CZM Rewind: Title 42, Pt 3: The Mutual Aid Response  ## Metadata - Author: [[It Could Happen Here]] - Full Title: CZM Rewind: Title 42, Pt 3: The Mutual Aid Response - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/ba6ba5dd-1cc8-4df0-8078-742e3d0b0463 ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **Hotel Became An Overnight Aid Hub** - The Hocumba Hot Springs Hotel team turned an old gas station into a mutual-aid hub overnight and fed thousands. - Local owners and volunteers organized supplies, shelter, and food for over a thousand people held in the desert. Transcript: James Stout Hucumber, California is a tiny town. You've probably never heard of it. It's actually really charming. There's a hot spring and a gorgeous hotel. A few stores selling art, trinkets, that kind of thing. There's a lovely lake fed by the spring. And on this sunbaked morning, there are about 50 people outside an old petrol station, nervously pounding bottles of water, applying sunscreen, and getting ready to head out to the Desert to clear up the ad hoc migrant camp that has held as many as 1,500 people out in the open when Title 42 ended and Border Patrol made no plans to keep them anywhere. It was a diverse bunch of people hidden beneath sunhats. There's an Australian film producer who was at a conference in Orlando and booked a flight over, a grad student painter, the folks who were in the Hucumba Hotel who organized this whole Thing, their friends from the hospitality industry in San Diego. There were students and mums and dads and about the entire population of this tiny desert town. There were also two former international aid workers who own a tower where you can look at the desert, which is actually a much cooler thing than it sounds. And there's also a museum of boulders right next to it. You should probably check them out if you're in the area. I spent the day helping out in Hacumba after the refugees, some of them in handcuffs, had been taken by private contractors to be processed by CBP's Office of Field Operations. We met at a petrol station in the middle of town. The space where the pumps should be was filled with tons, and I do mean tons of bottled water, masks, hand sanitiser and other necessary supplies. When I'd arrived the night before around 10pm, the eerie green and yellow lights reflecting from the roof had lit up the pallets of water like some kind of giant lava lamp. Driving across the desert, the town looked like it was glowing. The town certainly has had a bit of a glow up in the last few years. Three business partners purchased the Hocumba Hot Springs Hotel, a down-in property that had once been a glamorous desert resort, and they've been restoring the place for nearly Two years. Inadvertently, they also purchased a lot of land and a few other run-down buildings in the town that were sold as a lot with the hotel. It was in one of these buildings, the old gas station, that they set up a de facto mutual aid hub almost overnight. The hotel's not finished yet and they probably didn't make much progress on it during the week when they were feeding more than a thousand people in the desert. ([Time 0:02:53](https://share.snipd.com/snip/892d0e1f-f398-4142-a258-078bab3e3b87)) - **Relief Experience Guided The Response** - Sam described his prior relief experience in Southeast Asia and how it informed the desert response. - He said volunteers prevented what could have been a far worse humanitarian crisis given Border Patrol was overwhelmed. Transcript: James Stout Now Sam is a kind of guy who just looks like he's at home in the desert. His wide brim hat, boots and long-sleeved shirt and pants told me he spent plenty of days under the baking sun out here. And his readiness with an isopropyl alcohol spray to disinfect people's boots after walking in an area that was likely covered in human shit told me he'd been around one or two situations Like this in the past. Sam / Marissa I spent a great deal of my life as his second career working in developmental relief logistics in Southeast Asia, mainly working with large age organizations. For example, World Food Program, Doctors Without Borders, UNICEF, many, many different place things. James Stout In the context of that kind of experience, it's easy to understand why people come to the United States. But I asked Sam to put the situation here into perspective for me. It's understandable that folks came to the U.S., but why to a tiny desert town of 500 people? Sam / Marissa These people were radically unprepared for what they were going to go through because they were sold a bill of goods by coyotes on the other side about what was going to happen to them. You understand? So they had really no idea what they were getting into at all. And so there was not anything in the way of life-threatening situations for any of those people in any meaningful way, a great deal of discomfort. It could have turned very badly if these people here had not stepped up because the border patrol was completely overwhelmed. And so there was never that bad of a situation here compared to what i have seen in other places in the past as sam pointed out the migrants were now gone but we were still surrounded by tons James Stout Of supplies but at the time there was no way of knowing the scope or scale of the need and people reacted as best they could actually it was it was overkill but you had no way of knowing right Sam / Marissa At time. There's just no way to know. How do you know ahead of time? You always ask for as much as you can get, because why would you not? I mean, you never know. You ([Time 0:08:25](https://share.snipd.com/snip/ed4ebb68-d9e4-47e1-b37e-a00c0aa18cfc)) - **Ask For More Supplies Immediately** - When you see a sudden humanitarian need, ask for as many supplies as possible because demand is unpredictable. - Natalie and her network posted on social media and quickly mobilized donations and funds overnight. Transcript: Natalie I mean, immediately, even at one in the morning, I was getting messages because I posted it. That's when I posted the story. I immediately got messages from friends saying, I'll bring a blanket over. What's your address? Yeah, everyone just kind of rallied and started bringing supplies over. Collecting money as well. Some friends started collecting money and bought stuff and brought loads of food and things to my house. James Stout Her husband ferried the supplies to Okumba, where they were joined by donations from all over the county in the old petrol station. ([Time 0:11:55](https://share.snipd.com/snip/3aec0e00-fc2f-4555-a506-ea42bb1e6d19)) - **Institutions Sometimes Can't Or Won't Act** - Formal institutions like the Red Cross may be blocked by agency rules, leaving gaps filled by locals. - Katie noted Red Cross couldn't arrive unless Border Patrol called, and CBP said they weren't allowed to call them. Transcript: James Stout Yeah, the Red Cross wasn't there, right? Katie No, they weren't there. We were told that the Red Cross couldn't come unless Border Patrol called, and Border Patrol told us that they weren't allowed to call the Red Cross. James Stout Yeah, that's a pretty standard. The one institution that did show support to people in Hukumba was one that you might not expect, given the support for this cruel immigration policy by almost all the Democrats in D.C. But things are different when you can see the results of these policies with your own eyes. Perhaps that's why I didn't see a single elected official in my entire week at the border. But one person I missed, but who everyone mentioned, was a lady who worked for California Senator Steve Padilla. I won't name her, as I don't have her permission, but hopefully one day soon we'll be able to interview her. I'll let Katie describe the role this woman played. Katie There was someone from Steve Padilla's team, and that's the woman I rode with. And she was incredible. Her brother-in was the chef at the hotel. So I think, I mean, she might have came anyway, but she came faster. And there was true connection. And she stood up to the Border Patrol and said, you know, said, we're allowed, we're here on behalf of this senator. So, I mean, I saw some, like, head-to like arguments about our right to be there. ([Time 0:15:50](https://share.snipd.com/snip/18ffbbdc-7aad-4733-a387-c63199d44b3a)) - **Doing Makes Empathy Tangible** - Direct service work reduces feelings of helplessness and builds community solidarity. - Natalie described how immediate impact from shopping, fundraising, and delivering supplies empowered volunteers. Transcript: Natalie Yeah, I mean, well, like, in so many times you, like, feel overwhelmed with, like, so much suffering in this world. And, like, what can one person do you know and and so it did feel good that to actually see an immediate impact like I'm doing this and this is the result because sometimes you can just get Discouraged you know like we're just one person what can we really do and can we really make an impact and just seeing that and being able to see directly how that one person can impact, You know, can rally. Like just seeing how my friends came together, you know, went shopping, bought things, gathered money, collected money. You know, my really good friend, Sam, she went to her local bar after she collected a bunch of money, went and dropped supplies off at my house. She was just down at her local bar and just chatting with them and like, oh, what'd you do today? And so she told them, oh, I collected money and I bought supplies. And the people, she ended up collecting about 200 more dollars at the bar from people hearing her story. And so then the next day she went and bought more supplies and she actually ended up driving them out herself. She ended up doing like three trips just from her own talking to people and collecting. ([Time 0:19:46](https://share.snipd.com/snip/77bd51d9-0863-4d4f-8a3b-1b676bf158ae)) - **Label Phones To Manage Charging Chaos** - Label phones and give matching tape to owners to manage mass charging effectively. - Volunteers used painter's tape and name labels to return hundreds of phones amid chaotic charging needs. Transcript: James Stout News reporters took phones back to charge in their cars. Some people bought charge bricks and power strips, and mutual aid groups wrote names on the back of the phones using painter's tape and Sharpie so they wouldn't get separated from their Owners. By the second day, it was a better system, but on the first day it was chaos. Arlette Keber, who spent a whole day charging phones, described the system that volunteers came up with to mitigate that chaos a little bit. Keba And obviously they couldn't charge their phones if they're just in this kind of desert gap between um between these walls that doesn't you know have any kind of amenities or anything Um so we had a system uh where um they would pass a phone through and we had um we would we would um put a piece of tape on it with their name and give them a piece of tape with their name the same Name and. And then they would give us the, if they came back a couple hours later, they would give us the tape back and we'd match the names and get them in the phone. And that was, it worked well enough. I mean, it was still an extraordinarily chaotic process. I mean, we had, we always had at least a hundred phones on our side of the wallet at any given time. And some people had, you know, some people had chargers, some people didn't. Some people had Android or Samsung or old iPhones. ([Time 0:28:18](https://share.snipd.com/snip/6fe254a0-f937-46c4-89a2-9c6c02f117dc)) - **Personal Refugee History Fueled Helping** - Lon Chai, a Cambodian American, collected supplies citywide and related his parents' refugee experience to his motivation. - He argued many volunteers feel empathy because their families once received aid too. Transcript: Lon (Lan) Chai My name is Lon Chai. I'm part of Asian Solidarity Collective, a grassroots organization here in San Diego. I've been coming over here since yesterday. I came here around 5, 6 yesterday and then I came back through here this morning and been here since I got home at 12 last night and woke up, dropped my kid off and came right back with more Supplies. I've been reaching out to family, friends and community to help donate supplies and things like that, food, whatever they may have. And I've pretty much been driving around the city and collecting from folks that can't make it so I can bring it down here myself. So that's what I've been doing. James Stout Lan Chai explained to me why it was so important to show up. Lon (Lan) Chai My community, I'm pretty sure they're sympathetic to this because I'm coming from a first-generation Cambodian American here in the U.S. And when my parents and my family fled their country, they went through this as well. So somebody somewhere came and provided the support, provided the aid, the donations for them to be able to make it to America, to cross over and able to provide out here for me growing Up out here. You know, so it's just, I just sympathize with it, with the whole thing. I mean, everybody should feel the same way because somewhere down the line, our families went through similar situations. If you're not an indigenous, then your family somewhere down in history went through the same thing. ([Time 0:31:18](https://share.snipd.com/snip/35d90ec6-1b13-44de-8037-6d6c3f68999f)) - **Volunteers Met Local Hostility** - Volunteers faced local hostility, including a man accusing them of supporting 'illegals.' - Natalie described encountering confrontational residents while collecting supplies in Hocumba. Transcript: James Stout Sadly, not everyone who showed up at the makeshift detention facility was showing up in solidarity. Local anti-migrant activist and blogger Roger Ogden showed up. Now, Ogden might be familiar to some listeners, due to his attempts to host what he called a Patriot Picnic, and his advocacy for the removal of the historic murals in Chicano Park. Ogden organized gatherings in the park in 2017 and 2018, and they resulted in a huge and overwhelming community response to defend the park. And this time, Ogden decided to keep to himself. But Natalie ran into some people who weren't quite as shy about their opinions. Natalie You know, a lot of the people in the Hukum are, you know, lower income. You know, they are struggling in their own struggle on their own. And so I know, you know, maybe, I don't know, for those people, I don't know. It's hard. I don't know. I mean, towards the end, like when I was walking to my car, this man, this man in a car like pulled up and he's like, excuse me, what's going on over there? And I was like, oh, we're gathering, you know, supplies for the asylum seekers. And then I, you know, like I, if you're from here, you kind of, or if you're in Hukum, but you kind of already knew what was going on. And so him asking me that, I was kind of like, and then he just started laying into, I've had illegals, you know, have broken into my house a few times. Why are you supporting illegals? And I'm like, we're trying to let, like, make sure that people don't die. And he just kept going off on me. And so he, you know, his, the whole, um, everything, all the talking points that people have about not, um, um, allowing people to come seek asylum here. Um, and so I just walked away. Marisa ([Time 0:39:50](https://share.snipd.com/snip/6a59bc48-4742-40ac-aaec-570630c5bc24)) - **Intimidation And Media Attention At The Wall** - Keba described being filmed by right-wing local media and facing intimidation from observers at the wall. - She positioned herself between volunteers and onlookers until they left to protect the aid effort. Transcript: James Stout Keba also ran into some less than charitable San Diegans, this time down in San Ysidro. Keba Yeah, so I guess the first part is why they might have or how they might have found us there, which is there's a local news organization in San Diego called KUSI, which is kind of a, I would Describe as a local equivalent of something like One American News, which is really unfortunate because we already have One American News here. But um they are are pretty well known for um kind of a lot of like um this information um kind of scaremongering about um and house people uh immigrants um vaccines and all that sort of sort Of thing but with kind of a local news sort of aesthetic to it um and they were as far as i could tell they were really the only identifiable media that were there throughout the day. I read articles eventually that made me realize there were other reporters there, but they were identifying themselves the way that Hadesai was. But they had this one cameraman just shooting B-roll, I guess, and he was walking to all the different parts of the wall and like all the different sort of stations for aid and like trying To like really trying to get as many faces as possible um you can kind of tell that that's like what he was doing um everyone who i was around i was i was kind of you know oriented mostly with Kind of like um sort of like anarchist mutual aid uh people um and and you know they saw the KUSI truck, they were like, okay, I'm going to need to get a mask on. I still hadn't been in 95 with me, so I wore that. I had a slightly identifying logo on my sweatshirt, which I taped over so that that image wouldn't show up. James Stout Now, KUSI have drifted further and further right since 2020, along with their relatively minuscule viewership. These days, they engage in fake news culture war stuff, like repeating the recent false accusations that Target was making tuckable swimming costumes for kids or labelling everyone In the asylum process illegal immigrants. It's sadly pretty standard for right-wing news organisations now. Kaba thinks that some of the people who saw footage on KUSI or perhaps found the location posted on Ogden's blog came down to the border. Keba Like several hours later that's like when we started to see people you know um kind of um went by and and and we could tell that they weren't volunteers because like people people would Like play people who weren't even necessarily volunteering would drive by and say, hey, I just heard a volunteer now and I brought a case of water. And they'd bring in the water and then they'd drive away. But the people who were here to do some kind of intimidation where they wouldn't approach directly. Get out of their exceptionally large SUVs and just kind of watch. And they would kind of get a little bit closer at a time, and then a little bit closer, and kind of whisper to each other, and point at things. And it's just kind of like they were just watching. And they got close enough that I could read their shirts. And the shirts had a slogan that's associated with the Christian nationalism slogan. So it was this whole family. It was kind of sad that the kids were wearing the shirts, too. And so I kind of figured out that that's what was going on. And I never talked to them. I didn't approach them, but I stood. I was, you know, sitting in the day closer and closer, I kind of positioned myself in between the rest of the volunteers and this group and just kind of, you know, didn't even really stare At them, just kind of looked at them and just made it clear with my body language that I, like, I knew what they were doing, like, you know, they weren't doing any kind of secret agent thing Or whatever. They were being really, really obvious. And I just stood and positioned myself in a way that indicated that I know what you're doing and you're not going to get close. You're not going to interfere with what we're doing here. You're not going to come talk to anyone or troll anyone or whatever you want to do. And eventually one of the people who is either a volunteer or worked for like one of the NGOs can definitely tell there was something going on. So she went over and had a conversation with them that I couldn't hear. And eventually they decided to leave. And I think she was just kind of trying to be diplomatic, but just sort of like asked them if they wanted to help. And if they don't want to help then you know you can go be somewhere else i suppose um and and it was um i mean the sort of one uh amusing part to call it that was that they apparently complained To this person about me uh because they said that um i had been watching them and i was um i was racially profiling them uh because they white. And I realize now that this is an alarmist interview, but just for the listeners, I am very, very white myself. ([Time 0:43:58](https://share.snipd.com/snip/2c3a493f-c28c-4e60-8e85-137b32416ed6))