WEBVTT

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Twice a week,

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I drive from my home near Tijuana, Mexico,

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over the US border,
to my office in San Diego.

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The stark contrast between the poverty
and desperation on one side of the border

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and the conspicuous wealth on the other

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always feels jarring.

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But what makes this contrast
feel even starker

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is when I pass by the building
that those of us who work on the border

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unaffectionately refer to
as the black hole.

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The black hole is the Customs
and Border Protection,

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or CBP facility,

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at the San Ysidro port of entry,

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right next to a luxury outlet mall.

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It's also where, at any one time,

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there's likely 800 immigrants

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locked in freezing, filthy,
concrete cells below the building.

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Up top: shopping bags and frappuccinos.

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Downstairs: the reality
of the US immigration system.

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And it's where, one day
in September of 2018,

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I found myself trying to reach Anna,

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a woman who CBP had recently separated
from her seven-year-old son.

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I'm an immigration attorney

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and the policy and litigation director
of Al Otro Lado,

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a binational nonprofit helping immigrants
on both sides of the US-Mexico border.

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We'd met Anna several weeks earlier
at our Tijuana office,

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where she explained that she feared
she and her son would be killed in Mexico.

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So we prepared her for the process
of turning herself over to CBP

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to ask for asylum.

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A few days after she'd gone
to the port of entry to ask for help,

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we received a frantic phone call

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from her family members
in the United States,

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telling us that CBP officials
had taken Anna's son from her.

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Now, not that this should matter,

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but I knew that Anna's son
had special needs.

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And once again,

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this news filled me with the sense
of panic and foreboding

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that has unfortunately become
a hallmark of my daily work.

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I had a signed authorization
to act as Anna's attorney,

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so I rushed over to the port of entry

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to see if I could speak with my client.

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Not only would CBP officials
not let me speak to Anna,

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but they wouldn't even tell me
if she was there.

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I went from supervisor to supervisor,

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begging to submit evidence
of Anna's son's special needs,

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but no one would even
talk to me about the case.

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It felt surreal to watch
the shoppers strolling idly by

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what felt like a life-and-death situation.

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After several hours
of being stonewalled by CBP,

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I left.

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Several days later,

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I found Anna's son
in the foster-care system.

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But I didn't know what happened to Anna

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until over a week later,

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when she turned up
at a detention camp a few miles east.

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Now, Anna didn't have a criminal record,

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and she followed the law
when asking for asylum.

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Still, immigration officials
held her for three more months,

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until we could win her release

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and help her reunify with her son.

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Anna's story is not
the only story I could tell you.

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There's Mateo, an 18-month-old boy,

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who was ripped from his father's arms

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and sent to a government shelter
thousands of miles away,

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where they failed
to properly bathe him for months.

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There's Amadou,

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an unaccompanied African child,

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who was held with adults for 28 days
in CBP's horrific facilities.

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Most disturbingly, there's Maria,

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a pregnant refugee who begged
for medical attention for eight hours

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before she miscarried in CBP custody.

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CBP officials held her
for three more weeks

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before they sent her back to Mexico,

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where she is being forced to wait months

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for an asylum hearing
in the United States.

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Seeing these horrors
day in and day out has changed me.

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I used to be fun at parties,

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but now, I inevitably
find myself telling people

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about how our government
tortures refugees at the border

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and in the detention camps.

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Now, people try to change the subject

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and congratulate me for the great work
I'm doing in helping people like Anna.

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But I don't know
how to make them understand

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that unless they start fighting,
harder than they ever thought possible,

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we don't know which of us
will be the next to suffer Anna's fate.

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Trump's mass separations
of refugee families

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at the southern border

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shocked the conscience of the world

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and woke many to the cruelties
of the US immigration system.

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It seems like today,

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more people than ever are involved
in the fight for immigrant rights.

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But unfortunately, the situation
is just not getting better.

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Thousands protested
to end family separations,

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but the government
is still separating families.

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More than 900 children
have been taken from their parents

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since June of 2018.

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Thousands more refugee children
have been taken from their grandparents,

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siblings and other
family members at the border.

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Since 2017,

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at least two dozen people have died
in immigration custody.

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And more will die, including children.

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Now, we lawyers can
and will keep filing lawsuits

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to stop the government
from brutalizing our clients,

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but we can't keep tinkering
around the edges of the law

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if we want migrants
to be treated humanely.

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This administration would have you believe
that we have to separate families

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and we have to detain children,

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because it will stop more refugees
from coming to our borders.

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But we know that this isn't true.

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In fact, in 2019,

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the number of apprehensions
at our southern border

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has actually gone up.

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And we tell people
every day at the border,

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"If you seek asylum in the United States,

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you risk family separation,

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and you risk being detained indefinitely."

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But for many of them,
the alternative is even worse.

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People seek refuge in the United States
for a lot of different reasons.

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In Tijuana, we've met refugees
from over 50 countries,

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speaking 14 different languages.

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We meet LGBT migrants
from all over the world

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who have never been in a country
in which they feel safe.

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We meet women from all over the world

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whose own governments
refuse to protect them

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from brutal domestic violence
or repressive social norms.

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Of course, we meet
Central American families

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who are fleeing gang violence.

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But we also meet Russian dissidents,

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Venezuelan activists,

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Christians from China, Muslims from China,

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and thousands and thousands
of other refugees

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fleeing all types
of persecution and torture.

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Now, a lot of these people
would qualify as refugees

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under the international legal definition.

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The Refugee Convention
was created after World War II

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to give protection to people
fleeing persecution

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based on their race, religion,
nationality, political opinion

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or membership
in a particular social group.

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But even those who would be refugees
under the international definition

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are not going to win asylum
in the United States.

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And that's because since 2017,

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the US Attorneys General have made
sweeping changes to asylum law,

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to make sure that less people qualify
for protection in the United States.

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Now these laws are mostly aimed
at Central Americans

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and keeping them out of the country,

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but they affect other types
of refugees as well.

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The result is that the US
frequently deports refugees

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to their persecution and death.

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The US is also using detention
to try to deter refugees

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and make it harder for them
to win their cases.

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Today, there are over 55,000 immigrants
detained in the United States,

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many in remote detention facilities,

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far from any type of legal help.

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And this is very important.

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Because it's civil
and not criminal detention,

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there is no public defender system,

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so most detained immigrants
are not going to have an attorney

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to help them with their cases.

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An immigrant who has an attorney

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is up to 10 times more likely
to win their case

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than one who doesn't.

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And as you've seen, I hate
to be the bearer of bad news,

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but the situation is even worse
for refugee families today

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than it was during family separation.

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Since January of 2019,

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the US has implemented a policy

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that's forced over 40,000 refugees
to wait in Mexico

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for asylum hearings in the United States.

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These refugees, many of whom are families,

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are trapped in some of the most
dangerous cities in the world,

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where they're being raped, kidnapped

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and extorted by criminal groups.

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And if they survive for long enough
to make it to their asylum hearing,

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less than one percent of them
are able to find an attorney

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to help them with their cases.

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The US government will point
to the lowest asylum approval rates

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to argue that these people
are not really refugees,

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when in fact, US asylum law
is an obstacle course

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designed to make them fail.

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Now not every migrant
at the border is a refugee.

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I meet plenty of economic migrants.

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For example, people who want to go
to the United States to work,

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to pay medical bills for a parent

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or school fees for a child back home.

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Increasingly, I'm also meeting
climate refugees.

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In particular, I'm meeting
a lot of indigenous Central Americans

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who can no longer
sustain themselves by farming,

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due to catastrophic drought in the region.

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We know that today,

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people are migrating
because of climate change,

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and that more will do so in the future,

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but we simply don't have a legal system
to deal with this type of migration.

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So, it would make sense, as a start,

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to expand the refugee definition

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to include climate refugees, for example.

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But those of us in a position
to advocate for those changes

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are too busy suing our government

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to keep the meager legal protections
that refugees enjoy under the current law.

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And we are exhausted,

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and it's almost too late to help.

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And we know now

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that this isn't America's problem alone.

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From Australia's brutal
offshore detention camps

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to Italy's criminalization of aid
to migrants drowning in the Mediterranean,

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first-world countries
have gone to deadly lengths

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to keep refugees from reaching our shores.

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But they've done more
than restrict the refugee definition.

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They've created parallel,
fascist-style legal systems

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in which migrants have none of the rights
that form the basis of a democracy,

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the alleged foundation of the countries
in which they're seeking refuge.

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History shows us that the first group

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to be vilified and stripped
of their rights is rarely the last,

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and many Americans and Europeans

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seem to accept an opaque
and unjust legal system for noncitizens,

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because they think they are immune.

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But eventually,

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these authoritarian ideals bleed over
and affect citizens as well.

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I learned this firsthand

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when the US government placed me
on an illegal watch list

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for my work helping
immigrants at the border.

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One day, in January of 2019,

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I was leaving my office in San Diego

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and crossing the border
to go back to my home in Mexico.

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Mexican officials, although they had
given me a valid visa,

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stopped me and told me
that I couldn't enter the country

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because a foreign government
had placed a travel alert on my passport,

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designating me
as a national security risk.

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I was detained and interrogated
in a filthy room for hours.

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I begged the Mexican officials

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to let me go back to Mexico
and pick up my son,

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who was only 10 months old at the time.

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But they refused,

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and instead, they turned me over
to CBP officials,

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where I was forced back
into the United States.

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It took me weeks to get another visa
so that I could go back to Mexico,

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and I went to the border, visa in hand.

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But again, I was detained and interrogated

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because there was still
a travel alert on my passport.

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Shortly after,

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leaked internal CBP documents

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confirmed that my own government

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had been complicit in issuing
this travel alert against me.

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And since then, I haven't traveled
to any other countries,

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because I'm afraid I'll be detained

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and deported from those countries as well.

NOTE Paragraph

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These travel restrictions, detentions

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and separation from my infant son

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are things I never thought
I would experience as a US citizen,

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but I'm far from the only person
being criminalized for helping immigrants.

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The US and other countries
have made it a crime to save lives,

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and those of us who are simply
trying to do our jobs

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are being forced to choose
between our humanity and our freedom.

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And the thing that makes me so desperate

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is that all of you
are facing the same choice,

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but you don't understand it yet.

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And I know there are
good people out there.

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I saw thousands of you in the streets,

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protesting family separation.

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And that largely helped
bring about an end to the official policy.

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But we know that the government
is still separating children.

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And things are actually getting worse.

NOTE Paragraph

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Today, the US government
is fighting for the right

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to detain refugee children
indefinitely in prison camps.

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This isn't over.

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We cannot allow ourselves
to become numb or look away.

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Those of us who are citizens of countries

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whose policies cause detention,
separation and death,

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need to very quickly decide
which side we're on.

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We need to demand that our laws respect
the inherent dignity of all human beings,

00:12:35.283 --> 00:12:38.584
especially refugees
seeking help at our borders,

00:12:38.608 --> 00:12:41.997
but including economic migrants
and climate refugees.

00:12:42.719 --> 00:12:45.501
We need to demand
that refugees get a fair shot

00:12:45.525 --> 00:12:47.680
at seeking protection in our countries

00:12:47.704 --> 00:12:50.076
by ensuring that they have
access to council

00:12:50.100 --> 00:12:51.926
and by creating independent courts

00:12:51.950 --> 00:12:55.315
that are not subject
to the political whims of the president.

NOTE Paragraph

00:12:56.069 --> 00:12:57.847
I know it's overwhelming,

00:12:57.871 --> 00:13:00.228
and I know this sounds cliché, but ...

00:13:01.267 --> 00:13:03.722
we need to call
our elected representatives

00:13:03.746 --> 00:13:05.412
and demand these changes.

00:13:06.094 --> 00:13:07.674
I know you've heard this before,

00:13:07.698 --> 00:13:09.587
but have you made the call?

00:13:09.611 --> 00:13:11.746
We know these calls make a difference.

NOTE Paragraph

00:13:12.897 --> 00:13:16.635
The dystopian immigration systems
being built up in first-world countries

00:13:16.659 --> 00:13:19.223
are a test of citizens

00:13:19.247 --> 00:13:22.545
to see how far you're willing
to let the government go

00:13:22.569 --> 00:13:26.545
in taking away other people's rights
when you think it won't happen to you.

00:13:27.427 --> 00:13:29.966
But when you let the government
take people's children

00:13:29.990 --> 00:13:31.625
without due process

00:13:31.649 --> 00:13:34.831
and detain people indefinitely
without access to council,

00:13:34.855 --> 00:13:36.522
you are failing the test.

00:13:37.109 --> 00:13:39.276
What's happening to immigrants now

00:13:39.300 --> 00:13:42.934
is a preview of where we're all headed
if we fail to act.

NOTE Paragraph

00:13:43.442 --> 00:13:44.610
Thank you.

NOTE Paragraph

00:13:44.634 --> 00:13:49.730
(Applause)