Government Publicizes

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We end today’s show looking at horrific conditions for some 52,000 immigrants held in for-profit jails around the country. At least 24 immigrants have died in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement under the Trump administration. At least four more died shortly after being released. Now Homeland Security’s own inspector general has revealed how detained immigrants are subjected to rotten food, severe overcrowding, inadequate medical care, and broken and overflowing toilets. In two facilities, in particular—Adelanto ICE Processing Center in California and Essex County Correctional Facility in New Jersey—the inspectors found, quote, “immediate risks or egregious violations of detention standards … including nooses in detainee cells.”

AMY GOODMAN: The inspectors showed up at these four detention jails unannounced between May and November 2018 in response to several concerns raised by immigration rights groups and complaints made by prisoners. The LaSalle ICE Processing Center in Louisiana, the Aurora ICE Processing Center in Colorado were also inspected. Three of the facilities are operated by the private prison company GEO Group. This comes as a separate inspector general report recently documented dangerous overcrowding at a Border Patrol processing facility in El Paso, Texas.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration has announced it plans to hold some 1,400 immigrant children at a site on Fort Sill Army Base in Oklahoma that was once used as an internment camp for Japanese Americans during World War II. The agency is already holding a record number of children in some 168 facilities and programs in 23 states.

For more, we go to Houston, Texas, where we’re joined by Aura Bogado, immigration reporter for Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting. She’s been speaking with migrants held in a number of these jails.

Aura, welcome back to Democracy Now! There was not a lot of mainstream media attention on this inspector general report—again, the inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security. Talk about what it revealed.

AURA BOGADO: Good morning, Amy. It’s great to be back.

The inspector general’s report indicates what immigrants have said for years about conditions in various detention facilities. As you mentioned, the inspector general’s report did surprise visits to four sites. Three of them are run by the private prison company GEO, and the other one is local to Essex County, New Jersey.

And it’s hard to know where to begin, but, you know, some of what stands out are the photos, for example, from the bathroom facilities, where there is unusable toilets, mildew and mold on the showers. The inspector general said that this poses health risks to the people who—to the detainees who are being held there: little to no access to recreation, horrible food conditions—moldy bread; raw, leaking chicken blood; unmarked, unlabeled food—again, things that we’ve heard about for years. And as you mentioned, this is DHS inspector general, and they found that there were multiple violations of ICE’s own detention standards.

And ICE concurred with the one recommendation, which was to have increased oversight. In some cases, they tried to make fixes right away, such as replacing the kitchen manager at one of the facilities during the inspection. But with some other recommendations, they sort of indicated that they’d think about it. For example, the Aurora facility in Colorado has a space for in-contact visits, which we know improves the morale of people who are being held in any kind of detention or prison environment. And although it has those facilities, it doesn’t allow contact visits. And the inspector general’s report cited that, and ICE’s response was, “You know, we’ll think about it, but the standard isn’t to have contact visits.” So, it’s an interesting way to sort of skirt that particular issue which was addressed in the report.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Aura, could you talk some about the GEO Group, for those viewers and listeners who may not be familiar with it?

AURA BOGADO: Sure. So, the GEO Group is a private prison contractor. And for ICE, it runs several detention facilities around the country. And it does, you know, what it sounds like. It holds people for civil immigration custody. Something that I think people don’t always understand is that people who are in immigration, in ICE custody, they’re in civil custody, not criminal custody. So it doesn’t have to do with any kind of criminality. It’s people who are going through some kind of immigration process, one of the many immigration processes that exist in the United States. And ICE contracts with a few contractors, but particularly with GEO. And they’re a large firm that holds a lot of people around the country for this agency.

AMY GOODMAN: So, can you talk about the significance of this report, and specifically, also, the number of migrants who have died during the Trump administration? It’s both children, a record number—I mean, I think the number was six from back to last year, and there hadn’t been a death, a child death, in immigration detention in 10 years. And now you have this latest figure of—what was the number?—24 migrants—these are adults—who died in detention, with another four dying right after they’re released.

AURA BOGADO: Right. So, something to keep in mind is that there are various agencies that hold immigrants, asylum seekers, migrants. So, we have just been talking about ICE immigration detention. The Customs and Border Patrol also holds people at Border Patrol stations, which are often referred to as hieleras, or “iceboxes,” by people who are held in them. They always describe them as being incredibly cold. I spent time with a couple of girls who I first reported on back in 2013, and they described, in great detail, especially one of them, what the icebox was like. And, you know, here we are, years later. They have green cards now. They’re looking forward to becoming citizens. And when we went back to talk about the conditions in these Border Patrol stations, it was like it could have happened yesterday. I mean, they just described how freezing they were, how the one little piece of Mylar didn’t feel like enough for either of them, and the older sister felt so bad for the younger one, that she took it and tried to create a second layer for her sister. And she was scared of sleeping through getting her name called, because they say that they were told that if they didn’t hear their name, they would stay in there forever. So, you know, again, this is stuff that we’ve heard about for a long time.

Unaccompanied minors then who leave the Border Patrol stations are then taken to shelters around the country, which are run by the Office of Refugee Resettlement. These are all contracted facilities throughout the country, and that’s a different department altogether. That’s not DHS, but the Department of Health and Human Services. Some of what we found is tremendous abuse, both accusations and proven allegations, as well as, you know, in some of these places, there is the use of restraints, forced drugging. My reporting partner and I, Patrick Michels and I, we’ve been investigating secret shelters, in which the Office of Refugee Resettlement, without any judicial oversight, sends children to psychiatric facilities or residential treatment centers, and they’re sort of off the map of the shelters that we do know about. They’re not contracted facilities.

And, yes, people die. There are really horrible conditions in a lot of these places. And as you mentioned, there have been two dozen deaths during the Trump administration. That accounts for the 200 or so deaths since we’ve been keeping track, which is since 2003, I believe. And then there have been four deaths immediately after custody. So those are also tricky to track. We think that it’s four people who died immediately after being released. They may have been in custody when there were taken to a hospital, and then paroled, essentially taken out of custody immediately thereafter. But these are pretty high numbers. And again, they come from places in which people have been detailing the horrid conditions for quite a long time.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Aura, the inspector general’s report, from your own reporting, do you get the sense that they’re actually talking to the detainees, or are they just basically inspecting the delivery of basic services and dealing with the personnel in these facilities?

AURA BOGADO: You know, there’s mention in the report where they cite that detainees said such-and-such things. Detainees noted that not having contact visits was difficult for them, for example. But their actual perspective isn’t included. There are no quotes from the detainees themselves in the report. And again, it’s interesting, and I think it validates what people have been saying for a long time, but, again, you know, for immigration reporters, whose sources are the people who experience these policies, this isn’t necessarily anything new. I think the photos do illustrate, however, exactly what has been described to me and many other reporters for quite a long time.

AMY GOODMAN: And now the inspector general report author, John Kelly—not the General John Kelly, who’s gone on to the board of another for-profit detention facility—is resigning, after this report has come out. But, finally, the Trump administration saying it’s going to suspend legal aid programs, recreational activities, even English classes—all education for unaccompanied migrant children jailed in federally run immigration centers, the move drawing condemnation from groups like Amnesty International USA, which wrote, “It’s bad enough that the Trump administration is trying to normalize the warehousing of children, It’s unconscionable that they would so blatantly try to strip them of their rights. Locking up children and then denying them legal aid, education, and even playtime is all part of this administration’s cruel efforts to dehumanize people who have come to the U.S. seeking safety.” Those are the words of Amnesty International USA. And yet you have President Trump taking $8 billion to build a wall, and saying he doesn’t have money for kids having classes.

AURA BOGADO: Yeah. Again, my reporting partner, Patrick Michels, actually broke that story on Twitter recently. And it was surprising to see that memo, that email, which internally stated we’re not providing English classes right now. We’re not providing fútbol, or soccer, recreation services. And as you note, there is quite an irony in saying that there isn’t funding available for something really basic. Like, you know, how much does a soccer ball cost? I’m not sure.

AMY GOODMAN: Aura Bogado, we’re going to have to leave it there, immigration reporter with Reveal. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We end today’s show in Australia, where press freedom groups are sounding the alarm over a pair of police raids on journalists. On Wednesday last week, Australian Federal Police swept into the headquarters of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in Sydney, reviewing thousands of documents for information about a 2017 report that found Australian special forces may have committed war crimes in Afghanistan. ABC Executive Editor John Lyons spoke on his own network just minutes after police served a warrant naming a news director and the two reporters who broke the story.

JOHN LYONS: They have downloaded 9,214 documents. I counted them. And they are now going through them. They’ve set up a huge screen, and they’re going through, email by email. It’s quite extraordinary. And I feel—as a journalist, I feel it’s a real violation, because these are emails between this particular journalist and his boss, her boss, its drafts, its scripts of stories. I’ve never seen an assault on the media as savage as this one we’re seeing today at the ABC. … And the chilling message is not so much for the journalists, but it’s also for the public.

AMY GOODMAN: Wednesday’s raid on ABC—that’s, again, Australian Broadcasting Corporation—came one day after police in Melbourne, Australia, raided the home of Annika Smethurst, a reporter with the Herald Sun newspaper. Police served a warrant related to Smethurst’s reporting on a secret effort by an Australian intelligence service to expand its surveillance capabilities, including against Australian nationals. Australia’s acting Federal Police Commissioner Neil Gaughan defended the raids, saying journalists could face prison time for holding classified information.

COMMISSIONER NEIL GAUGHAN: No sector of the community should be immune for this type of activity or evidence collection, more broadly. This includes law enforcement itself, the media or, indeed, even politicians.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, for more, we’re joined by two guests in Australia. With us from Brisbane is Peter Greste. He is the UNESCO chair in journalism and communications at University of Queensland. He’s founding director of Alliance for Journalists’ Freedom. He was imprisoned for over a year, for 400 days, in 2013 to '14, while covering the political crisis in Egypt. And joining us from Perth, Australia, Joseph Fernandez is with us, a media law academic at Curtin University, Australia's correspondent for Reporters Without Borders.

We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Joseph Fernandez, let’s begin with you. Lay out exactly what happened and when it took place, all the details as you know them, both the raiding of ABC and the journalist’s home.

JOSEPH FERNANDEZ: Thank you for having me on your show. The two raids happened within 48 hours of each other. It began with a raid on Annika Smethurst’s home. You have introduced her. At her home, the Australian Federal Police spent seven-and-a-half hours going through every nook and cranny of her belongings, including the rubbish bin outside the house. And they sought to access her email messages, phone messages and anything they could lay their hands on, including what she might have kept away in her undies drawer. Annika obviously was very traumatized by this, but she has held her head up high, in the knowledge that the story about which she was being investigated was really something very arguably and very strongly in the public interest or of legitimate public concern.

The second raid, the following day—

AMY GOODMAN: And that story was?

JOSEPH FERNANDEZ: Sorry. Can you say that again, please?

AMY GOODMAN: And that story was, Joseph?

JOSEPH FERNANDEZ: The story was that there was a discussion, a discussion about a plan to expand state surveillance, that would have possibly included surveillance of ordinary citizens. And this was quite an unprecedented idea. And the objective of such a plan was obviously going to be justified on the premise of protecting national security.

The second raid happened at the headquarters of the national broadcaster, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, in Sydney. And police officers entered the premises armed with a warrant with an exhaustive inventory of things that they were looking for. And as you have noted, they scoured hundreds and thousands of documents and materials, and left with a small collection of materials in a sealed package, with the agreement not to use them until a possible challenge is considered in the days ahead.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Joseph Fernandez, these raids coming within a day of each other, was there any coordination, or were these related in any way?

JOSEPH FERNANDEZ: That’s an interesting question. One of the first questions that sprung into people’s minds was whether they were related, whether this was instigated by the government. The prime minister quickly moved to distance himself and his government from the raids, claiming that the two agencies and the police were acting entirely of their own accord. And the police themselves are on record as saying that the two events are unrelated. And so, it’s left to be seen, you know, whether new light will be shed on the real circumstances that led to these raids. It’s quite hard to accept, without inquiry as to whether there was absolutely no notice given, whether informally or formally, to the bosses in government.

AMY GOODMAN: And for people to understand, I mean, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation is the leading broadcaster throughout the entire country of Australia. I wanted to bring Peter Greste into this conversation. We had you here in our studio after you were imprisoned for well over for year by Egypt with your two Al Jazeera colleagues. You were working with Al Jazeera at the time. You certainly knew what it meant to be arrested, to not have rights, not to be even told at the beginning why the Egyptian authorities were holding you. Now you see the situation in Australia. And I was wondering if you can talk about the laws around press freedom, if you have them in Australia. Amazingly, in this warrant, the warrant gave the police wide-ranging authority to view, seize, edit and destroy virtually any document it saw fit.

PETER GRESTE: Yeah, that’s right. Look, there are a whole host of questions in there, Amy, but let me deal with the very beginning of it, and that’s the way I felt when I heard about the news, because it did—I mean, even now I can feel my skin pricking up, thinking about the raids and what that would have felt like, because I know exactly what it was like to have agents burst into your room looking for evidence, and all of the confusion that surrounds that, the outrage that surrounds that. But I never really honestly expected to see it take place here in Australia. And it seems to me that even though I’m not suggesting Australia is about to become an authoritarian state like Egypt anytime soon, I think that we are being pushed in the same direction by the same kind of imperatives around national security, the prioritizing of national security over the human rights and democratic rights of citizens, largely because it’s much easier to make the political case for national security legislation, particularly when you see attacks in the streets and the consequences of that, but much harder to make the more abstract case for human rights and citizens’ rights, freedom of speech, freedom of the press and so on, until you see what that means in practical terms. And that’s what we saw last week with these two raids. I think it’s very, very concerning to me, and I’m deeply worried.

Now, as you mentioned, we don’t have in Australia any explicit protection for press freedom written into the law, nothing about freedom of speech. Australia has no bill of rights. All we have is an implied right of political communications, that the High Court decided that was there as a function of our democracy. They said that we live in a representative democracy, and you can’t have an effective representative democracy without political communication, therefore, that right is somehow inferred in the Constitution.

But without anything like the First Amendment in the United States here in Australia, without any explicit protection for press freedom, what we’re seeing is a lot of scope for our legislators to draft laws that really intrude on press freedom in all sorts of deeply troubling ways that make it much harder for journalists to protect their sources, make it much harder even for journalists to contact sources within government. And so, what we’re seeing is a vast web of interconnected national security laws that, in all sorts of ways, make these kinds of raids that we saw last week possible.

I’m not so critical of the Federal Police for carrying out the raids. I accept that they were probably doing their jobs. And as we’ve been hearing, there may well have been some kind of political involvement in there. But let’s take what the Federal Police have been saying at face value, that there was nothing political. If there was nothing political, if they were simply fulfilling their duties under the law, then, clearly, the law needs to change. And that’s what we need to start talking about.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Peter Greste, we have about a minute left, but I wanted to ask you, in terms of—who determines the violations of state secrets? Is there one centralized agency, or can various federal agencies decide to conduct these kinds of raids in Australia?

PETER GRESTE: No. Look, it’s quite difficult to know quite how the laws come into effect or come into force. I mean, let’s take a look at the data retention laws, the metadata. In any number of more than 20 agencies, government agencies can look into any Australian’s metadata without a warrant. Now, they need to apply for a special journalist warrant if they want to investigate journalists’ metadata in a search for sources, but, otherwise, there is no—there is no warrant system. They can look anywhere, anywhere that they want.

And I think that’s the kind of scope that we’re talking about. That’s overreach. You talk to any lawyer, any civil rights activist, anyone who knows about the way the law operates, and they’ll acknowledge that that’s overreach. And we need to really start a vigorous conversation within this country about the limits of state power and the kind of ways that we need to encourage and support press freedom, and also the protection of whistleblowers, because, ultimately, these raids were in the hunt for the sources of these stories, for the journalists’ sources, for the whistleblowers that felt that these stories needed to be told.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, we have to wrap up right now, but we want to continue the vigorous discussion, and we’re going to bring folks Part 2 at democracynow.org under web exclusives. Peter Greste, we want to thank you and ask you to stay for that Part 2 discussion, UNESCO chair in journalism and communications, University of Queensland, founding director of the Alliance for Journalists’ Freedom, imprisoned for more than 400 days. Also, Joseph Fernandez, a media law academic at Curtin University, Australia’s correspondent for Reporters Without Borders. Stay with us. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

AMY GOODMAN: Facing an escalating showdown with Mexico and an insurrection from his own party, President Trump said Friday the United States reached a deal with Mexico to avert a 5% tariff on all imported Mexican goods that was due to take effect today and increase to 25% tariff, across the board on Mexican goods, by October. Trump’s announcement came after three days of Mexico-U.S. negotiations in Washington. Officials said it was based around Mexico’s commitment to deploy National Guard forces throughout Mexico, in particular to its southern border, in order to stem the flow of northbound migrants headed to the United States. Under the deal, they say Mexico also agreed to expand what is known as Remain in Mexico policy, which allows the U.S. to send back Central American asylum-seeking migrants to Mexico while their cases make their way through immigration courts in the United States.

However, on Saturday, The New York Times reported the plan to send troops to the border had already been agreed on in March. Trump lashed out on Twitter Monday morning by attacking The New York Times, writing, “The Failing @nytimes story on Mexico and Illegal Immigration through our Southern Border has now been proven shockingly false and untrue, bad reporting, and the paper is embarrassed by it. The only problem is that they knew it was Fake News before it went out. Corrupt Media!” he tweeted.

In a statement Saturday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said, “President Trump undermined America’s preeminent leadership role in the world by recklessly threatening to impose tariffs on our close friend and neighbor to the south. Threats and temper tantrums are no way to negotiate foreign policy,” she said.

Trump’s plans also drew resistance from some Republican leaders, including Mitch McConnell, who threatened a congressional revolt.

Meanwhile, in Mexico, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador hailed the agreement at a rally with thousands of supporters Saturday. He said migrant rights will be protected.

PRESIDENT ANDRÉS MANUEL LÓPEZ OBRADOR: [translated] We have signed our commitment to contributing to migrants not crossing through national territory to reach the United States. We would never do this by violating the human rights of travelers. And that starts with human rights, the right to live free from misery, the right to life. … It would be fair to try and punish Mexico to try and stop immigration, whilst there is a need for welfare and security in home countries for migrants and a search for brotherhood amongst peoples. We celebrate yesterday’s important agreement because things were becoming very difficult, very uncomfortable.

AMY GOODMAN: To talk more about the deal and its implications, we go to Washington, D.C., to talk with Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, author of The Rise and Fall of Fast Track Trade Authority.

Lori, welcome back to Democracy Now!

LORI WALLACH: Good morning.

AMY GOODMAN: What happened over these last weeks, when President Trump threatened Mexico with across-the-board 5%, to be increased to 25%, tariffs on all Mexican goods? Republicans, led by the Senate majority leader, McConnell, said they would revolt. And then Trump said he forced—essentially, he forced Mexico to its knees. Explain what happened.

LORI WALLACH: Trump created a fake crisis and has announced a fake “solution” that actually is terms that already the U.S. and Mexico had agreed months ago. Plus he announced something that I think just isn’t—can’t happen, which is “large agricultural sales,” except Mexico is a market economy. The government does not control what’s sold. There also are no tariffs. So it’s not like you can make a trade deal to increase agricultural sales. So, that part seems to be altogether made up.

But if you read the actual summary of the agreement between the two countries or you look at this weekend’s tweets, the president is also simultaneously saying, “And if I don’t get my way, we can put the tariffs back up.” And so, he’s basically, to quote Nancy Pelosi, having another “tariff temper tantrum,” and he’s sort of threatening that maybe the tariffs will come back.

But that, really, is, at the highest level, an indication that his racist border immigrant obsession really trumps everything else, because having this tariff tantrum over Mexico really is not helpful to the renegotiation of NAFTA, where the Democrats actually have been working to force improvements to the deal Trump signed, with the prospect that maybe they would actually pass something, except the tariff hysteria has really undermined that process.

AMY GOODMAN: Didn’t he introduce this, the possibility, the threat of the tariffs, right around the exact time that President Obrador introduced the new NAFTA—what, the U.S.-Mexico trade agreement—into his legislature to be approved?

LORI WALLACH: It’s a very peculiar set of circumstances. So, here’s what’s happening with the revised NAFTA. The deal that Trump signed at the end of last year is not the transformational replacement of the corporate-rigged trade model we need, but they made some improvements. So, for instance, they largely got rid of investor-state dispute settlement, those outrageous corporate tribunals. So, what the Democrats have been doing is trying to work with the one sane Cabinet member, U.S. Trade Representative Lighthizer, to take out a bad thing they added: They let Big Pharma put in some new monopoly rights that would lock in high medicine prices; that has to come out. And the Democrats have been working to try and get the labor and environmental standards improved and their enforcement much strengthened, because that’s necessary if the agreement is going to stop the outsourcing of jobs and pollution.

So, while that discussion is going on over here, and there’s some hope that maybe those improvements can be made and the agreement would be worth something—if not perfect, by a long shot, worth supporting—and could actually stop some of the ongoing serious damage to workers and the environment in North America that NAFTA is causing—that’s trucking along here. And all of a sudden Trump comes in with this racist border obsession and basically derails that whole discussion. Now, will it get back on track? Maybe. But not if these threats of tariffs are endlessly hanging over the head of the whole process.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go to the acting Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Kevin McAleenan, who was asked what part of Trump’s agreement with Mexico is new. He was speaking on Fox News Sunday.

ACTING DHS SECRETARY KEVIN McALEENAN: All of it is new. I mean, we’ve heard commitments before from Mexico to do more on their southern border. The last time they deployed down there, it was about 400 or 500 officers. This is more than a tenfold commitment to increase their security in Chiapas. That’s where people are entering from Guatemala in southern Mexico. … The president put a charge in this whole dialogue with Mexico with the tariff threat, brought them to the table. The foreign minister from Mexico arrived within hours. He arrived the next day with real proposals on the table. This is the first time we’ve heard anything like this kind of number of law enforcement being deployed in Mexico to address migration, not just at their southern border but also on the transportation routes to the northern border and in coordinated patrols in key areas along our southwest border.

AMY GOODMAN: So, that’s the acting head of Homeland Security, because Trump purged almost the entire leadership there, that was originally appointed by him, Kevin McAleenan. Your response, Lori Wallach?

LORI WALLACH: Well, according to not just The New York Times reporting but numerous outlets, that exact agreement had been made months ago by the ousted previous secretary, Kirstjen Nielsen. And, in fact—anyone can google—there have been a whole series of stories, actually, about how a lot of the border towns in Chiapas have become basically armed camps, where the bus stops and the hotels, the inexpensive hotels where migrants were staying, are now being raided. This is happening already, at the moment.

So, it seems like it’s another instance of Trump, perhaps as a distraction from the Democrats making clear the NAFTA deal he signed, as is, would not stop job outsourcing, would lock in high medicine prices—maybe he wanted to change the subject, so he creates a crisis. Maybe it was because he was worried about continuing fallout from the Mueller report. He created a crisis. He set an arbitrary deadline. He claims he got a deal, which doesn’t exist. And then he’s sort of leaving the crisis brewing on the sidelines for more chaos later.

And when you think about the NAFTA replacement, that could be the only good policy that might come out of this entire administration, and the president basically just clearly prioritizing not delivering on his promise to stop the outsourcing and to replace NAFTA, because he’d rather create the chaos with his obsession over his racist border plans, that says a lot, that hopefully gets out to American voters.

AMY GOODMAN: Trump tweeted Saturday, ”MEXICO HAS AGREED TO IMMEDIATELY BEGIN BUYING LARGE QUANTITIES OF AGRICULTURAL PRODUCT FROM OUR GREAT PATRIOT FARMERS!” Well, this is Mexico’s ambassador to the United States responding to Trump’s statement on Face the Nation Sunday. She was questioned repeatedly by host Margaret Brennan about whether the president’s claim was accurate.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Was there any kind of agreement by your government to buy agricultural products?

MARTHA BÁRCENA COQUI: It is our understanding that without tariffs and with USMCA ratification, there will be an increased rate both in agricultural products and manufactured products. Even now—

MARGARET BRENNAN: But nothing that was actually agreed to as part of this negotiation? Because the president has been tweeting, saying that Mexico agreed to buy all sorts of agricultural products.

MARTHA BÁRCENA COQUI: I would—what I would say is that, even now, we are the second buyer of the U.S.—

MARGARET BRENNAN: Right.

MARTHA BÁRCENA COQUI: —in grains and meat and this. We have an integrated economy in the agricultural sector. … The trends are already there. So, what we are expecting, without the tariffs, is an increase. You have to remember that, until last year, we were the third trade partner. We are now the first.

MARGARET BRENNAN: But there was no transaction that was signed off on as part of this deal, is what I understand you’re saying. You’re just talking about trade.

MARTHA BÁRCENA COQUI: I’m talking about trade.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Understood.

MARTHA BÁRCENA COQUI: And I am absolutely certain that the trade in agricultural goods could increase dramatically in the next few months.

AMY GOODMAN: So, that’s Mexico’s ambassador to the U.S., Martha Bárcena Coqui. Lori Wallach, explain exactly her response and also what Trump said about Mexico promised to buy a large amount of agricultural products from the United States.

LORI WALLACH: Well, she’s trying to be diplomatic, because she knows the president has left the tariff threat out there hanging. But as a practical matter, it’s a free market economy in Mexico, so it’s not, for instance, with China, where the government can say, “We will buy this many billions of dollars of whatever.” What gets bought for U.S. agricultural products in Mexico is determined by various trading companies, grain companies, grocery retailers, etc. So, it’s not something that the government—as a practical matter, it’s not the kind of deal the government can say, “We will by this.”

On the other hand, the notion, frankly, that the ambassador has put out that there will be more trade is a little silly, because there are already zero tariffs. So it’s not that tariffs will be cut. Agricultural trade between the U.S. and Mexico has been zero tariffs for 15 years. So, even the notion that the trade will grow—I mean, I suppose if the population grows, the economy grows, demand could grow. But it’s not like there will suddenly be an increase.

The real issue with what she called the USMCA—it doesn’t deserve a new name yet—NAFTA 2.0, is whether or not the remaining business is going to get done of taking out the new monopolies Big Pharma was able to rig into the deal, that Trump signed, and adding in the stronger labor and environmental standards and stronger enforcement. The new Mexican president is much more supportive of workers’ rights, and he wants to raise wages. He has passed a domestic labor law that would implement the best labor part of the existing NAFTA 2.0. If that were ever truly implemented, it could be transformational. For the first time, it would give Mexican workers the right to have real unions, to have contracts that they vote on, not fake contracts, “protection contracts,” that protect the company and lock in low wages. But that legislation has to be implemented. There’s a lot of fightback from elite industry in Mexico. But also, after AMLO is gone, the agreement has to have enforcement so that it doesn’t get rolled back.

That’s the mission right now, if the tariff sword of Damocles doesn’t end up chopping up the whole process, which is, Speaker Pelosi has been remarkably strong, and the House Democrats united, to say to the trade representative, “If you get rid of the pharma giveaways and you add the labor and environmental standards and their enforcement, this could be a deal that’s worth having,” because it has that labor-organizing Mexico part, it gets rid of ISDS, fixes some other stuff—it’s not perfect, but it would be a step in the right direction. So, here, with the prospect of actually replacing NAFTA, that Trump said was his top priority to stop outsourcing, what does he do? He blows it up with these tariff threats.

AMY GOODMAN: Trump sent out a flurry of tweets Saturday about the deal. In one, he lashed out at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, writing, quote, “Nervous Nancy Pelosi & the Democrat House are getting nothing done. Perhaps they could lead the way with the USMCA, the spectacular & very popular new Trade Deal that replaces NAFTA, the worst Trade Deal in the history of the U.S.A. Great for our Farmers, Manufacturers & Unions!” So, I’d like to go back to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s comments about NAFTA earlier this year during an interview with Politico.

SPEAKER NANCY PELOSI: The concerns that our members have are workers’ rights, the environment and issues that relate to pharmaceuticals. Those are the issues. The overarching concern that we have is, even if you had the best language in the world in that, if you don’t have enforcement, you ain’t got nothing. That’s just the way it is. You have to have strong enforcement provisions. Now, one of the things that the Mexican government has to do before we could even consider it is to pass legislation about workers’ rights in Mexico.

AMY GOODMAN: And now I want to turn to then-Senator Biden, before he was vice president, speaking in 1994 during the original debate on NAFTA. He said NAFTA was the positive thing to do, despite workers having a legitimate reason to be concerned.

SEN. JOE BIDEN: I’m supporting NAFTA because I think it is a positive thing to do, but not because I think it’s going to cure the workers’ fears, who have legitimate reason of be concerned. It will not exacerbate their concerns. It will not exacerbate their circumstance. But it will not help it very much in the short run.

AMY GOODMAN: So, that was, yes, Senator Joe Biden in 1994 and, before that, Pelosi. Lori Wallach, you’ve been deeply involved in the struggle against NAFTA. Your response?

LORI WALLACH: Well, first of all, unfortunately, Senator Biden has—Vice President Biden has said supportive things about NAFTA more recently.

But also, the reality is, the U.S. government has certified almost 1 million U.S. workers as having lost their jobs to NAFTA. So it did get much worse. The Mexican government has documented that, in real terms, Mexican manufacturing wages are down since NAFTA, so workers there also didn’t win. Right now Mexican manufacturing wages are 40% lower in real terms than Chinese manufacturing wages. The same exact U.S. plant moves to Mexico and turns a middle-class job into a sweatshop job, from 25 bucks an hour, for instance, a good year in the U.S., with the steelworkers representing the workers, to a buck-fifty-eight in Mexico without the safety guides. And when the workers went on strike because of the conditions and low wages, they were fired, because they had broken their fake contract that locked in those wages.

That is the reality of NAFTA. That’s why the agreement has to be replaced. That’s why the Democrats are fighting for those changes the speaker talked about, because the deal Trump signed, as is, wouldn’t stop that race to the bottom in wages and outsourcing, and it would lock in high medicine prices with these new monopoly rights that were added for Big Pharma. But if the monopoly rights for pharma can come out, and the labor and environmental standards and much stronger enforcement can go in, it would be worth having a deal like that, that also takes out the investor-state corporate tribunals, because the damage of NAFTA continues every week. Every week, another union is being busted in Mexico. Every week, jobs are being outsourced from the middle class to sweatshops. Same hard-working folks. The only difference, two countries, one agreement. The rules have to change. ISDS cases still being filed every week.

We have got to replace NAFTA. The question is whether Trump will end up basically derailing this process that, despite him, his trade representative and the House Democrats have been working on to try and fix, improve the agreement he signed, to get it to a point where it would be worth having, at least to try and stop some of that ongoing damage, even if it wouldn’t be perfect.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Lori Wallach, the message that has been sent, over everything that’s taken place until now, when President Trump, you know, announces that they will not be imposing the 5% to 25% tariffs across the board in Mexico, what this means for other countries around the world?

LORI WALLACH: What, basically, this arbitrary threat of the use of tariffs over a racist immigration policy is indicating is that this president is going to basically misuse tariffs and trade policy. So, tariffs are a legitimate policy tool. If you watch a lot of mainstream television or read The New York Times, you sort of think of tariffs as a deadly disease. No, when we talk about trade sanctions, for instance, for labor violations or for environmental violations, a tariff is a policy tool that actually is part of how you regulate trade in the global economy. However, what you use tariffs as a tool to achieve, this president has just blown up, with basically taking it off of trade, taking it off of even commerce, and putting it on, effectively, trying to build his border wall by tariffs instead of bricks.

AMY GOODMAN: Lori Wallach, I want to thank you so much for being with us, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, author of The Rise and Fall of Fast Track Trade Authority.

When we come back, we head to Raleigh, North Carolina to speak with the longtime civil rights leader Reverend William Barber. He was just convicted on Thursday of trespassing for staging a protest against gerrymandering and attacks on healthcare at the North Carolina Legislature. Stay with us.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: We end today’s show in Northern California, where nearly a hundred animal rights activists are free today after being arrested for carrying out a rescue mission and protest at Reichardt Duck Farm in Petaluma, which they accuse of animal torture. More than 600 activists with Direct Action Everywhere stormed the slaughterhouse Monday, fanning out in teams to chain themselves together at the entrance, freeing dozens of ducks and in some cases locking themselves by the neck to the slaughter line. Several of the activists made it inside the slaughterhouse, where they began trying to rescue ducks that were hanging upside down by their feet.

DIRECT ACTION EVERYWHERE ACTIVIST: Stay in your teams. Bands are free to move out. Michael, stay in place to act as animal care receptacle. Over. You’re good to go. We’re splitting off. Red team’s with me. Folks able to hustle a little bit more, let’s do this. Over. Try to get them off here. We’ve got to figure out how to stop this [bleep] line.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Inside the slaughterhouse, the activists began using U-locks on their own necks, locking themselves to the metal duck slaughtering production line. In a shocking move, an employee of the slaughterhouse then turned on the belt, threatening the lives of the activists and nearly asphyxiating one man, who was dragged by his neck and wedged against a metal pole. You can hear panicked organizers frantically working to unlock him in this next video. A warning to our viewers: This footage is disturbing.

DIRECT ACTION EVERYWHERE ACTIVIST 1: Whoa! Whoa! Stop! Stop! Stop! Oh my [bleep] god! Oh my god! Oh my god! Holy [bleep]! We need to stop this right now!

DIRECT ACTION EVERYWHERE ACTIVIST 2: Stop! Please!

DIRECT ACTION EVERYWHERE ACTIVIST 1: We need to stop this right now! Holy [bleep]!

DIRECT ACTION EVERYWHERE ACTIVIST 2: Stop!

DIRECT ACTION EVERYWHERE ACTIVIST 1: What the [bleep]! Oh my god! You’re OK. You’re OK.

THOMAS CHIANG: Do you have a key? Key. Get the key.

DIRECT ACTION EVERYWHERE ACTIVIST 1: OK. What number is this lock? What number is this lock?

THOMAS CHIANG: This is eight, not seven. It’s not seven.

DIRECT ACTION EVERYWHERE ACTIVIST 1: Eight. It’s eight.

AMY GOODMAN: The activist, Thomas Chiang, was taken away by ambulance and treated for nerve damage and severe pain. He’s since been released from the hospital.

Police, armed with riot gear, arrested 98 activists who participated in the action. Despite numerous complaints, authorities have yet to investigate the Petaluma factory and slaughterhouse. Activists, however, have been repeatedly arrested, with many facing multiple felony charges and, if convicted, decades in prison.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and co-founder of The Intercept Glenn Greenwald praised Monday’s action, tweeting, “The real criminality is the systemic torture and slaughter of billions of animals in the cruelest, filthiest, most sadistic conditions. It breaks multiple laws. But the police protect the corporate criminals, & instead arrest those saving lives,” Greenwald tweeted.

Well, for more, we’re joined right now by two guests. Priya Sawhney is one of the co-founders and lead investigator of Direct Action Everywhere, known as DxE. She’s speaking to us from Las Vegas. Wayne Hsiung is co-founder and lead organizer for DxE, former law professor. He was arrested during Monday’s action and was released late Wednesday. He’s facing a total of 17 felony charges in jurisdictions around the country for his animal rescue actions. Priya is also facing felony charges.

We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Wayne and Priya, thank you for joining us. Wayne, you just got out of jail. Can you explain exactly what this Petaluma farm is, what the Reichardt Duck Farm does, why you went there, why you targeted it, and hope to accomplish?

WAYNE HSIUNG: Amy, Reichardt Duck Farm is one of the largest factory farms in the state of California. They slaughter 1 million animals every year. And there have been repeated reports of animal cruelty from undercover whistleblowers, from ordinary citizens, even from people walking down the street next to the farm, because the smell emanating from this facility is so awful that it’s hard to breathe when you’re standing outside. Yet, despite the fact that there have been so many complaints, including complaints supported by licensed veterinarians, former prosecutors, criminal law professors, indicating there’s criminal violations happening at this farm and other factory farms across the state of California, the government has failed to take any action at all. And what we’ve seen in the past years, ordinary citizens have started taking action, when the government has been asleep at the wheel.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Wayne, could you explain: What are the criminal violations that are taking place? I mean, what is legally—what is illegal that these companies are doing? Is animal cruelty of this kind illegal?

WAYNE HSIUNG: I’ll give you a concrete example. One of the whistleblower accounts we received showed a duck with a gaping hole in her side, collapsed on the ground of the factory farm, writhing in agony, rolling back and forth, unable to even stand. This animal, in all likelihood, starved and rotted to death over the course of weeks. And if you or I did this in our own home, if we had an individual puppy, kitten or duck, stabbed her in the side of her neck and left her to slowly bleed and rot to death in our home for weeks, it would clearly be animal cruelty. Yet there have been multiple whistleblower accounts across the state showing systematic violence on a scale 1,000 or 10,000 times worse than what you or I might have done to an individual duck, that clearly would be a criminal law violation if you or I did it in our own home. Yet, because these are powerful corporate interests that have deep ties to the government, donate millions of dollars to politicians across the nation, but especially in farm counties, there’s no accountability or transparency whatsoever.

AMY GOODMAN: Tell us the history of this Reichardt facility. And also, what happened to Thomas Chiang? What exactly went down in this duck facility?

WAYNE HSIUNG: Reichardt is a facility that was first investigated by Mercy for Animals in 2014. There was an employee who was a whistleblower, an undercover investigator, who found that baby birds were having their faces mutilated. There were birds whose necks were being ripped and broken kind of mercilessly and brutally, and thrown in a garbage bin, some of them probably still alive while they slowly rotted to death inside of a landfill or inside of a dumpster. And a criminal cruelty investigation was demanded by activists.

And at that point, the government did actually take some action. They brought some police officers out. They even brought a veterinarian with them. But even the veterinarian herself, who was on site with the police, said the investigation they did was completely perfunctory. They didn’t even actually walk into the barns or didn’t do a systematic investigation of the conditions inside the barns. And no cruelty charges were brought back in 2014.

Since that time, there have been multiple reports of additional cruelty happening at this facility. We’ve seen birds collapsed on the ground. We’ve seen birds with sickening diseases, that if they were able to get out and infect the human population, would endanger families in the area and families who eat the meat from this facility. And yet again, the government has not only denied us an opportunity to investigate or find out what’s happening inside this farm, they’ve now come after the animal rights activists who have been exposing it. But what we’ve seen is the response of the animal rights movement is not to shy away and dissipate in the face of these charges, but more and more people are acting up and fighting back, because we see this as a threat not just to the animals we love, but, frankly, to our own communities.

AMY GOODMAN: What are you all charged with? Almost a hundred of you were arrested.

WAYNE HSIUNG: Yeah, I mean, I’m still, honestly, shaken from the experience, because we saw some of our friends nearly decapitated. We saw teenage girls being assaulted by farmers, farmers threatening the lives of nonviolent activists. These are people who are holding flowers in their hands, grandmothers, in some cases, small children. And yet, the police did not arrest or investigate anything that was happening at the farm, whether to the animals or to the humans who were there to protest the facility’s cruelty to animals. And yet, a hundred activists now face felony charges and could face years in prison for merely protesting and trying to do something to stop the systematic cruelty happening inside factory farms.

AMY GOODMAN: And Thomas Chiang, what exactly happened?

WAYNE HSIUNG: Thomas was one of the activists who decided to lock himself to the slaughterhouse line. And while that might seem an extreme act, when you see just the systematic brutality, when you see animals being ripped to pieces alive, animals languishing and rotting on the grounds of factory farms and slaughterhouses, and you see the government doing nothing about it, and corporations making millions off of this, people are starting to use the tactics of other social movements. We’ve learned from Greenpeace, from Extinction Rebellion, the Climate Defense Project, how we can use direct action to seize attention and make sure the government realizes this is an issue.

So, what Thomas did was he was one of a number of activists who actually locked his own body and neck to the slaughter line to show solidarity with the animals and, frankly, the human beings that are being threatened by this industry. But the employees at the farm, in response to this, decided to turn on the assembly line and nearly ripped his head off. When we reported this to the authorities, they did nothing in response, and instead charged and arrested a hundred activists.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, in 2018, hundreds of people with the group Direct Action Everywhere marched to an industrial shed housing chickens in Petaluma, California, that’s owned by Sunrise Farms, which supplies cage-free eggs to Amazon and Whole Foods. What happened next unfolded on Facebook Live, narrated at first by you, Wayne Hsiung. This is an edited recap.

WAYNE HSIUNG: I want to show you a photo of what’s happening inside this farm. Our activists were in this farm as recently as a couple days ago, and you see animals with huge sores on their heads, going blind, animals collapsed on the ground in feces, rotting to death. And this is standard practice.

And people don’t realize this is a farm that supplies Whole Foods and Amazon. Amazon is the largest retailer in the world. They’re shipping animal cruelty to 300 million households across the world. It is one-click cruelty. And it’s time for this one-click cruelty to stop.

And the only way to make it stop, when you’ve gone to the government, you’ve gone to law enforcement, you’ve gone to the corporations and CEOs and politicians, time and time again—the only way to make this violence stop is for people to take direct action.

UNIDENTIFIED: Hey! Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

JULIANNE PERRY: I’m Julianne Perry. I’m here with Direct Action Everywhere.

WAYNE HSIUNG: Sir, sir, sir.

UNIDENTIFIED: Back, back, back.

WAYNE HSIUNG: Sir, sir, sir.

JULIANNE PERRY: Out of the way! Out of the way!

WAYNE HSIUNG: Sir, we do have the right. [inaudible]

UNIDENTIFIED: Guys, can we move you all off the concrete? Off the concrete. The authorities have been called.

WAYNE HSIUNG: We do have a right. Do you want me to show you the statute?

UNIDENTIFIED: It doesn’t matter. I’d like to have the authorities here when we discuss it.

WAYNE HSIUNG: We’re going to have [inaudible], OK?

UNIDENTIFIED: You can come and talk to me, but you can’t overwhelm me with [inaudible].

WAYNE HSIUNG: You don’t think this animal is suffering? Animals collapsed in [inaudible].

UNIDENTIFIED: I have no idea where you got this picture.

WAYNE HSIUNG: This was taken from this barn. There’s a GPS tag on the photo.

UNIDENTIFIED: OK, so, tell you what. Would a person allow you to come in and show me?

WAYNE HSIUNG: [inaudible] statute: “Any person who impounds or causes to be impounded in any pound, any domestic animal”—

UNIDENTIFIED: I mean no disrespect to you, but, guys—

WAYNE HSIUNG: —”shall supply during such confinement” [inaudible]—

JULIANNE PERRY: We have activists putting on biosecurity gear, activists behind them holding flowers. There are hundreds of activists here today demanding to know what happens inside of corporate farms, what happens to chickens who are held in these farms. When you buy cage-free organic eggs—

UNIDENTIFIED: Get outta here! Get outta here!

WAYNE HSIUNG: We have a right under this California…

UNIDENTIFIED: You don’t have a right of anything!

WAYNE HSIUNG: We do. Do you want to read the statute [inaudible]?

UNIDENTIFIED: You do not have a right.

WAYNE HSIUNG: Well, we took pictures that showed the animals…

UNIDENTIFIED: I don’t give a [bleep] what you took.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Activists say they removed 37 chickens and took them to get veterinary care. Police arrested 39 people for trespassing. So, Wayne, can you talk about what happened then, in 2018?

WAYNE HSIUNG: In 2018, there were two mass demonstrations outside of poultry facilities, including the largest organic suppliers of chickens and eggs to companies like Costco, Whole Foods and Amazon. And these activists were working under a legal authority called 597e. There’s a Good Samaritan statute in California that historically has been mostly applied to dogs and cats. It gives you the right to enter a facility where you have evidence that animals are being denied food and water, and just give them some care and aid. And activists set up a medical care tent. They had veterinarians inspect the footage we had to show that animals were in fact being denied access to food and water, and attempted to give these animals aid peacefully.

But, in response, we had farmworkers and authorities threatening to run us over with trucks, hurling homophobic slurs at us. It got so bad that, in one case, a young woman was endangered and felt like her life was being threatened. We had multiple activists in fear of their lives at these demonstrations. Yet, when the police were called, the police instead arrested the activists, instead of the folks who were threatening to kill them. And this is coming from the discovery in the cases. When these people—when the farmers were talking to police, they were saying to the police directly, “I’m going to kill these people.” Yet, instead of trying to do something about the violence against animals and, frankly, the violence against activists that’s happening in these demonstrations, the police, who receive and are working really in cahoots with the industry, are doing nothing about that, instead putting the activists in prison.

AMY GOODMAN: Priya Sawhney, we are watching you at that action. You were also at the one on Monday, though you weren’t arrested. But you were there confronting the authorities in 2018, as well, one of the co-founders of Direct Action Everywhere. Explain why these chickens mattered so much to you. You also then got arrested—is that right?—and face felony count, years in prison?

PRIYA SAWHNEY: Yes, I am facing—I’m facing up to a decade in prison and seven felony charges. I was one of the 58 activists who was arrested in September, in the same county, at the—for documenting criminal animal cruelty at the largest organic poultry producer in the nation.

And yeah, for me and for so many Americans and, frankly, citizens of the world, people love animals. And we know this to be true, because most people have dogs at home, and they’ll do—they treat their dogs like children. And when we show people what’s happening to these chickens inside of farms, to pigs inside of farms, people are mortified. And the reason for this is because people don’t want to see animals being hurt. And, you know, growing up as a child in India, I saw a lot of stray dogs, a lot of stray animals. And I always knew that these animals are helpless, and we need to help them and do whatever we can. So I’ve carried that into my work as an investigator for DxE.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, Priya, could you explain—I mean, you face felony charges. This might be surprising to some, because it’s not clear at all what law they’re saying that you’ve broken by participating in these protests.

PRIYA SAWHNEY: Yeah. And when I was arrested in September for being at this facility, I was actually just documenting what’s happening. So I was behind the camera, watching and filming my friends and just making sure that someone is present and showing the world what’s happening. So, I was behind the camera, and I don’t know what I did wrong. And, you know, quite frankly, I don’t know what my friends did wrong, because they were just helping animals. And we were present with a letter from a legal professor stating that we had the legal right to be there, because we know from whistleblower footage that California law is being violated.

And I know Wayne mentioned this, but despite showing this to officials—and we showed these letters to officials back in September; we also did the same on Monday—we were repeatedly refused any conversations about this. And what we see is that instead of helping activists and helping the animals, the police turned their backs on both the animals who need help, both the activists who need help, and continue to arrest people for documenting animal cruelty and for helping animals.

AMY GOODMAN: In 2017, Direct Action Everywhere went to Smithfield’s Circle Four Farms in Utah, one of the worlds largest pig farms, to expose conditions at the facility. Investigators report finding piglets feeding on their own mother’s blood, pregnant pigs held in gestational crates too small for them to turn around in, and sick and feverish piglets left to die of starvation or be trampled. This is Wayne Hsiung at Smithfield’s Circle Farms.

WAYNE HSIUNG: So, we’ve got a little baby here who’s literally starving to death, because her mom’s nipples are so torn up, she can’t feed on milk. So, she’s about half the size of the piglets. And like the one-third of the piglets who are born into farms like this, she’s going to die. She’ll probably starve to death. Her face is covered in blood, and we’ve got to take her out. So that’s what we’re going to do.

AMY GOODMAN: Utah officials filed felony burglary and rioting charges against Wayne Hsiung and four other members of DxE, Direct Action Everywhere, accusing them of removing a pair of piglets, named Lucy and Ethel. The activists could face 60 years in prison. You go to trial for this in November, Wayne. We just have a minute to go, but if you can talk about the significance of Smithfield, who it’s owned by, and what you did with these piglets and why they mattered so much to you?

WAYNE HSIUNG: Smithfield Foods is the largest pork production company in the world. And in the single largest acquisition of a U.S. company in Chinese history, the Chinese government financed a deal to buy out the company. And this is a company that has systematically abused the rights of workers. They have caused environmental devastation in communities of color in North Carolina and Utah. They’ve even been caught up in human trafficking scandals in Utah. And obviously, they’re engaged in brutal abuse of millions of animals every year.

And what has happened over the past 10 years is, more and more exposure has occurred of the industry. More and more citizens and consumers are upset and furious about the violence against animals and human beings they’re seeing in factory farms. And so corporations are being forced to change.

But too often what happens, instead of real change, is they put up the appearance of change. So, Smithfield changed its motto to “Good food. Responsibly [raised].” They claimed they stopped using gestation crates. In 2017, we went into their single largest facility, Circle Four Farms in Utah, and found that they were continuing to use gestation crates, despite the fact that they had told the public they had stopped using that. But instead of trying to address the corporate fraud, the systematic cruelty at the farm, the Utah government brought prosecutions against six activists, including a retired woman named Diane Gandee Sorbi, who has no criminal record, spends most of her life and most of her time taking care of abused animals—

AMY GOODMAN: We have 10 seconds.

WAYNE HSIUNG: —in sanctuaries and shelters. And we’re seeing this happening across the country right now.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to do Part 2 of this discussion to find out more about these actions, with Wayne Hsiung and Priya Sawhney, co-founders of Direct Action Everywhere. Go to democracynow.org for details.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, we continue our conversation about the violence faced by transgender women by looking at the spate of killings of black trans women in the United States. The body of 26-year-old Chynal Lindsey was recovered Saturday from a lake in Northeast Dallas. Police said they are investigating her death as a homicide. She is the third transgender black woman killed in Dallas since October, including the high-profile death of Muhlaysia Booker just two weeks ago. Another Dallas trans woman was stabbed multiple times in April but survived. The city’s police chief, U. Reneé Hall, addressed the spate of violence in a news conference Monday.

POLICE CHIEF U. RENEÉ HALL: The Dallas Police Department has reached out to the FBI, because, as we know, this is the second individual who is transgender who is deceased in our community, and we are concerned. We are actively and aggressively investigating this case, and we have reached out to our federal partners to assist us in these efforts.

AMY GOODMAN: The Dallas police chief. Trans rights activists say the violence in Dallas is indicative of the larger threat to black transgender women. At least eight black trans women have been murdered in the United States this year. According to the Human Rights Campaign, at least 26 transgender murders were recorded last year, although it’s likely the actual number is much higher. The majority of those were black transgender women.

For more, we’re joined by Ashlee Marie Preston, a media personality, civil rights activist. She made history as the first transgender editor-in-chief of a national publication—Wear Your Voice magazine—as well as the first openly trans person to run for state office in California.

Welcome to Democracy Now! Thank you for joining us from Los Angeles. Ashlee, can you talk about this latest death in Dallas? Can you talk about what happened to Chynal?

ASHLEE MARIE PRESTON: I think what we’re seeing is an ongoing trend of a lack of access for black trans women. I think there’s a larger conversation that should be had around our experiences at the intersections of race, gender and socioeconomic disparity. What often happens is that black trans women have difficult times attaining employment, housing, legal aid, healthcare, social support and anything that would set us up to thrive. And so, we’re left to defend ourselves on the margins of society. And from what it appears, in Dallas, she’s just another who had to deal with that disparity by herself.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I want to ask about Muhlaysia Booker, a 23-year-old black transgender woman who was fatally shot in Dallas last month. The month before she was killed, a cellphone video of a crowd physically attacking Booker as she lay on the ground made headlines. Police say men in the video were shouting homophobic slurs at Booker, who eventually got away with the help of a group of women. Authorities say there’s nothing connecting the perpetrator of last month’s attack, Edward Thomas, to her shooting as of now. I’m wondering your thoughts.

ASHLEE MARIE PRESTON: That is correct. I think, going back to it, this is a systemic issue. I think oftentimes law enforcement address it as if it is a isolated incident, but the issue, it really is a lack of support and safety for black trans women.

I can only speak from a first-person perspective. When I came from Kentucky at 19 years old, I got a job. I transitioned on the job. And I was fired because I was being harassed, and I ended up becoming homeless. I was on the streets of Hollywood. I had to engage in survival sex work, and I ended up using methamphetamine as a social lubricant to be able to navigate everything that I had to do in the name of survival.

What I noticed when I was on the streets of Hollywood is that whenever there would be deaths of a black trans women and we saw the uptick of violence, law enforcement, as a means of helping us, would actually target us, and we would be profiled. And we faced more violence while incarcerated, for those of us who that’s a part of their story. So, the issue is that our law enforcement are looking at black trans women as women who are breaking the law, instead of looking at the laws that are breaking black trans women.

And so, I think it’s an opportunity for our federal, state and local officials to be more intentional about implementing policies that are going to serve black trans women. When you’re looking at resources, if you’re trying to attain employment, that’s not going to help you if you have a hard time gaining access to housing. If you’re trying to gain access to housing, that does nothing for you if you’re experiencing intimate partner violence. And so, what we need are programs that are prepared to address dual disenfranchisement at the same time.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Ashlee, you started a campaign called Thrive Over 35. Could you talk about what that is?

ASHLEE MARIE PRESTON: So, Thrive Over 35 is an opportunity for us to reimagine our lives as black trans women outside of a casket or a jail cell. I feel that what happens often when we’re talking about the deaths of black trans women, we’re caught up in this trauma porn around how we die and at whose hands we die at. But it’s an opportunity for us to take a look and examine the barriers that place us in front of the barrel of the gun.

So, in Thrive Over 35, I talk about the lack of access to employment, the lack of access to education, the lack of access to healthcare, the lack of access to legal aid. I talk about the fact that even in communities that have larger movements in play, like for women, when we’re not seen as women, we don’t have access to those movements. In the African-American community sometimes, LGBTQ issues are seen as secondary issues, so we don’t have the protection there oftentimes. When we’re looking at the LGBTQIA umbrella, there are individuals who use their sexuality as a shield to absolve them of the responsibility of dismantling sexist, racist and transphobic policies and systems.

And so, Thrive Over 35 is an opportunity for black trans women and brown trans women to show up for ourselves and to be a beacon and hope of light for one another. And it’s also an opportunity to engage our would-be allies to figure out how they can do the work to help liberate us.

AMY GOODMAN: Ashlee, last month, the Trump administration announced a change in HUD policy that would allow homeless shelters and other facilities that receive federal housing money to deny access to transgender people. The rule also lets programs house transgender individuals alongside others of their birth sex, refusing to let them share facilities with people of the same gender identity. If you can comment on this, and then what you feel is most important needs to happen to protect the trans community?

ASHLEE MARIE PRESTON: I think when we’re looking at human rights, we have to realize that trans people are seen as less than human. And that really broke my heart when I heard the story about HUD and the Trump administration, because that was what happened to me when I became homeless, as I mentioned, at 19 years old. Women’s shelters wouldn’t accept me because of my assigned gender at birth. And I was so desperate, I was willing to be housed with men. Like, I was that far down in the gutter. And men’s shelters turned me away because I obviously read female.

And so, I think what it really is going to require from our government and our state and local officials is an intentionality to show up for us. Don’t just give us the scraps that fall from the table of some of these other programs, but really be intentional about showing up for black trans women. There’s an opportunity for us to create a task force, actually. I know, in California, there’s a task force that addresses homelessness, and it looks at the different barriers to access that homeless people have. We need to do that on the federal level for black trans women.

And it’s one of the main reasons why I endorsed presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren, is because she’s one of the few candidates who are actually breaking down all of those needs and tackling them head on. We don’t need more officials in office who are going to be intellectually lazy. We need officials who are going to do the work, lean more into the nuance instead of the noise, and are going to ask the community directly impacted what it is that we need to stay alive, to grow strong and to thrive.

AMY GOODMAN: Ashlee Marie Preston, we want to thank you very much for being with us, civil rights activist—

ASHLEE MARIE PRESTON: Thank you for having me.

AMY GOODMAN: —media personality, made history as the first transgender editor-in-chief of a national publication—Wear Your Voice magazine—as well as the first openly trans person to run for state office in California. Thanks so much for being with us.

That does it for our show. Our condolences to our Democracy Now! colleague Jon Randolph on the death of his father, Robert Randolph.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We turn now to look at the Trump administration’s deadly treatment of transgender asylum seekers in immigration prisons, after a transgender woman died after being released from ICE custody Saturday. Johana Medina, a 25-year-old transgender asylum seeker from El Salvador, died at an El Paso, Texas, hospital this weekend after spending seven weeks in immigration jail, according to several LGBT groups and advocates who knew her. Medina had sought medical treatment for nearly two months for complications related to HIV/AIDS before finally being transferred to the hospital last week. She died four days later.

AMY GOODMAN: Johana Medina is believed to be the second transgender migrant to die in or after being released from ICE custody since Trump became president. The other is Roxsana Hernández Rodriguez, a 33-year-old Honduran transgender woman who died while in ICE custody in May of last year. An autopsy revealed she was physically assaulted prior to her death.

For more, we’re going to Phoenix, Arizona, where we’re joined by Isa Noyola. She’s deputy director at Mijente, the former deputy director at the Transgender Law Center and a transgender and immigrant rights activist herself.

We welcome you to Democracy Now!, Isa. Can you describe what you understand were the circumstances of her death?

ISA NOYOLA: The circumstances of Johana are the same circumstances that so many trans women inside immigration detention centers are facing, which is cruel and inhumane treatment and human torture. And so, we understand that Immigration and Customs Enforcement has seen trans women, immigrant trans women, as disposable, you know, from—we see it through the ways that they’re placing trans women through administrative segregation and also denying them medical care and medical treatment.

And Johana is just another example, another extreme story of so much loss and of so much pain that someone has endured, even after the long and arduous journey of arriving to the border. And so, Johana left her hometown with so much hope, of El Salvador, her country, and she had so much hope for a better life, to live her life fully, authentically as a trans Latina immigrant woman, and only to be met with violence at the border and discrimination, and even more violence inside detention facility.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I’m wondering if you could talk of your experience with refugees who are coming, who are trying to get into the United States. The one group in Honduras, Cattrachas, which is a lesbian feminist organization, has estimated that between 2013 and 2017, they found 34 cases of lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans people who had been deported back to Honduras and then were later killed. And what the situation is for trans folks, especially in Honduras and Central America, right now?

ISA NOYOLA: The climate for trans people globally is alarming. The level of violence has always existed. It is now recently being studied, researched and documented by the media. But being in the trans community and doing this work for so many years, doing local immigrant rights work for trans people in San Francisco at El/La Para TransLatinas, we always understood that the violence surrounds our daily lives, violence surrounds the community, and that—one of the main push factors and reasons why trans people migrate, why trans people globally are seeking refuge, are seeking safety, are seeking a better place to live their lives and to have a chance, have a possibility of, you know, what everyone else has, what everyone else is living in terms of their dreams, in terms of their having access to healthcare, having access to housing, having access to education, having access to community, right? And so, detention and immigration have been—Immigration and Customs Enforcement have been hell-bent on denying basic human rights to our community.

And so, the phenomena of violence and murder is not a new thing. There’s no uptick. It has always existed. Now there’s an acknowledgement of it. But the realities that Central American trans people, queer, LGBT+ folks have faced in their countries are the same that are experiencing in Mexico, in Asia, in all over—all over the continent of Africa. And so, we understand that the violence is one of the main factors of why trans people are marginalized, why trans people are placed in vulnerable situations where they have very limited choices. And so, when you understand that there’s a systemic issue involved when you get to the border—right?—and then you’re returned back, you know, people are still going to find possibilities to exist and to live.

AMY GOODMAN: A report released last month by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists revealed that, since 2012, ICE has used solitary confinement as a routine punishment for thousands of immigrants and asylum seekers locked up in immigration jails across the country.

ISA NOYOLA: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: Immigration officers repeatedly used isolation cells to punish gay, transgender and disabled immigrants for their identities. This is a clip from an NBC interview with two trans women who were held in isolation while in ICE custody. In this clip, we hear from Dulce Rivera, a trans woman from Honduras who was kept in solitary for 11 months while in ICE custody and attempted suicide. But first, Joselin Mendez, a trans woman from Nicaragua who was put in solitary twice for a total of nine days.

JOSELIN MENDEZ: [translated] And, well, the truth is, what I went through in there is something I don’t even wish on my worst enemy. It’s horrible. I felt like I really didn’t know what was going to happen to me. I felt afraid. I felt that I couldn’t even breathe. And at the beginning, I began to scream and scream where they locked me up. I told them, “Release me. I can’t stand it. I am short of breath.”

DULCE RIVERA: [translated] I asked them for help. I told them, “I need to see a psychologist. I need to see a psychologist.” And what happened is that the guard’s response was “no.” So then I decided to tie a piece of blanket to the window above, and I completely covered the door outside so that no one was seeing what was happening inside the room. I made a lasso. I hung myself. So it’s something psychological, mental, that it affected me being in that place. So disgusting and horrible.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s Dulce Rivera and, before that, Joselin Mendez, describing their experience in solitary. Isa, as we wrap up, I wanted to ask you about Johana’s death. She was held in an all-male detention facility? And if you could describe these facilities that you’ve entered and seen, and what you’re calling for?

ISA NOYOLA: I also—I want to clear something up also. I just want to be very, very clear that Immigration and Customs Enforcement is responsible for the death of not just Johana Medina and Roxsana Hernández, but also Victoria Arellano in 2007, who was handcuffed to her bed, pleading for her life, and was an HIV-positive trans woman. So, ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, has to be held accountable for the deaths of these trans women and all the deaths that happen inside detention facilities, and customs/Border Patrol has to be held accountable for the deaths that are occurring at the border.

Johana, you know, her experience that she had at the Otero facility is one that exists—the experience that exists in all of the 200-plus facilities that exist around the country. And that is one of human rights violations and denial of access to medical treatment and to basic human dignity. The ways that trans women are classified by Immigration and Customs Enforcement is based on genitalia, is based on a classification that does not align with our community, that is dehumanizing us from the very beginning. And Immigration and Customs Enforcement does not make any excuses about that. They are very clear and adamant that trans people inside detention are not human beings. And they’ve demonstrated that time and time again. And Johana, her experience is one of many of trans people who have been placed in—whether it’s administrative segregation or whether it’s with other, in the male housing units—right?—where sexual assault is experienced, and one of the highest levels for trans people inside detention.

AMY GOODMAN: Isa Noyola, I want to thank you for being with us, deputy director at Mijente, the former deputy director at Transgender Law Center, transgender and immigrant rights activist, speaking to us from Phoenix, Arizona.