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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.
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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.
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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,
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especially refugees
seeking help at our borders,
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but including economic migrants
and climate refugees.
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We need to demand
that refugees get a fair shot
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at seeking protection in our countries
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by ensuring that they have
access to council
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and by creating independent courts
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that are not subject
to the political whims of the president.
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I know it's overwhelming,
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and I know this sounds cliché, but ...
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we need to call
our elected representatives
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and demand these changes.
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I know you've heard this before,
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but have you made the call?
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We know these calls make a difference.
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The dystopian immigration systems
being built up in first-world countries
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are a test of citizens
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to see how far you're willing
to let the government go
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in taking away other people's rights
when you think it won't happen to you.
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But when you let the government
take people's children
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without due process
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and detain people indefinitely
without access to council,
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you are failing the test.
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What's happening to immigrants now
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is a preview of where we're all headed
if we fail to act.
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Thank you.
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(Applause)