--:-- [Theme music fades out]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Welcome to Today Explained, I'm Sean Rameswaram.
--:-- Noel King: And I'm Noel King.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Today, we're talking about the migrant caravan heading to the U.S. Dara Lind is here to help us separate truth from fiction.
--:-- Dara Lind: Thanks for having me.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Have you seen Viper Club yet? If not, you're off the hook because it's only showing in New York and Los Angeles, but that changes on Friday when the movie is showing nationwide.
--:-- Dara Lind: [laughs] No, I haven't seen it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's a movie. Daryl Lind, immigration reporter here at Vox, the Trump administration has announced that it's sending 5,000 troops to the U.S.-Mexico border, anticipating the arrival of a caravan of Central American immigrants.
--:-- Dara Lind: Let's start at the start. What is this caravan's origin story?
--:-- Daryl Lind: So on October 12th, which was a couple of Fridays ago, about 150 or so people started off from the town of San Pedro Sula in Honduras, which is a city that you may have heard of at some point because for a while it had the unofficial title of the murder capital of the world.
--:-- Dara Lind: So a group of people set out from San Pedro Sula with the intent of going through Guatemala, through Mexico, and seeking asylum in the United States.
--:-- Daryl Lind: By the time it got to the Honduras-Guatemala border a couple of days later, we were talking about over 1,000 people.
--:-- Dara Lind: And that largely was because of the coverage in the Honduran media, which took one of the people who had been serving as a spokesperson for the caravan, who was a former member of the legislature who had been in the opposition party.
--:-- Daryl Lind: And the pro-state media kind of turned him into this figure who was deliberately organizing the caravan to undermine the government, even to the point of claiming that he was promising free food and fee payment to people who came along with him.
--:-- Dara Lind: Is it mostly women and children? Is it men? Is it everyone?
--:-- Daryl Lind: What's important to bear in mind is that while the caravan is itself a relatively new phenomenon, the people who are in the caravan are people who are similar to those who have been coming to the U.S. without papers for the last several years.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: How big is the caravan right now and how far away from the United States-Mexico border are they?
--:-- Dara Lind: They crossed into Mexico a little over a week ago. Given the rate at which they've been going since then, they're probably not going to cross into the U.S. for several weeks at least.
--:-- Daryl Lind: It was something like 5,000 people a week ago.
--:-- Dara Lind: How big is the caravan now? Do we know?
--:-- Daryl Lind: Yeah, the latest assessment that I've seen from the AP that has been with the caravan from the beginning is that we talking about about 4,000 people who are currently in that group.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Do we have any idea what's going to happen to these people in the caravan based on, let's say, what happened to the people in the last caravan?
--:-- Dara Lind: So we can certainly use it as a good guide for how the things that Donald Trump says affect actual policy.
--:-- Daryl Lind: Remember when the caravan was coming up in spring, Trump was freaking out about closing the border. President Trump sending two to four thousand National Guard troops to the southern border, warning a horde of illegal immigrants is on the way.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That crackdown ultimately led to the zero tolerance policy of prosecuting everybody who came across and separating families if that's what was necessary.
--:-- Dara Lind: By the time the actual caravan arrived, people weren't paying attention to the border anymore.
--:-- Daryl Lind: But this policy crackdown was still very much in effect.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So this group arrived. They were told that there wasn't enough room at the San Ysidro port of entry to process 300 people.
--:-- Dara Lind: They were let in slowly over the coming days and weeks.
--:-- Daryl Lind: And in the meantime, they stayed in migrant shelters in Tijuana, which is pretty much what happens if you try to present at that point of entry these days.
--:-- Dara Lind: They went in for an initial screening interview to establish whether they had a credible fear of persecution.
--:-- Daryl Lind: If they pass that interview, which most people do, they were allowed to stay in the U.S. and go before a judge and apply officially for asylum.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That's a process that takes months or years.
--:-- Dara Lind: And that's really the problem the administration has pointed to when it talks about loopholes.
--:-- Daryl Lind: What it means is that people who are here and say that they want asylum can pass that screening interview, even if they don't ultimately get approved, they're going to be in the U.S. for a while before they get the final decision.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So regardless of how it's going to dissipate or how far away these folks are, President Trump yesterday announced that he is going to send 5,000 troops to the border.
--:-- Dara Lind: So there are the reasons that Donald Trump might give for that. And then there are the reasons that the Trump administration gives for it.
--:-- Daryl Lind: The reasons that Donald Trump gives for it is that this is a very bad thing that is an invasion that these people are, you know, trying to come illegally and should be told to turn around or stop.
--:-- Dara Lind: Yeah. And that the U.S. is going to be tough because this is a situation that requires being tough.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It is legal to seek asylum in the U.S. even if you don't have papers.
--:-- Dara Lind: And if you present yourself at a port of entry, an official border crossing, and say you want to seek asylum, you are breaking no U.S. law.
--:-- Daryl Lind: The more nuanced argument is that there are already more people trying to enter ports of entry to claim asylum than the administration says they have space to process.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So they're already making people wait.
--:-- Dara Lind: Having a few thousand people trying to come in at a single point would take an already very stressed system and would stress it even more.
--:-- Daryl Lind: So the argument being made by the administration is that, you know, you send the armed forces to do things that Customs and Border Protection would otherwise do so that they can be doing the work of immigration enforcement instead of having to do everything else.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But the president, the administration, they're sending 5,000 troops to do this.
--:-- Dara Lind: And no one even knows if if anywhere near 5,000 people are not be there.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I am confident saying that the caravan that initially inspired all of this is not going to number 5,000 people when it comes to the U.S.
--:-- Dara Lind: It already doesn't number 5,000 people.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I think it's also relevant to point out that what happens between when the soldiers arrive and when the caravan arrives is the midterms.
--:-- Dara Lind: You're saying this could be an optics play because there's an election one week away.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We'll put it this way. There are people who have made good faith arguments about this.
--:-- Dara Lind: There are also people in the White House who have said pretty openly that it doesn't particularly matter if what the president says about the caravan is correct because this is the play for the midterms.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You can adjudicate among that and figure out how the decisions are actually getting made how you will.
--:-- Dara Lind: Coming up on Today Explained, the caravan as a political play.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Just checking out Viper Club on IMDb.
--:-- Dara Lind: Here are some fun facts about the movie. Genre, drama. Motion picture rating rated R for language and some disturbing images.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Runtime, 109 minutes.
--:-- Dara Lind: Color, color.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Tagline, a mother's worst fear will become her greatest fight.
--:-- Dara Lind: Tagline on the movie poster, when the government wouldn't help her son, she turned to those who could.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Summary on IMDb, a war correspondent gets taken hostage while on assignment, prompting his mother, impatient with the government's lack of concern, to take matters into her own hands.
--:-- Dara Lind: The mother is played by Academy Award winner Susan Sarandon.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Viper Club hasn't won any Academy Awards yet, but that's because the Academy Awards aren't until, like, early next year.
--:-- Dara Lind: The movie's already in L.A. and New York, and it's Nationwide Friday.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Dara, how exactly did this caravan become such a political issue? Is it the second the president said something about it, or is this you know lingering politics from the last caravan?
--:-- Dara Lind: Gee Sean, I don't know. You tell me.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Is President Trump able to say things without them turning into political issues?
--:-- Dara Lind: Yeah, there lots of like conspiracy theories about this caravan.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Could you run us through some of them?
--:-- Dara Lind: Yeah, no, Trump hasn't blamed Democrats for sending the caravan, but... What's happening right now as a large group of people, they call it a caravan. I think the Democrats had something to do with it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And now they're saying, I think we made a big mistake because people are seeing how bad it is, how pathetic it is.
--:-- Dara Lind: And in that caravan, you have some very bad people.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That kind of subtextually opens the door for people like Representative Matt Goetz of Florida to kind of go the extra step.
--:-- Dara Lind: and take a clip that was circulating of someone giving money to women who are waiting in a group and say, oh, this is proof that members of the caravan are being paid off to migrate to the United States.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Who's giving them the money? Is it Democrats? Is it George Soros?
--:-- Dara Lind: We don't know.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That is a thing that a representative of the United States Congress tweeted a couple of weeks ago.
--:-- Dara Lind: And Trump then shared that video clip, although he didn't talk about, you know, George Soros or anything.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That's kind of level one of the subtext to text kind of progression of conspiracy theory.
--:-- Dara Lind: Oh, no, it gets worse because what it gets is textually saying someone is sending these people.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And the subtext of is it George Soros in the context in which George Soros tends to be raised is maybe it's the Jews.
--:-- Dara Lind: So that is where that went in the right wing fever swamp social media world.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There was one shot that was on Fox that showed a truck with a Star of David on the back that people were riding in.
--:-- Dara Lind: It was like it wasn't even in the focus of the shot. It was in the corner of the shot.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And Fox didn't comment on it.
--:-- Dara Lind: But the right wing fever swamp took that and took these references to Soros.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There was also, you know, a guest on Lou Dobbs' show said that this was the work of the Soros-occupied State Department and connected the dots and said, oh, this is a plot by the Jews to replace white Americans with foreigners to import people en masse.
--:-- Dara Lind: Which is, you know, there's a longstanding idea that Jews are aligned with the kind of lower non-white masses to overthrow the white race.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We appreciate you. You know, it's you and me. We're all brains and no brawn, I guess, is the flip side of this.
--:-- Dara Lind: But this is, you know, that cosmology isn't new, but applying it to the caravan allowed a lot of people not just to freak out about the idea of people coming into the U.S., but to turn it into this is a deliberate plot by our enemies to replace our civilization and to slaughter us.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And, you know, we wouldn't be talking about this if it weren't for the fact that someone who believed these conspiracy theories killed 11 people at a bris at synagogue on Saturday morning because of it.
--:-- Dara Lind: On the other side of these extreme outlandish conspiracy claims, you've also got like people saying that there's a bunch of Muslims in this caravan trying to get into this country illegally, right?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yeah, the Middle Easterners thing is weird. It's all pretty weird.
--:-- Dara Lind: Oh, I mean, yeah. I love that I can actually talk about the genealogy of this because I think this is something that a lot of people don't understand the origins of.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The president of Guatemala was in the U.S. earlier this month and said something about how they've arrested over some time period, and I don't think he was specific about this, 100 members of ISIS who they've identified as trying to infiltrate and come into the U.S.
--:-- Dara Lind: That somehow got turned into, I think, a thousand members of ISIS on Fox News at some point.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yeah.
--:-- Dara Lind: And that then got turned into there are members of ISIS in the caravan.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You got the president of Guatemala saying to a local newspaper down there just last week, they caught over 100 ISIS fighters in Guatemala trying to use this caravan or other processes.
--:-- Dara Lind: He talked to their local newspaper. We don't know.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It hasn't been verified.
--:-- Dara Lind: But even one ISIS, even one poison pill is too many in a caravan.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Did he make that shit up?
--:-- Dara Lind: The president of Guatemala has been unwilling to provide any documentation to the press of Guatemala about this.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So it's not clear what the truth value of that claim is, but it was made before the caravan started.
--:-- Dara Lind: And then it got picked up after the caravan launched and brought up on Fox News by a talking head.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And then the president started tweeting about how there were known Middle Easterners in the caravan.
--:-- Dara Lind: One more thing on the caravan. You had said that there were Middle Easterners in the caravan. Can you explain that? Are you saying there are terrorists?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Well, there could very well be.
--:-- Dara Lind: There could very well be.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And if you look at...
--:-- Dara Lind: Do you know for sure?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I have very good information.
--:-- Dara Lind: I have very good information.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: A lot of reporters wore out a lot of shoes trying to verify that claim.
--:-- Dara Lind: No one was willing to verify it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The Department of Homeland Security tried to back it up by pointing out that a lot of people who aren't Mexican or Central American have been arrested at the U.S.-Mexico border, which is true.
--:-- Dara Lind: But also not a claim about who's in the caravan.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Like one of the reasons that it's important to realize – to think about this through the lens of TV and the visuals here is the visuals of this large group of people proceeding down a road make it really – you know, it's easy to imagine that no one really knows who all is in there.
--:-- Dara Lind: And like yeah with a group that changing so frequently that true that no one really knows who all is in there
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But the jump from we don't exactly who is in there right now to these people will invade the United States and we have no way of stopping them is a massive leap
--:-- Dara Lind: Again, people present themselves at ports of entry to seek asylum or they cross the border and then present themselves to border patrol.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So we've got the Jews are funding this slash George Soros. We've got their Muslims, ISIS. It's a terrorist infiltration.
--:-- Dara Lind: That Democrats are doing this because they want people to vote illegally in the midterm elections.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I have to say, you know, that's a good one.
--:-- Dara Lind: If that was a Democratic plot, they should have started six weeks ago because, like, they're not going to get here, man.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Recently, a lot of Fox News folks who are still talking about this, mind you, after a week in which a lot of other people were talking about people in the U.S. getting sent bombs and killed, or have said that they are bringing unknown diseases to infect Americans.
--:-- Dara Lind: Such as smallpox and leprosy and TB that are going to infect our people in the United States.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I've heard leprosy. I've heard, I think, scabies.
--:-- Dara Lind: Scabies? Someone was talking about a disease to paralyze your children.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I'm not clear what that is.
--:-- Dara Lind: There's a weird seed of truth in this.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I was literally on, I toured one of the busiest ports of entry last week.
--:-- Dara Lind: And when somebody who presents themselves for asylum is taken in for processing, the very first thing they do is a medical check because people have been walking for weeks.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They're exhausted. They haven't necessarily been in good medical care.
--:-- Dara Lind: They want to make sure that people aren't going to like show up and die.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So there definitely are concerns about, you know, they've seen a lot of a lot of weird diseases in those circumstances.
--:-- Dara Lind: But that's not because people are deliberately trying to infect Americans.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: If the Trump administration is placing this bet that sending 5,000 troops to the border right now sends the message to the base that, you know, he's still taking immigration seriously or whatever they might read this as, can Democrats make a counterplay here that like, hey, we're still the party that understands what asylum is or we are OK with immigration, legal immigration into the country and rally their own base?
--:-- Dara Lind: I think that there are a few things going on.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: One is that Democrats, they're making the bet that the people who are really fired up about immigration are people who are already going to vote for Republicans, which seems accurate.
--:-- Dara Lind: As we go into 2020, it's going to be interesting to see how Democrats deal with the very real primary pressure to be progressive on immigration that was super prevalent in 2016 and that is all the more prevalent now while trying to figure out what a good message on immigration is for the general election.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Because it's not, you know, you can't really avoid it.
--:-- Dara Lind: Like the president of the United States has made it very clear that every time he's in political trouble, he's going to go back to that well.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's going to be interesting to see whether democrats think that the right answer to that is to portray themselves as the pragmatic solution makers who aren't you know just using this for a culture war.
--:-- Dara Lind: Whether it's to double down on the strategy that hillary clinton used which was to affirmatively defend the idea of diversity and pluralism or whether their answer is to just kind of accuse him of not caring about real Americans and always pivoting back to health care and tax cuts.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I guess we'll see. We'll see.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Daryl Lind is one of the hosts of the Weeds podcast at Vox.
--:-- Dara Lind: I'm Sean Rameswaram.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I'm the host of the Today Explained podcast at Vox.
--:-- Dara Lind: Irene Noguchi is the executive producer of Today Explained.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Bridget McCarthy is the editor.
--:-- Dara Lind: Afim Shapiro is the engineer.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Luke Vanderplug produces, so does Noam Hassenfeld.
--:-- Dara Lind: Katherine Wheeler is our intern.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Jillian Weinberger is always here for us.
--:-- Dara Lind: And the unlikely Breakmaster Cylinder makes music for us.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Today Explained is produced in association with Stitcher, and we're part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
--:-- Dara Lind: If you're still listening to this, you must really, really love the show.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Let the world know how you feel by reviewing Today Explained on Stitcher or Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Dylan Matthews, you're the host of Future Perfect, Vox's new podcast about how to make the world a better place using the knowledge that we have and all of that data.
--:-- Dylan Matthews: Thanks for having me on the show.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So we told you about lithium and coming up after that, we're going to talk to you about chemicals not in water but in the air.
--:-- Dylan Matthews: We're going to be talking about something called solar geoengineering, and it's a wacky sounding idea to try to cool the planet by faking a volcano.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Nice. Is this like a moonshot idea to help global warming?
--:-- Dylan Matthews: Yeah, it's sort of a break glass in case of emergency idea.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Like if we really don't get our act together and everything's really going to hell, maybe we resort to this.
--:-- Dylan Matthews: But it has a lot of drawbacks and we get into that.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Cool. Is this like an Elon thing or is this other people?
--:-- Dylan Matthews: I don't think Elon has gotten into it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I think what people are worried about is that it's pretty cheap.
--:-- Dylan Matthews: And so if the oceans are rising and they're threatening your country and you can just spray stuff into the atmosphere and cool everything really fast, odds are some country is going to try to do that.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Find out more about this on Future Perfect.
--:-- Dylan Matthews: The episode drops, what, tomorrow, Wednesday?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Tomorrow, October 31st, Halloween episode.
--:-- Dylan Matthews: And it's like a little freaky. It's a little freaky, a little spooky.
