OTM 3 - "What We Know About the Border"

After listening to On the Media's "What We Know About the Border", there is no question that government agents at the border are diminishing innocent peoples constitutional rights. This broadcast covers in great detail different stories of people who got wrongly accused of being illegal immigrants. These individuals were greatly mistreated by our government agents.

For the people being abused by this awful system it included: intense phone searches, computer searches, agents holding information and not answering any questions detainees had, getting held in ice box rooms, (extremely cold temperatures), getting deprived of basic needs (food and water), getting assaulted in various ways for being apart of the Muslim religion, getting handcuffed for no reason, being held in a cell for no reason, being detained for several hours (in some cases overnight), and sexual assault. Sadly, these are only a few things that were discussed throughout this recording. One man even said, "They make you feel like a foreigner in your own country".

I'm sure that there are more inappropriate misconduct from government agents toward the accused "illegal immigrants" on the United States border.For example, the former producer of OTM, Sarah Obduraton, "Who in the fall of 2013, was headed back to New York from her cousins wedding in Toronto, when she was detained along with a carload of family and friends for six hours without explanation by U.S. border patrol agents in Niagara Falls. Everyone in the car was a U.S. citizen".

After being held and treated as a second class citizen by the government, Sarah decided she was going to look further into what the government is and isn't allowed to do while detaining her (and her friends), in hopes of being able to defend herself if this were to ever happen again. She went to several different sources to find out what her rights were in this type of situation. She had a difficult time finding people to help her understand what was okay and what was not. She had questions such as: what her rights were? If there was a time limit while being detained? If agents have to tell you why you're there and or being held? She then found out government agents can say "we can't disclose that information at this time", and really, there isn't anything anyone can do about it. Pretty messed up system if you ask me.

Something that threw me for a loop was the fact that these government officials could pretty much get away with anything. The report goes on to tell how people have been shot and killed by agents and the agents who allegedly murdered these people are not held responsible for it. "Many agents do not know when or when not to use deadly force." This is not only scary, but also outrageous and wrong. It is completely unconstitutional and quite frightening that they have the ability to get away with such crimes. I feel the government around the border has a very corrupt system. 

In one extreme case that was shared, they made an individual strip down and get searched throughout her private parts for drugs. There was no clear reason for this search. The woman had agents and doctors inspect her private parts with their hands, flashlights as well as inserting things into her. This poor woman had no warnings of what these men were doing to her and very low privacy (quite a few men watched as the other agents sexually assaulted her). They found nothing. This was extremely horrific and violating to the woman. After the men finished their search, they told her if she did not sign a consent form, she would be billed from the "doctors" inspections, but if she did sign it then they would not bill her for the inspection. She did not sign the document and the government ended up billing this woman $6,000. She filed a lawsuit and won, getting a settlement around $475,000.

While listening to this recording, I was taken back at how many different accounts of corruption take place around the borders. I think our current president, President Trump has made this type of behavior more and more okay as well. Illegal immigration has been one of Trump's main issues that he wants to fix, but I do not think he is going about it in the correct way. In fact, I think that he is reinforcing this type of negative behavior towards potential illegal immigrants. Because Trump has talked about immigration so much, it has become a popular topic in the United States. The sad thing is, I don't think I would have known how much corruption was taking place at the borders if it was not for Trump talking about the borders because it brought so much more awareness to this issue. This is good in the sense that now we can see the negative role this plays in America. Now that we know more about what takes place, we have the potential to rise up, and change this discriminatory behavior.

A question we should ask ourselves is, how do we stop the corruption? In all of these stories, no one was given the rights of due process. This goes against our rights as American Citizens. Which is exactly opposite of what we stand for in America. It's not right to question innocent people who are indeed American citizens.