Episode Transcript
Futuro investigates Investiga.
Speaker 2So we're going about what like ten twelve, maybe fifteen miles an hour down neighborhood streets like these are homes.
Speaker 1Yes, this is historic South Central Oh.
Speaker 2My goodness, it's just after six am.
The sun isn't out yet on this dewey morning.
Speaker 3We're looking right now for like vehicles.
They're usually American made vehicles.
They're definitely like have super dark tinted windows, so you'll find the agents are double parked.
Speaker 2Immigration Enforcement agents, Border patrols.
Nice men because they're mostly men in unmarked cars, often in plain clothes, who're waiting to get out and take people.
It's been four months since Los Angeles saw an unprecedented attack on Latinos and Latinas and immigrant communities.
The attacks haven't stopped, and this morning Latino USA is managing editor Fernando Echavarri and I are in the back seat of this ride along as the Ugnon del Barrio neighborhood patrol begins and then some of.
Speaker 1The cours that look I see too that you can tell that they're not because sometimes they have that customization, you know, like a rasa.
It's not like ice, but they love to get that tinted look, you know.
Speaker 4Unon Delaro is a grassroots community group that is responding to the ice rates by patrolling neighborhoods.
Lupe Carrasco Cardona is driving.
She's a teacher at a middle school nearby.
She has her hair pulled back and is wearing a brick colored blazer.
Clement Navalos in the passenger seat, wearing the classic black and white checker advance.
She's the one that gets out of the car to get a closer look at any vehicle that looks suspicious.
Clement is a school psychologist.
They also each have impeccable manicures with bright blue and reddish orange nails.
Speaker 3We became little private investigators, and you do you kind of right, I would say.
Speaker 2Big, not little, Like everything that you're talking about is very strategic, and you have really honed the work of having to be osa look met to the Vienno.
Main that is the fact that you're having to patrol your neighborhoods at six and them fourteen in LA.
That's where I'm just like, oh my god.
Speaker 4The idea here is to blow the agent's cover to warn the neighbors when they find agents on their street and to post it live on Instagram so people who are commuting can avoid the area.
Speaker 3I'm really worried.
Speaker 4For this morning.
There are four cars in this patrol.
Each team has a walkie talkie.
Most of them are educators or work in public schools and they're doing this before they start their workday.
Speaker 1Tim in a check all clear on twenty five Griffith.
Speaker 2We're trying to keep up with all the clues.
Loope and clemen are looking for.
Speaker 3See how they have the like the sunrisers.
Speaker 4Sometimes they do that to hide themselves.
Speaker 2But yeah, there's no one in there.
How can you tell thee Yeah, it takes.
Speaker 5No.
Speaker 2They don't know that we've been doing this.
Speaker 6Wow.
Speaker 4I feel like it is a big American flagon in front of the house.
Speaker 3So that could either be a super patriot or a decoy.
Speaker 1They're trying to protect themselves.
Speaker 4You know, we've been driving for about half an hour when Clement spots a heavily tinted Dodge charger and looks of their customers, loops around the block and comes back slower.
Speaker 3Okay, do you want to call back up?
Speaker 4Stopping right next to the car.
Speaker 1And so anybody near thirty eighth and Griffith.
They can come about the car and back up.
We see a suspicious, suspicious charger, super dark tinted windows.
Speaker 7Hello.
Speaker 4Clemen gets out and knocks on the window, then peeks through the very tinted windshield, and just as the other drivers start to make their way over to us, Clemen gets on the walkie and calls it off.
Oh mind, there's nobody in the car.
False alarm.
Speaker 2By now, it's been almost an hour and none of the volunteers have spotted ice agents.
Loope and Clemen tell us that this is a good thing, but unfortunately, she says, they often receive photographs of agents setting up in the areas where they had just patrolled the day before.
It's a mix of chance, of luck and of being at the right place at the right time.
Speaker 4They tell us, this is what it looks like when there's protection and community.
Speaker 1It feels like just another day on patrol.
But there's always that heaviness in the back of our minds, like that our community is under attack and we just wanted to We want our people to be safe.
So, like I think that's always in the back of our minds.
Speaker 3Yeah, honestly, it's exhausting, but I would be more tired and more exhausted if the community was left unprotected.
This is the minimum that can be done.
Speaker 2From Futuro Media, It's Latino USA.
I'm Maria Ino.
Speaker 4Josa and I'm Fernande Chavarri.
Speaker 2Today we bring you a special episode in collaboration with the investigative reporting team at cal Matters.
Speaker 4First, we take you to La ground zero of the ramped up raids.
Speaker 2Or, as the Mayor of Los Angeles told us recently, the hunting of Latinos.
Speaker 4What can local and state officials really do to stand up to having masked agents take over their cities?
We ask California Governor Gavin Newsom.
We're fighting fire with fire.
We're not rolling over this forty plus lawsuits.
Speaker 2We're also going to meet the man behind this effort, because it's not just those in the White House Order Patrols.
Gregory Bovino, and he's living for this moment to.
Speaker 8Just go ahead and self deport because the Green Team is on the job.
Speaker 1And it's game on.
Speaker 4We'll go to Chicago, where Bovino's tactics have spread.
Speaker 3Ice, lies, and people die.
Speaker 4We'll also go to Mexico to ask President Claudia Shanebaum about Mexico's role in all of this.
Speaker 2Senor, can you please respond to this question of psychological terror that is being unleashed.
Speaker 9No este mosi cordo costa for male We found that about seventy two percent of those in ice custody right now have no criminal record none.
Speaker 4So while the administration's messaging continues to be about protecting the country from.
Speaker 8Those that are perpetuating murder and rape, terrorist cartel members.
Speaker 2The worst criminal illegal alience, what we're seeing is that this is really about picking up anyone anywhere based on how they look, where they were, for the language they speak.
Speaker 4Something that the Supreme Court has said is totally okay to do.
Speaker 2The racial profiling supported by the Supreme Court.
My god, So stick around because if there's anything you need to hear to get a full picture not only of what's going on, but of what's to come, it's this.
Let's read that Dalla Villa.
So she lives in a walk up in a complex.
Speaker 4It's not really called a walk up in la.
Speaker 2Oh, my god, what's it called.
Speaker 4It's just a two story apartment.
Bill.
Okay, we're in a working class neighborhood in Los Angeles to meet with a woman we're going to call d She's undocumented and asked us to protect her identity.
Speaker 2Today she greets us with a big smile and welcomes us into her small apartment.
Speaker 4We're here because her thirty one year old son, Mauricio, was one of the first to be detained when the raids led by border patrols Gregory Bovino began this summer, and the perspective of the many mothers, friends, family members who have had someone go missing without any information about where they may be.
Speaker 2The tackling the violent raids, We've seen that all over social media and the news.
But what Mauricio can tell us is what happens after Latino's Mexican and Central American migrants are handcuffed.
Speaker 4For this episode, we're making a conscious decision to not play any audio of the gut wrenching weeps, the cries for help, or the desperate screams from the many people being detained.
Speaker 2It was a Sunday, June eighth, to be exact, that previous Friday and Saturday chaos had erupted in La.
Immigration Enforcement agents began very public, very militarized raids across the city, and d had been paying attention.
Speaker 4Mauricio had a bad feeling.
He was scared, but he had to go to work.
He worked cleaning apartment buildings and was on the payroll, paying income.
Speaker 10Taxes and not in anyone the little must.
Speaker 4He has no criminal record, and his mom tells us that he's the type of guy that just goes from work to home and home to work.
Speaker 2So after his shift he headed home as usual, and as you waited for the thirty three bus, an unmarked truck pulled up in front of him and the other handful of people waiting for the bus.
A couple of men in jeans and baseball caps got out of the truck quickly and held up a piece of paper with a man's photos.
Speaker 11Malissando.
Speaker 2The men asked if they knew who the man in the photograph was, because he was a wanted man, but nobody did.
Nobody even knew who.
Speaker 6That was YEA.
Speaker 4When a couple of the other people waiting for the bus started to run, so did Mauricio.
The man chasing Mauricio tripped them and he fell on his knee.
Mauricia says it wasn't clear who was who.
None of the men showed him a badge, nobody said anything.
All Malisia heard was some of the plain clothes men speaking pretty good Spanish, no accent.
He says.
The men took them in based only on the way they looked.
They can tell we have dark skin and that were shorter.
He says, who.
Speaker 11Wastos?
Speaker 4I saw this as racist, Mauricio tells us, but.
Speaker 2So there he was handcuffed, shackles around his ankles.
Agents then take his phone away.
Speaker 4Meanwhile, at home, his mother d starts to worry.
She hasn't heard from her son since the last message two hours ago, and he always responded to her messages right away.
Speaker 10Mikhom three hours four hours and according to what's app, her son hadn't even seen her messages.
Intos's thoughts spiral.
Speaker 2Had her son been robbed?
Was he hurt?
Was in the hospital?
Speaker 10Hospitales Andyaria aa l Masalo.
Speaker 4D didn't sleep that night and toss and she reached out to a neighbor who tried to file a missing person's report with the police, but the cops told them it was too soon.
There was no trace of Mauricio even in immigration detention records.
Speaker 2Mauricio was first taken to a detention camp an hour south of Los Angeles.
Then at five am that next morning, he was put on a plane.
He was shackled, He had absolutely no idea where he was going.
They were taken to an ice tent camp.
Mauricio's knee was causing him a lot of pain, making it almost impossible for him to walk.
Speaker 4Three days past since Mauricio had been levantado kidnapped, a word that in Mexico has a heavy significance.
This is the term used for cartel related kidnappings or state sanctioned disappearances.
And Mauricio knows this.
It's precisely why he's using that term.
Speaker 11Espress and I was picked up by people in playing clothes, he tells us, no uniforms, no badges, no arrest order.
Speaker 10It was almost.
Speaker 2It was now day five.
He still hadn't been allowed to make, not even one phone call.
His mother de still in anguish, with no idea, no trace of her son anywhere.
Yes, finally, Mauricio says, Immigration agents at the El Paso detention facility tell him and the other men in the holding cell that they can make one phone call, but only after they sign a document that says that they're volunteerily deporting themselves.
Legal experts have called this conditioning of phone access blatantly illegal, saying the government is essentially pressuring people in detention to give up their rights to do process, wave their opportunity for an asylum hearing or a date in front of an immigration judge, just to get a call.
Aurisio showed us the document he was told to sign.
It's in English and in Spanish, and Mauricio checked the box that said.
Speaker 4I denounced my right to a hearing in an immigration court and I wish to go back to my country as soon as my departure is available.
Speaker 2Government officials are essentially dangling a carrot of a phone call.
They warned detainees that even if they try to fight their deportation, they could be held in terrible conditions for months and months.
Speaker 4So on June tenth, five days after he was taken, Mauricio signed the form, and so did most of the other men who were detained with him.
That day, he was released in Quads and it was then he got his phone back.
He turned it on to many miss calls and messages.
Then he called his mom d answered.
Speaker 10The phone, Mamma gentle Stovian.
Speaker 4She got to hear her son's voice telling her that he was okay and not to worry.
Speaker 11I mean, what is mom in Mexico from.
Speaker 4That's when his mom broke down and started crying.
She was relieved to know that at least he was okay.
Speaker 2The Olivia coming up after the break, we meet the man behind this new reign of terror if.
Speaker 8They crossed the border illegally, and then they're coming with us.
Speaker 2And later we'll go to the presidential Palace in Mexico to ask President Claudia Shamebaum about Mexico's role in all of this.
Stay with us at the Yes, Welcome back to Latino, USA.
I'm Maria no Josa.
Speaker 4And am fernand Chari.
Before the break, we heard how these seemingly random ICE rates are sowing uncertainty and immigrants and their families.
Speaker 2The way ICE and Border Patrol have been conducting these detentions shows that they're working from a new playbook, one that relies on the thinnest pretext for taking people.
And then on September eighth this year, the Supreme Court essentially made that legal officers can now stop people based on quote, the totality of circumstances, things like who you are, where you are, the language that you speak, even the job site where you work.
Civil rights lawyers say all of this adds up to legalized racial profiling.
Speaker 12And this ruling basically turned the actions of a rogue border patrol chief into policy.
Gregory Bavino had previously used Kern County, California, as a test run, and the Supreme Court gave him a green light to keep it going.
Speaker 2This is Setyo Almost.
He's an investigative reporter with cal Matters and our partner in all of this.
La is his home and he's been covering this story NonStop for months, NonStop.
Speaker 8Is right joining me?
Speaker 6Now?
Speaker 2Is Sergio Almost?
Speaker 6I want to bring Sergio Almost into the neighborhood Sergio Almost.
Speaker 2Last Sunday he was struck while filming.
Speaker 4An officer opened fire, said you husband at the center of the protest and courtrooms and all over southern California reporting on this story.
And when Maria and I were in La, the three of us went to a news conference with California Governor Gadernism thank you.
Speaker 12Newsom was signing into law.
A bunch of measures meant to push back against Trump's immigration agenda.
This legislation is like banning the mass that immigration agents wore around LA push back, I mean the public season Newsom and lawmakers in California are standing up to Trump.
But in this case it's not a power they have.
Federal officials came out right away and said they'll just ignore the mass law.
Speaker 2It's only nine months in under President Trump.
Can you tell us what you're expecting and what are you preparing to do for what might becoming?
We make doesn't believe in the royal alive believes in the rule of dawn, period full stop.
Speaker 13We're pushing back.
Speaker 4We're using our formal authority and we're using our moral authority in a.
Speaker 12State, California's governor has become a national politician resisting the Trump agenda.
He's taken the Trump administration to court more than just about any other governor, and he's winning the case challenging Trump's deployment of the California National Guard to the streets of Los Angeles.
Speaker 2Good to see you see, how are you?
Speaker 4We asked Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass about this when we sat down to speak with her.
Speaker 7No we absolutely are limited.
However, we still must push back.
Speaker 2So is there more a reign of terror?
Feared terror to get I don't know it to what end, but to create a state of terror in your city?
Speaker 7Well, I mean that's exactly what it has been.
I mean, when you have masked men driving up and down the street, cars tented windows, jumping out with rifles and just snatching people off the street, that absolutely creates a sense of terror.
When you have people who are afraid to go to school, people who are afraid to go to work.
You have entire sectors of our economy that have been crippled because they are dependent on immigrant labor.
Speaker 2Although immigration enforcement.
Speaker 7Has always happened, it's nothing new.
I do not recall in my lifetime saying it is this brutal.
Speaker 4As we were wrapping up our conversation with Mayor Back, we asked not about the politics or her actions, but about how this invasion of her city makes her feel.
Speaker 7It feels terrible that I cannot protect people to the extent that I would like to.
Speaker 2And her response to the recent Supreme Courts ruline that we've been talking about.
Speaker 7That basically legalized racial profiling, or as I say, the hunting of Latinos.
Speaker 2Right, Cecho.
So this is a good moment to pass the mic over to you, because over the last few months you've essentially become an expert on one.
Speaker 4Man, Gregory Bavino.
Speaker 12I first came across Bavino back in January, before Trump had taken office for the second time.
Immigration agents had just stormed into Kerrent County, California's agricultural heartland.
Bavino was the border patrol chief leading these raids.
He started posting on x and commenting on Facebook about it.
From that moment, it became clear to me and my editor that Bavino was auditioning for a bigger rule.
Thanks so much for indviting.
So I interviewed him in his office.
Speaker 8Well, Sergeia, thank you for coming.
Speaker 12And there were a handful of armed agents standing behind me the whole time.
Speaker 8We do call ourselves the premier sector.
So please let those other chiefs know that we said that.
Speaker 12I wanted to know if the Kerrent County operation was targeted or if it was an indiscriminate raid of people.
Speaker 2What was the goal of that operation.
Speaker 8We had a predetermined list of targets, many of which, as you say, were prior to deports, already had immigration history, criminal history.
Speaker 12The question of going to the gas station where field workers show up, the home depot where labors are.
When someone like a growers association says that they feel like labors were targeted, these are places where people gather to go to work or look for work.
Is this that you were also looking for, just generally people who might be in the country legally.
Speaker 8We didn't go to the citrus fields, we didn't go to any of the other fields.
We did not conduct farm and ranch check.
So I think for US targeting agricultural workers at their job, absolutely not that has no merit.
But when border patrol comes into contact with illegal aliens, you're going to get arrested.
Speaker 12Out of the people you arrested, how many of those people had criminal convictions.
Speaker 8Every single one of the seventy eight that we arrested were criminals.
When you cross the border illegally at USC thirteen twenty five illegal entry into the United States, So they were all criminals.
Let's get that one out of the way here, right out of the box, Sergey.
Every single one of them were criminals.
Many of those did have prior criminal convictions apart from their illegal entry into our country.
Speaker 12It turns out that wasn't true.
According to documents that we obtained from Customs and Board Protection, they had no knowledge of criminal or migration history for seventy seven out of the seventy eight people they arrested, only one person had a prior deportation order.
Speaker 8We're going after bad people in bad things hard as we can possibly go, and we're going to do it on our time with our approach.
Speaker 12But I think the general public does see a difference between the palalatto or the citrus worker and the fentanyl dealer that they are not both on the same field.
Speaker 8If they cross the border illegally, then they're coming with us.
They are under arrest, and they're coming with us.
Every single one of them was arrested for one crime or another.
Whether they were convicted or not is a moot point here.
That's not important.
Speaker 2So this becomes the basis for all the sweeps that we've seen.
US government isn't using these violent raids to go after violent criminals.
They're using this force to go after anyone they think maybe in the country without permission.
Speaker 4And we saw this play out when Bovino and his team went to LA with full force.
Speaker 13Tactical officers on things like bear cant.
Speaker 4Vehicles, patrolling on horses, tanks.
Speaker 8A lot of bad things are in our country now, including Los Angeles.
Speaker 2He's truly taken a very public role as the leader of all of these attacks.
Speaker 4And we need to pause and talk about the social media, about the official videos and images produced by the Department of Homeland Security.
Speaker 2All of these efforts paid for with our tax dollars.
Speaker 12Customs and Border Protection won't tell us how much they're spending on this effort.
We've asked, But one thing is clear, but Vino is cultivating this image of a hardline, righteous enforcer.
Speaker 8There is no such thing as a sanctuary city.
There's no such thing as the sanctuary state we are here conducting.
Speaker 12These are highly polished hype videos of massed and heavily armed officers set to songs like Kendrick Lamar's DNA I got in another video.
But Vino is Darth Vader.
He slashes the rebels who are labeled as sanctuary cities, fake news, and human smugglers.
Speaker 4These are wild and they're incredibly damaging.
They're adding to the depiction of immigrants as the enemy.
They are endangering every day working people who anti immigrant folks might think just look or sound foreign.
We've reported on the damage that this type of rhetoric has done.
It is very real.
Speaker 8But we're taking this show on the road to a city near you.
Speaker 2Forget well new.
Speaker 4Some baths and even federal judges seem almost helpless.
Bovino is the one with the power.
The Supreme Court made it official.
Speaker 2And Bovino has now taken that power to Chicago.
In an interview with a WBEZ reporter, Bovino basically admitted to racial profiling.
Speaker 8Then obviously the particular characteristics of an individual, how they look, how do they look compared to say you.
Speaker 2What's your name again?
Speaker 14Chip, Chip?
Speaker 2Hey Chip?
Speaker 5You or other folks?
Speaker 4How do they appear.
Speaker 8In relation to what you or other people look like?
Speaker 12So a lot.
Speaker 4By the way, We requested another interview with Bovino, and after a couple of emails, we did not get it.
Speaker 12Bakersfield was the test for LA was ground zero.
Chicago followed the playbook, but it doesn't end there.
Truthfully, we don't know how it ends.
Federal agents are now in Washington, d C.
Portland, and the Trump administration has said they're just getting started.
Speaker 13We should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military National Guard.
Speaker 4But according to the latest data, immigration agents have arrested more than seven thousand people in the LA area since the raids began this summer.
Speaker 2Immigration is the veneer to exert power.
Nice.
Speaker 12I was just telling you, I think Illinois nice.
Speaker 2He's like, Illinois's nice, It's pretty.
Speaker 12I think that would be so sunny.
Speaker 2We're in Chicago now, which is the second major city where Bovino decided to take his troops.
Speaker 4And in Chicago, it starts with a death.
Speaker 8The following breaking news out of the Chicago area, Homeland Security official say an ICE operation left an enforcement officer severely injured.
Speaker 15The Department of Homeland Security initially claimed the agent fired the gun out of a fear for his life, the agency adding the officer was seriously injured, Yet in that footage, the agent himself can be hurt, telling police his injuries were quote nothing major.
Speaker 2We're actually like on a major through way in Franklin Park and it was on this major through way that see radio was shot by ice.
Speaker 12Thirty eight year old Silverdio Viegas Gonzalez was shot and killed on September twelfth.
Speaker 2He was a working man, a father, and a Mexican immigrant from the state of metrok gun Seed Radio was reportedly driving to work after dropping off his two children at daycare when he got pulled over by ice.
Speaker 12The makeshift vigil for st is along the highway.
Speaker 2There are candles that are lit.
There's roses, flowers, carnations, white flowers, Mexican flags, a Mexican flag intertwined with an American flag.
Speaker 12It's a small vigil, perhaps a sign of the times.
Speaker 2That probably if he had been killed under any other circumstance, more people might have shown up.
But I think people are afraid.
Speaker 12Elected officials in the US and even Mexico demanded answers about this killing.
Illinois Governor JB.
Pritzker condemned it.
Speaker 13Our people have been subjected to violence, intimidation, and harassment.
They have struck fear in our communities, including notably fear in the hearts of US citizens.
Trump and the thuggery that his agents have brought has actively made us less safe.
Speaker 2So said he, I know how you said that la is like your city.
Well that's the way I feel about Chicago.
I mean, I grew up here, right.
I witnessed the local grassroots politics, the politics that led to a black and Latino coalition electing the first black mayor here, basically the lead up to the Obama era of Yes we can So.
Yeah, Chicago's a big city like La but it's got its own vibe for sure.
Yeah.
Speaker 12And I saw this in the people in Chicago that we talked to, like Server Tracy Kinionis, who says they're not going down quietly.
Speaker 6We're not only being hunted down by the way we look and the way we speak and our culture, but now we're being murdered for it in cold blood by his gestapo.
So I'm here because I will fight for the rights of myself always and for the immigrants in my community who are welcome here, who make America a great country.
Without our immigrants, this country wouldn be anything.
Speaker 12Baveno brought camera crews to document their mission in Chicago, and they produce what can only be described as a trailer for a big action film.
Speaker 2In the weeks since we left Chicago, Texas deployed the National Guard to that city under the urging of the White House.
Speaker 7It's probably worse than almost any city in the world.
Speaker 2And Illinois is now fighting those orders in the courts.
Speaker 13There is no invasion here, there is no insurrection here.
Speaker 4There are protesters out in the streets clashing with border patrol agents, and.
Speaker 2Much like in La and cities across the country, activists there are blowing the whistle every time they see Ice threatening their neighborhoods.
So when I see Ice, I blow the whistle.
I mean literally blowing whistle.
So when people hear the whistle blow, we know that Ice is around.
But the Bovino machine continues to plow through Chicago those assaults.
Speaker 8There's riots, that violence against federal officers that happens every day here in Chicago.
Speaker 2More than a thousand immigrants and even some American citizens have been detained in Chicago.
Speaker 6So far.
Speaker 4The message from the Trump administration seems to be watch out, We're coming for you.
Be it in Chicago, in LA and Portland, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 2And the trauma caused by this terror is continuing.
It's affecting not just undocumented people but also their families.
Many of them have US citizen children.
Speaker 4The trauma is something that Lupe and Clemen talked about during the Neighborhood patrol in south central La Clemen remember is the school psychologist with a black and white checker advance.
Speaker 1What I've noticed is that we're getting a lot of referrals for older kids.
They're like acting up, and teachers are like, this is weird because they weren't like this last year.
What's going on.
One parent was like, oh, you know what, like he his grandfather hasn't left the house in months because he's scared, right, So that's one of the reasons that we suspect he's starting to act up and wants.
Speaker 6To go home.
Speaker 1Another little girl, her mom, so stamlas on the street and she was like, I want to call my mom.
I want to call my mom, Like I need to hear my mom.
And so like, you know, like our kids are coming to school like they're worried.
They don't have the words to be able to say like, oh, I'm worried because you know, Ice is on the.
Speaker 2Streets coming up.
We're going to Mexico to speak with President Claudia Schambaum to ask her how the Mexican government is reacting to these terror tactics.
Speaker 4Provoca and Milo.
Speaker 2Mexican and to see what happens after Ice sends people back alacente.
Is this new reality making more people want to leave before risking being taken?
Stay with us.
Welcome back to Latino USA.
I'm Maria Josa.
Speaker 4And I'm Fernando Chavarri, and we're going to take you straight to Mexico City, now to the presidential Palace to be exact in the city's Socalo.
Speaker 2Every morning Mexico's President, Claudia Shanbaum holds a news conference.
It's known as La Magnanea del Pueblo, which is the Mourning of the people.
After weeks of dealing with bureaucracy, a lot of phone calls and messages, we were told that we would be allowed in, but that didn't guarantee we'd be able to ask a question.
Speaker 4We were pretty far back, and even though Maria kept raising her hand and standing up, no luck until she yelled.
Speaker 2From US media about a question about immigrants.
Until finally what was the yes?
So Maria, no hostas and your presidenta represent Latino USA.
This dows tonidos Concuba and less puss in Espanol jaqu in restrum.
Speaker 4Maria told the President that we'd be asking our questions first in English, and then in Spanish.
Speaker 2I did witness the unleashing of a reign of psychological terror that Trump has unleashed on Latino immigrants, specifically Mexican communities.
Can you please respond to this question of psychological terror that is being unleashed on Latinos.
Speaker 16And latinas nista forma re trato nasquan do qumas milo isosbra and las.
Speaker 4Mexican President Shane Baum said that she doesn't agree with the way Mexican immigrants are being treated in the US and with the way that the raids are being handled, which, as she put it, are causing a fear effect.
Speaker 16Que partio tanto comunicados parti de noa diplomaticas what.
Speaker 2Are we doing about it?
She says, well, she's expressing her concerns by sending diplomatic notes directly to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and then she says she's spoken to him about it personally.
Speaker 16As the personal mentelo plante Marco Ruvio celodje personal.
Speaker 4MENE.
President Shane Baum says that she has also strengthened resources at Mexican consulates across the United States and built up a twenty for seven hotline to provide assistance to Mexican citizens caught up in the raids.
Speaker 16Is Los Cacilo in consuls.
Speaker 4Now, from what we've seen in our reporting, people who are detained have not had access to consular help at all.
Remember Mauricio, the thirty one year old in La who was told that the only way to make a phone call would be by signing a voluntary deportation order.
Well, while the Mexican government has these extra resources available, the US government is making it really hard for people to access them, nearly impossible.
Speaker 2Incident that, personally, in your heart, how are you processing all of this is to uta process and to this qui pasa and it's an injustice, Shenebaum tells me.
Of course it hurts impersona.
Speaker 4She wants Mexican citizens in the US to know that her administration and the president herself is trying to support them and if and when they come back to Mexico they will be welcomed with open arms.
You program Mexico Mexico Brasa Mexico Embraces You is what the official name of the program would translate.
Speaker 16To the Zaxi Saviivienna the ZAK program as a Vinista I m Pleo.
Speaker 2To better understand the Mexico TRASA program, we took a look at Maurisho's experience after being held by ice in custody for five days.
Mauricia tells us that once he was sent across the border to what Is, he was finally able to have warm meals, showers, and to get assistance from Mexican officials.
Speaker 4Okay, Comida est.
Speaker 2Mozilla mouseim.
Speaker 4They treated as well, he says, and that's what we've gathered from our reporting too.
Maurisio and other people are receiving one hundred and twenty dollars in pesos to make their way home, which for Maurisio was in the outskirts of Mexico City, So from what Is to his hometown that's about as far as from Florida to New York.
Speaker 2And while the Mexican government is trying to provide some assistance, there is plenty of criticism that it is not doing enough.
We spoke to representatives from a couple of nonprofit organizations in Mexico.
We're working with folks who have recently been deported, and they told us that while the Mexican government is providing folks with immediate assistance at the border.
There is a lot more that they could be doing long.
Speaker 4Term, especially when it comes to addressing mental health.
Speaker 2Other government officials we spoke to in Mexico acknowledged that their program doesn't include any counseling or access to mental health care long term, but they do have a psychologist onside at the border to tell people as soon as they're.
Speaker 14Deported aisicologos cicologas at the end, then alas personas paracontenegeria and crisis and MS analysts.
Speaker 2Those therapists are they on location twenty four to seven at.
Speaker 14The Riserardos Totalos Services stam Beni Puetro cost Central attentions, the.
Speaker 4LA mayor, the governor of California, and the Mexican President.
They're all saying something similar that they're trying to do what they can, but how effective are their efforts.
One thing that kept coming up in the reporting for the story is the very very real trauma that the current Bovino style machine is causing.
And as the school psychologist told us as we were driving through doing the patrol in south central l A, kids and teens are lost in the anguish confusion, the mental health challenges, and trauma of seeing their communities, their family members being hunted.
Speaker 2We saw this trauma and frankly felt it when we were talking to Maurisio and his mom.
You know, those harrowing five days of not having any idea where her son was, and the physical and emotional torment that Maurishu experienced when he was picked up at the bus stop waiting to go home.
Speaker 10Seems.
Speaker 2She says, psychologically she's not okay.
She's now extremely paranoid.
She's having trouble sleeping, and she says she's afraid of agents coming to her apartment and kicking her door down.
She's trying to stay home as much as possible.
She says.
There have been times when she's needed something from the store from home depot, but she definitely won't step foot there.
Speaker 4And her son, Mauricio, who is eighteen hundred miles south, oh yeah, he has nightmares of cop cars and helicopters chasing him in La Patrias we visit Maurisio's modest and sparkly clean home where he lives with his wife and two daughters, two hours north of Mexico City, it's about eleven am, and he hasn't gone to bed yet because he works an overnight shift.
Throughout our visit, it seemed to us that Mauricio is both very matter of fact about what happened to him and also very hurt.
He mentioned that he had left his wife and kids in Mexico to be able to work in the US and send his family money to finish building their homes.
He wasn't able to fulfill his dreams, and he feels like he let his family down.
But at least, he says, he's with his daughters and his wife again, and with the five dogs that are also part of their family.
The tall hound dog, the noisy pug, the very chill black lab, the extra fluffy mud and the tiny Chihuahua wiener dog makes Chiki, whom Mauricio's daughter says, is of course the most mischievous of all.
Speaker 2Back in Los Angeles, in Maursio's old apartment where he lived with his mom, d she tells us that she's lost a big part of her income over the last few months.
She cleans homes, but many times she just hasn't felt safe enough to even make the commute to work.
Noo.
Speaker 4If this country doesn't want us here, she says, then we'll leave, as she points to a box near the TV stand, big enough to fit a stove.
Speaker 2That that box is pretty huge.
It's like is he and yeah, yeah, and the box is filled with clothing, shoes, dishes.
Speaker 4This constant, physical, giant representation of what happened to her son and what could happen to her Americo.
She's going to mail this box to her son's home in Mexico, where we visited Mauricio and where she once lived twenty years ago.
Speaker 2If things don't get better, maybe I should just go Alacente.
He saw what happened to her own son, how quickly and without any morning he was picked up by masked men at a bus stop on his way home from work, disappeared for five days, with no communication whatsoever with his families, lawyers, or Mexican consular officials.
Speaker 4She has been in the US for about twenty years.
She doesn't have anything in Mexico anymore, and if she's taken, she wants this big box to be there so that at least she will have some of her belongings.
Speaker 3This is a very glee moment in history.
Speaker 2We want to end this episode where we started patrolling the streets of south central La with Unon del Barrio and the teachers who are volunteers, you know, the ones with the perfectly manicured, bright nails.
Speaker 4It's just after seven am and they're wrapping up their shift.
They got to go to work, and later today other groups are going to take over the afternoon patrolling shift.
Speaker 2But really for loupe Clement and the other folks here early this morning, their work continues at their schools, then in their own neighborhoods ICE agents because in a sense, it's like they're constantly on patrol now.
Speaker 4Because in a time when politicians at every level are running up against the full force of the federal government with the backing of the Supreme Court, it's community that protects you.
Speaker 3There are times when, like when the sun is it starts to go up, and if we're at you know, the grocery, start parking lot, et cetera.
Sometimes you'll see people, they'll honk, they'll cheer, they'll.
Speaker 10Tell you, oh, you know, we know who you are.
Speaker 3The community really does feel safer, of course, not to the degree that is necessary to one.
Speaker 1Did you see that back home?
Speaker 2That's it for Today.
This episode is the work of Fernando Chavari, Rebecca Barra, Serio, Almost Pennile Ramirez, Andrew Donahue, Wendy Frye, Mary Franklin Harvin and myself.
It's a collaboration between Latino USA and cal Matters and it comes to you via Futuro Investigates.
We also have a special version of this episode En Espanol a Scuccadlo budes in contrad Estepisodio and Donzcuccis two's podcasts and you can practice your Spanish.
Everyone.
Now back to our credits.
Our episode was mixed by Julia Caruso and Lea Shaw Damaran special thanks to guilled Mootejeva Early, leanad Riz and Christopher Rojel Blanquet.
The rest of the Latino USA team includes Roxanna Guire, Jessica Alis, Renaldo Leanoz Junior, Stefanie Lebau, Andrea Lopez Gruzzado, Luis Luna, Flori Mard Marquez, Julieta Martinelli, Monica Morlis Garcia, Adriana Rodriguez and Nancy Truji.
Benille Ramirez and I are executive producers.
I'm your host Maria Josa for even more reporting on this story, check out latinousa dot org and you know what I'm gonna tell you, Chao.
Speaker 5Funding for Latino USA is coverage of a culture of health is made possible in part by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
Latino USA is made possible in part by California Endowment building a strong state by improving the health of all Californians, and the John D.
Speaker 2And Catherine T.
Speaker 5MacArthur Foundation.
