of border. But, you know, the people that live on the on the reservation are U.S. citizens and they come. So they’re on a paved road going driving. They have to stop at a checkpoint. And the incident I just I just mentioned was was, you know, one of many that this person I interviewed him, the person that told me this and he and he, like, gave testimony to a number of different incidents that he’s had. But it’s really typical for people on that on Tohono O’odham Nation to to have some sort of what they call traumatic episodes at the checkpoint, and in fact, one person even has coined a term called checkpoint trauma. So even approaching the checkpoint, because something’s happened in the past or because you’ve heard of so many people with so many incidents, you start you start to get nervous. [00:22:03][87.3]

Adam: [00:22:03] Of course, while you’re sitting on the ground with your hands cuffed behind your back, you know, in the hot sun with your kids, that happens once you’re in and you’re just trying to leave your fucking house to get to work or go to the next go to the city to see a movie or whatever. And that happens to you. Yeah, you’re going to your heart’s going to pound the next time you pull through there. Absolutely. That would happen. And this I don’t know. I mean, I did a whole episode of TV about this and just talking to you about it, I’m still flabbergasted that this happens in America. I mean, like our cultural understanding of what, you know, a fascist country looks like of Nazi Germany. What’s one of the main images we have? It’s, you know, the the jack booted, like government agent bending down to your window and saying it appeared a bit like your papers, please. And then you’re terrified. You pull out your papers. And I oh, I hope they accept them, you know, and all that. And that’s like that is what we picture as being un-American, as being the thing that we defeated in World War II. That’s in America we’re all about freedom. That’s one that’s one of the basic things of freedom, is the free ability to move about your own fucking country. And we’re doing it here in the US. Am I not right about that? What the fuck? I’m sorry I’m getting mad. I get mad on this show, but I am getting mad. [00:23:23][79.5]

Todd: [00:23:25] Yeah, that’s exactly what happened. And when you’re talking and reminding me of this episode that happened with Senator Senior Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, and he was driving. And so this just goes to show you it’s not just a southern border. He’s driving in the state of New York. He says he was one hundred twenty five miles and he gave testimony to Congress about this. He was one hundred twenty five miles away from the border. So he’s not even he’s outside of one hundred mile zone. So that goes to show you that maybe one hundred mile zone is he’s kind of near Syracuse, I believe, or Syracuse, New York or somewhere around there. And he’s driving and there’s a Border Patrol checkpoint and he’s surprised that he even has a license plate to say he’s a senator and they pull him over. And according to Leahy’s testimony, the agent asks him to get out of his car. And then I have to paraphrase, I’m sorry. I wish I used to have this totally memorized. But he said he said under whose orders? And then the agent pointed to the gun on his head and he said, that’s no under whose authority. And the agent pointed to the gun on his on his hip. He said this is the only authority I need. And that and that was to Patrick Leahy, right. The senator. [00:24:38][73.6]

Adam: [00:24:38] Wow the fucking Senator. [00:24:38][0.1]

Todd: [00:24:38] Right a white Senator. Right. So, yeah, it fits your description. [00:24:44][6.0]

Adam: [00:24:45] I mean, my God, at the very least, that’s not that also shows a problem of the culture of the Border Patrol that an officer would even say that. I mean, civilian control of law enforcement in the military is like supposed to be a pretty high value in American society. And for a law enforcement official to say or think that that should be anathema, it’s like under whose authority? Well, I should I was given an order by a lawful authority. That’s how authority is supposed to work. It’s not supposed to be I have a gun so I can do whatever the hell I want. I think that’s also un-American. [00:25:20][34.8]

Todd: [00:25:22] Yeah, and it seems like that’s our I mean, with the Border Patrol, I would say there’s there is both elements of both. Right. And at the end of the day, it’s a command’s top down command structure. They get their orders from Department of Homeland Security. Like even if you look at how checkpoints are put up or taken down in the state of New York, that the fact that it’s even there in the first place comes from a top down order. But then you have these incidents and and this isn’t the only one. There’s so many of them where there’s an abuse of authority or or like pointing to my gun or worse. Right. Like like the whole incident was a bit like pulling out the baton or macing somebody or or pulling them out of their car or, you know, tailgating them and spotlighting cars or pulling over people. And, you know, there’s so many stories of which many people would be would consider, abuse right? Even its violations. [00:26:25][62.6]

Adam: [00:26:26] I want to find out how they ended up. I want to ask you in a second about how they ended up in Portland pulling people into vans. But before that, I just wanna talk about one more border issue. Another one that a lot of people have encountered is when you’re crossing the border, how you apparently have no rights over your personal privacy. There’s stories of people’s phones getting taken. I’ve seen and this is like show you how big this problem is in the tech press for like white collar tech workers there’s all these guides about how to protect your phone from the Border Patrol to use a password instead of your fingerprint, because they can force you to use your finger, but they can’t force you to divulge your password. And the problem is, you know, people have corporate secrets, personal information you know NDA stuff on their phones that they literally can’t have other people going going through. And so it’s become a problem for like Google employees. How do I get across the border without having my shit taken? I can only imagine how bad of a problem it is for people who are at the other end of the privileged spectrum. I mean, tell me about tell me about that piece of it. [00:27:27][60.4]

Todd: [00:27:27] Yeah, that piece of it’s becoming a bigger and bigger and bigger deal when you look at the stats of electronic devices, phones, computers that have been confiscated by the Border Patrol or CBP, I should say usually because you’re usually coming through a port of entry of some sort. The numbers have just been growing and growing and growing and growing and growing over the years. And and there was a case the ACLU brought this to, I think I can’t remember what court, but there was a case on it and the court ruled against the ACLU. They ruled in favor of CBP and saying that they could confiscate devices. I mean, I did a profile on a student at McGill University in Montreal who came across. He would cross back and forth to go visit his parents in New York City. And and one time he was he was a Middle Eastern studies major, I believe. So he had pictures and he had some pictures from travels he got taken to the Middle East. And I think he had a picture, I can’t remember of what stored on his computer, like something the Hezbollah or something like that. But just like a picture of somebody like I can’t remember. It was like an innocuous picture of some sort, but that very picture caused the agent to then take it. He was on an Amtrak train. They took him off the train. They put them in. They put they detained him for hours. Then they confiscated his computer. And then when they let him go, they they they didn’t give him back his computer. Then his computer was sent to him fifteen days later. And it was obviously they are obviously busted into it and and and and he then talked about it like there is a trauma after that. Right. And the trauma never really went or it didn’t go away for years because every time he cross the border after that, he went into secondary questioning and they had to search through his stuff and they would look through his electronic devices. So once that happens one time that then it’s like you’re set you’re it’s going to happen to you a zillion times until the algorithm stops, until. [00:29:47][139.3]

Adam: [00:29:47] This is this is an American citizen. I assume you said parents in New York. [00:29:52][4.5]

Todd: [00:29:52] I think yeah. I think he was dual French, but US, US French dual. [00:29:57][4.7]

Adam: [00:29:58] Student of Middle Eastern studies was flagged for secondary screening because he had a picture of Middle East, even if it’s a picture of a Hezbollah bombing taking place. If you’re a student of Middle Eastern studies, it’s OK for you to have a picture of that. What the hell? I mean, I’m sorry. Like I should know by now better than to say, you know, it’s un-American. Because the truth is, stories like this are our history is full of them, but it’s contrary to our professed values and to our image of ourselves as a country. And again, this is something that you you know, your laptop is confiscated because of photos on it. That sounds like something from an authoritarian country on the other side of the world. [00:30:43][44.8]

Todd: [00:30:44] It certainly does. Yeah, it definitely does. Yeah, and then there’s the stories of an on the on the on the border between Michigan and Ontario, Detroit, particularly Port Huron. They were all of a sudden there was a number of cases of people, Muslims that were crossing from one side to the other, U.S. citizens. They go to Canada and come back, who are then being systemically harassed by Customs and Border Protection. That I did interview somebody in this sort of situation. They brought it. In this case, he had a grueling story. I haven’t this is from years ago, so I have to remember. But but he they went they went to a conference, I think, in Toronto from Port Huron. It was a conference during like I think it was right at Christmas, like December 25th. But it was a conference that they went to and then they came back and and there was all of a sudden he looked out his window, the car window, and there was all these CBP agents with like machine guns like surrounding their car. And they were all brought in and they were interrogated and they were asked all kinds of questions or asked questions about where they went to what they were doing there, what plans that they have, all these all these things. And at one point, I can’t remember exactly, but they put them in a position that was akin to torture, like they made them stand. [00:32:16][91.9]

Adam: [00:32:16] In a stress position. [00:32:20][3.7]

Todd: [00:32:22] In a stress position. And as part of the interrogation and this is Customs and Border Protection, this is going across the border. And and that was just one case of, I think, dozens and dozens of cases of US citizens or Muslim that were going across the Canadian border there, but coming back and facing this sort of discrimination. [00:32:40][17.9]

Adam: [00:32:42] Well, and so how does so that’s all bad enough, how does this how does the Border Patrol, how does the agency end up pulling people into vans in Portland? That doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the border. That doesn’t seem that that’s if you want to take the most unfavorable view towards those protests, you’d say that’s civil unrest, which to me sounds like, I don’t know, the National Guard or something. How does that’s what is normally called out for those things. How does the Border Patrol end up doing that? [00:33:12][30.1]

Todd: [00:33:13] Right. So one again looks the one hundred miles zone. Exactly. So they can they have jurisdiction that can be there. It’s part of the border, Portland, what is it, 60 miles, 70 miles from the coast or something like that. So it’s technically a one hundred mile zone. I think the actual international border is 12 miles out to sea. So it’s it’s barely in it, but it’s there. So there’s that. And then but Border Patrol and and in particular BORTAC. So BORTAC is the name of the unit that was in Portland [00:33:44][30.3]

Adam: [00:33:44] Why do tactical things have the stupidest names? BORTAC because tactical’s in it we got to make it this dumb ass like acronym thing. Sorry. Go on. [00:33:55][10.4]

Todd: [00:33:55] Yes I would, I would, I would agree with your assessment but yes. So BORTAC is there, they and they’re usually BORTAC. I don’t know if you’ve been following the No More Deaths, No More Deaths is a humanitarian organization that provides clinics for people crossing the border, puts out water, provides humanitarian aid because people are crossing to the desert. Well, they’ve been raided by Border Patrol, like their camps have been raided by Border Patrol. Now, like at least five, four or five times in the last three or four years. And that’s usually BORTAC right there. The there that they’re that they’re kind of like the what is the word like? They’re Special Ops team, the SWAT team. They come in and do these sort of operations. They also do international trainings. But we can talk about that later if you want. But so they they they they’re the ones are deployed. They’re part it’s not just Border Patrol. They’re part of a joint task force. So the federal government sent in a joint task force. So there’s other like armed agencies, other forces from DHS. But BORTAC, you know, what are they doing? They’re applying what they’ve learned about the border. They’re Border Patrol agents. They so they’re applying all the other training from the border, the bringing the border apparatus. Right. Who belong to doesn’t belong who’s who can do things, who cannot do things, who’s criminal, who’s innocent. All those sorts of mentalities of the training of the Border Patrol to Portland to to a protest. Right. And and and so basically they’re allowed to do that. And plus, I think they would even argue if it wasn’t a one hundred mile zone, they would still deploy BORTAC and say that I would I put money on it, that they’d done hundred miles. I might not even be confining for an operation like that where they were a part of a joint task force. But it wasn’t only Portland. They were Border Patrol is deployed in Washington, DC during the Black Lives Matter protests there. So there’s pictures of that. You can see in this case, it was I know it was more just the green uniformed agents. They were on the streets of Washington, D.C. It’s amazing because I laugh because I see them all the time in Arizona. They’re in forest green uniforms. If you see them in Washington, DC, walking the streets, it’s just out of place. Right. So but there they are. And then after right after the George Floyd killing and in Minneapolis, this isn’t BORTAC but CBP sent their drones over Minneapolis directly after the George Floyd killing in early June, and they were doing surveillance operations as part of. So those are just three examples, recent examples of how this is. It’s like there’s a border and all this this kind of suspended constitution and these violations. And then it just expands. Right? It goes everywhere. It’s almost like the border becomes a proving ground. [00:37:03][187.6]

Adam: [00:37:04] And what causes this expansion? And we take a break in a second. But I just want to understand this piece of it, what causes the expansion and also what to me seems like lawlessness, like an agent saying this is all the authority I need or, you know, ununiformed agents in unmarked vans just picking people up. I’m like, well, hold on a second. Like, I don’t think that other agencies do. I, like the Secret Service, is going around hustling people to unmarked vans. They all wear suits and they take their orders from the president. You know what I mean? Do they deal with counterfeiting or whatever. It’s like pretty strict about like what it is that they do, but the Border Patrol, you just constantly hearing stories where you’re like, I don’t think that’s what the Border Patrol is for and I don’t think it’s legal for what’s going on, you know, like what is causing this sort of explosion and mandating jurisdiction and dodgy behavior. [00:37:57][53.3]

Todd: [00:37:59] Yeah, I mean, in a way, that sort of behavior is what they do. I mean, in the on the borderlands, when they come across a group of unauthorized people crossing the border there, they snatch them up and put them up into vans and detain them and pretty much disappear them at times. Right. That’s what they do. They so they just bring that what they’re already doing into other places. And then and then this sort of extra constitutional powers they have, they’re not like again, they’re right there. They’re not confined to the Constitution. I remember I talked to I interviewed somebody in that CBP headquarters in Washington, D.C. and and we got on to this topic and he said and he started talking about the Fourth Amendment and he told me precisely, exactly we are exempt from the Fourth Amendment. Exempt from the I mean, it’s not even the Fourth Amendment, even there’s mangled or the it’s kind of work sometimes. He said we’re exempt from it. It’s already been shown that. And so there’s this idea that they can do things that other agencies cannot do. [00:39:10][70.8]

Adam: [00:39:11] Todd this is very bad for the largest law enforcement agency in the country to say we as an entire agency are exempt from the Fourth Amendment, which is the amendment against unlawful search and seizure, correct? [00:39:27][16.0]

Todd: [00:39:28] Yes, yes, yes, yes. [00:39:29][1.0]

Adam: [00:39:29] That’s bad! For the largest law enforcement agency in the country to believe that about that, about itself and for it to be true to an extent. [00:39:40][10.4]

Todd: [00:39:41] Yeah, it’s both. Right. It’s I you know, until that and in this case, I was talking to you know, I was I was interviewing an official from CBP in their Washington, D.C. headquarters that was not an agent. He was he was dressed in a suit and tie and talking to me and he told me that. Right. So it’s definitely a part of their just fundamental belief of the core of the system. And then it’s as it is played out every day. Right. You could say, oh, it’s it’s it’s rogue, but is it right or is it just following how it’s been established? And you go back to the racial profiling like we’re exempt from that, too. We’re exempt from the Fourth Amendment, exempt from any racial profiling regulations. We’re exempt, exempt from everything until you’re pulling people off the streets everywhere. [00:40:31][49.1]

Adam: [00:40:32] You’re right, I guess, my idea of like, oh, this must be them going rogue. How is this possible? If that’s the way it’s set up? That’s what it’s for. My God. OK, we have to take a break. When we get back, I want to ask you about why we have a border in the first place and your other work reporting on the border. We’ll be right back with more Todd Miller. [00:40:50][18.3]

Adam: [00:41:03] OK, we’re back with Todd Miller, that was just an epic first half we had about the Border Patrol, but you’ve been reporting about the border for 20 years. You have a new book out or coming out, and you’re starting to ask yourself the question. My understanding is of why we even have a border when the effects of it are so dire. Can you tell me about that a little bit? [00:41:27][23.9]

Todd: [00:41:29] Yeah, I mean, it’s a really the book the new book starts out when I was driving in the borderlands, actually the Tohono O’odham Nation, about 20 miles, 10, 15, 20 miles north of the border. And I was driving down this dirt road and I just came from a mountain top and it and this mountain top was it was one of those, like, beautiful views. And you’re so close to the border, but all of a sudden you just couldn’t see the border. The border was just nonexistent from the from this vantage point. So I’m coming down this mountain having this like, wow feeling. And then I’m driving down this dirt road. And also the person came came out of the desert. So I’m driving through the Sonoran Desert. People are familiar with the Sonoran Desert and others. It’s like very hot. It’s in it’s in the summertime, September. And there’s Solaro Cactus, Baril Cactus, Mesquite all around. And a person comes comes onto the road and he and I immediately stopped and I give him a glass of water. So I start talking to him and he turns out he’s from he’s from Guatemala. He had crossed the border or he didn’t tell me that. But I surmise that. And I asked him if he wanted anything else, if you needed anything else. And he is clearly, you know, in a state of he looked he was he looked like he’d been walking through the desert for a while. And he was definitely thirsty because he took down the water really quickly and he said, I want to can you give me a ride. Right. And I and I had to hesitate. I had to sit there. I had to hesitate. And this hesitation came this book like here here comes a person is asking for a ride. In any case, of course, you’re going to get somebody who’s who looks like they’re about to die of thirst a ride and I knew at the same time I was in this border zone, the one that we just described, the one that’s just filled with Border Patrol agents, those twenty one thousand agents are all they’re all around. They have drones that could be watching from the sky. They have surveillance towers that that have cameras that can see seven miles away. They have motion sensors, helicopters. And the motion sensors if you step on on one of them, go in a command center, command center will get their angle the cameras to where you are. So I knew I was in this huge surveillance apparatus right in the middle of it, even though it was at the same time, it just I was out in the middle of the desert and I had to think that I had to think all these things because because if I were to give him a ride, then from this place to another place, it would be a felony. If they had caught me, it would be a felony. So, yeah. And that’s one of the rule. I can give you a glass I you know, according to the humanitarian aid kind of setup, you can give you can give up some food, you can give them water. But if you further their presence in the United States, you’re you’re you’re doing an act of smuggling is as you are. It’s a felony. And so had to. So I had to I had to think that. And so this new book is almost like, wow, like the act of just an act of what you would do for anyone at any time. Give them a ride to simply give them a ride is criminalized. Right. And how on earth can that be? So so this this book is really a meditation beginning at this place, like starting with a sort of questioning and then really just looking at borders. And in and in the sense in this book, I have several other books that are really more straightforward journalism, looking at border issues from different perspectivesBut this one is more like looking over 20 years of reporting, 20 years of talking to people, 20 years of looking at borders, 20 years of studying them, reading books about them, talking to experts about them and all this stuff, and just really coming to a realization that this is at best an absurdity, right? [00:45:57][268.6]

Adam: [00:45:58] Yeah. [00:45:58][0.0]

Todd: [00:45:58] It’s it’s it’s why do we even the serious question of why why they even exist? And to begin with, I mean, I go into that. I don’t know if I want to go into that quite yet, but but the whole idea of why they exist really became the fundamental question of this reporting of this in this new book. [00:46:20][22.6]

Adam: [00:46:21] Yeah. I mean, it’s a difficult question to answer. Why do borders exist? It I mean. There are fiction, right? I mean, our our nations that we that we have are our structures, the human mind. You know, they’re not based on geographical features for the most part. They’re completely impermanent, that many borders around the world, you can’t even tell where they are. It’s not agreed upon where the border is. You know, if you look at the average map, a good number of those lines that have been drawn were made up by cartographers. And that doesn’t actually exist. If you look at, for instance, the recent, you know, conflict in near Armenia is a very good example of that, where these two countries are fighting over who controls this piece of land and. How what is the what purpose do they do they serve? Is is it difficult, more difficult question to answer than you might think at first? [00:47:23][62.1]

Todd: [00:47:25] Yeah, certainly, it certainly is, and you think about. This like the US Mexico border, for example, I mean, it’s it’s really the result of a bloody war on the US that the Mexican-American War in the mid 19th century, when when you look at Mexican history books, it’s called the Yankee Amnesia, and it’s like they like Mexican territory, was invaded by the United States and taken over. But then when you look at indigenous peoples of the period is like all of it was just like the new Spain was imposed upon it. And then the United States. And it’s interesting, when you go back to the border in Arizona, like the surveyors, the cartographers, the soldiers who showed up and started drawing it without consulting, like the Tohono O’odham people, for example, they weren’t consulted at all. They just show they just showed up and started drawing the border or like the continent of Africa, the 1883 Berlin conference, European powers basically sliced up Africa into the shapes of the countries that they are right now. And they cut through just like the US Mexico border, there is a Tohono O’odham on the other side, Tohono O’odham on the Mexican side. There was no consideration. There was a common language, common traditions, common people, and the same like I have been recently to southern Kenya and not recently before the pandemic, of course, but that the Maasai people in southern Kenya, the line drawn by Europeans and Berlin, cut right through, cut through their territory one part’s Kenya, one part of the Maasai live in live in Tanzania and so they’re not able to organize together in the country. It’s a divide and conquer. And there’s a there’s there’s a lot of colonial roots, like a colonialism is very much attached to this, to this these formations of borders. And there’s one academic that calls it the violent way no gosh I can’t remember sorry. I’m thinking of an academic term. I can’t remember it. But it’s something about the the violence of origins. Right. Most borders started with some sort of violence. And then there’s a politics of forgetting. And then you’re supposed to forget that violence ever, ever happened. So you forget it. And the border just becomes as natural as a river or a mountain range. It’s just there right a map like a map will be color coded. So you see the world in these color codes of these shapes and you forget where the great mountain ranges of the world are. The the the rivers and the the natural borders that you would have. [00:50:05][159.6]

Adam: [00:50:06] Yeah, yeah, yeah. You forget about the. Yeah. Those Man-Made lines become more important than the watersheds and the rivers and the the actual natural features that, that were there originally and are still there and are still determining so much of where we what characterizes where we live. But. I mean, by imposing those borders, we also reshape the the country in the and our ideas about those borders reshape those areas. I mean, the fact that our southern border is so militarized and the northern border is less militarized, it’s militarized to some extent, but not nearly the same extent means that it has dramatic effects on the lives of people living in those places. You know, someone living in I was struck by when I found out that I was always aware that, for instance, people went go back and forth between Canada and the US for business. If you’re living up in the Great Lakes region or Maine or somewhere like that, it’s just part of life. You know, like Canada’s right there. And you go there, you know, you have business and stuff like that. And I never thought of the southern border in the same way. And then I read some piece somewhere years ago about how there are people in the El Paso region who commute from La Ciudad Juarez. Right. Am I correct? That’s the that’s the Mexican counterpart to El Paso. It’s El Paso is a split city. It’s like the Twin Cities, but half of it’s in the US and half of it’s in Mexico. And there are people who commute every single day across the border, just like you might commute from the suburbs or you might commute from Minneapolis to St. Paul. There are people who do the same commute except they’re commuting across the most militarized border and it takes them hours. And that’s that starts to seem absurd when you look at when you look at it that way. [00:52:02][116.3]

Todd: [00:52:04] Yeah, that’s exactly. In fact, I got a job I had a decade ago, I was I worked with a bi national organization and I would commute to Nogales, Mexico, every day and not every day, but several times a week. And then same exact thing. You’d have to wait in these long lines and hours at times to, you know, to get back. You’d have to start to have to plan for it. You’re like, oh, what should be, you know, 30 minutes now is three hours. Right. And you just it just becomes part of how you plan your day off. You cross the border, then you’re going to have to allow. Oh, I can’t I can’t cross the border today because I have to get back for this at this time. Right. And you have you just have to put that as part of your psychological psychology in the planning. [00:52:58][54.0]

Adam: [00:53:01] And at some point you have to ask, what purpose is this serving? You know, I mean, all of this militarization and prevention of people crossing the border, I mean, people do cross the border still, despite all this in in large numbers, they come across on planes and boats. They come across through the desert despite the largest law enforcement apparatus in the country. And, you know, now we’ve got, know, half completed walls all over the place. We’ve got drones, like you said you were driving through, and it felt like there were Border Patrol agents all around you. And still people are crossing. But just now at great misery, at great humanitarian cost, at a great cost of loss of life, a huge expenditure of of resources. It does make you ask what is the point of militarizing the border in this way? I mean, sure, draw a line on the ground, but why make it impermeable? [00:54:00][59.7]

Todd: [00:54:02] Yeah, one one thing I always I always or I thought about I kind of thought about it in this new book is The border is always drawn for the people, the poorest people, the people who are dispossessed, the people not it’s not drawn for the Border Patrol doesn’t exist, for example, for the mining company, like the mining company from the United States that goes to Zacatecas in Mexico and and takes over a whole community and uses their water supply and drops cyanide in it. [00:54:33][30.6]

Adam: [00:54:33] And there’s no there’s no checkpoint for them. There’s no agent stopping that company’s executives saying, hold on a second. Yeah, nothing. [00:54:39][6.7]

Todd: [00:54:40] Nothing like that. No, they’re flying over thirty five thousand feet over over the border and arriving with no problems. There’s no ICE agents rounding them up and detaining them at detention centers. There’s no deportation apparatus for for them. There’s also like for US military that crosses that it’s going crossing borders all over the world. And there’s no you know, the countries don’t have any say about that or greenhouse gas emissions. Like when you compare the United States to like Central American countries, if you take the United States is emitted like seven hundred times more emissions that greenhouse gas emissions than El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras combined. And right now, when you’re when you’re looking at Honduras, you have if people have been following the caravans that have been coming from Central America, like there’s an eight thousand person caravan coming from Honduras. And it turns out that many people in that caravan have been displaced by the hurricanes. There was back to back hurricanes that hit Category 4 hurricanes that intensified over warm, absurdly warm Caribbean waters. They went from a Category- one went from a tropical depression to a Category 4 really quickly, and they pounded Nicaragua and Honduras. And of course, that’s you know climate scientists say that’s a part of the climate crisis. Right. The intensifying storms and now people’s houses are flooded. And all of these communities and they’re in this and then they’re in this caravan and they’re heading north. And so you but like you look at the greenhouse gas emissions from the United States across borders and affect people in other places all the time, I compare compared to like those in Honduras, which is just a fraction. [00:56:28][107.9]

Adam: [00:56:29] It’s our greenhouse gas emissions that are causing hurricanes to become more extreme and more frequent. [00:56:33][4.3]

Todd: [00:56:34] Right, exactly. And then you start thinking, whoa, what is this border like? What questions are we at? What questions are officials asking to put this border or to militarize this border? Right. What are like? Are they you’re trying to stop displaced people. I mean, are you so you put up a border? Like if you look like some of the research I did for one of my books was looking into climate change and finding out there’s all kinds of documents, of course, in the Pentagon, but also in DHS, which is following the Pentagon’s lead about the future, about people being displaced due to climate, about what are what is the answer to that. And then when you look at the DHS documents, it’s building more walls. That’s what they say. They’re preparing for mass migrations. So so you have the the question the problems, right? People being displaced, people being on the move and the and and you think, well, the solution to this would be to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, maybe or maybe it would be not having the mining company going and poisoning people’s waters or not sending toxic waste to the community in San Luis Potosi or not having the other mining company want to dig under a community’s cemetery for for silver like they were trying to do in this community in Honduras. And people actually sat in their cemeteries in the cemetery where their ancestors or their grandparents are buried saying, you’re not going to let you come in here and dig underneath us. Like maybe the questions that we need to ask are other that that, if we’re going to have a solution for a world where less people have to be displaced and be on the move. But it seems like there’s only one question being asked and that’s, oh, how do we stop people from crossing our border? And then the only answer becomes building walls, building surveillance, putting more agents. [00:58:31][117.3]

Adam: [00:58:33] And I mean, the militarization of the border has meant even if you want to adopt the point of view, that, hey, we can’t let people willy nilly into the country and we need to have control over it and we can talk about how impossible it is to immigrate into the country legally and all those sorts of things and I could make the argument that, oh, people who cross the border are an asset to America. And we can have that whole argument that we’ve that we’ve had before that’s being had someone’s having that argument on CNBC right now, you know, but even if I were to adopt the point of view that said, OK, we want to control who comes through the border, the fact is the militarization of the border has been counterproductive to that goal. We had Douglas Massey on our show a number of years ago who does field research on who crosses the border and who has crossed the border since, I think the 70s. He’s been going down and doing field research, just counting people, interviewing them, doing basic field research. And he found that as the border got more militarized, basically, and I’m sorry, you know, all this stuff and you tell me if I’m wrong, it’s wrong but that, you know, the in the Southwest agriculture for the entire history of the country had been migrant labor had been people coming across from Mexico. They worked the fields growing season. Then they go back home. That was like the fucking system, you know, and that’s how we built the country. We built it that way. Then in the sort of the Reagan years, we started militarizing that border, saying you can’t come across the border anymore. And so instead, those people started coming across. And since they could no longer move freely back and forth, they came across and they put down roots. They said, well, now that I can’t go across back and forth and I got to scramble over a fence or like through the desert or whatever. Well, now, when I get to Phenix or wherever it is I am, I’m going to I’m going to hang out and like, raise my kids here because I can’t go back and visit my kids back over in Mexico. And that if you are someone who hates people from Mexico being in America, well, you just made your problem worse. You didn’t you didn’t solve anything by by increasing by increasing that border presence. I’m sorry, but your racism actually made more people who you’re racist against live in America. So you fucked up. Am I right? I mean, this is a story that we heard from Douglas Massey. [01:00:52][139.7]

Todd: [01:00:53] Oh, yeah. Yeah, that’s totally true. Like people, you know, it’s so hard and so dangerous to cross the border. And, you know, you end up going through the desert, you go and maybe so many people have died crossing the border. There’s been more than 8,000 bodies that have been recovered since the 1990s that. Yeah. I mean who wants to do that again. Who wants, you know and and, and so I’ve you know, unfortunately you end up talking to people who just don’t feel like they can go visit family and and sometimes people will do that. You know, if a loved one like a parent dies, they’ll go oh, then they’ll go back for a funeral and then they have to. I’ve met people crossing the border who’ve done that, but then they have to they have to come all the way back through the desert, risk their lives to get back. And so, yeah, that’s that’s a fact. That’s one of the effects of militarized border has, that’s for sure. [01:01:57][64.5]

Adam: [01:01:59] What if you had the power, if Todd Miller could completely you could do whatever you want with the border, you know what I mean? Like, what’s a better what’s a better world for us to live in when it comes to the border? Like how how if we were able to think about it differently and have it mean something else, what could it mean instead? And what benefits would we see as a result? [01:02:21][22.4]

Todd: [01:02:22] I mean, I think we I mean, when you think of the 21st century and the problems and what’s coming down the pipe, and you can even put it in the context of the pandemic that’s happening right now, or climate change, climate, climate change, like people are saying, you think this pandemic is bad? Well, that’s just the appetizer for what’s what’s being predicted as far as the climate crisis that’s going to hit this planet more. It’s already hitting this planet. Right. We can talk about what’s going on in Texas right now or any number of things, any at any time. But but like when you think about the threat, like when you have the borders, the way they are, what is being told to us is the threat is somebody coming across from another place across that wall on the other side of those train tracks. That person is going to come and get you right. That’s what you’re told. You’re constantly told it’s not it’s definitely not creating a solidarious world. It’s not it’s creating a world of divisions, us versus them. It’s creating a world where people are not cooperating. They’re not able they’re not able to to organize together in ways that we need to. We need like when you think of just displacement alone, displacement is predicted to be there’s places that are predicting a billion people to be displaced by 2100, like this idea that a world on the move with sea level rise alone, I think whole coastal cities are going to become uninhabitable. Then people are going to have to move from one place to another and livelihoods are going to be lost. It’s kind of like what you’re seeing in Honduras right now with people coming north. [01:04:06][103.5]

Adam: [01:04:07] And the number of the number of unlivablly hot days where you live is going to rise like the number of the number of days or being outside could kill you in Tucson is going to go up, up, up, up, up. And people are going to have to leave. [01:04:20][13.2]

Todd: [01:04:21] Yeah, this last summer was the worst ever in Tucson. It was 106 108 hundred degree days and the average in Tucson’s 62 to so is almost double the what is what I would say was the average, I’m sure the average is going to grow now. But yeah, I mean we’re looking at a crisis that really knows no borders and it’s really going to take a global effort to figure out what to do. And there’s some things that are already in place. There’s going to be pretty massive displacement. And this idea of dividing into sections where some people are allowed and some people are not, some people are included and some people are not along racial divisions. Right. Because you look at those borders and there often these racial divisions, some people even use the term global apartheid to to refer to this world of of a globalized militarized borders that you see between the global north and the global south, where people are being displaced. And you can see it in the European Union and Middle East and Africa. Right. People coming, coming, coming into the European Union. They’re doing the same thing Fortress Europe it’s called right. Mediterranean boats capsizing in the Mediterranean, people dying in our deserts. And this is like wrong, right. This is what we have to there, like the the world that is forcing us to think of contemplating doing things differently. And in that, I think, might mean organizing ourselves differently. It’s like there’s so many things like the pandemic right now needs a global response, like all the talk about the strains now. And it doesn’t even matter like you could they could go completely away in the United States. But if there’s a strain coming from wherever right, then it’s a global problem, right? It’s just the borders don’t stop it. It’s a global. So so it takes like it takes thinking about things differently, thinking about things not confined to these places. And then on top of that, the place like the United States, European Union, Australia, the kind of power centers and. How did they become such wealthy places and why is the world why is there endemic inequality in the world? Why, why? Why, why is why in some places you can like why in here in Tucson in the minimum wage here sucks, right? But I can earn $7.25, seven dollars and twenty five cents an hour, which which would seem like a lot in Nogales, which which is an average line worker in a maquila for a US corporation would make like thirty minutes from my house just because of a line. [01:07:07][166.2]

Adam: [01:07:08] Yeah. [01:07:08][0.0]

Todd: [01:07:09] And just seems like those, that’s what the border, the borders are organizing ourselves. It is stratification of inequality of who’s accepted and who’s not. And it’s it’s inadequate to answer the problems at hand in the globe to answer like what? What’s the real threats? And it seems like it’s a bad time or it’s either going to if we don’t do it, it’s going to be forced to really think about organizing things and doing things differently. [01:07:38][28.8]

Adam: [01:07:38] Yeah. And I’m trying to think of what that organization would be, you know, and the the nationalists, the fascist nationalists, you know, what do they hate? They hate the globalists. Right. That’s the big that’s their big curse word. That’s their big slur. These people are globalists. And, you know, I have to say I don’t love the globalists either. But who are we talking about? You know, who what is our previous vision that we’ve had of open borders? Right. It’s the corporate vision as the Thomas Friedman vision. It’s the it’s the IMF and the World Bank. It’s the moving capital freely from country to country. It’s letting Facebook and Amazon and Exxon do whatever they want. Right. In any country. That’s been the vision of it. And there is a word that you said earlier. You said solidarity between people of these countries. And I feel like that’s a different version. Global solidarity is a much stronger vision because fuck what the corporations and the wealthy people at Davos and, you know, and in Dubai want to do the people at the top of the Burj in Dubai, not the people working, cleaning the rooms. You know, we should have solidarity with those people. We should have solidarity with the people in the factories in Mexico that you’re talking about. We should have like like what we need is the knowledge that, like, OK, my my wealth as an American, my is is built on emissions that are causing hurricanes, that are displacing people in Honduras. And I therefore have a responsibility to them. They have a responsibility to me because we exist on the same fucking continent. You know, we’re we’re part of the same we’re part of the same system. And that we have that in common. And we need to to have some some solidarity together with each other as people, as working people, as citizens of the continent, and then expanding that out to the world. So I don’t know that’s that’s sort of coming coming to me as like, because I don’t think that, you know, when we say open borders, we think about, you know, the policies of the 90s that that sort of brought us to this to this place and the early 2000s. And those don’t seem appealing. But I think there’s an alternate vision that that you’re helping bring into focus for me. [01:09:49][130.3]

Todd: [01:09:50] Yeah, that’s I think that’s that’s like when you look at, you know, those policies of like North American Free Trade Agreement NAFTA, which is basically an open borders policy, it’s it was written by five hundred corporations. There wasn’t there wasn’t like civil society organizations invited to be a part of this. There wasn’t like people who are going to be most affected by NAFTA, small farmers organizations in Mexico. Many like there’s like a million small farmers displaced within two two years of NAFTA in Mexico because they couldn’t compete with the US companies. They weren’t invited. They weren’t invited to the table. So it’s not a solidarity is a version of open borders. It’s open borders for certain people certain companies that are Archer-Daniels-Midland can transferred it’s corn across into Mexico without any red tape, but the small farmer in Mexico can no longer compete. And so and so like what the that is not an answer to the problems we have at hand that’s causing the problems. Right. That’s the I don’t know if that’s what’s meant by globalists. Right. But that’s that’s that’s what’s. [01:11:02][71.8]

Adam: [01:11:03] Globalist is a slur. I mean, that’s all. That’s all it is. But there is that what is the connotation. It’s the it’s what you’re talking about. It’s the it’s the wealthy, you know, exporting jobs because they can pay people less over there. But that’s not the kind of open border that we want. We want and we want to have solidarity with the people, with our neighbors, with the people who we share this this planet with. [01:11:34][30.8]

Todd: [01:11:34] Exactly. Why can’t I mean, I do. But why why is it why is it why is it an impediment for me to go across to Nogales and meet with people and and organize with those people and understand we live in the same place right where I’m in Tucson, there in Nogales, we’re in the same region. We’re in the same place. You know, why can’t we I mean, we’re we’re co-creating a place together and a lot of ways. But yet there’s this big, huge border, the border wall. And now it’s like wrapped with razor wire. It’s even more visually appealing and with cameras mounted and border patrol agents. And and when you try to go to the border wall and talk to people across it, they’ll go, what are you doing? What are you trying to pass things across the border? You know, it’s just why is it so hard? Why is it so hard to do that solidary come together and and and on top of that, when it does happen, it’s amazing, right? Like, there’s some there’s some ecological projects, bi national projects that are like conserving water in a drought prone Arizona where water tables are rising. And in a during a drought, which isn’t totally impossible, but here they are of a cross-border project, people work in Mexico people working in the United States because the drought is nailing them both right here and coming together, like building these gaviones which which conserve water. And they end up both water table rises it doesn’t the water table doesn’t look at the border. It just rises, right? It doesn’t go, hey, there’s a border there. I shouldn’t rise on that side of the border. It rises, right? and it’s just like the border makes no sense. Right. It just it is. It just makes no sense at all. It’s it doesn’t it doesn’t work for the water table. The water table rises either side. [01:13:32][118.0]

Adam: [01:13:33] Yeah. Because ultimately we we live on the same scrap of land. I mean, we’re yeah. The the borders again are a fiction that I mean, occasionally we’re able to build some structure there that changes the physical landscape in our own puny way. But like I mean the rain falls on it and the water flows, you know, to both sides alike. And when we know our again, our emissions change weather patterns, you know, and then that causes ripple effects that then affect us. And this is all one system. And we can’t you’re completely right. It’s impossible to wall ourselves off and pretend like it isn’t. Like, what happens in what happens in Mexico, what happens in Brazil, what happens in China happens here. [01:14:22][49.2]

Todd: [01:14:23] Yeah, exactly, and it’s it’s that’s exactly it. [01:14:28][4.8]

Adam: [01:14:29] So this is this is why the name of your book is Build Bridges, Not Walls. [01:14:33][3.5]

Todd: [01:14:34] That is correct. Yes. [01:14:35][1.0]

Adam: [01:14:36] Well, I am I’m really thrilled to have had you on the show to talk about it. And thanks so much for sharing these ideas and these experiences with us. And yeah, I mean, people can get- is the book out now? [01:14:47][11.1]

Todd: [01:14:48] The book will be out the end of March. People can preorder it at City Lights, City Lights is the publisher so you can preorder at City Lights, but it will be out at the end of March. [01:14:58][10.0]

Adam: [01:15:00] Wonderful. Todd thank you so much for coming on the show to talk to us about it. Really appreciate you. [01:15:03][3.5]

Todd: [01:15:04] It was my pleasure, Adam. Thank you for having me. [01:15:05][1.7]

Adam: [01:15:10] Well, thank you once again to Todd Miller for coming on the show, I hope you enjoyed that conversation as much as I did. His book once again, is called Build Bridges, Not Walls, and it will be out soon. And that is it for us this week on Factually! I want to thank our producers, Kimmie Lucas and Sam Rodman, our engineer, Andrew Carson, the party God, Andrew W.K. for our theme song. I got to thank the fine folks at Falcon Northwest for building the incredible custom gaming PC that I’m recording this very episode on. You can find me on social media @AdamConover or at AdamConover.net. If you have any comments or questions about the show, if you have any topics that you would like to see covered in future episodes, shoot me an email at Factually@AdamConover.net. I’d love to hear from you. And that is it for this week on Factually! Thank you so much for listening. We’ll see you next time. And please remember to stay curious. [01:15:10][0.0]

[4381.9]