The Crisis and Politics of Immigration under Trump in 2025 - Ep 169

this is Fortress On A Hill, with Henri, Danny, Kaygan, Jo

vonni, Shiloh, Monisha , and Mike

Welcome everyone to Fortress on the Hill, a podcast about U. S.

foreign policy, anti imperialism, skepticism, and the American way of war.

I'm Giovanni, your host.

Thank you for joining us today.

With me is my co host, Henry.

Henry, how are you doing today?

I'm doing all right, man.

How about yourself?

I'm doing well.

Today we're diving into one of the most pressing and polarizing

issues of our time, the crisis and politics of immigration.

It's a story that stretches across centuries and continents, shaped by

war, exploitation, and the relentless movement of people in search of

safety, opportunity, and a better life.

Consider this, according to Brown University's Cost of War Project, the

U. S. post 911 wars alone displaced an estimate of 38 million people.

And some estimates reaching as high as 60 million.

That's more than any conflict since World War II, These staggering numbers

are a stark reminder of how conflict and foreign policy decisions ripples

across the globe, driving mass migration.

But the roots of this crisis run even deeper.

From the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the first U. S. law to explicitly

bar immigration based on race, to the 1965 Immigration and Nationality

Act, which introduced quotas that disproportionately restricted migration

from Mexican and Central America.

The U. S.

has long played a role in shaping who is allowed to cross its border.

And as Aviva Chomsky argued in her book, Undocumented, How Immigration

Became Illegal, the very concept of illegal immigration is a relatively

recent invention tied to economic demands and political agendas.

Meanwhile, the global movement of people in the 21st century has become a defining

phenomenon, whether driven by economic inequalities, climate change, or the

legacies of colonialism and exploitation, as Walter Rooney outlined in his book,

How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, millions are forced to leave their homes, often

with nowhere to go, instead of addressing the root causes, We see xenophobia,

hysteria and scapegoating take center stage, especially during election seasons.

Politicians compete with each other to see who can be tougher on

immigration, while the sensationalist press fuels fears and division.

But what if we pause and ask, how did we get here in the first place?

And what role do we have in creating this global phenomenon?

In this episode, we'll explore the context of political forces that

have shaped immigration policy, the human cost of displacement, and the

complicity of nations like the United States in perpetrating this crisis.

From the Bracero Program to Operation Wetback, from NAFTA to the Border Patrol,

we'll trace the threats that connect past and present and ask what it means to live

in a world Where borders are fortified, but the cause of migration never addressed

here to join us, to unpack this crisis and partisan immigration, we're joined by

three young activists on the front lines of migrant justice, Cynthia Rodriguez.

Juana Guzman Mata, Maxine Rebles, Cynthia is a dedicated organizer based

in Chicago, and the national organizer with Nijente, a political home for

Chicano and Latino communities across the United States and Puerto Rico.

One is a master's student at the University of North Texas working toward

becoming a mental health counselor and has been involved in immigrant

rights from 2011 throughout the fight for DACA, where she was a student at

University of Texas, Austin, Texas.

Maxine Rebles.

I'll let Maxine Rebles introduce herself.

3 young activists on the front lines of.

Migrant justice, Cynthia, my mother and Maxine.

Cynthia is a dedicated organizer based in Chicago and a national organizer with

Mijente, a political home and national hub for Chicano and Latino communities

across the United States and Puerto Rico.

At Mijente, she leads an impactful No Tech for ICE campaign.

With a rich background in grassroots activism, Cynthia previously served

as organizing director for Centro de Trabajadores Unidos, advocating for

low wage immigrant workers in Chicago's southeast side and south suburbs.

He's also the local organizer with Umuwi Ethnic Studies,

and has worked as a community educator and interfaith organizer.

Juana is a master's student.

At the University of North Texas, working towards becoming

a mental health counselor.

One of the became involved in a movement for immigrant rights in 2011.

Throughout the fight for DACA, where she was a student at the University

of Texas, often one that has worked as a legal assistant case manager

community organizing in the immigrant and Latina communities advocating for

immigration leave policies fighting deportations and anti immigrant laws and

engaging community efforts to increase.

Latinas political involvement.

Maxine Hervélez is a Navy veteran, former teacher, and a local activist.

Ladies, how are you doing today?

I'm good.

Thanks for having me.

I'm excited to join all the amazing Texas organizers on here today.

Juana Guzman Mata: I'm doing well as well.

Thank you.

Thank you for having us.

So talk to us a little bit of what you do.

I can start.

it's really great to be here.

I am joining from far away.

I'm in Chicago where it's snowed finally.

the sun is up today.

I miss Texas sunsets, but I get to support and organize alongside.

our members and folks in Texas every once in a while because I'm a part of Mijente.

So I'm a national organizer with Mijente right now.

Mijente, as you said, Giovanni is a national Latino and Chicano organization.

That talks about our work as the work of both an organizing

hub and a political home.

And that's because roots are precisely in the work of deportation defense

of Folks really harnessing the power of community and publicly defending

themselves and each other through the Not One More Deportation campaign and from

that work, people throughout the country and organizations really realizing that

there was a gap at the national level for Latino people on the left at that scale.

And so that's how Mijente is born.

Mijente is with a J. a lot of people tell us, you're spelling it wrong.

I'm like, I know, but it's on purpose.

It's a J for justice because we believe that's the work.

And we believe that by coming together That's how we make change

and get justice for our people.

And Mijente has members both in the U. S. In Puerto Rico and we've

been around for 10 years now.

This is Mijente's 10 year anniversary.

at Mijente, I Coordinate our no tech for ice work, which I can talk about

later, but it's one of the ways in which as you were talking about, we

take on this larger web and octopus that is immigration in this country.

So that's a little bit about where I'm at what we do, and I'm so excited because.

Before I was a staff person at Mijente, I was a member and I'm joining two other

Mijente members who are also doing amazing work outside of and within Mijente.

great.

Anyone else care to join and share with us a little bit of what you do?

Juana Guzman Mata: Yeah, I can share.

like Cynthia said, I'm also a Mijente member and previously a couple of

years ago I was also part of the staff.

I was an organizer with Mijente.

once you step into that role, you never really stop.

So I continue to carry those learnings with me.

Even in the different spheres I find myself in now.

I am working towards a master's degree in mental health as a therapist and hoping

to work with immigrant communities.

It's a very much needed role, especially with immigrant and Latina

populations, so hoping to work there.

I also currently work with stateless individuals as a case manager, so I've

been getting just a first hand feel of what people are like the fears that

people are having right now especially when it comes to immigration policy

There are many times, especially like you were saying right now, where

immigrants are used and just very political gains for in all kinds of ways.

And I get to really be there with people as they're experiencing

it and going through it.

In particular with individuals who are immigrants, but also stateless,

so do not have a nationality and that there's been a lot of concerns right

now what does that look like for someone who's stateless to be detained?

Where are they deported if they were to be deported?

So many questions that we're just getting around But yeah, that's currently

where I'm at and what I'm doing.

Thank you.

Thank you for sharing Maxine.

So right now I'm working on doing like a watch party?

Because Jasmine Crockett is going to be having it on the 20th

with three different lawyers.

And they had reached out because they're gonna be talking

about undocumented veterans.

So that's one of the big things that I'm working on trying to convince people.

to advocate for these undocumented veterans.

what got me into it was growing up, we didn't realize that we were poor because

no one really talks to us about it.

So I joined the Navy right after 9 11 and it was a real eye opener to learn.

One, that you're poor and no one should be living like this because it's not normal.

And two, how policed our city is.

How we're brainwashed into thinking all this stuff when we don't.

You're used to looking up at the walls in history class and not seeing

yourself at all in those white men.

But you don't really think about that stuff.

when they murdered my twin brother, I became a teacher to try and stop

other young people and families from going through the same

cycles that we had been through.

I felt like he had fallen through the cracks and nobody cared.

Inside that institution, you start seeing all these problems, but everyone is just

really compliant, and don't really see it.

you start feeling like you're in the twilight zone.

this last year, I had a mediation class, which is basically teaching these kids

how to love themselves showing them that their parents are human beings

with feelings emotions goals and the stress of the world on their shoulders.

So what they say and scream at them, it's not their fault, that they feel

their sense of worth and start building up that strength within themselves.

this past summer, they were telling me that they were going to take

that class away and wanted me to teach history because of funding.

I did not want to lie to these kids talking about Christopher Columbus and

all this shit I couldn't do that, and that was A shifting point for me do you comply

and do what you know is wrong or do you put your foot down and see what more you

can do to stop cycles like you promised yourself you were going to do, right?

But being around these teachers, some of them so compliant, you

start to think that you're wrong.

So when the contract with me, came up, to go on tour with the achievement tour.

I thought that was a sign, I told them no, I resigned I'm taking this three month

contract to see what is going on, and going around to the different cities, the

different states filled me with so much emotion I'm not crazy, there's something

wrong and we need to fix it, so that's why now, even with the veterans not seeing

where I'm coming from, trying to support these undocumented veterans I know.

This is where I need to be Even if nobody stands with us, we're

gonna be doing the right thing.

Thank you, Maxine.

Thank you for sharing us very important work that all three of you do.

And just for the listeners here, we have two Texans and Cynthia,

you're coming out of Chicago, right?

Thank you all three for joining us.

So I want to ask you, what's it, how's it been like this last few days or the

last few weeks since the second Trump administration came on board and this

wave of ice raids happened shortly after his inauguration all across the country.

What's it like in your area?

How did you see it?

Like for us, I'm in Laredo, so we're right close to the border.

My house is like 10 15 minutes away from the border.

we have the National Guard here, so that was normal for us, but

we also have the Border Patrol.

they got more handsy or territorial now, one of my friends who would go

jogging right by the river because his house was there now he's been

getting stopped more frequently.

He's been videotaping or recording that stuff.

I think that they have all this right but our community is in such a need if

they have all this money to waste on something that we don't need like Laredo

is one of the 10 safest top cities like in the US, like there's no reason

to spend another billion dollars or whatever it is to send more troops over

here we don't need them, but nobody sees that I had a student because they're

scared there was no protocols for schools, you know when shit hit the fan.

And they don't understand like they think it's just black and white.

This student is in the process of getting the papers.

They're so close to, finalizing this stuff.

And now he's going to turn 18.

If he turns 18, he has to start all over again, so they're scared.

now they have to live in fear and they don't understand

that these aren't criminals.

he was a really good student.

people don't understand we have the know your rights, and the

family's coming, they're scared.

There's so much uncertainty and they think it's black and

white, but there's so much gray.

Yeah, it does stoke fear in people, even people that are residents,

because the rhetoric is so powerful.

The rhetoric is so intimidating and so terrorizing I've known people that, avoid

driving the highway to go to work, because it's a high risk of getting detained

So they would rather drive, through the towns or through the cities to get to work

and they just won't go on the highway.

I've heard of teachers intimidating children about that.

And kids just terrorize the fact that they might go home and their parents

there, or one of their parents there, it's a very terrorizing feeling.

Yeah, it's been an incredibly chaotic time.

And to Maxine's point this narrative of public safety is really important because

everything that's happening is being sold under the name of public safety.

people who are watching the news and thinking about, what's going on, need

to ask themselves public safety for who because it's not public safety for

everyone I'll talk a little bit about Chicago just because of what's been

happening right now with the attacks on, sanctuary cities but I'll take a step

back by saying, I think Where we can learn the most right now and where we should

have been looking for the past, several months and year should have been Texas.

I'm sure the Texas compañeras can share more, but a lot of, Policies

and tools and technologies used by ICE are first deployed in Texas.

And we should really be learning from the incredible organizing

that's happening there.

what we're seeing in Chicago is a foil of what's happening in a blue city, right?

this, narrative Around sanctuary cities what's supposed to be these, usually,

more liberal, more blue cities where, folks have organized really hard to

have protections that limit information sharing between ICE and local law

enforcement or That limit the actual collaboration between local police and

ICE apart from information sharing.

And that, even before the inauguration this was put out as these cities

are like public enemy number one.

And they became the top of the target list for the early, rounds

of raids that were announced.

and if anything, we've just seen the kind of immigration system that we

have now growing and being passed down from one president to another.

And that also means that the organizing and the kinds of resistance that

our communities have done are also being passed down over the years.

And so I say that to say that chicago, as well as in other places

people have been preparing for this.

People have been creating strong rapid response teams or, as Maxine

is sharing making sure that people have the kinds of trainings, know

your rights materials that they need.

when raids happened in Chicago, folks were out sharing information, showing up

to schools and making sure that people were, backed up as much as possible.

And so now you have a Trump administration that is having people

in ice fired because they haven't been meeting these, numbers that they had.

And you even have so called borders are Tom Holman saying that people It's, people

are too educated about their rights and that it's not so much know your rights,

but that people know how to evade arrest.

So people are organizing.

Yeah, I think the cities that came out when they initially

did the race were New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Phoenix, San

Diego, Denver, Miami, and Atlanta.

Am I missing anyone that they initially announced?

Those were right.

Yep, that's right.

Juana Guzman Mata: Yeah.

I've definitely seen our local organizations sharing information

about local ice sightings.

There has been an increase in activity, but it's also been just really confusing.

And I think that's the point in that, there's vehicles that are seen that are.

Presumed to be eyes, but it's just really hard to tell and I think that's the

point to create this chaos of confusion like cynthia was mentioning that's

part of the tactic to instill fear so that people are taking it seriously

or seeing trump as this all powerful presence in our lives, in a lot of

ways this is not new in Texas either.

I think that I'm not going to pretend or say, oh, no, before the Trump

administration, everything was great because in Texas, it has never really

been a welcoming state for immigrants.

there have been many, Policies that were in place before that, focus

on targeting immigrants, like the 287G agreement, which still exists

here in Tarrant County between the Sheriff, Tarrant County Jail and ICE.

those sort of things, ice activity has always been present here.

It's just that right now it's really hard to know.

Oh, is that car ice or are they undercover?

What should I believe in?

And that is part of the tactic.

Like you mentioned, there's also the whole teachers situation, this made

national headlines because it came out of Fort Worth sadly, not surprising

to me, but very sadly the substitute teacher went on to tag ice, on Twitter

saying, Hey come to North side high school because we have a lot of students

here who don't even speak English.

Something that is unfortunately not Uncommon here in Fort Worth.

it makes the news when everyone's already paying attention.

Because it's already been a hot topic it really got picked up and I believe there

was a whole investigation by the ISD board and hopefully the teacher hasn't returned.

we've had teachers in the past year make controversy because they're

trying to target students to be reported to ice it happens during any

time especially right now when they know that is out in the community and

just trying to see who they can get.

It's just really wild.

like Cynthia mentioned people are rising up everywhere.

We are really seeing who's with us.

We had a day without immigrants.

And I saw some local businesses stand up and say we're closing that

day in support of the community.

that to me was very telling.

You have big corporations turning people into ice.

And then you have local businesses saying, no, we're going to stand by our community

and acknowledge who makes the economy run and it's really immigrant work.

And so that's been really amazing to see as people who are taking a stand.

And if they don't, then they know what the consequences will be because

people are ready to make that known.

The other thing is also the Know Your Rights.

The church that my parents go to hosted a whole Know Your

Rights during the mass service.

I thought that was really interesting.

It's telling me that people are taking it seriously.

Even institutions like the church are really taking this seriously

and trying to get information out to people as much as possible.

Tom Holman was saying about people being educated.

we know that and we seeing the consequences of that, which is great.

it's interesting because the contradictions here in Texas, at least

Texas is a Latino majority state, I believe it was like 70 percent of the

Texas population is Latino origin.

And with that brings anxiety, just like you said.

About, people speaking Spanish and just bring anxiety and with that also brings

this complication of identity, right?

Because although it's a Latino majority state, there are divisions

and there's schism and identity.

Whereas, some call themselves Tejanos, some call themselves Mexican Americans,

so that brings a lot of Complications to the culture here in Texas.

But one of the things that I noticed here as well is That when we talk about

immigration, migration, rarely there's a topic of why is it happening just

like I mentioned in my intro has seen the largest migration of people since

the Second World War displaced people just moving and never really like the

media, politicians never really pretty much address the issue of why people are

moving, the majority of the time people are moving because of their policies.

Just like we talked about in the intro, I talked about nafta.

One of the things that NAFTA did is pretty much open the economy of Mexico, right?

With the United States and the North Atlantic agreement with

Mexican, United States and Canada.

And they pretty much opened the economy we call the free economy.

Really what we're talking about, the economy Of corporations, the transnational

right there, they have the freedom of moving capital back and forth and not

people right just capital back and forth.

one of the things that happened in Mexico is that They used to be so auto

sufficient the production of corn.

Corn is a major staple of the Mexican diet and Mexico grew their own corn.

But with NAFTA, when agribusiness came into Mexico, They were

pretty much pushed out.

They were bought out.

pushed out A lot of them just ended up migrating to the cities of Mexico looking

for work because they lost their land and ranches to the big agribusiness.

a lot of things like that are now, and now Mexico, for example buy corn.

Once it was a producer of corn, right?

It was also sufficient.

Now it buys corn from American corporations.

Anyone want to comment on that?

Juana Guzman Mata: I'll just share that.

That's exactly why my family migrated.

my parents were farm workers in Mexico and we just couldn't survive

on the, what they were earning.

It wasn't that yeah it's a fun thing to do to migrate or that

you can really choose to do that.

your whole life in that country.

And for us, it was just a really big loss.

And, had to go through the whole process of just grieving a way of life

that we didn't really want to give up willingly, but felt forced to move.

And I think that speaks to the.

push pull factors and how the NAFTA agreement really forced a lot of people

into migration and in this situation in the first place that now we're facing

these consequences of people who have been living here 30 plus years, but

haven't been able to get on a path to citizenship because there just isn't one.

Like you said, it's been easier to transport goods, capital, but not people.

And so that's what's led us into this situation of having people

who don't have a status Because that hasn't been the priority.

It hasn't been that it's been just the capital and the focus

on making money off of that.

But without giving us something in return,

The same token Americans also have been affected by this

transnational global capitalism phenomenon that we're seeing with free

trading all that with the auto industry.

I went to Detroit.

A few years back Detroit used to be, the fourth largest city in the United States,

in the 90s when the auto companies moved to either Canada or Mexico for assembly

millions of people had to leave Detroit.

When I went there, you saw dilapidated homes everywhere, you saw a lot of

homelessness, you saw, you hardly even see police because the budget was so stringent

in Detroit that they didn't have money to pay the police or fire department.

So one of the things I was told that there are a lot of.

Fires happening in Detroit because people will go into these abandoned

homes to try to stay warm in the winter, and you start these fires

and then you have the city budget.

to pay for a lot of these fire department and stuff like that.

And that was going back to what you were saying Juan, about, how your family

was affected here in the United States.

People's family, people were affected as well.

And this brings to a lot of anxiety among people here.

a friend of mine from Central U. S. I think it was Nebraska.

He was telling me about the meat packaging industry, where at one point used to

be in the cities, and then those meat packaging moved out into the outskirts

and moved out into the rural areas, right?

And a lot of times they moved out to towns where they had a population

roughly around three or four or five thousand people, real small populations.

And then overnight.

these sleepy towns saw an influx of migrants, going to work in

the meat packing factories.

they were transported there to work on these meat packing factories.

these small towns, saw a duplication of their population, where they didn't

have the infrastructure to support the amount of people, So that brought a

lot of anxiety among the local people people from other places, brown people

or whatnot, or Asian people came from other places to work, into that town.

So that created a lot of risk amongst the local people and the new arriving migrants

And plus the politicians pretty much will feed off of that because the

cities didn't have the infrastructure to support those amount of people.

So that brought a lot of frustrations and anxiety in people.

Cynthia, how do you see that affecting.

The migration as far as, migrants come in, leaving their family,

breaking families and whatnot.

Also, the working class people in the United States, when they clash, when those

interests clash, how do you see that?

Yeah, that's a great question.

at the end of the day, what does it mean to pit working class people

against working class people, indigenous people against indigenous

people and who wins, right?

And I think your point and your framing around what does this mean on an

international level is so important.

And I think there has to be things that give us hope in these next four years.

And one of them has to be what's beyond our belly button here in the U. S. And

that's gonna have to be Adapting a real international perspective and solidarity.

I echo Juana also because Juana is like my neighbor, Paisana.

And my parents left Mexico for the same reasons.

was born the year of NAFTA.

NAFTA is a part of, that's all we've known our whole lives, right?

And we've seen The damage and the way that it's just completely changed

the landscape of Mexico and what it's done to our communities here.

And so I would say, you've shared what does this mean in terms of

labor and capitalism and within that what does it mean in terms of

U. S. economic interest in general?

What does it mean in terms of war?

Interventionist foreign policy?

Because, When we talk about the U.

S. Mexico border that exists in Texas, I think we're not just talking about the

physical border that's there, but we're also talking about how the dynamics of

that border get extended all over the world through financial and political

policies like NAFTA And Mexico, who's also not can't wipe its hands clean, right?

Mexico is also funding and U. S. is funding an increase in border enforcement.

And the thing that this current administration doesn't want people

to think about is, what kind of interventionist foreign policy

is the U. S. engaged with that forced so many people to migrate.

And so I would say in order to address the issues of our time we

need to look at the root causes.

that means having this conversation around what's happening at a global

scale and for us to See what we're doing locally as informing what's

happening nationally and internationally.

Absolutely.

One of the themes that always keep coming up when they talk about migrants,

particularly during elections is the criminalization of migration, one of the

things I've noticed among, Activists right for immigration activists and whatnot.

They used to feed into that trope of the criminal migrant versus the non

criminal by hiring, And one of the things is that, by crossing the border

undocumented illegally, by definition, You're automatically a criminal,

In the eyes of the laws, If you look at it logically, there's really no

separation between the criminal And the non criminal immigrant, in my

opinion, that narrative shouldn't be repeated by activists, Because that's

just a way to create more division.

I'm wondering what you guys thought on that.

Anyone want to go?

I personally don't like using the word illegal because

no one's illegal on stolen land.

And a lot of European immigrants, right?

Our people had to cross a river, but their people crossed the ocean,

and nobody's talking about that my grandparents were migrant workers.

So they would go from Laredo to Chicago and then back.

Once the steel mill opened up, my grandpa worked there.

But he didn't speak a lick of English.

There no protections for them at that time, so they inhaled all that stuff.

When they came back to Laredo, he was able to buy three plots of

land where their family stayed.

He had a house for his mom, a house for him, and a house for his sister.

But even then, him owning houses, him owning property there, like they still

didn't treat him any better because he did not speak English him being able to vote

because he was a citizen, like him being able to vote every election, even though

he claims everyone was a corrupto, he made sure he voted because for him that, that

was his Americanness, I've Come across a lot of people, like in the Navy, there

was a guy whose last name was Escobedo.

And for me to see his name, I was like, hey, what's going on, Escobedo?

And he looked at me and he was like, it's Escobedo.

And I'm like it's Escobedo, buddy.

they're so hungry for that whiteness, that belonging, that something that they

can't take away from them, I've run into veterans like that too, and I think it

starts when we're young, and even if you think about it For Latinos, a lot

of time, we have to click if you're white or if you're black right before

you can click if you have any Hispanic and most people won't click that black

button because they don't want to risk being black, we're closer to black than

white and we should be proud of that, a lot of people, they're just so desperate

and I think that's how they keep it.

bring us back on this struggle because they think they're going to

be accepted and they never will be.

When you say about that block, the black, white and whatnot, right?

I'm Puerto Rican Dominican.

I'm from Puerto Rico, So Puerto Rico Became citizens

of the United States in 1917.

one of the reasons why was because of the need to gather an army.

That's the First World War, So the Jones Act was imposed on Puerto

Ricans, and they became citizens overnight, and then right after

that, they were drafted to go to war.

For the first war.

So one of the

Puerto Rico didn't, the first year since the invasion of 1898, when the Americans

invaded Puerto Rico, until 1948, Puerto Rico didn't elect their own leadership.

The first few decades, the island was governed by U. S.

military generals and whatnot.

They governed the island, then became administered by civilians.

In 1948, I was the first Puerto Rican elected president governor,

which was Luis Munoz Marín.

before his election the census would describe Puerto Ricans as black mulatto,

The majority black mulattos, right?

But when Munoz Marín became governor, he advocated for that block to be taken out.

So when I grew up in Puerto Rico, that was not a thing.

You don't put blocks, when you're, if you're white, black or whatever that

didn't exist right when I was growing up.

Now recently, because of this movement, particularly about the statehood people

want to be close to in proximity to Americanness and whiteness right the

statehood is which is the movement to become to make Puerto Rico the 51st state.

They implemented that again, and now I'm Puerto Rico.

Now you check the block of either white or black, whatever.

But what's interesting about that is that the 20th century before,

before that was introduced, right?

The census will describe Puerto Ricans as being majority black or mulatto.

Mulatto is a mixture between black and white, right?

Today, yeah.

When people check that blog, it shows that the majority of Puerto Ricans are white.

So I didn't want to throw that in there because you mentioned that.

So I want to ask you the role of employers in this, in streamlining

migration, encouraging migration I know we got policies and I'll talk about

the policy in a minute, but employers, one of the things about migrants when

they come undocumented, a lot of them already know where they're going to

work they already have jobs lining up.

What do you think is the role here of of this employers,

particularly this big company like meat packers and stuff like that.

Juana Guzman Mata: I'm just thinking about what the role should be because they

don't really take up the responsibility There is a demand for labor and a lot

of times like you said, people sometimes come with visas, but also sometimes.

they don't when people are working for these big corporations, they

don't really do anything for the people that are working for them.

it's very exploitative.

They're not incentivized to adjust their status because

they can just get more people.

there's a lot of lack of accountability, like no one

really holding them accountable.

Because it's just cheap labor.

They love the labor, but they don't love the people.

a lot of the times they knowingly employ people without documents,

but just blind eye to it because it's not convenient for them.

And I know that the first Trump administration, there were a lot of

news of big in these big corporations, like warehouses, manufacturing

companies, meat packing companies and people were basically disappeared.

And, that was like the big news.

No one really talked about it after that.

Who knows what happened to these companies, but I imagine they

just continue to hire more people.

to them, it doesn't matter.

They just see people as capital.

and continue without really caring.

very dehumanizing sort of way.

what they care about is The money and unfortunately corporations

in general are just not held accountable in the U. S. At all.

when it comes to labor corporations can get away with so much and they do seem to

have more rights than people themselves

Yeah, and I would just add to Juana's point immigrant

rights are labor rights, in the question of what should these companies be doing

very least is really pushing to resist the criminalization of immigrants and

support the kinds of protections that immigrant workers and low wage workers

need so much of what we're talking about is immigrant workers and low

wage jobs or precarious work and, for the last couple of years there was a

lot of workers applying for deferred action for labor enforcement, right?

The so called DALE.

And that's completely gone now, right?

They're not a possibility.

And we're also seeing the erosion at a federal level of the kinds of labor

protections that were in place so immigrant workers could Uphold their

labor rights and not be worried about retaliation, not being worried about,

oh, if I speak up about the wage loss even the trafficking that happens at

workplace then I know that I have This kind of protection from deportation

or from, the purview of ice and that's something that, was off the table right

at the onset of this new administration.

I would say on the one hand it's about, what kinds of protections

these big companies, able to support.

And then two is just there are examples of like other folks doing incredible

organizing around labor that are holding some of these big corporations

accountable and that includes like protections for immigrant workers.

I'm thinking in particular about the work of the Mowgli workers or the Milk with

Dignity campaign and the way that they've been able to push for demands, right?

that hold these employers accountable as much as possible.

Indeed, because you have the Immigration Reform

and Control Act of 1986, right?

Which was the Reagan era when he also did like an open the path to legalization.

For documented people at that time, And introduced what I call the temporary

protectors TPS, I forgot what this S stands for but particularly people

that were in the war zones in Central America, the same war zones that, The

Reagan administration was stoking in El Salvador Guatemala and Honduras

on the one hand, they were stoking and financing those civil wars, And

on the other hand, they were offering TPS to people at the same time.

But this Immigration Reform and Control Act it was supposed to penalize companies,

that employed undocumented people, right?

At the same time, like I said, they were doing path to legalization of people.

But rarely the companies get held accountable.

Rarely they get penalized for anything, The penalization comes in the backs

of the worker or the migrant worker.

a lot of these big companies, a lot of these agro companies, a lot of these meat

packing companies, they have lobbies.

They have lobbies in dc so they also support both parties, it's like a

revolving door, come in, come out, come in, come out, And just like people,

they're treated as things to extract labor from and then send them away, and more

people come in, Just like you guys said one of the things that I also want to

talk about is the politics of migration.

I went to one of the events.

here in San Antonio, which was a last thing and they had workshops and there

some people that were talking one workshop, one of the speakers he one of

those detention camps of the first Trump administration He came in from Honduras,

was caught on the border, he was applying for asylum, he was put in one of the

detention camps, and he was there for several weeks, during that time, Trump

was tough on migrants one day, out of the blue, They're all let go, go to whatever

you're supposed to go, that told me right there this whole migration thing

just a farce, this whole politics of.

stoking anti-immigrant anger and resentment amongst the people here.

it is just a farce because like you said, they need that labor and those

people have lobbies in Washington, those big companies that have that

labor, and they still want that labor.

So it's not something they want to get rid of.

All 11 or 12 million undocumented workers.

They want a permanently vulnerable working source.

What are your thoughts on that?

I think right now, they just want to scare

everyone into compliance.

Once they get the number down to whatever they think is gonna work

for them everyone's gonna be scared.

If we can't do what Dolores Huerta and Cesar Chavez did

and that's what I see now.

I remember people telling me this, and I heard them, and I thought

I understood it, but I didn't.

They fought for all this stuff.

they already won all these rights and now they take them away so that we

fight again and we think that we're making this progress but in reality we

just got back what they had, and like people are like okay we won so let's

take a rest and it's no like we just got where we were we still got to go more,

It took a lot for me to open my eyes, and here in Laredo I know it's going

to take time, for me, what helped me and what grounds me I grew up in

front of the train tracks, and we were used to seeing, like, when the train

would stop, at least, 12 to 20 people jumping off the trains, my grandparents

would always give them water and food.

I remember the first time that it happened this migrant was coming with

his empty jug of water and the other one was telling him like, no, no vallas.

at the time I didn't really speak Spanish, so I didn't understand what's going on.

But my grandpa looked at me and he was like, vele a tu

abuela que le traiga tacos.

So I ran inside and I was like, grandma, grandpa told you to make him tacos.

And she was like, yeah.

And she looks outside and she was like, Chinga madre, Jose.

I had no idea why she was so mad.

it wasn't until I was in my twenties, that memory came back, and

I was talking to my mom about it.

she was like they could have gotten arrested.

it was illegal for them to be helping them.

But my grandparents didn't care.

Being instilled in me helps drown out all the rhetoric that these

people are horrible and they're going to kill you and rape you.

And it's no different than the border patrol that have been caught.

Like raping and murdering people here, why don't they see everybody else the

same way, or the wife beater cops, it's so easy label these people a

certain way because you don't want to be like them because you want to put

yourself above them for some reason I don't want to lose my compassion or

empathy and that memory grounds me back,

but people don't have that.

So maybe that's why they're asking.

So you want to,

Juana Guzman Mata: I just want to say that you were saying, Maxine,

about the rights that Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta fought for.

I think that's why, administrations like such an authoritarian administration

like this one is fighting really hard to erase history, to have us forget

that this already happened, that we've already won these things, That we've had

things and so I think what you're saying about scaring people into compliance

and just forgetting what's possible really fighting against, trying to get

rid of the Department of Education, defunding education taking away resources.

We've seen that too here in Texas with the governor who focuses on that quite

a bit banning books and all kinds of things that are really targeting the,

how do we erase the history That tells us that we haven't always not had all these

things that they're making it seem like, now we're really going to be controlled

by the government, but really for us, it's we know what it's like to live with

these rights and we can't forget that.

Yeah, just the importance of that history and remembering.

What's possible when we fight for rights like that.

Yeah, I think this is a good note to pause on.

Thank you, Cynthia Maxine.

I want to thank you so much for coming to the show, talking to us, giving

some of your time and sharing your thoughts and experiences with us.

Do you guys have any last comments before we depart?

I want to say thank you so much for having me.

This is so important.

The work that the compañeras are doing is super important.

And I'm down to support in any way I can.

I would just say two things.

One is, there's a reason why the agricultural workers are not

considered a part of the Department of Labor, but fall under the

Department of Agriculture, right?

To Juana's point and Maxine's point this is our history.

This is not our first rodeo.

We've been here before, We've seen these systems before.

And just like we're, stuck in this moment with the development

of so many harmful things.

We also have a lot of, resistance has been passed down and we need to tap into that.

one of the ways in which folks can connect with us at Mijente around some of these

issues is particularly around the ways in which technology companies and data

companies are powering ICE's policing and surveillance in our communities.

If folks want to learn more about that, check out notechforice.

com.

We just put out a report at the end of last year around the use

of AI within the Department of Homeland Security, and Ergo Ice.

And also we just put up a report for the folks who might be tuning in from

New Mexico about what that looks like at the state level with data companies.

So again, thank you so much for having me.

And folks can learn more about Mijente at mijente.

net.

Cynthia.

So that's one of the things that I wanted to cover also.

I guess we didn't have the time to, but about the no tech for ice.

And I also wanted to make that relationship between the technology

that use here and the technology that US military imperialism uses abroad

and how that connects to Israel and the genocide Israel is committing.

Right now with all that technology together, pretty much a lot.

It's like a handful of companies are involved that they're handing

all those three scenarios that I just gave you right there.

But that was one of the things that I wanted to hit on.

I guess we'll have to bring you back Cynthia to talk about that.

I just want to say thanks for putting this together

and having us share what's going on.

They helped us because we were one of the only cities to stop

Trump's wall the first time.

And when they tried to bring the virtual wall here with their information, we

were able to stop the virtual wall that the mayor was so keen on doing here,

but we're gonna have to fight it again.

Like I said this fight isn't over.

And if you're listening to this or watching this if you feel like you're

going crazy you'll find your tribe.

I've gone through this so many times, when you lose hope, you lose the faith that

the people are going to come, and join you and fight, because this fight is worth

fighting for generations to come after us.

So just keep on fighting.

I'm so grateful to be in the fight with everyone here.

Awesome.

Thank you.

Juana.

Juana Guzman Mata: Yes, I just want to say thank you for bringing us

on and having this conversation.

Very important during these times to continue connecting with each other.

if we're going to survive the next four years and beyond we really need to work

on that and continue connecting with each other because we have to survive.

I don't think there's a choice.

We really do have to take care of each other in order to do that as well.

And I think it starts with learning our history of

resistance and finding our people.

I think that, we're here in this space and there's many spaces that we can

continue connecting and reminding each other that the tactic that this

administration uses is fear and chaos and that it's hard not to give into

that, but knowing that's the strategy, I think that we can start to think

about, okay how do I conserve my energy?

Where am I going to contribute and also maybe pull back a little bit just so that

we take care of each other and ourselves so that we can continue moving forward

because we have to survive this next 4 years and beyond and the way to do that,

I think it's really staying connected and just being strategic about how we use our

energy and who we surround ourselves with.

Yeah,

how can people get involved again?

Who can I connect with?

And how can I get involved with the work if they want to?

Folks can follow us on social media Instagram at Con Mijente.

We're on Facebook.

And folks can also check out our website, Mijente.

net, M I J E N T E dot net.

To learn more.

Thank you again.

Thank you for coming and sharing your stories.

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