818: Stand Clear of the Closing Doors

This American Life

Society & Culture, News, Politics, Arts

4.6 • 88.8K Ratings

🗓️ 17 December 2023

⏱️ 77 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In the last year and a half, New York City has scrambled to try and provide shelter and services to over 150,000 migrants. We take a look at how that’s going.

Prologue: In the middle of the night, host Ira Glass meets a woman on a mission at Port Authority bus station. (13 minutes)
Act One: Producer Valerie Kipnis follows a group of people who’ve just arrived at their new home, a tent shelter in the middle of nowhere. (11 minutes)
Act Two: Producer Diane Wu talks to an asylum seeker trying to hustle his way through bureaucratic limbo. (11 minutes)
Act Three: Host Ira Glass meets some of the city’s newest arrivals in every New Yorker’s least favorite place. (9 minutes)
Act Four: Three girls, whose families traveled thousands of miles to get to New York, navigate their latest challenge: American middle school. (11 minutes)
Act 5: One woman needs to find shelter for 27 young men in a matter of hours. (15 minutes)

Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org

Transcript

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0:00.0	A quick warning, there are curse words that are unbeeped in today's episode of the show.
0:05.4	If you prefer a beeped version, you can find that at our website, this American Life.
0:10.0	org.
0:11.8	New York City, the Port Authority bus terminal, a very cold night a few weeks ago.
0:17.0	Explain what time it is, where we are, what we're doing.
0:20.0	It is 11.14 PM, we are waiting for a Texas bus. Texas bus with who and inside?
0:28.1	So we don't know the number yet, but we have asylum seekers that are there that just come from the
0:31.6	water.
0:32.2	This is one of the buses that Governor Greg Abbott sent to New York City
0:36.0	starting in the summer of last year.
0:38.0	You probably heard about this.
0:39.0	Hoping to make a point about what Texas is dealing with,
0:42.0	he sent migrants on buses to cities run by
0:44.2	Democrats, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, Denver, and New York.
0:49.6	Over 27,000 people have arrived at this spot this way, where many of them have been greeted by a 5-foot-2 black woman named
0:57.6	Adam Abah.
0:58.6	How many nights a week do you do this?
1:00.6	I don't keep counting anymore. But what's the most it gets like and what's a
1:08.7	hard week for you? A hard week is everyday a bus. I put the kids to sleep and then I ran over here.
1:15.5	I'm a mommy. And I and I and I and I and I make it back in time where they won't notice I'm gone.
1:21.5	Do they know you left? No. The thing is, Adama doesn't work for the city of New York. She
1:28.3	runs a community center for newly arrived immigrants called Africana. She's been doing this work with migrants for 18 years
	...

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