Welcome to the session of the 25th annual texas book festival. My name is Julie Schwietert collazo and im an author and im also the midrater of this panel, border stories, immigration, refuge and justice. And today im honored to be speaking with the writers who know a great deal about these subjects. Before we begin our conversation, i have a few housekeeping items to review. First, wed like to encourage you to leave mints and a chat box and skinned send kudos to our authors. If you have a question for an author pleasic the ask a question button which in crowd cast. The producerred will send me your questions and well get to as many of these questions as we can. One more housekeeping item. This is a bilingual panel. And in addition to serving as your moderator ill be doing double duty as your translator. This will work as follows. I will ask questions in english and then spanish, will translae answers in the same way. Over ore purist the translation will not be word for word. I will take the liberty of condensing and consolidating while aiming to capture the intent and spirit of each speakers words. Now to meet our panelists. Fran cisco can thank you is a writer trains later and the author of the line becomes a river, winner of the 2008 teen Los Angeles Times book prize and a finalist for the National Book critic circle award in nonfiction. He is also a contributor to the anthology here, dear america, letters of hope, habitat, dedefians and democracy. A former pull bright fellow he has been the recipient of a push cart prize, writing award and an art for justice fellowship. His writing translations have been featured in new yorker, best personnel says, hammers and as well as on this american life. A lifelong resident of the southwest he lives in tucson where he coordinates the Field Studies Program in writing at the university of arizona. Sorry, field studies and writing program at the university of arizona. Jessica goudeau is the author of after the last border two families and the story of refuge in america named a New York Times ed doctors choice book. She has around for the New York Times, the atlantic, washington post, Los Angeles Times, teen vogue and many other employses and is a former columnist for catapult. She produced projects projects n vogue and a documentary about a young girl who crossed the border into the u. S. On her own which was distribute by the new yorker. Jessica has a ph. D in literature from the university of texas and served as a melan writing fell explore interim Writing Center director at southwestern university. She has spend more than a dead cake working with refugees in austin, texas, and a part of Rosayra Pablo Cruz is a business owner, mother of father and the coauthor of the book of rosy, the first memoir to be published by a mother separated from her children under the Trump Administrations zero tolerance policy. The book was published simultaneously in june 2020 by harper one in english and Harper Collinses pan ol in spanish and received a star review and named one of people magazines mustread bask summer 2020. And im in the other coauthor of the book in full disclosure. Born and raised in guatemala she migrated to the out in 2013 and currently lives in new york city. Welcome. I would like to start by acknowledging the donkey in the room, not the elephant. The fact that we are looking forward to a new administration in washington, dc and who is counting know i am, 71 days. We will absolutely circle back to this development and what it means in the cob text context in our subject, immigration, refuge and id like to look in the high what we have been living. Let me just jump in. [speaking spanish] [speaking spanish] in your work each of you seem to push back against the current immigration system by doing something that Trump Administration wishes you would not. Making visible and humanizing the experiences of people who come to the United States to seek refuge or asylum. [speaking spanish] francis co cow you have line but a week you spent attending Immigration Court and you write my impression was Assembly Line justice, vatmanry quickly and dispassionately grinding way at the lives of men and women who are forgotten as soon as they were named. All the of you in your work insist upon the importance of understanding immigration through the lens of individual stories, francisco can you talk but this and making what might be a nebulous bureaucrat rick policy that is unfamiliar to many people, real and a more tangible and emotional way. [speaking spanish] thank you, julie and thanks to everybody for showing up and its an honor to be in conversation with these authors. So, yeah, ive been thinking a lot about sort of that question, especially in relation to where we are now at this weird sort of limbo between taking stock of the last four years, taking stock of sort of what led us here and how we might act in the coming four years, and i think yeahen, i think this is actually the maybe the most important time i think one sort of hopeful thing ive taken from the last four years is i think that more eyes have been focused on what is happening on the border perhaps than ever before, ate least in my lifetime. And i think along with that focus has obviously come a lot of horror, especially for maybe the casual viewer who perhaps wasnt living along the border or already paying attention to border issues. So i think like my biggest fear is that we might lose that focus and that sort of like tenacious outrage i think has propelled a lot of awareness about things that frankly are have certainly become worse in the last four years but that really predated this administration and have been ongoing for quite some time. And like my the book i wrote about the time i spent at a Border Patrol agent is written about an experience that happened entirely under the obama administration. So all of the sort of like horrifying things that i catalogue and grapple with having participated in in that book. There are things that happened under the previous administration, when i think a lot of people because of the rhetoric that was coming down from the top, sounded better, sounded friendly and compassionate but a lot of the institutional realities were only slightly less worse than they have been in the last four years, and i think probably a thought that we all share is that its so important to keep the gaze fixated on the space of the border and also all of these spaces like the courtroom that exist far away from the border and grapple with the ways that this border really reaches into all of our backyards. In rosys book in rosy and julies book, even though theres really vivid chapters that describe the Detention Center an hour from where i live in tucson and i encourage people to read and sit with those chapters because those Detention Centers exist in all states, every state in the continental u. S. Theyre forprofit dough tension centers, contracted by i. C. E. And so thats one specific way in which the border just extends into all of our backyards and this machinery is very slow to sort of change and correct and so i think its not going to change from the inside. Thats what i learned from having worked inside that institution. Its only going to change from outside pressure so i think right enough is the most important juncture. Maybe we have a seat at the table to change this stuff but its not going happen unless we sort of maintain i think the same level of visibility and outrage we have had the last four years. Absolutely i he agree with all of that. Ill summarize in spanish if thats okay. [speaking spanish] [speaking spanish] rosy your book was the first memoir written by a parent separate from their child in the Trump Administrations zero tolerance policy. I would love for you to talk about what kind of reaction readers have had to your story. [speaking spanish] [speaking spanish] rosy says sat overall she has had a very positive reaction from readers and a lot of support from people who are willing to learn about what happened to her specifically during her detention at eloi. Although as to be expected theres also criticism and questions, and says that really she wants to underscore what fran fran skis francisco has shared which this transcends a Single Administration and a single election. Its an ongoing project and process that we all need to be involved in. Jessica, after the last border is about two specific families and their journeys. Can you talk about them and your choice to look at a sum of refugees and refugee policy through these specific narratives. Yeah. At first i just want to acknowledge, im so grateful that rosy is here today. Because it really should be that people who have undergone these experiences who are centered no this conversations. For me, the two women whose story i tell had very similar timeline especially the whom who i i tell the story of a woman who came over from myanmar and a whom came over from syria and what the woman endured is not the same as you, has some relevance in that it was happening at the same time we were writing the process, something that was happening its was ongoing and i think too often former refugees have been kind of siloed on the side as if they are deserving pause they have gone through a vetting process, and then there is this whole other conversation that is happening about immigration, including Asylum Seekers and want to have a better life for their families and we act as if theyre separate categories of people. What i really hope we can do moving forward, we need to do a better job of having these conversations not just for one administering but a longterm way. And what im hoping we can do use the stories of people who are willing to speak out. Identity prefer is h the two woman could be here because theyre not able to show their faces and voices. And if think its most important we keep people centered and recognize what is happening across the border is not separate for each category. Theyre all things part of the same process. [speaking spanish] so much of our immigration policy especially in the trump era but also long before it as were discussing has been based on this idea of deterrence oriented policies, and in the Trump Administration, we heard, for example, just but a month ago, in this report that one reason that parents and guardians were separated from their children which is something that we knew long before but it was confirmed, was to act as a deterrent to other parents, right . So, a Border Patrol official wrote on october 28th, 2017, which was the phase during which the zero tolerance policy was being piloted in el paso. This Border Patrol official wrote it is the hope that his separation will act as a deterrent to other parents bringing their children into the harsh circumstances that are present when trying to enter the United States illegally. [speaking spanish] [speaking spanish] [speaking spanish] [speaking spanish] whose roasties saying the i stink to survive is stronger than any deterrent and it impact and although the separation from her sons for 81 days and the traumas they endured have marked them profoundly, that it is difficult to think she would have made a different choice because the will to live was just stronger than anything else. And that she believes its really difficult to explain that decisionmaking process to anyone who hasnt lived it. But just that deterrent policies are not likely to work for that very reason francisco you have unique position as somebody who has is beth an activist, you might describe yourself that way as well as someone who has been on the other sideright, as a cbp agent. So from the perspective of someone who has worked for customs and Border Patrol, how do you evaluate these deterrent policies and have you ever seen a deterrent policy work . I think firsting think its so important to here what rosy said and sit with that. And to connect the dots about what that means because i think what rosy has just told us has been for so long willfully ignored by policymakers. I think its important to look at what it means to ignore evidence like that, not just the voice or the testimony of somebody saying that outload but also to just look at the facts, figures and statistics of how these policies have what they have wrought along the border and beyond. I think like the sort of birth of largescale deterrence policy on the border could maybe be penned to the late 80s and early 90s, with really the building of more walls in border cities and townsen to hiring of more Border Patrol agents, really expanding the Law Enforcement along the border, border enforcement, border militarization, and the thinking behind that big push in the late 80s and 90s was completely rooted in the idea of deterrence, and the idea, i think like this one is a little bit more tied to landscape than the current deterrent policiesed, but the thinking back then was that if you seal off these cities and towns where crossings were happening, that you would push those crossings into sort of the deserts and mountainous rugged terrain where it was hard to crossexamine people would not cross. But when you hear anybody who has been in rosys situation said, theres no version of hell, no obstacle that will stop someone from making that journey, especially when like certain death is on one side of that equation, right . And theres a possibility and a hope especially in a country where we have been selling this vision, this dream, whether or not its true, of what awaits you if you make it; so, with we look at the example of prevention through deterrence we see that very soon after that policy was implemented, deaths along the border started to rise and it was seen and recognize is by policymakers early on. But what we see is that there was no correction. There was no attempt to pilot Something Else or change course, and so what i think that means is that all of the deaths that have occurred along the border since the imenemy addition of this policy, theyre by design, and the policymakers of both parties, like this is bipartisan, it spans every president ial Administration Since the first george bush and bill clinton and the cruelty we realize is the point. And i think that a lot of people have started to realize that cruelty is the point, especially under trump. But i think what is important to realize is that a policy that means cruelty is also a policy that means death. And i think its not just border crossings that are leading to death. If we look at the policy of internment and its important we call immigrant detention internment because that it what it has morphed into. Were detaining different populations, were detaining Asylum Seekers as opposed to shortterm detention of regular crossers who didnt cross as a port of entry for 90 days or whatever. That does permanent damage. I think its important to grapple with that as well. Thank you. Facebook. Com booktvyou. [speaking native language] [speaking native language] [speaking native language] [laughter] [speaking native language] im just going to say quickly before i check in with you jessica for our audience members if anyone would like to drop some questions in the crowd cast using the crowd cast button, producers will give that to us and we will address those in a few minutes. Jessica, i wanted to talk to a little bit about aband what you would say on their behalf in terms of this notion of the terms. And i think my particular experience in areas of expertise are more toward the global self but maybe more from the middle east or other ways in which these policies play out that i personally would not be as familiar with, i would love to hear about those as well. I think the problem for us is that i think it goes back to what frandcisco said about the cruelty being the point. When we start with dehumanizing rhetoric, people realize there is no choices for people who are fleeing their country speed up the two women i write about, their lives were in danger, thats why they fled. I think the current policies are global and i think one of the things people are doing, this is part of why you get refugee camps because the public if they are stuck here they go home and the truth is they dont. People fleeing across the border and end up staying the average weight is 26 years right now in refugee camps around world. This is what we are wanting to keep an eye on is this is not limited to one particular administration. These are global dehumanizing policies that dont recognize that people who are fleeing war or floods or major Climate Change or whatever it is thats going to be causing these major migrations in the future, these are just actually people so i think these stories are incredibly important to show that these are not about policies, these are about people who get caught up in this time period and somehow those of us who live in the United States feel like its acceptable collateral to allow people to be separated from their children just because they are from syria and muslim or just because they are crossing the border into the United States and that seems reckoning is something we need to really focus on the matter where we are talking about the deterrent policies in the world. I think those are really good points. It really underscores as well the individual narratives to help readers and the general public understand the there are no choices available. To summarize in spanish b [speaking native language] [speaking native language] [speaking native language] [speaking native language] we have about 10 or 12 more minutes and i know we do have a couple questions from the audience. Just want to ask one quick question about a new administration, and i am under no illusions that a new administration will solve any problems, although im also optimistic and hold out hope that there will be some