This American Life on refugee contrasts at the border
Molly Molloy
It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Today's program, "My Lying Eyes," stories of people staring at the truth, but it's hard to take in for all kinds of reasons.
Act Two: How the Other Side Leaves
Ira Glass
We've arrived at Act 2 of our program. Act 2, How the Other Side Leaves.
So according to a recent UN estimate, something like 5 and 1/2 million people have already fled Ukraine. For a while, a bunch of them were ending up in Tijuana, Mexico, at the border, trying to get into the United States with, of course, people from lots of other countries, who also would like to get into the United States. They're there because they couldn't get visas to fly directly into the United States, and Mexico didn't require a visa.
Anyway, the situation has changed some since the Ukrainians first showed up at the border. But in some important ways, it has not changed at all. We sent James Spring down there in the second week of April. James has done a bunch of stories for us from the border. He's no stranger to the situation down there, and yet he still had a hard time believing what he was seeing. Here he is.
James Spring
I've spent a lot of time at migrant shelters in Tijuana, and I've never seen anything like this. You can tell the difference a block away. The day I visited, it was all so orderly.
This Ukrainian shelter is housed in a shiny, 4-acre sports complex called the Unidad Deportivo Benito Juarez. Security is tight, Mexican cops are posted on the corner, and Americans in lime green safety vests are directing traffic. A packed school bus heads off to deliver a load of Ukrainians to the border crossing.
At the front gate, security directs me to a sign-in desk. There's a big whiteboard with shift schedules. Everybody seems to have specific jobs. There's even a media coordinator.
Volunteer
You're waiting to get escorted in?
James Spring
Yeah.
Volunteer
You're press? OK.
James Spring
I'm given a 15-minute slot to be escorted around the shelter with a volunteer. He sets a timer on his phone. We walk.
Inside the complex, it's clean. And there are tons of American volunteers and just resources-- easy-up stations with cooked food, and information sheets, and people helping to get refugees in line to board the next bus. The Ukrainians don't really want to talk with me, which I get.
James Spring
Thank you, though.
They've put on some hellish miles here at the end of a hellish month.
Volunteer
Do you guys speak English?
James Spring
They're mostly slumped in folding chairs or propped up against their wheeled suitcases. The person who organized all of this is a tall, young guy who's wearing black jeans, and a white t-shirt, and a cap with an American flag on it. His name is Vlad. He's 24. He's from Ukraine, but he lives in San Diego where he runs a Christian ministry.
Vlad
I never been in Mexico before. It's my first time. I've been here three weeks already, and my plan was to be here--
James Spring
When he arrived, there was no official infrastructure to help the Ukrainians, so Vlad put one together himself. He was able to tap into a network of other churches in the US that wanted to help, and they made contact with officials in Tijuana. The city donated the use of the sports complex and provided some beds. Everything else comes from churches and private donations.
Vlad
The Mexican government said it's the best what they've seen, ever, like how we're working with refugees. Because, as you can see, it's clean. We have volunteers here. We have good kitchen here. And as you know, they open for us Chaparral Border only for Ukrainian refugees. So only Ukrainian can come to this authorized bus and go through the border. And the CBP officer is processing them there.
James Spring
The day I was there, Vlad said there'd be between 500 and 800 refugees moving through this shelter. They have a whole system. Each Ukrainian refugee is assigned a number. They scan a QR code for an app that tracks their place in line, and their progress is logged by volunteers at every stop along their final journey to the US. It's like if a factory and a military operation had a baby.
Normally, it had been taking a day and a half to process the Ukrainians through the shelter and into the US. But on this day, it's only taking about eight hours total-- eight hours. It strikes me hard that there are some migrants not very far away from where we're standing who've been waiting-- let's just say longer-- for their shot at being able to step onto American soil.
The next day, I went to a different migrant shelter not far away, Agape Mision Mundial. It's also a church-based shelter in Tijuana. It has about the same number of people as the Ukrainian one, but these are migrants mainly from Central America and Mexico, a few from Haiti. I wanted to visit Agape to see what they knew about what was happening at the sports complex with the Ukrainians, if they had any thoughts or feelings about it.
Agape is up a dirt road. It's right between a junkyard and a cemetery. And it's not very big, maybe the size of like two Olive Garden restaurants. And I'll just come out and say it. The place has a very different vibe than the Ukrainian compound.
James Spring
Gracias.
A young Mexican girl opens the gate to let me in. It's all pretty loosey goosey. And it's dense with people, like the same number of people as at the Ukrainian shelter, but in a much smaller space. I ask if I can speak with somebody in charge, and I'm directed to a Honduran migrant named Antonio.
I ask him if I need to sign in or anything. Nope. I ask him, do you have security here? He says, yes, me and the pastor. And sometimes, there's a guy named Ulises, another migrant. Antonio goes to fetch the pastor for me.
People crowd a narrow corridor that leads past a bunch of open doorways to some rooms that just, like-- look, the entire place is just rough. Beyond the rooms, there are a lot of tents in the yard. It's lunchtime, and there are people cooking stuff all over the place-- gas camping stoves inside rooms. And out in the yard, there are open wood fires underneath a plastic tarp roof.
Pastor Albert Rivera
They cook their own food, and they have-- well, not refrigerators, just--
James Spring
Pastor Albert is from Puerto Rico. 25 years ago, he started Agape as a church and rehab center, but he turned it into a shelter. Agape is not supported by a network of churches.
The government donates some food every month. But other than that, donations are pretty rare. The migrants have to mostly buy everything that they need for themselves. Some have jobs. Some get money from relatives in the states.
People don't move out of the shelter very quickly. In the last month, only one person from Agape, a migrant named Danny, was legally processed into the US after staying there for most of a year. I asked Pastor Albert if he's been to the Ukrainian shelter. Turns out that he has. He volunteered there. He knows all about it and how the Ukrainians were being processed into the United States in just a few days. I tell him that the previous day, the processing time was only eight hours.
Pastor Albert Rivera
Oh, so now it's express, very express.
James Spring
Does that irritate you a little bit?
Pastor Albert Rivera
Well, basically, it looks all over like discrimination. Discrimination. Don't get me wrong, I'm 100% for the United States to allow the Ukrainians to enter. I know they've been through a lot. I know they have suffered a lot. And I know that they're saying, OK, they're entering as refugees, because they're suffering a war.
Now, what I don't understand is, well, when organized crime and drug cartel declare a war on civilians, declares war on that city and says, every 13-year-old has to be part of our cartel, and they're going to go on the front lines to shoot and fight against the other cartel, if you don't agree to it, you got three days to leave the city. I have immigrants here that that's what they're going through.
But the UN, United States, don't consider that as war against civilians. It only applies if it's one government against another government in war for you to enter as a refugee. That doesn't make sense.
James Spring
The US government sees the Ukrainian refugees through a different lens than they do the Latin American migrants. The people at the border from Central America and Mexico are mostly seeking asylum with a pathway to citizenship, a way to live permanently in the United States. The Ukrainians, though, they just need a place to wait out the war.
They're being accepted into the US through a process called humanitarian parole, which allows them to stay for up to 12 months. For over two years, US officials closed the border to nearly all immigration because of COVID, but then they found a way around it for the Ukrainians. As Pastor Albert summarizes it, I guess white people aren't contagious.
I'd really been hoping to bring Pastor Albert along with me back to the Ukrainians' compound to get his first impressions. But since he'd already seen it and is too busy anyway, he suggests that I take one of the migrants instead, see what they think of it. He introduces me to a young woman, named Mira, from Michoacán in Mexico.
While she's waiting to request asylum in the US, she teaches school to kids in the shelter. She seems enthusiastic about the idea of seeing the Ukrainian shelter. She says to the pastor--
Mira
[SPEAKING SPANISH]
James Spring
"So go with him?"
Pastor Albert Rivera
Si.
Mira
[SPEAKING SPANISH]
James Spring
I'll get my jacket, she says. Mira arranges to leave her son with a relative and is back in a minute flat with a coat and a backpack. I ask her about the Ukrainians and what she's heard about their shelter.
Mira
[SPEAKING SPANISH]
James Spring
Not much, she says. I hear they get a lot of support, but really not much more than that. I'd like to see it. She seems genuinely curious. OK, I say.
James Spring
[SPEAKING SPANISH]
We'll do it.
James Spring
Vamos.
Mira
[SPEAKING SPANISH]
James Spring
Mira says that she's been at the Agape shelter for seven months. She's really invested in the kids she's teaching, wants to instill good values in them. She starts her classes really early, at 7:00 AM. Are you serious, I say? She thinks it's good for them.
Mira
[SPEAKING SPANISH]
James Spring
I like to be very punctual, she says. I tell my students, as a teacher, I have to set an example for you. If I want you to get up early, then I have to get up early myself. The saying goes, God helps those who rise early.
Mira
[SPEAKING SPANISH]
James Spring
"We have to be optimists." Her optimism seems particularly profound, given everything that's happened to her. She was a schoolteacher back in Michoacán, too, but her family also owned avocado farms and avocado packing facilities.
When the cartels arrived and started to demand more and more protection money, Mira's family couldn't afford it. Three of her uncles were kidnapped, never to be seen again. The cartel had made it clear that the next time they came, if her family didn't pay up, they'd kill everyone. So she and two dozen of her relatives-- cousins, kids, aunts-- all fled here together to Tijuana.
The cartel continues to send threats, audio messages on WhatsApp. Mira plays a couple of them for me. One of them says, we know where you are now in Tijuana. We're going to fuck up your whole family if you don't cooperate.
It's 11 minutes to the other shelter. We drive along the border wall to get there.
James Spring
[SPEAKING SPANISH]
Mira
Uh-huh.
James Spring
Here's the entrance, I say.
James Spring
[SPEAKING SPANISH]
What do you think?
Mira
[SPEAKING SPANISH]
James Spring
Really nice, actually, she says. Really nice.
Mira
[SPEAKING SPANISH]
James Spring
"Seriously, I don't believe it. Can they send me here?"
James Spring
[SPEAKING SPANISH]
How's your Ukrainian, I say?
Mira
[SPEAKING SPANISH]
James Spring
Well, she says, I'm not that dark skinned, like maybe she could blend in. It's a joke.
Mira
[SPEAKING SPANISH]
James Spring
And the sports complex, she says, do they use it just for them? Or is it like-- and then she just says, I can't believe it. Our assigned press escort appears. She's a Ukrainian-American volunteer from a church in California. She seems smart and capable. It's the same deal as yesterday-- 15 minutes for the tour.
Volunteer
Yeah. So they have a kid's center. For little kids inside, they have little toys, and Legos, and stuff like that. There's a coloring station for the older kids. And then there's--
James Spring
The woman points out this little area for the Ukrainians' dogs with some kennels. I translate what she's saying to Mira, who's pretty wide-eyed now.
Mira
[SPEAKING SPANISH]
Ira Glass
Oh, that too, she says. Cool, as if to say, how nice for them. Mira asks, where'd all the supplies come from? Donations, the guide says.
Mira
[SPEAKING SPANISH]
James Spring
And everything over here, those are all donations, she asks?
Volunteer
Yes. So this is all donations. If anybody needs any clothes, there's shoes, I think. There's toys behind. There's strollers for kids, car seats, anything that's needed.
James Spring
All of these things might come in really handy for people who are staying in a place for a long time. But of course, that's not the case with the people coming through this shelter. I ask how much time it's taking today for the Ukrainian refugees to be processed into the US.
Volunteer
It's been pretty quick. If they come in in the morning, they're usually gone by nighttime. But there's been times where it takes at least 24 hours.
James Spring
So right now, people are not even really having to sleep in here, because they're moving so quickly.
Volunteer
Right. Because you don't know. Your number can get called at any time. So you can go to sleep. We've had people that their number got called, and they look at the board, and they're like, oh, my number, I missed it. Then they have to catch the next bus. It's OK if they miss it, but somebody else gets filled into their spot.
James Spring
I translate this to Mira.
Mira
[SPEAKING SPANISH]
James Spring
Oh, well, she says, what can I say? I guess we'll talk, she says.
The fact that the Ukrainians are getting processed so quickly and under humanitarian parole, that's tough for her. She tried to get her dad into the US under humanitarian parole. He had severe diabetes. His leg had been amputated. It was getting worse, and no medical interventions in Mexico were helping. The humanitarian parole claim was denied. Mira's father died in the Agape shelter in November.
James Spring
Thank you, so much. I really appreciate your time today.
Volunteer
No problem.
James Spring
Mira and I walked toward the exit, past the chafing dishes of food, past the cases of bottled water, past the walls of clothing and blankets sealed in clear plastic bags, past the smiling American guards at the front gate.
James Spring
Thank you, guys.
Security Guard
Yes, sir. Appreciate it.
James Spring
Outside, I point out that the Mexican cops are still posted at the corner, keeping watch.
Mira
[SPEAKING SPANISH]
James Spring
What? Really, she says? They get that, too? And people shoot at us from outside the shelter, actual gunfire, and the police are almost never around. How sad.
She's not exaggerating. In September, a gun battle outside Agape sent a hail of bullets into the shelter, into a room where children were staying. In December, there were published news reports of armed men threatening shelter migrants.
Mira
[SPEAKING SPANISH]
James Spring
Mira says, the way that woman said that they have families waiting for them in the US, well, we do, too. We also have family waiting for us over there, and it's the same. They had to leave their country, we also had to leave or, really, we're forced to leave.
It's sad, she says. Honestly, it's sad. And it makes me really angry to see it. I'm seeing the comparison. They have chairs, beds, when there are people in our shelter who've been living there for months, sleeping on the ground.
I sleep in a little bunk. I don't even have a mattress. It's just the bare wood. There are people who've been there 10 months, just waiting for a reply from the government. And they don't have the resources. They don't have them.
I've seen so few people, so, so few bringing even a single donation to the shelter. Or, for example, these kids have so many supplies-- Crayons, notebooks, Play-Doh, these learning materials. And our kids, who are here for months, don't have these supplies.
And those who are only here for eight hours, they have everything here, everything, everything, all the comforts. They even have the internet. They bring them cooked food. They have everything. The truth is, they don't need it.
Honestly here, I see how literally they don't even open the things they bring them. I think they don't even open it. They don't need it. They're people who simply pass through, and they give them everything. Why?
It made me want to cry, she says. Maybe I'll find me a Ukrainian man and say, let's go. Then she says, ah, but everyone comes with their family anyway.
James Spring
No.
No, I tell her. A lot of them are single.
Mira
Si?
James Spring
Mm-hmm.
Mira
[SPEAKING SPANISH]
James Spring
Well, then why didn't you introduce me to one, she says? It'd be like my pass, my ticket in.
James Spring
OK.
Mira
[SPEAKING SPANISH]
James Spring
Let's leave before I start to cry, she says, [LAUGHS], before I get angry.
It's not that Mira doesn't understand what the Ukrainians are going through. She does. It's just that now she's seen that the whole world came together so quickly, and so efficiently, so willingly, to try to help, and they haven't done that for her and for so many others like her. She wishes that people wanted to, because, clearly, they can do a lot when they want to.
Ira Glass
James Spring. Since James was in Tijuana the second week of April, the situation has changed for Ukrainians there. The United States announced that they will no longer be processing Ukrainians at that border, so the shelter that James visited, it's closed.
In the place of all that, the Biden administration has introduced an even faster, easier process for Ukrainians to enter the United States. It's called Uniting for Ukraine. Refugees from Ukraine can now get a visa to fly directly into the United States. When the shelter for Ukrainians closed in Tijuana, leftover donations and supplies were given away to other migrant shelters and churches in the area.