This is an I-Heart podcast.

Guaranteed human.

As we always do, we have included the sources for this podcast in the show notes.

I've also included a link to Primrose's legal aid fundraiser.

People would like to help out. A week before you're hearing this, on a beautiful Southern California winter morning,

I met some friends in a parking lot near the border.

We hopped into our trucks and drove along dirt roads until we reached a pull-up.

Once there, we threw on packs and hiked straight up a steep hillside. Even in late

November, the south-facing slope was hot, we were all sweating by the time we reached the GPS location

we'd been given. It wasn't hard to spot. A dark patch on the landscape where someone's remains

had returned to the earth. One friend had carried a heavy wooden cross up the mountain.

We dug a hole in the rocky ground, then placed the white wooden cross in it.

Silently, we filled the hole back up, stamped on the dirt until the cross stood straight up.

Then we decorated it with marigolds and sea shells, and dried flower petals, doing the best we could.

One friend carefully picked the petals off the flowers, laid them on the arms of the cross,

and others sprinkled poppy seeds into the ground.

We stood in silence for a while, but the construction of the secondary border wall didn't

halt for a minute.

In silence, and then together, we paid our respects to

Graciela Sonsione Gomez Hernandez, whose last moments were spent looking at the same sky we were

looking at, gazing down onto the two border walls that were built to separate us from her.

She died in September, in the heat wave. The same month the year before, I'd had to call

...