What's really happening at the US-Mexico border -- and how we can do better | Erika Pinheiro

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4.1 • 11.9K Ratings

🗓️ 14 November 2019

⏱️ 14 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

At the US-Mexico border, policies of prolonged detention and family separation have made seeking asylum in the United States difficult and dangerous. In this raw and heartfelt talk, immigration attorney Erika Pinheiro offers a glimpse into her daily work on both sides of the border and shares some of the stories behind the statistics -- including her own story of being detained and separated from her son. It's a clear-eyed call to remember the humanity that's impacted by policy -- and a warning: "History shows us that the first population to be vilified and stripped of their rights is rarely the last," she says.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This TED Talk features nonprofit litigation and policy director Erica Pinheiro, recorded live at TED Salon Border Stories 2019.
0:12.0	Twice a week, I drive from my home near Tijuana, Mexico, over the U.S. border to my office in San Diego.
0:19.0	The stark contrast between the poverty and desperation on one side of the border,
0:23.8	and the conspicuous wealth on the other always feels jarring.
0:27.5	But what makes this contrast feel even starker
0:30.0	is when I pass by the building that those of us who work on the border
0:33.0	unaffectionately refer to as the black hole.
0:35.9	The black hole is the Customs and Border Protection,
0:38.4	or CBP facility at the San Jacero Port of Entry,
0:41.6	right next to a luxury outlet mall.
0:43.9	It's also where, at any one time,
0:46.1	there's likely 800 immigrants locked in freezing, filthy concrete cells
0:50.1	below the building.
0:51.7	Up top, shopping bags and frappuccinos.
0:56.6	Downstairs, the reality of the U.S.
1:02.8	immigration system. And it's where one day in September of 2018, I found myself trying to reach Anna, a woman whose CBP had recently separated from her seven-year-old son. I'm an immigration
1:08.9	attorney and the policy and litigation director of Alotrolado,
1:12.3	a bi-national nonprofit helping immigrants on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. We'd met Anna
1:17.8	several weeks earlier at her Tijuana office, where she explained that she feared she and her son
1:22.6	would be killed in Mexico. So we prepared her for the process of turning herself over to CBP to ask for asylum.
1:29.9	A few days after she'd gone to the port of entry to ask for help, we received a frantic
1:34.4	phone call from her family members in the United States, telling us that CBP officials had
	...

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