Surviving Trump’s Border Crossing is Just the Beginning. Here’s What Happens Next.
The Mother Jones Podcast
Mother Jones
4.5 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 13 March 2020
⏱️ 37 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The Trump administration has slammed the door on asylum seekers in the last year, forcing more than 60,000 migrants to wait upwards of a year in Mexican border cities as their cases moved through US immigration court. But on this latest episode, we take you to New Mexico to meet some of the select few asylum seekers who have defied odds to be admitted to the United States—and who now must face a new set of challenges as they settle into life here. Mother Jones' Fernanda Echavarri and Julia Lurie spend the day with a so-called family navigator from a local direct-services organization called Las Cumbres whose main job is to do "whatever the families need": from driving them around to a clinic to helping them enroll in school. Las Cumbres is a nonprofit that helps families with resources—including mental health services—in a city without the type of support systems that immigrants can find in bigger cities such as Los Angeles, New York City, or Chicago. Many newly arrived immigrants are often preoccupied with trying to find employment and a safe place to live first, before addressing any mental health issues. They've fled dangerous situations and traumatic experiences in their home countries before experiencing the infamous harsh conditions inside US immigration detention facilities. Mental health experts have said it can be difficult to recognize signs of trauma in these communities, not only because trauma shows up differently when they're still in the middle of processing it, but also because they are still in the middle of it with so much stress to handle.
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| 0:00.0 | This is the Mother Jones podcast. I'm Jamila King in Crown Heights Brooklyn. |
| 0:06.0 | Recording this from the floor of my bedroom closet, since we're all working from home this week. |
| 0:12.0 | What a time to be alive. |
| 0:14.0 | Today, we're bringing you a second episode this week. |
| 0:22.0 | Something we'd hope to play for you earlier in the week, |
| 0:25.4 | but then the coronavirus pandemic news was taking off and we switched gears. |
| 0:32.3 | This show is totally not about that though. This is a beautiful radio |
| 0:36.7 | documentary about trying to fit into a new life when the odds are stacked |
| 0:41.6 | against you and the resilience you have to have in the face of that struggle. |
| 0:47.0 | Stick around. You've seen the headlines about Trump's immigration horror show at the border. |
| 1:04.0 | Children and detention camps, migrants drinking out of toilets, |
| 1:09.0 | an end to asylum as we know it. But for many, crossing the border is just the beginning. |
| 1:19.0 | As they settle into a new life here in the U.S. |
| 1:21.0 | They have to figure out the basics, filling out paperwork, |
| 1:25.0 | getting vaccines, and rolling in schools. |
| 1:28.3 | And those little things, they can be tough when you don't have a support system. That's when you really need a |
| 1:34.5 | helping hand. Our Mother Jones reporters, |
| 1:38.6 | Fernando Echavari, and Julia Lorry take you to a town in New Mexico, where they hopped in a car with a |
| 1:44.8 | social worker and spent a day with him, driving around from family to |
| 1:49.0 | family, helping them navigate the unique challenges they face. |
| 1:53.1 | Fernando and Julia will take it from here. |
| 1:59.0 | Thank you. |
... |
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