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This is a transcription of a pre-recorded program on Gila Mungo's Community Radio. The program hosts and guests express their own views, not those of the radio station. The show is called the Equity Hour and is part of the Kindred Continuum series. In this episode, the hosts interview Gigi, a pseudonym for a woman who previously worked in immigration detention centers in New Mexico. Gigi shares stories of immigrants she encountered during her time there, describing their arrival at the facility, their conditions, and the need for new underwear. The stories of these immigrants are still relevant today. The following program is pre-recorded. The views expressed on this program do not reflect the views of Gila Mungo's Community Radio and belong solely to the program hosts and guests. You are listening to Gila Mungo's Community Radio, KURU 89.1 FM, Silver City, New Mexico, and online at gmcr.org. You are listening to the Equity Hour, where the political is personal, a monthly show The Equity Hour is part of the Kindred Continuum series and airs on the first Monday of the month at 10 a.m. and is replayed on the air the following Sunday at 4 p.m. I'm your co-host, Cindy Renée Provencio, and I'm your co-host, Kit West. This show is the third and final show of our three-part immigration series. On today's show, we are interviewing Gigi, a woman who previously worked in immigration detention centers in New Mexico. Gigi is a pseudonym for the purposes of the show and her need to remain anonymous due to her current work. Gigi, thank you for coming on the show. We invited you on the show because many of the migrants you worked with in these immigration detention centers 20 years ago shared their stories with you, which have stayed with you even after all this time. Their stories sound much like the stories of today's migrants, and their stories are still relevant today. Gigi, let's get started with the first story. All right. Well, my first story is just a little background about my place in life when I met these immigrants. I was very, very naive and didn't know what I was signing up for to work up in these facilities. So what I remember were the – that's why there were such lasting impressions. I guess the first day that I remember opening up this facility, it was a private facility contracted by the government to hold immigrants from El Paso. I didn't know what kind of inmates we would be getting in these facilities because I never worked at a facility and nothing was really explained to me. So I just remember the first day. The first group of immigrants that came into our facility were from Guadalajara, Mexico. Do you mean Guatemala? No, no. It was Guadalajara, Mexico for instance. So we roughly – so not we, but the facilitators brought in about four or five busloads of Guadalajara inmates, female and male. All of them were over the age of 18 and they – I'll never forget because that's when they had every single officer that was hired for that facility had to be present. We all worked booking the early morning that they came in. They drove in probably about four or five in the morning. And I just remember that we – they got them down from the buses into the facility or got them in through the back, like a big, a huge corridor within the outside of the facility. And they unloaded them. They weren't shackled from the seat, but they did have cuffs to the front. And I just remember watching them get down from the buses as we walked them or the officer walked them into the booking area. And the first impression that I got was I was just – they were in their clothing. They looked dirty, tired, scared, and some of them looked really young. They spoke Spanish. They understood Spanish. So, they had a lot of us that were Spanish-speaking asking them questions for booking purposes. So, I just – they – their faces still stood with me. They still had mud on their face, on their hair. They hadn't been showered, I don't believe, dressed. I'm not even sure how long they had been in their clothing because they came from El Paso. So, I believe it wouldn't have been that long that they had been caught. And I just remember we took them and questioned them. They got showered. So, they were put into inmate clothing. They wore beige inmate clothing. The females wore beige, the males wore blue. And they were kept separate through the whole process. So, I only checked in females. And I remember that my orders were to help other female officers gather their undergarments and we were going to take them to the laundry to wash all their undergarments because that is what the undergarments they were going to be wearing in the facility. And they didn't say much at first. They just answered our questions. Some of them stuck closely together. They just did what they were told every time. And then it was a very long day and a long process. That was the first set of inmates that were brought into that facility. So, they took all day. When did they take the handcuffs off? Oh, right away. They only had the handcuffs from the buses to the entrance. They took them off right away. Okay. So, I want to correct it. These are not criminals, but they were just immigrants? Correct. And they still had the handcuffs? They did have the handcuffs coming out of the buses. Just wanted to know. I think for safety purposes. Right, but they're not criminals. No. They're just folks. Right. Within the facilities, they were always kept with no handcuffs, because they were just people. Okay, thanks, Jason, just getting an image there. That's fine. Thanks. Yeah. So, I do remember that took all day. And so, I didn't finish the task of getting to walk them and put them in the elevators up to the different floors. There was four floors. Each floor held about 98 inmates. And so, enough to keep them all. I just remember that first day, though, I was surprised, being that I never worked in a facility. But all I saw were these humans that were being brought in, and they looked, like I said, scared, tired, dirty. And I just remember, I do remember now that I spoke to one of the captains that was a female. She was a young female. And I told her, we're just going to, just to make sure I was understanding, we're going to wash these dirty, awful underwear and clothes, and we're going to give them back their underwear. And I just remember she said, that seems kind of harsh, doesn't it? And I looked at her, and I was like, yeah. I mean, what have they done? And then she said, yeah, that is harsh. That's probably not good. But I didn't know. I was just speaking. And I know I was getting ready to leave that day. And she says, well, I need you to tell the warden. I do remember hearing the last thing, but I'm not going to say. And I do remember she said, I want you to go tell the warden. And I think she walked with me up to, I mean, to his office. It was on the first level too. All the admin was down on the first level. And I walked in there, and I kind of just looked at him, and I go, I'm sorry I've never worked in a facility like this before, but I just feel like some of their underwear is in such poor condition that this can't be the only underwear they're going to wear. And he just looked at me like, do you really think that they need new underwear? And I'm like, yes. Because I had to strip them out, a lot of them. Not all of them, but a lot of them. And I was the one that took the clothes, and so I told them that they're human, and they came all the way from El Paso. And I'm thinking they caught them in dirty water or something because the underwear was full of mud and dirt and sticks and all ripped up. And he just looked at me and he said, well, you're probably right then. And I didn't really think much of it. I went home that night. It was pretty late. I think it was like 8 o'clock or something. I had been there like about close to 16 hours. And I went, and they told me to come back the next day to be there at 7. And I was like, okay. So I went home, and when I came back the next day to start my shift, they had a bunch of boxes stacked up. And I guess some of them, the admin and the captains, they went to S.A.B.S. Club and bought boxes of Hanes underwear for all of them, male and female. And so mostly I remember the first days. I think I probably remember them a lot more than some of the others because I could understand them. They spoke Spanish, so I could understand everything they told me. There was only about four or five in each pod that really spoke to me. Most of the other ladies stayed within their little groups that they had met on the buses or in the facility that they were in. And so they were the most, they stood out more to me of what the stories were because I understood them clearly. There was just, you know. So anyway, we got all the boxes up, and we handed out all the underwear. And I remember by after lunch, some of the older women started approaching me and just thanking me and asking me how they did this. And I just said, why does that ask for it? Because they saw my face, I think, when I was stripping them and taking their clothes to the washer, and they remembered me. And I was just like, I didn't say anything in Spanish. I just said, ha, you can't leave them in these things. They're all messed up. It wasn't until later when they started telling me stories about what happened and when they got caught and stuff and what they went through that I learned why everything was such a mess. But it was pretty, it made an impact on me forever because I still never seen anything like that again. I remember sitting in the pods by about a week. And they started really opening up because they saw me like five days out of the week, sometimes eight hours, sometimes 16. I do have to interrupt this for a station ID break. You are listening to Hila Munger's Community Radio, KURU 89.1 FM, Silver City, New Mexico, and online at GMCR.org. You are listening to the Equity Hour, where the political is personal. And we are interviewing Gigi, a woman who previously worked in immigration detention centers in New Mexico 20 years ago. But the stories she has to tell are still relevant to the immigrant stories of today. And you may continue now, Gigi. Okay. So anyway, like I said, a week passed by. They saw me a lot. They started opening up a lot. Like I said, about five in each pod would speak more, usually the more mature ones, late 20s, mid-30s. And there was a few 40-year-olds. I don't remember older women than that, but there might have been some. They used to play games, and I'd listen to them, and then I was constantly present in the pods because that's what I was told to do. So I was with them, and they started opening up about their stories. They started telling me what their houses were like in Guadalajara. I believe they were telling me maybe they were outskirts, but they said a lot of their houses were very like plywood boards. What pictures grew in my head were like when you're driving into El Paso and you look over at Juarez, and that's what the description said. They made their houses out of whatever they found. Most of them did work in the motels or any fancy establishments down there. They were more like farm workers and maybe like waitresses or cooking. But they worked a lot, and they said back then they only got paid about 50 cents a day, and they had to feed their children and their elders. They were married. A lot of them were married to the males that were caught on the other side. I did get to work with the males at times too, and so I got to talk to them. They told me a little, but they did not talk to me very much. Can I ask you a question real fast? Sure. Did the ones who were married, did they get to spend any time together? No, no. Once they entered the facility, they were completely separate. So families were not allowed to be together? No. They said that it was a safety issue and you can't put a male with a lot of females or a female with a lot of males, and they couldn't figure out how to. That wasn't implemented in the plan for that. So, no, they were kept separate. They were actually even put on the buses separate to go back to the airplanes or the main buses that they were going to drive them back. But I'm pretty sure those got flown back. Did they get flown back together? Do you have any idea? No, not the one time that I did the airlifts where I got to go escort to load them onto the planes. No, they sat them in different. I believe sat half of them in the back of a plane. It was a big, full-sized plane, like the planes you travel on. But they were on the same plane, at least. Yes. They dropped them off in the same spot, which I thought was at least a bit better. But I do remember that some of them told me about some of their families that tried to come and got caught and got sent back the same way, and they said they never even dropped you off close to where you're from. And then they're there having to migrate to wherever they live or wherever they're from. And their stories, that was the worst part, because they were way down there in the southern, mid-southern Mexico. So they said the closer you get to the border of the United States, the worse it gets with the criminals, the cartel, the people on drugs and crazy people. It gets worse as you get closer to the border. And so I do remember those stories. But I guess their driving factors is what I liked. I not liked, but I really would listen to them because they would tell me about their work and how they didn't get paid. Like a lot did make tortillas themselves on the street or work in the farms and pick. They were pickers. So they weren't skilled workers. And they said they could never become skilled workers because they had no money for education. They had no money. Nobody was going to pay for their schooling or anything. I've learned, though, in Mexico, they only get public school up to middle school, and everything else has to be paid for. So they told me that they many times had to choose for their children to eat, and they wouldn't eat. They wouldn't let the men eat because the men were going to go do work. They made them eat. So they told me about lots of times they didn't have food. And they didn't want to keep living like that. There was, at that time, I guess, there was no type of welfare system. So how was their driving motivation to go through these ugly parts of Mexico to try to get in to the United States? Gigi, I remember the other day you talked to us about violence that they suffered too. Yeah. The same group of people? Yeah, all of them. Actually, every single one from every country suffered violence. Sometimes by people that were bringing them up. I forgot the proper terminology again. The coyotes. The coyotes. The human traffickers. Right, which was usually of their own kind. Like they were Mexicans too. From their own country. Yeah. And they were the ones that would subject them. Like they would be getting through the cartel, the cartel doing something to them or their groups. They would, you know, like throw them a bone and give them a couple of young girls or even young men, whatever. And they would let them be raped and assaulted, beat. A lot of them even got pregnant during those sections. They thought that the Mexicans near the top of the borders were just evil. That's what they used to all tell me. Those people are just so mean and evil. And they're Mexican too. But then they would also say that sometimes it wasn't any different than They would spend their life savings to pay these coyotes to bring them over, and they feel like those were the very people that turned them in. Because as soon as they would cross and be on land, then it was like immigration was waiting for them. And so they did. They got caught right out of the rivers, helping all the little branches and moss that were found in their underwears. Now they're not looking for it. But they got subjected to beating. But they said even if they stayed where they were at, they were always subjected to people coming up from Central America. They have, I guess, like guerrilla-type gangs, and they were dead. Also, I mean, they could be raped, mugged, beaten, robbed at any time. They said you never felt safe. They never felt safe, especially because these were the most oppressed of those areas. They're not the ones with just families that own motels or anything. They're more oppressed, and it's like they're, like, unmentionable. People don't keep track of them. And nobody cares. So they would tell me stories about that, and they told me how the border patrol agents would just grab them and throw them into trucks, Three of them told me about how they had miscarriages when they got thrown off the trucks, pushed off trucks, when they were being loaded up and taken down. So our border patrol was physically abusive to these migrants. Mm-hmm. Oh, yeah. Yep. And so they told, you know, they talked about that stuff. They also came, some of them, most of them left their children behind, but some of them tried to bring their children. So I don't know where their children went. I don't know. They don't know. They would separate them when they were loading them up into the buses. And this is 20 years ago, before the policy of separating families. This was, I wrote it, I worked in this facility from 2001 to 2003. It was long before those policies, so it was already happening. Yes. I know that some of them that were pregnant told me they came to have babies here in hopes that they could stay. But for the most part, our facility was very careful with them. They were well fed. They got incorporated, some of them, to go work in the kitchen so we could cook them foods that they were familiar with. And so they ate really well in our facility. That facility was not, it was very clean, and the showers worked well, and there was no mold or anything. It was a new facility, right? It was newly renovated. It used to be an old jail, and then it got renovated by this company. And they had it pretty nice set up because, you know, they had regular inmates on the other part of it. I had to work with them too, so I didn't always get to stay with the immigrants. But they pretty much were very compelling, and so that was my first after the Guadalajara inmates. So they stood usually about two to three months for processing, and then they would either get put in airplanes or bus back to where they came from. And so we didn't bus them. We would take them back to El Paso, and they had buses to take them to wherever they were going to take them. After that, there was Guatemala. Let me do a quick station ID break, and then we'll continue. You are listening to Hilo Minguez Community Radio, KURU 89.1 FM, Silver City, New Mexico, and online at gmcr.org. You are listening to the Equity Hour where the political is personal. We are interviewing a woman by the pseudonym of Gigi. She previously worked in immigration detention centers in New Mexico and must remain anonymous due to her current work. Gigi, continue telling stories of the immigrants that you worked with. Okay, thanks. All right, so after Guadalajara, then we started getting inmates from Central America. So we got Guatemala, Honduras, and Brazil. And so all of those were separate though. So first they would bring about 200 to 400 Guatemala. It was always the same. They stayed about two, three, maybe some stayed four months processing. And their stories were even, you know, they were as compelling, but it was harder for me to understand a lot of what they were saying. They speak a very different kind of Spanish. And especially in Brazil, those speak a lot of Portuguese. So it was, yeah. I mean, I caught a lot of words. I had some idea. I guess I understood them pretty well because they did put me with them a lot. Yeah, Portuguese is similar to Spanish. Yeah, and their stories were just as compelling. They were very oppressed. Their wages are very low. Their housing is very poor. They have children that they're trying to they want a better tomorrow for them. And they knew people that got here and made it. They were trying to do it, and they don't have any money. They would go through. They also spoke of Mexico being the worst place ever to walking up, and they all said the same thing. The closer you get to the border of the United States, the worse it gets. I couldn't understand the Hondurans very much. I don't know what they speak, but they also were very young, middle-aged. All the ones I remember were still where they could walk, run. The males, I didn't get to be with them a whole lot, but when I did get to be in the pods with them, they were very healthy and very strong, but you could see where a lot of them had broken legs, bones sticking out, or some fingers chopped off. Some of it was from their country. Some of it was from their travels. But they all seemed to be driven by their families to get to the United States because they didn't have a chance where they were born. They were born into society with nothing, and that's how that society keeps them. Back then, not very much opportunity. Brazil, they were very spunky. They were very vivid people. I do remember a lot of them smiled. I don't think they got treated as bad as the ones from Guadalajara, Honduras, and Guatemala. I don't know if it's because they are very attractive people. They have beautiful features. They're darker light. They have long, thick lashes, curly, long hair. They just looked really healthy. I remember they would tell me what they ate. A lot of fish, rice. Did you mention they would find things in nature to eat? Yes. They have lots of wild fruit to eat, guapano. I don't know where they got rice. It seems like everybody ate rice. Their fruits just grow down there. I'm sure they ate different kinds of fruits. I just didn't understand what they were saying. It was really kind of hard because I don't think any of us... I understood more than a lot of people, but not really. Not a lot of stuff. Did the Brazilians talk to you about their circumstances and why they had left? It was harder to understand them. A lot of ours were like hand gestures. It was hard. I didn't understand what they were saying. So, no, they didn't talk about... All I know is that they said that they wanted to come to this great land. They didn't say nothing much. But they had also a separate Brazilian female that got put in a separate part of the facility because they were strictly mail-order brides. They were being trafficked. But I don't think they were kidnapped mail-order brides. I think they were voluntarily doing this. And their whole operation got caught. And so I do not think that those people came from much oppression like the ones from Guatemala, Honduras, and Guadalajara and Vietnam. I remember you talking about one of the human traffickers that you got to talk to that was basically from Russia. Yes. She was on the criminal side of the facility. Yes. Okay. That story was a little bit heart-wrenching. Oh, it was, even though it was very hard to understand her. But luckily there was one from Russia there that she knew more English. So she would tell me what she was saying. And she, too, she was very young. I'm thinking early 20s. And her boyfriend was the ringleader for the mail-order brides. And he was actually from Brazil. So I don't know how that happened. But they were bringing in the mail-order brides. But she was telling me about Russia and how it was cold. And they lived in little houses, I remember. And they grew potatoes. And they ate potatoes. That was all that happened. And she was a very skinny girl, like really skinny. But, I mean, she was really young, too, very pretty. But she also said no money, no food. She liked that when she started working with her boyfriend, I guess rounding up females, she got to eat in McDonald's. And I think that was down in Brazil. And so, you know, she said there was nothing else. She felt like it was an opportunity. And many of those criminals that are immigrants kind of don't realize what they're doing because they knew, but they didn't know. And the people that got her involved, a lot of the stories I heard are, it happens here in the United States, too. You get somebody that has no money and you tell them, well, just drive this vehicle from A to B and we'll give you all this money. And they are like, oh, okay. The Mexicans, a lot of them, just get told, drive this across the states and you'll get all this money. And they'll do it not because they're users or anything or they're even involved. It's just for them to get money to support their families. And we did have a lot of those in the criminal side. And then they're the ones who get busted, right, but the people who pay them don't. Exactly. Yep, yep, they're the ones that get busted. Some of them are like, what do you call that? I'm sorry, I never go this blank, but I'm nervous. They're like decoys. They get them to drive something across, then they tell agents, informants, they'll tell them they're driving it across, and it's to distract the agents because bigger amounts are coming across. They're different needs. Yes. They have no clue that they're being set up like that. None at all. So I do want to talk about the story that you told us about the Chinese woman. Oh, gosh, yes. So the Chinese, the group of Chinese, we had them. There was about five of them, but there was one. They actually came legally on work visas, and they opened or they worked for these buffets, and they actually got drawn in to launder money by some sort of mafia. I don't know if it was from their country or from Mexico, but they got up. And they just go along with it because they don't want trouble. They don't want attraction towards them. They think it's just easier to go with it. I think that's what the one said, but, you know, I could be misled. I hear that the amount of money that they launder is what made them federal cases, and they were laundering it for organized crime. And according to them, they were just getting paid what they made from the restaurant. But I wouldn't know the truth. I just know the stories they tell me. But what was more heart-wrenching was after their convictions and, yeah, after they're convicted, they get sent back to China, and China doesn't mess around. They're just going to, she told me, they're just going to kill us. They're going to hang us or take off our heads or something. And it was very sad. I was there the day that they got taken to trial, and they were convicted. And from there I never could get them to stop crying, but it didn't take long for them to come get them. They were there probably a week before they went to put them on the airplanes to fly them back. And that stuck with me a lot. They were probably early 20s, mid-20s. And it was very hard to hear all these stories because, I mean, I didn't think that was hard. And you see their expressions. You see their feelings. They're humans. They're not just beings coming over here with bad intentions. And they think America is so great. But this was, like, 20 years ago. So that was a lot. The Vietnamese also, they seemed the same, but I did not understand a word that they said. In fact, they quit talking to me after a while because it was just like, you know, they saw a meal tray, they'd come get them. They saw laundry bags. They put their laundry in there. You know, we just, you know, we turned the lights off so they'd go to sleep. Turned the lights on so they'd wake up. You know, they saw the medicine carts. They'd come. But they also, when they'd get there in their clothing, they all came in their clothing, all of them, except the ones on the criminal side. They had already been held somewhere. But the ones that the immigrants, the non-criminal immigrants, came in their clothing. And you could see in their clothing. I believe the Guadalajara people told me that they would put on about seven layers of clothing on just to come with that. And maybe a little, like, a little bag, like, tiny bag with, like, underwear and extra socks. But they also had about three, four pairs of underwear on. And they tried to minimize everything just to walk. So it was like they were coming on a big, long hike. Yeah. With almost nothing to eat and, you know, no baths, no showers, no nothing. Right. Well, Gigi, that is the time we had for the interview with you today. Thank you so much for sharing your experiences and the stories that were shared with you. And I do have to do a quick station ID break. You are listening to Hilo Ninjas Community Radio, KURU 89.1 FM, in Silver City, New Mexico, and online at gmcr.org. You are listening to the Equity Hour, where the political is personal. And we just finished interviewing Gigi. Thank you so much. And we'll end the call with you right now, Gigi. Thank you. Thank you, Gigi, very much. Thank you so much. Thank you, Kit. Thank you, Renee. Thank you for the opportunity. You're welcome. Okay. All right. And now we're going to turn to Kit, who has prepared some research that we would like to share with you all. Go ahead, Kit. Okay. So this is a great segue. We've just heard a personal rendition of these conditions and the story from a personal level. And I would like to back it up with a pretty much present tense myth-busting, because a lot of people are like, now you've heard this personal story, but there are facts and figures that go along with it. And we're just going to run through them and sort of clarify what's really happening here. So one of them is about crime. Remember, Gigi was saying that most of the people were just people who didn't have anything or had violence in their country and were just coming over here for a better life. And the statistics back that up. So the Vera Institute of Justice says that political candidates often falsely link undocumented people to crime in the United States. Yet an extensive study of crimes in all 50 states and Washington, D.C., from 1990 to 2014, found that undocumented immigration does not increase violent crimes. So some of this is just politicizing these immigrants, as we see today. It's the same thing. So this information is from a little while ago, but the current information is pretty much the same. There's also, referring to the detention centers, the Vera Institute also says that the detention centers are actually not really necessary. That evidence clearly shows that over the past two decades, most immigrants have shown up for the immigrant court hearings that determine whether they have legal standings remaining in the United States. They do not slip into the country and disappear, as some political leaders claim. And they go on to say that there is no need to confine people in costly and inhumane immigration prisons. So the one that Gigi's talking about doesn't sound so bad as some of them are. Some of them have very bad reputations. There are prisons like this one was that are renovated, but there are prisons a lot of times that were closed down because they were so bad. There were abuses in their sanitary problems and medical problems. So they go on to say at the Vera Institute that the federal budget for the fiscal year 2023 still provides ICE with $1.4 billion for a total of 25,000 detention beds. And they say that this spending is a total waste, that it's not necessary. And under the Biden administration, people were ankleted a lot, so they weren't forced to be in detention centers. So you kind of begin to wonder about these detention centers and what they're really all about. Who are they benefiting if they're really not necessary? Another myth about violence is that people coming in across the border are terrorists. Have you heard that, Renee? Of course. Of course. So the Cato Institute, this is in September of 2024, came out with a study that says, and I quote, Zero people were murdered in attacks on U.S. soil committed by foreign-born terrorists who entered illegally during the 1975 to 2023 period. Zero people were injured in attacks on U.S. soil committed by foreign-born terrorists who entered illegally during that time. Suffice it to say, the number of people killed or injured in a terrorist attack committed by an illegal immigrant who entered illegally across the U.S.-Mexico border is also zero. Okay? So if you aren't kind of wondering what's going on here, you should be by this time. So let's bring it really up to date. Have you heard, Renee, about the Lake and Riley Act that's recently passed Congress? Yes. Okay. When have you heard about that? Do you know what it is? I mean, I know it's inspired by a woman who was killed by undocumented. Yeah. Yeah. A man from Venezuela, I believe. So this is in response to that, and the idea is that someone can be accused, an undocumented immigrant can be accused of even just a misdemeanor, like petty theft or something like that, larceny, only accused and then be incarcerated in these detention centers for an unspecified period of time and then deported. No due process. Now, we know that undocumented immigrants have the same civil rights that citizens have, so this is definitely a clear violation of their civil rights. So Alejandro Ocasio-Cortez on the House floor said this, I want the American people to know with eyes wide open what is inside this bill, because we stand here just two days after President Trump gave unconditional pardons to violent criminals who attacked our nation's capital on January 6th, she said, referring to Donald Trump's blanket pardon of more than 1,500 insurrectionists. She goes on to say, and these are the people who want you to believe, who want us to believe that they are trying to keep criminals off the street, who have just released criminals onto the street. So she's very upset about that. And the most serious critique of the bill is that non-citizens risk losing the right to due process, allowing for detention of immigrants simply accused of a crime. So why? We would like to know. So she goes on to say, so when a private prison camp opens in your town, and they say, we didn't know this was going to happen, know that they did and they voted for it. When a dreamer has disappeared from your classroom, when the President of the United States destroys what is left of the Constitution, as he's announced in his attack on birthright citizenship, they will all say, we didn't know this was coming. And I want the American people to know that they did. This vote represents it. And then she goes on to say that the same people who voted for the Lake and Riley Act also were investors in private prison detention centers. Okay. So that's kind of how it works. So I want to do a little logic game with me. We have five minutes. Okay. We'll do it really fast. So also there is a study about far-right extremism in the United States. In 2021, the document rate of far-right extremist crime as a percentage of all extremist crime in the United States reached its highest level since 1970 at approximately 85%. Okay. So my little logic game is I'm going to ask you a question, right? If the lawmakers in Congress who voted for the Lake and Riley Act also invest in private detention centers, and if the federal government pays billions for immigrants to be held in private detention centers, and if the taxpayers fund the federal government and therefore also fund the private detention centers, then who is making these lawmakers in Congress rich? Taxpayers. Taxpayers. You guys who are listening to us today. There's another one. If undocumented immigrants are arrested at less than half the rate of native-born U.S. citizens for violent and drug crimes, and if for 150 years immigrants have never been incarcerated at a greater rate than those born in the United States, and if in 1921 the documented rate of far-right extremist crime as a percentage of all extremist crime in the United States reached its highest level since 1970 at approximately 85%, then clearly we are pardoning the wrong people and detaining the wrong people. All right? Well, we might have to do a part two on busting this. What do you think? I don't know. There's a lot more. I mean, I just really squished that all together. Listeners, I was trying to get as much in as possible because it goes on and on and on how this whole situation has been used for decades for private reasons and political power and money. Right. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for listening to the Where the Political is Personal, part of the Kindred Continuum series on KURU 89.1 FM, Silver City, New Mexico. We'd like to thank Gigi for coming on the show to share migrant stories that were shared with her while she worked in detention centers in New Mexico. Thank you for listening.
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