The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Marc Steiner:

Welcome to the Marc Steiner Show here on The Real News. I’m Marc Steiner. It’s good to have you all with us. Now, as I was coming into the studio to tape this conversation with two Latina activists here in our community, people who live in Baltimore, my wife called me and said that ICE was all over a neighborhood called Canton, which is on the east side of Baltimore. And we’re rounding people up, arresting people on the street, stopping everybody, which shows you the level of danger and harassment that’s taking place in our city and our society as a whole. People who are in the Latino communities in this country are terrified. And lemme just say before we start that when I was a little boy, I spent a lot of time with my grandparents who were Jewish and from Poland. They had a hard time coming to America back in 1905, but all that meant is they stopped at the Port of Baltimore.

They were given a health check. The door opened, even though people hated them, the door opened. And now with Latinos coming from all Latin America, the issue of race and racism and our exploitation come all to a disgusting hit right here in this country. Today we talk with two women who are from that community, who are active in the defense of their community, who fled to this country from authoritarian brutality and oppression, live a life of freedom or so they thought, given that we are witnessing the neofascist takeover of our country, I won’t use our names today. It’s good to have you both here.

Guest 2:

Thank you. Thank you so much.

Marc Steiner:

I mean, the fact that you have to sit here in this studio and be anonymous, but you also consider yourself an American. Talk about that contradiction for a second. What you feel, what happens to you and other people like you in the community.

Guest 1:

Yeah. First I wanted to say thank you for your introduction. It was great. It was really great. That’s the way that it should be. That’s the way that we should feel when we come here to this country. I would like to say that it is very, very sad. It’s so sad to be anonymous or not to say whatever you want to say because if you do something wrong or you say something that you think it is the correct thing to do, somebody is going to say, oh, you know what? Against. Or she doesn’t want to follow the rules. That’s not true. We really love this country. We really want to be here. We really want to work. We do work.

Marc Steiner:

You do work,

Guest 1:

We do work. And it is hard, but this is the way that it has to be right now. We want to help. We want to do a lot of things, but sometimes you cannot do it in front of everyone. You just do it behind or just that’s how it is right now.

Guest 2:

And so we’re not also just here taking, a lot of us are here, and I say us as a generalization, we are here and we help society, we contribute, we volunteer. But it is a sad state of affairs that we have to do a lot of it now in hiding. But we’re here and we’re not going to go away. Our children are born here. Our children will stay here. They will have other children and we just, there’s just nowhere else for us to go. Many of us have come because not because we wanted to was out of necessity. We stayed in our countries, we would have been killed, our families would have been killed. So there’s also no jobs. People are dying of hunger and they need to find, they want to work and they just want to be able to earn a living. And usually there is work for them in the fields and they’re willing to do that. They put their children to work in the fields, sometimes earning less than minimum wage, but they will still do it because even in those grueling conditions, they’re still better off than what it would be where they’re coming from. So some people walk here days, some people get raped. Why would people go through all of that? Just because they want to come and take it. It’s because they’re really, really afraid of the situation. Where do they come from?

Marc Steiner:

I want to explore that more. I mean, you two came in studio here with us today. I remember years back when I was on the radio, I had a couple of whom were not documented as they say. And I got something in my ear saying the police were at the door and I shut down the mic. I got those people out the back door into my trunk and drove off. That’s the kind of world we live in. I felt like I was in. What happens when I see what happens to us today that I’m in Nazi Germany. As I said, when we started this program, my wife called from saying that ice was in Canton, just harassing people, locking people up, dragging people away. As we began this conversation

Guest 2:

And we were also getting the same notices and we were also sharing with the people that we know because we needed to protect them. And at the same time, people that when we hear something like that is happening, we share with the people that we know and we say, memorize our phone numbers. Call us if something happens. There might not be too much that we can do, but at least we know to look them. And then we try to give them instructions. Don’t sign anything, don’t speak. There’s not much for us to do other than just say, memorize our numbers, call us or memorize somebody’s number,

Marc Steiner:

Memorize our numbers.

Guest 2:

Why we can say, and then from there we will try and think about the next step. But we’re preparing people for the next step.

Guest 1:

And she’s correct because people are being raped. Some people, they don’t even know where is her husband or son. So it is very important to someone to be there. At least take a picture who is being taken so at least they know where they are. Can you imagine that they don’t know where their family is? That’s too sad. That’s very sad.

Marc Steiner:

I mean, it’s hard to imagine that in this country we call a democracy that this is actually happening. That the two of you and people in your community and your families have to live in this daily fear.

Guest 2:

Yes. And it’s a reality. A young lady, they deported her father. She’s a senior in high school. There’s nobody else for her right now for her father. They took him to another state, he cannot see him. So what can we do? We come in and figure out how to help the young lady that’s still here. But can you imagine? And young children, again, they pick up their parents and they don’t have a parent to go home to. Nobody thinks about that.

Guest 1:

Right. And then at the beginning you asked me, why don’t say your name? I don’t want to say my name because where I work, we help the immigrants. We do. And the government is taking that money, but I’m like, they are taking the money. It’s money from the immigrants that they work and they pay the taxes. That is something that the Americans, they don’t know that people, if they have a legal status or not, they pay taxes. Why they taking, taking the money from all the organization that they are working for the immigrants. Why? That’s one of the reasons when we cannot say the name because then they’re going to take everything.

Marc Steiner:

And what you’re describing here is, I think it’s people listening to understand is that the federal government under this government is taking money out of organizations who are helping immigrants in this country.

Guest 2:

Not only we helping immigrants, organizations that are oversights to make sure that other agencies are following the law. So they’re taking funding from oversights committees, agencies and things like that. And then going back to the taxes, people pay into the social security Medicare and it’s money that they will never see because they don’t have a status where they will be able to claim social security and all of that. But all of that money is going into the social security

Marc Steiner:

In their name and they can’t use it.

Guest 2:

They will not be able to claim it. So that money is being used right now to help those that are in receiving social security. That money is going towards that is millions of dollars. And if you’re taking all these people, not the ability for them to work and then that they’re putting in the money into social security, that’s also something that that’s going to be a deficit. And people don’t think about that. People think, oh, they’re taking us, they’re taking our taxes. No, they don’t qualify for anything. They don’t qualify for.

Marc Steiner:

What do you mean by that?

Guest 2:

So people think that if you are undocumented, you can still go apply for food stamps and medical assistance. You cannot qualify for that. You don’t get any of that at all. You cannot apply for, even though you were working and you were paying into the system, if you get fired, you don’t qualify for unemployment insurance. And even somebody that has a green card that is here with a legal status, they have to be here for five years before they can even qualify for food stamps or public benefits.

Marc Steiner:

So

Just to take me, take one piece here, what you just said. So what happens if someone in your family, one of you, it’s sick, what do you do?

Guest 2:

You keep on going, you keep on going, keep on going and until you’re dying. And then you end up going to the emergency room. And then so this for the system is where you could have gone to preventive visits. You end up going to where you are. It’s a life or death situation. I know of a young lady, she needed a feeding tube. The mom ran out of the food, the liquid food, she was watering it down. The young lady was malnutrition. She was doing so bad. She ended up having to go to the hospital to the emergency room. And only because I told her, go to the emergency room and she would’ve died had she not taken her to the emergency room. But again, if she would’ve had, because she needed a prescription, the mom was willing to pay for the food, but she needed a prescription for the food and she couldn’t go to a doctor to write up a prescription. So people die.

Marc Steiner:

Yeah, people die.

Guest 1:

Yeah. I’m going to give you two examples. I have one example that one kid, he came here when he was five years old with his mom. And the mother never took him to the doctor because she was told that if she takes her son to the doctor, the police will be there. Most of the people that they come here, they don’t go to the hospital because they think that over there, there is police or immigration that they will take them. And I’m not talking about right now, I’m talking about years ago. So she never took his kid and he lost his urine because she never took his kid. Another example that I can give you, and this is general

People immigrant, that they don’t have a little status, legal status. They will never go to the hospital until they die. Why? Because first they are afraid. Second, they know that they not apply for, they’re not going to be able to be attended. That’s what they think. And then the third thing is that they were working years and years and years that when they go to the hospital, it’s too late. So what’s going to happen? The community is going to help this family to take back the body. Can you imagine 30, 40 years working here and they never go to the doctor? Never. Never

Marc Steiner:

Out of fear.

Guest 1:

Yeah.

Marc Steiner:

When we were talking before we went in here, you were both talking about the overarching sense of fear that’s taking place inside the Latino communities

In Baltimore and what it’s like to live through that every day.

Guest 2:

Yes. It’s traumatic. So people are really afraid of what, even if they have children that are born here, me, myself included, where you have to talk to your children and you have to prepare them what to do if they are detained. And if you don’t look Latino, do you tell your child carry around your passport or your birth certificate in case that you are getting detained and now it’s worse and worse because you’re hearing that actual, you would think that having your passport or your id, that’s a real ID would be enough. But you’re hearing that US citizens are being detained only because they look

Latino. Because they are Latino. They are Latino. I can be stopped just because of my accent. Then that gives them probable cause to think that I am undocumented. So what do I carry that is going to be now with me, I am in their system. They have my fingerprints, and if they run my fingerprints, I will show up. My children are not in the system. They don’t have their fingerprint. They never been fingerprinted. And if for some reason, let’s say they were out with their friends and they didn’t have any idea, my children disappear. I don’t know. I will not know where to find them because they were taken. How would I know? Because they just grabbed them and take them and they’re not allowed to. So what do you do? There’s a registry that you can look them up, but they don’t show up right away. It takes a couple of days. So that’s one fear. The other fear is people are not going out. We’re going back to the pandemic time where people are scared to think about it. When you were afraid to go out, but instead of getting afraid of getting sick, you’re afraid of being caught. People cannot go to work, but at the same time they cannot go get food. So it’s really scary.

Guest 1:

Another thing that we can think about, it’s like if we are going to talk about mental health, okay, could you imagine if you are living in a country that you don’t have opportunities, that you don’t have rights. They come here, you have no idea. Everything that they have to go through months, years, they got stuck in Mexico, they have to live there for one or two years waiting. Come here. Then they come here and they say, this is the American dream, which I believe we can still say in that I pray God that it’s going to continue. So they got here and then somebody told them, yes, you are welcome, but then you are not, you’re going back. If we talk about mental health, could you imagine how these kids, they already went through a lot of things and then they got here and now they’re saying you’re going back because you are a criminal. I don’t understand that. I don’t understand that. I know that they don’t have to love us, but they have to have some kind of empathy with the people. That’s more dangerous than even if somebody doesn’t have food to eat, that’s okay. You can be like that one to three days. But talking about mental health, they are putting in dangers. The community, they are doing something very, very bad.

Marc Steiner:

So can we talk a bit here before we conclude just about in part how you fight back against this, what you see going on in terms of the fight back, there was just a huge demonstration. We can talk about that. That took place and I spoke well, what is it, I mean, among inside the Latino community and also the larger community that unites with the Latino community, how to begin the resistance to stop what’s going on? What do you see and how do you see that happening?

Guest 2:

So I personally, well, I’m not quite there on the organizing, the resistance and all that.

My own personal knowledge and how I work is sharing information because I think that part of anxiety is not knowing and not having control. So I think sharing information of what is understanding your rights, and I understand that right now people feel like that we don’t have no rights, but we do. We just have to make sure that people know that to follow the script basically. And if they hang in there, then they will eventually be able to find a resolution. So sharing information by either attending or organizing workshops where people can understand. The other thing is helping parents fill out the standby guardianship because in the case, the worst case scenario, then there’s something in place if you get picked up while your kids are in school, who’s going to be that?

Marc Steiner:

Let me stop a second.

Guest 2:

Oh,

Marc Steiner:

Sorry. I want you to jump into this too, but what you just said that you have a family and they have to have a legal document about guardianship for their children because you live in fear that you’re going to be picked up and deported or put in camps and your children will have nobody. Yes. That’s what you’re

Guest 2:

Saying? Yes. And because that’s the reality. Again, what if you get picked up while your child is in school? So that is where I am. Where we are in the helping process is getting ready for the worst case scenario.

Guest 1:

And we have a lot of community organizations, even mema, and I want to highlight that because they are providing those,

Marc Steiner:

Who’s that?

Guest 1:

MIMA, mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs for Baltimore City. They are providing those workshops. San Streets, they are doing that Latino, they are providing that. So there is a lot of organization that they are doing the workshops,

Guest 2:

Latino Providers Network. They also are doing, they provided a training for people to help fill out the standby guardianship, which is, so there’s a tricky part in Maryland because a lot of people think that if they get a power of attorney that will let them do it. But in Maryland you need a standby guardianship. However, people are charging a lot of money to fill this document that the court has made available and it’s free to print and it’s free. It is very easy to fill out, but people don’t understand. So just having that paper ready and the documents and understanding what documents to help, it eases people’s fears a little bit. Again, what we are suffering from is anxiety and having control over the situation helps with anxiety.

Guest 1:

And right now it’s not just like job food, it’s more education. We have to educate the community. What are the steps that they have, they have to do in order to be prepared for whatever is going to happen. That doesn’t mean that all the immigrants, they don’t have a legal status. But yes, even if your children were born here, they can take them because they look Latinos. I mean they are Latinos. So we cannot be just like, this is not going to happen to me. They have to be prepared.

Marc Steiner:

I mean, mental health and keeping your lives in balance is almost impossible with what you face every day as you never know. As we said, we started this program, ICE was all over one neighborhood, rounding up, who knows who and how many people were just taken away in the city. I would like to ask you too, this one question in time that we have, and we can spend more time over the period of days and months talking about more stories that people need to hear. But what drove you here? What were the reason that you left to come to the United States? What happened?

Guest 1:

For me, I would say I came here because I wanted to have a better life,

Marc Steiner:

Which is why most people come here.

Guest 1:

That’s what I want to say. I think everybody came here because we need to have a better life. Everyone has a different situation, but that’s the only reason. I don’t think somebody came here because they want to be criminals here. I don’t think so. But that’s what people,

Marc Steiner:

Yes.

Guest 2:

So I came here in the eighties when in Guatemala there was the Civil War.

Marc Steiner:

Oh yeah, right.

Guest 2:

And my father was a witness of a lot of the things that the army did,

What they consider gorillas. But again, looking back, and as I was saying, at that time, the government had control of the television. So when I was 10, I really did feel like the army was the heroes and the gorillas were the bad people. Come to find out that massive genocides happened in the eighties in Guatemala, and people can look it up, but it was basically, we were really well off in Guatemala. We had two chauffeurs, we had a nanny, we had two people, housekeepers, we were incredibly well off, but none of that was worth my father’s life. And we would stayed, my father would have been killed because even after we came here, our neighbors reported that somebody would park in front of our house for a long time, for at least two, three months. They were basically surveilling our house. So it hasn’t been easy when we came here, it wasn’t easy, but it was worth my father’s life. And I don’t think, and how things were, maybe they would have killed us too.

Marc Steiner:

One of the things that people don’t realize, I think, is that a lot of people from certain countries south of the border, Mexico, through Latin America, bled because of dictatorships that this country sponsored, that the United States sponsored and

Guest 2:

Supported. Yes. And you remember the Iran Contra thing, all of that. It was all

Marc Steiner:

Killing indigenous people in Guatemala and all the rest,

Guest 2:

I mean in Guatemala still up to this day, people have not recovered because even they would work the land. So even though they weren’t wealthy, people could work the land, but then the army came and they would even burn out their crops. So they were dying of hunger. And still to this day, there’s a famine in Guatemala, there’s a hospital that serves I think two or 300 children a day because they’re malnourished when people are used to working the land, but there’s just no land for them because it was all taken away.

Guest 1:

And I think that there is a different stories that you can hear from all the community, but everyone has something that they left behind. And it’s something sad,

Marc Steiner:

Right?

Guest 2:

And people don’t come here just because there’s a reason why they’re here.

Marc Steiner:

There’s a reason why, as I said, going back to my grandparents’ generation,

And my mother was not from this country either, that

People left because they were terrified and there was oppression and they couldn’t survive. So they came here. The place that has a Statue of Liberty, this is not a new story, but what’s happening now I think is one of the worst situations in our history when it comes to immigrants. It’s been bad. 19th century is bad. The Irish were killed, were imprisoned when they came here in the 1840s and fifties. But this is, we’re watching a repression that is on the part of the federal government that is just, it’s almost unfathomable.

Guest 2:

And it also has given permission for people to think that it’s okay to say things or to think things about immigrants in general. And I think it’s, what do you call it, a mob mentality that, oh, and they think because he says it’s bad, we’re all bad. But we do not all fall under one category. There’s so many of us, so many different things.

Marc Steiner:

And I just one last thought from the two of you here. What gives you hope, both politically in terms of your organizing, the movements and where you think the fight is for your rights? How do you see where we are and where do you see it going?

Guest 1:

I think we’re lucky that we live here in Maryland because

Marc Steiner:

In Maryland?

Guest 1:

Yeah.

Marc Steiner:

Yeah,

Guest 1:

Because everybody, if we are talking political, everybody’s supporting us. So that’s for sure.

Marc Steiner:

Right?

Guest 1:

So we don’t have the situation in Texas or in la, but even though we know that they are behind us or they are supporting us, people still living with fear. But I think at least we can breathe like, okay, if we need something, we know that they will help us. That’s the only thing that I can say that. And I can name people that they help us a lot. Like Mayor Sitco, like Mark Parker, like Catalina Rodriguez,

Guest 2:

Joceline Pena,

Guest 1:

Joceline Pena. They are with us and they are doing their best in the best way that they can do it. But there’s a lot of people that helping us,

Guest 2:

Some of the things, again, even when he started running the second time, we’re talking about July before there was a lot of organizations and a lot of

Marc Steiner:

You about Trump.

Guest 2:

Yeah, I cannot pronounce the name. I’m sorry. We don’t say the name. Honestly, I cannot say the name. So a lot of organizations and a lot of, they started to propose laws and that would protect us because we kind of had an idea of what was coming because we had seen it four years or eight years before. So there’s a lot of laws that Maryland and Baltimore City specifically started to make sure that they would pass so that they would be protected when the Office of Civil Rights would go away because it’s basically gone away.

So there’s a lot of, in January, a lot of laws passed that were put in place to protect us to the extent that they could and to the extent that the budget could afford to do it. So I think some states, again, people can find and figure out those politicians that are not beneficial and that are willing to work with the other side and that are willing to, even if they’re, so we need to put those people in place that they will start working because it might not be able to happen in the federal level. But there’s a lot of things that people or states can do at the local level, even not even states, cities, that they can do it at the local level to protect people in general. Let’s not even think about immigrants because let’s think about all the other things that are happening. Medicaid is being taken away. The Department of Education is being dismantled. So we have to realize that he’s making a lot of noise with the immigrants. But a lot of things are happening that people are not realizing that is happening. And I am aware of a lot of things that are happening that are affecting a lot of other people, and we are just paying a lot of attention with immigrants. But there’s so many other things or so many other people being affected.

Guest 1:

Even with our clients, they are Americans and they are about to lose benefits. So this is not just for the immigrants, this is for everyone. And people, they don’t realize that this is going to affect everyone.

Marc Steiner:

I think it’s important that these final messages, you both are giving of unity in this country and how it’s about all of us,

Yes,

To fight for a different world and a better world. And I will say that we will list a bunch of organizations on our page, people who can identify who to go to and where they can get involved. And I want to thank both of you both for being in the studio today, but also for being brave enough to stand up and speak despite what could happen. So we’ll use no names. I want to thank you both of your work. You do. And thank you so much for being in the studio today, and we will stand with you always.

Guest 2:

Thank you so much.

Guest 1:

Thank you. And I just want to say my last message is for everyone that is listening this is that please just think that like I said, no, everyone is a criminal. And also people that are here, they are working and now they are professionals. They are contributing a lot of things here in this country. We have kids, wonderful kids that they are doing their best. And another thing that we do, we educate the community. So now communities learning the rules, communities is trying to learn, speak English. So if they don’t know how to recycle, they are learning. This is the big difference that they don’t believe that we really want to learn. So that’s something that they have to know. And right now they are losing money because nobody wants to go any place who is buying now. Nobody.

Marc Steiner:

Thank you both so much.

Guest 1:

Thank you. Thank you so much.

Marc Steiner:

Appreciate you both.

Once again, I want to thank these two women, our guests today for joining us and for their bravery and what they face under the threat of this 21st century Gestapo called ICE. I want to thank producer Rosette Sewali for creating the power of the show behind the scenes. Our audio editor, Stephen Frank, working his audio magic, David Hebden, who run the program and making me sound good and Kayla Rivara for making it all happen behind the scenes. And everyone here through our news for making this show possible. Please let me know what you thought about, what you heard today, what you’d like us to cover. Just write to me at mss@therealnews.com and I’ll get right back to you and we’ll be linking to all the organizations mentioned to you today. You too can help and support the struggle of freedom in America. Once again, thank you to our guests for joining us and for the work they do. So for the crew here at The Real News, I’m Marc Steiner. Be involved. Keep listening and take care.