Hopping the Border

the experience of trekking through the Mexican Borderlands is a surreal one everywhere you look you see freerange cows vas vas vuas vuas and signs asking not to leave garbage still there's a ton of trash but a lot of it's pretty interesting you see empty cases of beer diapers full of Pooh Venezuelan Flags printed copies of unanswered emails from US border patrol and a delicious half Feen Snickers bar just for you as we begin to walk down a large Hill one of the coyotes stops us and tells us some important information they say the cartel controls this particular human smuggling route and that as Freelancers they failed to pay the coyote fee or the cartel tax which is usually about 20% and they also didn't tell them we'd be filming so in the event that a collector rolls up demanding money I have to act like like we're just a couple of Bros on a chill hike okay truly seeing no other option I follow them down the hill and into the woods all right we're uh walking through the forest we're about a mile from the Rio Grand which obviously is the natural barrier into the state of Texas so we're going to follow the homies here as you can see there's like a ton of um discarded underwear stocks you know garbage empty bottles of water presumably left behind by previous migrants it's estimated that um just last year alone you know roughly 2 million people entered the US this way as we continue to walk I get my first view of the river this spot though they say is way too hot to [Applause] cross not because of border patrol they say but because of undercurrents which are the leading cause of death in the river the current can sweep you under that water in just seconds border patrol agents rescued two migrants struggling to stay afloat in the fast moving water just left Stu animal behind [Music] see the coyote like many others don't understand why migrants would go to such lengths just to get to the US but his perspective is an informed one he spent most of his life in a Border Town and for a year lived in San Antonio and worked as a dishwasher where he said he felt alienated exiled overworked and depressed Miss but does admit the service wages were much higher yet so was the cost of living so he was barely able to make any money this equation is something that very few economic migrants seem to be aware of which points to a larger issue which is the widespread proliferation of American Dream propaganda in developing nations every migrant that I've spoken to from Sagal to guinea to Guatemala and to Bangladesh believe without any prior experience or really contemporary information about the problems facing American society that America is Paradise heaven on Earth a place of free elections press and unlimited social welfare [Music] programs but unfortunately this is not the case the Department of Justice says a rapper who bragged in a music video about getting rich from an unemployment scam is now facing federal charges America is in a bad spot in a number of ways and it seems that most migrants are not aware as I mentioned about the skyrocketing cost of living yet stagnant minimum wage in every major US city that's eroding the working class in cities like San Francisco where many lifetime City natives have been priced out in the past couple years yeah it's [ __ ] up it's impossible to live here the rent is rising minimum wage is the same no parking if you get a parking ticket [ __ ] that's a that's a whole check right there you need to work three jobs just to live in a one bedroom in Zombie Land but most migrants seem to be programmed with the opposite vision of America and seem to have been swindled by an aggressive iive multi-generational PR Campaign which in my view has totally misled them and left them in the dark on very important information they're unaware for example about the ongoing cold class war in all of America's major cities or that the majority of US citizens have been strategically divided into politicized consumer groups by the investment firms who control the mainstream media they've been using the Border issue to stoke the Flames of an internal culture war between Americans by pulling on liberal heartstrings with migrant soab stories while simultaneously stoking conservative anger by blaming the global economic crisis on Joe Biden but both angles are deployed by the same propaganda apparatus whose primary goal was to generate Revenue by bringing clicks and engagement to Legacy Media which will collapse but not yet in the meantime Legacy media's purpose is to distract and divide anyways back to the forest me and the coyotes find a gap in the trees and there she is the US OFA home to Bald Eagles corn dogs and gangster rat driveth through Starbucks Roll Tide rush weekend Apple pie and the island boys I also see the barbed wire the newsman has been hollering about for the past couple weeks razor wire remains up along the US Mexico border even after the Supreme Court ruling allowing Federal immigration officials to remove it Texas is argued that the razor wire is repelling migrants from Crossing into the country illegally it appears that President Joe Biden and Texas governor Greg Abbott have been involved in a vicious dispute about having more or less razor wire right there Biden once less and Abbot once more but it doesn't matter because the majority of river embankments on the American side have no barb wire at all it's a non-issue and a distraction designed to create controversy from afar he says this is a perfect place to cross but he's worried it's a bit too [Music] deep this may sound a bit amateur but I didn't realize up until this point that we were actually going to cross the river ourselves I was expecting just like a tour of their route but obviously they had other plans God damn it it was also going to cost us $55,000 a piece this was not discussed but I wasn't sure what to do so PR okay okay at this point it became quite obvious that I was in far too deep the coyote told me that after crossing the river we had to walk from Eagle Pass to U valdi Texas which is over 67 Mi on foot how would this be possible according to Apple Maps it said it would take over 24 hours and we had no water plus we apparently owed these guys $5,000 looking back I would have asked to turn around but we were in far too deep and while they're being pretty cool you never know when a switch could Flip or something abruptly the younger coyote asked me to duck down because a border patrol boat was speeding by okay say this okay I mucho the other coyote asks me to give him the 100 pesos that I brought along for emergency purposes he says someone spotted us and is asking for money perhaps naively I approached the man to see what's going on the man who asked us for money is a bit strange he seems to function as both a tax collector and someone who provides first aid and flotation devices to migrants whatever his title was or who he works for I don't know but there was no option but to bring this man along fore [Music] speee okay as we learned in our previous episode the Rio Grand is 4T and 9 in deep and 58% of Mexicans reported as not being able to swim so many children and older grandmothers who try and cross the river into America but are below 4' n end up drowning three migrants have died near Shelby Park in Eagle Pass a woman and two children drowned in the r Grand River four migrants including an infant have drowned an Eagle pass [Music] for despite his Good Samaritan framing we had no option but to pay him for his Services still apparently this is a bad place to cross our coyote points to the water to show me something he points to the orange buoys in the river installed by the state of Texas to deter migrants disturbing Discovery at the border security officials found a body trapped in the buoys recently placed in the river across from Eagle Pass the coyote says that on multiple occasions he's seen dead bodies trapped in the buoys so we'll need to keep walking but stops to tell me that he believes the border patrol boat from earlier has been following us using infrared heat sensor cameras out of nowhere the first aid collector man starts hauling ass and my coyote follows come naturally I run after them for about 10 minutes until we finally get back to a new spot in the [Applause] forest once again they bring up money so kind of what they were saying was that um right now the standard market rate for an average border crossing with a coyote is between $3 and $5,000 I'm not sure how they expected me to pay them but I wasn't worried about that my primary concern was getting back into America once there I'm sure we could easily arrange some kind of wire transfer or something but I didn't feel that a remote forest in Mexico was the place to negotiate so I kept going all right so we just made it on a uh maybe mile and a half hike through the woods and now we're here on the banks of the Rio Grand I hear the sound of a machete striking a tree behind me in the distance so I turn around the [ __ ] going okay all right guy with a machete just came out of nowhere I guess it's kind of normal to want to chop down sticks and [ __ ] out here but yeah definitely not the uh most chill thing to see right now my coyotes assur me that all is well he was just making sure that we paid the first aid man and after a final plunge deep into the woods we found ourselves at the perfect embankment there were no orange buoys in the river here and very limited razor wire on the American side so they said we'd cross here all right so as you guys can see we're at the end of The Journey here right here behind me is the Rio Grand So Over Yonder is the United States much like the initial entry point into the forest migrants had left behind a ton of garbage here we got hella of garbage here we got a uh children's coloring look right here I hope they're doing well but I must say they did not do a very good job but it's all good let kids be kids there was also a bunch of dudes there just hanging out we got like a a Mexican Ernest Hemingway type figure down here just fishing and wishing wishing people the best of luck be careful have a you you have a good trip be careful I'm not sure why but Ernesto's words gave me the confidence boost that I needed and the coyotes said it was go Time come on come on come on money see after stripping down to my boxers and taking off my shoes the reality of the risk that we're about to take begins to set in at this point I wonder if this whole thing was worth it after all many migrants have died on this exact journey in 2019 alone9 people lost their lives in the real ground River and last month the body of a young girl was pulled from that body of water after an unsuccessful attempt to cross I see a picture of a young boy on the ground and begin to wonder did he make it across into America for a better life there's no way to know there was also no time to ask questions the first coyote was already in the water and it was my turn step by step I inched myself down and after a few small strides I reached the water from there there there was only one way to go in as I inched through the rushing green water I began to feel the undertoe the rapid current beneath the river's surface I'd been warned about and so my coyote asks that we link arms to avoid the rushing currents I see an entanglement of razor wire that lets me know we're almost home and Larry Susan's close behind me thank God the experience is finally almost over I breathe a sigh of relief as my feet touch American soil I was finally home in the land of the free where the bald eagle flies sure we had 76 mil to go until ubaldi but at least I made it across the river and away from Mexico for now w w w suddenly my coyote ducked for cover and told us to be quiet speak English hands up speak English get up let me see your hands got any guns on you no sir face away from me we're journalists we St you too you speak English yeah stand up I couldn't believe it border patrol had been watching us the entire time since we entered the forest yeah I could clearly hear him swimming and set up an ambush on the American side to apprehend us you two face away from me walk backwards over here hey MEA immediately my coyotes jumped back into the water swimming back to Mexico come back come back over here get over here this left us alone in Border Patrol custody there was one guy here he obviously ran back and then the two USC right there yeah after crossing the river Andrew and his cameraman were arrested by United States border patrol for illegal entry into the United States they did not realize this but what they did was a federal felony offense called failure to report after being arrested they were driven to a migrant processing center and placed under detane status and held for several days much of which was spent in solitary confinement thankfully Channel 5 Personnel were able to recover their memory cards which is how you were able to see this footage but our team also took things a step further while Andrew was detained using details he gave to us over the jail phone we hired a video game designer to create a graphic Recreation of the things he saw and heard on the inside and we compiled these animations and voiceovers into a documentary if you'd like to see it go to our patreon www.patreon.com channel5 again that's www.p .com/briowfc [Music] [Applause]

Channel: Channel 5 with Andrew Callaghan

Views: 1,915,510

Keywords:

Id: ponylQTj_gg

Length: 19min 22sec (1162 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 07 2024