democracynow--2020-05-26--Photojournalist Sebastião Salgado: Brazil’s Reckless COVID Response Threatens Indigenous Survival

This is a rush transcript .
Copy may not be in its final form .
AMY GOODMAN : This is Democracy Now !
, democracynow.org , The Quarantine Report .
I ’ m Amy Goodman in New York City , one of the epicenters of the pandemic , joined by my co-host Juan González from his home in New Brunswick , New Jersey .
New Jersey is the state with the second-highest number of infections .
Hi , Juan .
JUAN GONZÁLEZ : Good morning , Amy .
And good day to all of our listeners and viewers across the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ GOODMAN : Well , we begin today ’ s show with Brazil , where the coronavirus is rapidly spreading , with nearly 400,000 confirmed cases and almost 23,500 deaths , making Brazil ’ s outbreak the second worst in the world , after the United States .
On Monday , Brazil ’ s daily death toll surpassed the U.S. for the first time , with 807 deaths in 24 hours .
President Trump has suspended travel from Brazil to the United States , effective today just before midnight .
Despite this , right-wing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the severity of the virus .
He ’ s called it a “ little flu ” and spoke out against lockdowns imposed by governors and mayors .
Two health ministers have left his Cabinet in recent weeks over disagreements over the handling of the pandemic .
On Sunday , just as Brazil became the number two hot spot for COVID-19 in the world , Bolsonaro greeted anti-lockdown protesters outside the presidential palace .
He wore and then removed a face mask as he mixed with his supporters .
AMY GOODMAN : This comes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Brazil ’ s Indigenous population , who are dying at double the rate of the rest of the population of Brazil , according to advocates .
The Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil says there have been at least 980 confirmed cases and 125 deaths of Indigenous people , indicating a mortality rate of 12.6 % , compared to 6.4 % nationally .
The city of Manaus in Brazil ’ s Amazon region has been hard hit by the virus , with nearly 1,200 deaths .
Last week , the mayor of Manaus @ @ @ @ @ @ @ intentionally allowing Indigenous communities to die of COVID-19 .
AMY GOODMAN : Well , for more , we go to Paris , France , where we ’ re joined by the world-renowned Brazilian photojournalist Sebastião Salgado .
He has also warned that the Indigenous peoples in the Amazon face genocide if the Brazilian government does not take steps to protect them from the coronavirus outbreak .
Earlier this month , Sebastião Salgado wrote an open letter to President Bolsonaro warning that the pandemic represents an extreme threat to their very survival .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Sebastião Salgado has spent almost four decades documenting the Amazon and its people .
And it is an honor to welcome you to Democracy Now !
, Sebastião .
Thank you so much for joining us .
Can you talk about what you see happening in your home country , in Brazil , right now ?
SEBASTIÃO SALGADO : Well , Brazil now is living a very difficult moment .
We have a central power , held by President Bolsonaro , that is not acting in the normal way that every country act @ @ @ @ @ @ @ And we have the governors of the states , the mayors of the big cities , that are taking care , putting people in quarantine .
And Mr. Bolsonaro is working in the opposite way .
And that ’ s creating an amazing destabilization of the country .
I am very concerned with the Indigenous community , mostly in the Amazonia .
I just finished a bond of work where I spent seven years in Amazon .
And these Indians have no immunological protection against the diseases that come out of the forest @ @ @ @ @ @ @ knows this .
And we are not taking care .
We must take care to protect these Indians .
The contrary will be real genocide .
JUAN GONZÁLEZ : And , Sebastião Salgado , you have said in the past that you believe that the virus is a product of the destruction of the planet ’ s environment .
Could you elaborate on that ?
SEBASTIÃO SALGADO : No , ask me again .
What ’ s the question , exactly ?
JUAN GONZÁLEZ : That in the past you have said that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , a product of the destruction of the environment around the planet .
SEBASTIÃO SALGADO : Well , you see , we are destroying every portion of the ecosystem protectors of this planet .
And we are putting the diseases , that will be possible to stay inside the protected environment , out of the environment .
And that ’ s a very difficult moment that we are living .
Probably , what is happening now in all the planet , around the world , will bring us to mind more about the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ planet , to protect what we have , the pristine , and to see how we can rebuild the ecosystem in order that we can live in peace with our planet , is what happens everywhere around the world .
AMY GOODMAN : Let me ask you — I wanted to turn to the chief of Tres Unidos .
It ’ s an Indigenous village in Brazil ’ s Amazon rainforest , that I ’ m sure you know well , where the coronavirus infected people despite a lockdown to all outside visitors @ @ @ @ @ @ @ village ’ s 106 people have tested positive for COVID-19 .
The virus likely came up the Rio Negro river from Manaus , which is five hours away .
This is the village chief , Waldemir da Silva .
AMY GOODMAN : If you could talk , Sebastião Salgado , about how the Indigenous people are now dealing , and how the government is dealing with them ?
I mean , you have this battle going on in Manaus with the mayor calling the president stupid .
If you can talk about the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dealt with in the Amazon ?
SEBASTIÃO SALGADO : You see , when Brazil was discovered , today the scientists can calculate that the population of Amazonian — Brazilian Amazonian ecosystem , we had about 5 million people living there .
With the diseases come from outside , a lot of Indians disappeared .
Today we have just a little bit more than 300,000 Indians living in Amazonia .
A lot of them are close to the cities , as Manaus , as Barcelos , São Gabriel , as you said .
These @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and they have more anticorps .
They are more adapted for the world , human world .
But one very big portion of the Brazilian tribes are quite isolated tribes .
You see only Brazilian Amazonians who have a little bit more that 100 groups that were never contacted .
They are completely isolated Indians .
And the diseases coming inside of Amazonia can hit them .
You see , what is happening now , the danger is that Mr. Bolsonaro took all the filters to protect the ecosystem , eliminating all the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Amazon ’ s ecosystem .
And he took out most of the budget of the National Foundation of the Indians .
And what happens ?
After a while , the Amazonian protected land of the Indian territories started to be invaded by loggers , by gold diggers , by religious groups .
Only in Yanomami territory in Amazonia , we have today , in this moment that we ’ re speaking , more than 22,000 gold diggers that are invading the territory .
And these people are carrying the disease inside .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ the president of Brazil is to stop , to push out these invaders , to create a kind of barrier , sanitary barrier .
People come inside the Indian territory in order to protect these tribes — to the contrary , we ’ ll lose them .
They will disappear .
They have no anticorps , antibody , to protect themselves against this disease .
JUAN GONZÁLEZ : And , Sebastião Salgado , what does it mean to have a president like Jair Bolsonaro , who basically ridicules science , doesn ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ public health , officials ?
Very similar to some of the stuff that ’ s happening here in the United States with President Trump , but even worse .
What does it mean , not only for the Amazon and the Indigenous population , but for all Brazilians ?
SEBASTIÃO SALGADO : You see , the big problem with President Bolsonaro , that he is destroying the Brazilian institutions .
Brazil had very good institutions , cultural , health institutions , the protection of Indian territory .
He ’ s extremist , rightist @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
He has tried to make the Indians , that live in their territory , that are hunters , that are gatherers — they want to transform them in peasants .
It ’ s incredible .
It ’ s incompatible .
And he is not respecting all these territories , protected by law .
And that is happening every level of the Brazilian society .
We are living a very difficult moment in Brazil .
AMY GOODMAN : I ’ m wondering if you could talk , Sebastião Salgado , on the attacks @ @ @ @ @ @ @ president of Brazil , Jair Bolsonaro , who is a very close ally of the president of the United States , President Trump .
Both of them diminish , to the end , this coronavirus , the president of Brazil , of course , calling it a “ little flu , ” President Trump saying it would come to nothing , 15 cases and then zero , as opposed to what so many of the scientific advisers around him were telling him .
Now , you are famous in your work for photographing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the ground all over the world , particularly workers , Indigenous people — your famous book , Migrations : Humanity in Transition , Workers : An Archaeology of the Industrial Age , Gold and Terra : Struggle of the Landless .
Can you talk about this phenomenon that we see , if you can call lies that , the thousands of lies told by these men , that clearly take lives , and particularly of the most vulnerable ?
SEBASTIÃO SALGADO : You see , we have countries .
We have very poor @ @ @ @ @ @ @ than Brazil , than the United States , if you take India , if you take Indonesia .
These countries , they take care of the population .
They had one quarantine , and they are coming out now from the quarantine with a lot of deaths , but not enormous amount as the United States , as the Brazil .
It ’ s exactly these two presidents that don ’ t care about the people .
They care about money , about rentability .
I put myself the question : if you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ government for the people , your nation , your country .
You are not a president just for the profit .
And that is the big problem happens in this moment .
The United States has the biggest number of death before in the world by coronavirus .
You are just today cross 100,000 deaths in the United States .
In Brazil , because the figures are not good , we are told that you have more than 20,000 — just more than 20,000 people , because the ones that die inside the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by coronavirus .
But the people that are dying in the slums , the people that are in the very poor areas , we don ’ t know of about what they are dying .
The scientists in Brazil calculated that we must still have a minimum nine times more case and deaths in a Brazil than just the official figures that is presented .
JUAN GONZÁLEZ : And , Sebastião Salgado , you mentioned the thousands of gold diggers that are invading the Amazon , but there are also major multinational companies @ @ @ @ @ @ @ also benefiting from these policies of Jair Bolsonaro .
Could you talk about who some of these companies are , so that people know ?
SEBASTIÃO SALGADO : Well , the companies , yes , but , you see , Bolsonaro was elected by the agrobusiness in Brazil and by the sectarian religions — religious groups .
And he has opened the Amazonian territory mostly for farmers , for loggers , for gold diggers .
You see , we spoke a lot last year about the fires in Amazonia in last July , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
We are destroying the forest in a very high speed .
And while destroying everywhere around Amazonia , these farmers , they are growing the space by the incentive of the president .
The companies , of course that they are there .
They are trying to get what they can have in this government .
But the big problem is the populism of Mr. Bolsonaro , that he wanted to have voters that have his mind in the new elections .
And he ’ s giving Amazonia for the people that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have hundreds of thousands invading in Amazonia .
As I said a few minutes ago , only gold diggers inside Yanomami territory , we have more than 22,000 .
But you have loggers going inside everywhere , farmers destroying the forest everywhere .
It ’ s a general problem , and it ’ s not just specific of big companies .
They are also inside of the problem .
But the biggest problem is the populism of the president .
AMY GOODMAN : If you can talk about this Reuters report that says @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Salles , called on the government to push through further deregulation of environmental policy while people are distracted by the coronavirus , in a video the Supreme Court ordered released ?
The video of the ministers ’ meeting surfaced in an investigation of whether President Bolsonaro interfered in appointing leaders of the Federal Police for personal gain .
During the meeting , other ministers spoke , including Salles , with environmental groups saying his remarks prove Bolsonaro government is systematically seeking to dismantle environmental protections .
SEBASTIÃO SALGADO : You see , we @ @ @ @ @ @ @ an impeachment of this president .
Everything that the ministers are doing , they are doing in the way to take the power .
They are doing every weekend , in the meetings that they do in Brazil , a proposition to have the power in their hands , out of the democratic way .
They are applying for a coup d ’ état .
And , you see , we are living a difficult moment , because how you can do an impeachment during this big problem of coronavirus ?
Who will @ @ @ @ @ @ @ will you be having new elections in a moment like this ?
And they are profiting .
They are taking profit for themselves in order to made more large their power .
The example you just gave a few minutes ago , the minister of environment , Mr. Salles , doing the proposition that just in this moment that you are completely toward the coronavirus was the moment to push all the destruction of the law system that protects the Indian community , that protect the environment , that protect the destruction of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ all this now in order to create a total destabilization in the order in Brazil .
Brazil has a fantastic system of law .
The National Foundation of Indians is one amazing institution .
Who directs the National Foundation of Indians now ?
It ’ s no more an anthropologist like always was , a scientist like always was .
Now it ’ s a cop .
It ’ s a policeman that is directing the National Foundation of Indians .
National Foundation of Indians now is not acting more for the Indians @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The order is completely reversed in Brazil .
JUAN GONZÁLEZ : And , Sebastião Salgado , you ’ ve said , clearly , that the key role that farmers are playing , Brazil is a big exporter of agricultural products .
What kind of pressure could governments around the world exercise on Brazil ?
Do you support sanctions against the Bolsonaro government to make them take the necessary steps to protect Indigenous communities ?
SEBASTIÃO SALGADO : I believe that the political sanctions , the political pressure .
Brazil is very sensitive @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is a big exporter of raw material .
And I believe that we can do pressure .
I don ’ t apply to do interdiction of importation of Brazilian goods , because the Brazilians need to live .
I ’ m not applying from this .
But I am applying for the political pressure in companies that invest in Brazil , that they put umbrellas in their investment , that they take care of the environment , that they accept to finance in Brazil if the Brazilian — the Brazilian government respect the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ happening in Brazil now .
I believe that the pressure must be [ inaudible ] the political and economical pressure .
AMY GOODMAN : Sebastião , can you talk about Messias Martins Kokama , an Indigenous leader in Parque das Tribos , a region of Manaus state made up of 3,000 people from at least 37 different ethnic tribes ?
He died of COVID-19 earlier this month .
This is local Indigenous resident Vanderlecia Ortega dos Santos wearing a mask that says “ Indigenous lives matter.
” AMY GOODMAN : If you can @ @ @ @ @ @ @ And talk about what has happened to the people , as well , and what you ’ re calling for in this letter , signed by 300,000 people , that has gotten a tremendous amount of attention .
Among the people who have signed it are Oprah Winfrey and Madonna , Naomi Campbell , the author Mario Vargas Llosa , the artist Ai Weiwei , actress Meryl Streep , Brad Pitt and others .
SEBASTIÃO SALGADO : Well , our hope — this letter was not directed exclusive to the president of Brazil @ @ @ @ @ @ @ legislative — to the executive power , the president , to the legislative power and to the judiciary power .
We are applying these three powers to aid us — it ’ s a humanitarian letter .
We are not made any political attack toward the government of Mr. Bolsonaro .
We are applying for a humanitarian actor to protect these tribes .
You see , Amy , in Amazonia in Brazil , we have these Indians , as I said a few minutes ago , that were never contacted .
These Indians @ @ @ @ @ @ @ We are a species that are living with the prehistory of — we are living with our past inside Amazonia , and we are in total danger to lose all this population now .
And the coronavirus multiply very fast if they go inside this community .
These communities are linked one to each other , and will be very complicated .
We are applying to protect these more isolated groups , to create a barrier , to not — to take out the invaders and create a barrier , not allow the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ while , to protect this population .
The reply in Brazil of this petition , of this letter , was very , very good .
We have all Brazilian press .
We have all the newspapers that gave the notice .
And we are having — we continue to have meetings with the judges , with all the group of the judicial system in Brazil , to see if we can create this humanitarian protection for the Indians .
AMY GOODMAN : Finally , Sebastião , if you could comment more broadly on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Brazil in 1969 .
You fled the military dictatorship there .
You went to Paris .
If you can talk about the future of Brazil and also your own time now ?
Just like we here are sheltering in place in the United States , you have , too .
I last saw you years ago when we had this amazing conversation in New Mexico , a public conversation with Eduardo Galeano , as well , you may remember .
And you were talking about your son then , but you ’ re @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
You ’ ve written about that , as well .
It ’ s a lot of questions there : the future of Brazil to what you ’ re doing now .
SEBASTIÃO SALGADO : You see , Amy , Brazil , when I was a child in Brazil , we had more than 90 % of Brazilian population that were rural population .
Now we must be more than 90 % urban population .
In very few — in a few decades , four , five , six decades maximum , we @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and the Europeans made 300 , 400 years to urbanize .
And we have a lot of problems that were linked to this massive movement of population toward the urban sector in Brazil .
Brazil , we had a dictatorship in Brazil .
Today we have a democratic system .
And we are in evolution .
It ’ s not easy , the things happening in Brazil .
We are one of the biggest countries in the world .
It ’ s one of the fifth population in the world , one of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Brazil is an important country .
And I have a big hope that the disaster that we are living now with Mr. Bolsonaro is just temporary , that this is just a step in our evolution , that we can become a real collaborate socially in the economic country .
AMY GOODMAN : And finally , you ’ re living in Paris right now , sheltering in place like we are , and you spending more time with your son .
SEBASTIÃO SALGADO : Yes , I live here .
We came @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in 1969 .
I came here in this time I were an economist .
I came here to prepare a Ph.D. in economics .
And we stayed here during the dictatorship .
And we have a Down syndrome child that ’ s born here , that grows here .
And I became a photographer here .
I travel all over the world .
We work a lot in Brazil .
The farm of my parents , we transform in a national park .
This farm , the rainforest was completely destroyed .
With @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this forest .
We planted now more than 2,700,000 trees .
We created one of the biggest environmental institutions in Brazil .
And we keep working , we keep going in Brazil , and live in part in France because my profession of photographer .
I developed here , but I keep working environment in Brazil .
We are in Brazil all time .
AMY GOODMAN : We want to thank you so much for being with us , Sebastião Salgado , world-renowned Brazilian photojournalist , who has spent almost four decades documenting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ there .
Salgado has been a UNICEF goodwill ambassador since 2001 , has traveled to more than a hundred countries for his photojournalism , some of which has been compiled in his books , including Migrations : Humanity in Transition and Workers : An Archaeology of the Industrial Age , Gold and Terra : Struggle of the Landless .
We will also link to that conversation that we had together back in 2000 in New Mexico , a conversation I had with Sebastião Salgado and Eduardo Galeano , the great Uruguayan writer , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Democracy Now !
When we come back , we go to New Zealand .
As the U.S. deals with the greatest catastrophe in history , we look back at one of the earliest lockdowns , that has largely succeeded in eliminating the coronavirus .
It happened in New Zealand under the leadership of Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern .
Stay with us .

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The Quarantine Report. I’m Amy Goodman in New York City, one of the epicenters of the pandemic, joined by my co-host Juan González from his home in New Brunswick, New Jersey. New Jersey is the state with the second-highest number of infections. Hi, Juan.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Good morning, Amy. And good day to all of our listeners and viewers across the country and around the world.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, we begin today’s show with Brazil, where the coronavirus is rapidly spreading, with nearly 400,000 confirmed cases and almost 23,500 deaths, making Brazil’s outbreak the second worst in the world, after the United States. On Monday, Brazil’s daily death toll surpassed the U.S. for the first time, with 807 deaths in 24 hours. President Trump has suspended travel from Brazil to the United States, effective today just before midnight.
Despite this, right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro has continued to dismiss the severity of the virus. He’s called it a “little flu” and spoke out against lockdowns imposed by governors and mayors. Two health ministers have left his Cabinet in recent weeks over disagreements over the handling of the pandemic.
On Sunday, just as Brazil became the number two hot spot for COVID-19 in the world, Bolsonaro greeted anti-lockdown protesters outside the presidential palace. He wore and then removed a face mask as he mixed with his supporters.
PRESIDENT JAIR BOLSONARO: [translated] Are you ready? We are in Brasília now to join a spontaneous demonstration of the people for democracy, for freedom, the people who really want Brazil to move forward, freedom above all else.
AMY GOODMAN: This comes as the spread of coronavirus is devastating Brazil’s Indigenous population, who are dying at double the rate of the rest of the population of Brazil, according to advocates. The Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil says there have been at least 980 confirmed cases and 125 deaths of Indigenous people, indicating a mortality rate of 12.6%, compared to 6.4% nationally.
The city of Manaus in Brazil’s Amazon region has been hard hit by the virus, with nearly 1,200 deaths. Last week, the mayor of Manaus accused the government of Jair Bolsonaro of intentionally allowing Indigenous communities to die of COVID-19.
MAYOR ARTHUR VIRGÍLIO NETO: [translated] I fear genocide, and I want to denounce this to the whole world. We have here a government that does not care about the lives of Indigenous people. … It is a crime against humanity that is being practiced here in my state, here in my region.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, for more, we go to Paris, France, where we’re joined by the world-renowned Brazilian photojournalist Sebastião Salgado. He has also warned that the Indigenous peoples in the Amazon face genocide if the Brazilian government does not take steps to protect them from the coronavirus outbreak. Earlier this month, Sebastião Salgado wrote an open letter to President Bolsonaro warning that the pandemic represents an extreme threat to their very survival. The petition has gathered nearly 300,000 signatures. Sebastião Salgado has spent almost four decades documenting the Amazon and its people.
And it is an honor to welcome you to Democracy Now!, Sebastião. Thank you so much for joining us. Can you talk about what you see happening in your home country, in Brazil, right now?
SEBASTIÃO SALGADO: Well, Brazil now is living a very difficult moment. We have a central power, held by President Bolsonaro, that is not acting in the normal way that every country act around the world toward the coronavirus. And we have the governors of the states, the mayors of the big cities, that are taking care, putting people in quarantine. And Mr. Bolsonaro is working in the opposite way. And that’s creating an amazing destabilization of the country.
I am very concerned with the Indigenous community, mostly in the Amazonia. I just finished a bond of work where I spent seven years in Amazon. And these Indians have no immunological protection against the diseases that come out of the forest. The government knows this. Everyone knows this. And we are not taking care. We must take care to protect these Indians. The contrary will be real genocide.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Sebastião Salgado, you have said in the past that you believe that the virus is a product of the destruction of the planet’s environment. Could you elaborate on that?
SEBASTIÃO SALGADO: No, ask me again. What’s the question, exactly?
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: That in the past you have said that the coronavirus pandemic is, in part, a product of the destruction of the environment around the planet.
SEBASTIÃO SALGADO: Well, you see, we are destroying every portion of the ecosystem protectors of this planet. And we are putting the diseases, that will be possible to stay inside the protected environment, out of the environment. And that’s a very difficult moment that we are living. Probably, what is happening now in all the planet, around the world, will bring us to mind more about the environment, to come back to our planet, to protect what we have, the pristine, and to see how we can rebuild the ecosystem in order that we can live in peace with our planet, is what happens everywhere around the world.
AMY GOODMAN: Let me ask you — I wanted to turn to the chief of Tres Unidos. It’s an Indigenous village in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest, that I’m sure you know well, where the coronavirus infected people despite a lockdown to all outside visitors. At least 16 out of the village’s 106 people have tested positive for COVID-19. The virus likely came up the Rio Negro river from Manaus, which is five hours away. This is the village chief, Waldemir da Silva.
CHIEF WALDEMIR DA SILVA: [translated] This virus is treacherous. It came quietly, as if carried on the wind. We started getting ill and thought it was a bad cold, but people got worse, even after taking medicine made at home and taking antibiotics and anti-inflammatory medicine. We managed to treat the illness in a careful way.
AMY GOODMAN: If you could talk, Sebastião Salgado, about how the Indigenous people are now dealing, and how the government is dealing with them? I mean, you have this battle going on in Manaus with the mayor calling the president stupid. If you can talk about the history of the way Indigenous people are dealt with in the Amazon?
SEBASTIÃO SALGADO: You see, when Brazil was discovered, today the scientists can calculate that the population of Amazonian — Brazilian Amazonian ecosystem, we had about 5 million people living there. With the diseases come from outside, a lot of Indians disappeared. Today we have just a little bit more than 300,000 Indians living in Amazonia.
A lot of them are close to the cities, as Manaus, as Barcelos, São Gabriel, as you said. These Indians are contacted a long time, and they have more anticorps. They are more adapted for the world, human world. But one very big portion of the Brazilian tribes are quite isolated tribes. You see only Brazilian Amazonians who have a little bit more that 100 groups that were never contacted. They are completely isolated Indians. And the diseases coming inside of Amazonia can hit them.
You see, what is happening now, the danger is that Mr. Bolsonaro took all the filters to protect the ecosystem, eliminating all the institutions, weakening the institutions that protected the Amazon’s ecosystem. And he took out most of the budget of the National Foundation of the Indians. And what happens? After a while, the Amazonian protected land of the Indian territories started to be invaded by loggers, by gold diggers, by religious groups. Only in Yanomami territory in Amazonia, we have today, in this moment that we’re speaking, more than 22,000 gold diggers that are invading the territory. And these people are carrying the disease inside.
What we apply with this letter to the president of Brazil is to stop, to push out these invaders, to create a kind of barrier, sanitary barrier. People come inside the Indian territory in order to protect these tribes — to the contrary, we’ll lose them. They will disappear. They have no anticorps, antibody, to protect themselves against this disease.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Sebastião Salgado, what does it mean to have a president like Jair Bolsonaro, who basically ridicules science, doesn’t pay attention to his own health, public health, officials? Very similar to some of the stuff that’s happening here in the United States with President Trump, but even worse. What does it mean, not only for the Amazon and the Indigenous population, but for all Brazilians?
SEBASTIÃO SALGADO: You see, the big problem with President Bolsonaro, that he is destroying the Brazilian institutions. Brazil had very good institutions, cultural, health institutions, the protection of Indian territory. He’s extremist, rightist president. He is destroying these institutions. He has tried to make the Indians, that live in their territory, that are hunters, that are gatherers — they want to transform them in peasants. It’s incredible. It’s incompatible. And he is not respecting all these territories, protected by law. And that is happening every level of the Brazilian society. We are living a very difficult moment in Brazil.
AMY GOODMAN: I’m wondering if you could talk, Sebastião Salgado, on the attacks on the truth, both from the president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, who is a very close ally of the president of the United States, President Trump. Both of them diminish, to the end, this coronavirus, the president of Brazil, of course, calling it a “little flu,” President Trump saying it would come to nothing, 15 cases and then zero, as opposed to what so many of the scientific advisers around him were telling him.
Now, you are famous in your work for photographing, documenting the truth of people on the ground all over the world, particularly workers, Indigenous people — your famous book, Migrations: Humanity in Transition, Workers: An Archaeology of the Industrial Age, Gold and Terra: Struggle of the Landless. Can you talk about this phenomenon that we see, if you can call lies that, the thousands of lies told by these men, that clearly take lives, and particularly of the most vulnerable?
SEBASTIÃO SALGADO: You see, we have countries. We have very poor population, countries with — more populated than Brazil, than the United States, if you take India, if you take Indonesia. These countries, they take care of the population. They had one quarantine, and they are coming out now from the quarantine with a lot of deaths, but not enormous amount as the United States, as the Brazil.
It’s exactly these two presidents that don’t care about the people. They care about money, about rentability. I put myself the question: if you are a government? We are a government for the people, your nation, your country. You are not a president just for the profit. And that is the big problem happens in this moment.
The United States has the biggest number of death before in the world by coronavirus. You are just today cross 100,000 deaths in the United States. In Brazil, because the figures are not good, we are told that you have more than 20,000 — just more than 20,000 people, because the ones that die inside the hospitals that we can identify that died by coronavirus. But the people that are dying in the slums, the people that are in the very poor areas, we don’t know of about what they are dying. The scientists in Brazil calculated that we must still have a minimum nine times more case and deaths in a Brazil than just the official figures that is presented.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Sebastião Salgado, you mentioned the thousands of gold diggers that are invading the Amazon, but there are also major multinational companies, major Brazilian companies, that are also benefiting from these policies of Jair Bolsonaro. Could you talk about who some of these companies are, so that people know?
SEBASTIÃO SALGADO: Well, the companies, yes, but, you see, Bolsonaro was elected by the agrobusiness in Brazil and by the sectarian religions — religious groups. And he has opened the Amazonian territory mostly for farmers, for loggers, for gold diggers. You see, we spoke a lot last year about the fires in Amazonia in last July, August. This year will be worse. We are destroying the forest in a very high speed. And while destroying everywhere around Amazonia, these farmers, they are growing the space by the incentive of the president.
The companies, of course that they are there. They are trying to get what they can have in this government. But the big problem is the populism of Mr. Bolsonaro, that he wanted to have voters that have his mind in the new elections. And he’s giving Amazonia for the people that want to invade it. And you have hundreds of thousands invading in Amazonia. As I said a few minutes ago, only gold diggers inside Yanomami territory, we have more than 22,000. But you have loggers going inside everywhere, farmers destroying the forest everywhere. It’s a general problem, and it’s not just specific of big companies. They are also inside of the problem. But the biggest problem is the populism of the president.
AMY GOODMAN: If you can talk about this Reuters report that says that the Brazilian environment minister, Ricardo Salles, called on the government to push through further deregulation of environmental policy while people are distracted by the coronavirus, in a video the Supreme Court ordered released? The video of the ministers’ meeting surfaced in an investigation of whether President Bolsonaro interfered in appointing leaders of the Federal Police for personal gain. During the meeting, other ministers spoke, including Salles, with environmental groups saying his remarks prove Bolsonaro government is systematically seeking to dismantle environmental protections.
SEBASTIÃO SALGADO: You see, we have enough happened in Brazil to have an impeachment of this president. Everything that the ministers are doing, they are doing in the way to take the power. They are doing every weekend, in the meetings that they do in Brazil, a proposition to have the power in their hands, out of the democratic way. They are applying for a coup d’état. And, you see, we are living a difficult moment, because how you can do an impeachment during this big problem of coronavirus? Who will you be putting in place? How will you be having new elections in a moment like this? And they are profiting. They are taking profit for themselves in order to made more large their power.
The example you just gave a few minutes ago, the minister of environment, Mr. Salles, doing the proposition that just in this moment that you are completely toward the coronavirus was the moment to push all the destruction of the law system that protects the Indian community, that protect the environment, that protect the destruction of the rainforest. He tried to destroy all this now in order to create a total destabilization in the order in Brazil.
Brazil has a fantastic system of law. The National Foundation of Indians is one amazing institution. Who directs the National Foundation of Indians now? It’s no more an anthropologist like always was, a scientist like always was. Now it’s a cop. It’s a policeman that is directing the National Foundation of Indians. National Foundation of Indians now is not acting more for the Indians; they are acting for the farmers. The order is completely reversed in Brazil.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Sebastião Salgado, you’ve said, clearly, that the key role that farmers are playing, Brazil is a big exporter of agricultural products. What kind of pressure could governments around the world exercise on Brazil? Do you support sanctions against the Bolsonaro government to make them take the necessary steps to protect Indigenous communities?
SEBASTIÃO SALGADO: I believe that the political sanctions, the political pressure. Brazil is very sensitive for outside of the country. Brazil is a big exporter of raw material. And I believe that we can do pressure. I don’t apply to do interdiction of importation of Brazilian goods, because the Brazilians need to live. I’m not applying from this. But I am applying for the political pressure in companies that invest in Brazil, that they put umbrellas in their investment, that they take care of the environment, that they accept to finance in Brazil if the Brazilian — the Brazilian government respect the minimum of the environment that is not happening in Brazil now. I believe that the pressure must be [inaudible] the political and economical pressure.
AMY GOODMAN: Sebastião, can you talk about Messias Martins Kokama, an Indigenous leader in Parque das Tribos, a region of Manaus state made up of 3,000 people from at least 37 different ethnic tribes? He died of COVID-19 earlier this month. This is local Indigenous resident Vanderlecia Ortega dos Santos wearing a mask that says “Indigenous lives matter.”
VANDERLECIA ORTEGA DOS SANTOS: [translated] Here, we still have this dream of quality education and health, because we have not yet been provided with assistance. His death is also representative of what’s lacking, a lack of healthcare, of what’s missing for those Indigenous who live in the city.
AMY GOODMAN: If you can talk about this area, Manaus? And talk about what has happened to the people, as well, and what you’re calling for in this letter, signed by 300,000 people, that has gotten a tremendous amount of attention. Among the people who have signed it are Oprah Winfrey and Madonna, Naomi Campbell, the author Mario Vargas Llosa, the artist Ai Weiwei, actress Meryl Streep, Brad Pitt and others.
SEBASTIÃO SALGADO: Well, our hope — this letter was not directed exclusive to the president of Brazil. We directed this letter to the legislative — to the executive power, the president, to the legislative power and to the judiciary power. We are applying these three powers to aid us — it’s a humanitarian letter. We are not made any political attack toward the government of Mr. Bolsonaro. We are applying for a humanitarian actor to protect these tribes.
You see, Amy, in Amazonia in Brazil, we have these Indians, as I said a few minutes ago, that were never contacted. These Indians are the prehistory of the humanity. We are a species that are living with the prehistory of — we are living with our past inside Amazonia, and we are in total danger to lose all this population now. And the coronavirus multiply very fast if they go inside this community. These communities are linked one to each other, and will be very complicated. We are applying to protect these more isolated groups, to create a barrier, to not — to take out the invaders and create a barrier, not allow the people come inside this territory for a while, to protect this population.
The reply in Brazil of this petition, of this letter, was very, very good. We have all Brazilian press. We have all the newspapers that gave the notice. And we are having — we continue to have meetings with the judges, with all the group of the judicial system in Brazil, to see if we can create this humanitarian protection for the Indians.
AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Sebastião, if you could comment more broadly on the future of Brazil? You fled Brazil in 1969. You fled the military dictatorship there. You went to Paris. If you can talk about the future of Brazil and also your own time now? Just like we here are sheltering in place in the United States, you have, too. I last saw you years ago when we had this amazing conversation in New Mexico, a public conversation with Eduardo Galeano, as well, you may remember. And you were talking about your son then, but you’re living with your son with Down syndrome. You’ve written about that, as well. It’s a lot of questions there: the future of Brazil to what you’re doing now.
SEBASTIÃO SALGADO: You see, Amy, Brazil, when I was a child in Brazil, we had more than 90% of Brazilian population that were rural population. Now we must be more than 90% urban population. In very few — in a few decades, four, five, six decades maximum, we made what you in the United States and the Europeans made 300, 400 years to urbanize. And we have a lot of problems that were linked to this massive movement of population toward the urban sector in Brazil.
Brazil, we had a dictatorship in Brazil. Today we have a democratic system. And we are in evolution. It’s not easy, the things happening in Brazil. We are one of the biggest countries in the world. It’s one of the fifth population in the world, one of the fifth biggest countries in the world. Brazil is an important country. And I have a big hope that the disaster that we are living now with Mr. Bolsonaro is just temporary, that this is just a step in our evolution, that we can become a real collaborate socially in the economic country.
AMY GOODMAN: And finally, you’re living in Paris right now, sheltering in place like we are, and you spending more time with your son.
SEBASTIÃO SALGADO: Yes, I live here. We came to Paris, as you said, in 1969. I came here in this time I were an economist. I came here to prepare a Ph.D. in economics. And we stayed here during the dictatorship. And we have a Down syndrome child that’s born here, that grows here. And I became a photographer here. I travel all over the world. We work a lot in Brazil. The farm of my parents, we transform in a national park. This farm, the rainforest was completely destroyed. With Lelia, my wife, we replanted this forest. We planted now more than 2,700,000 trees. We created one of the biggest environmental institutions in Brazil. And we keep working, we keep going in Brazil, and live in part in France because my profession of photographer. I developed here, but I keep working environment in Brazil. We are in Brazil all time.
AMY GOODMAN: We want to thank you so much for being with us, Sebastião Salgado, world-renowned Brazilian photojournalist, who has spent almost four decades documenting the Amazon and the people who live there. Salgado has been a UNICEF goodwill ambassador since 2001, has traveled to more than a hundred countries for his photojournalism, some of which has been compiled in his books, including Migrations: Humanity in Transition and Workers: An Archaeology of the Industrial Age, Gold and Terra: Struggle of the Landless.
We will also link to that conversation that we had together back in 2000 in New Mexico, a conversation I had with Sebastião Salgado and Eduardo Galeano, the great Uruguayan writer, who has since passed.
This is Democracy Now! When we come back, we go to New Zealand. As the U.S. deals with the greatest catastrophe in history, we look back at one of the earliest lockdowns, that has largely succeeded in eliminating the coronavirus. It happened in New Zealand under the leadership of Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. Stay with us.


democracynow--2020-05-26--Headlines for May 26, 2020

Headlines for May 26, 2020

In immigration news , a Guatemalan man has become the second known person to die of the coronavirus while in @ @ @ @ @ Customs Enforcement .
Thirty-four-year-old Santiago Baten-Oxlag was imprisoned at the privately run Stewart Detention Center @ @ @ @ @ to a hospital .
Earlier this month , another ICE prisoner — Carlos Ernesto Escobar @ @ @ @ @ died in a San Diego hospital after becoming sick at the for-profit Otay Mesa Detention @ @ @ @ @ immigrant rights activists drove by the Otay Mesa jail to demand the release of prisoners @ @ @ @ @ Frost Moreno .
Jennifer Frost Moreno : “ No more needless or senseless deaths because @ @ @ @ @ s lack of action to protect the detainees and staff inside detention centers.
” At @ @ @ @ @ Mesa have reportedly contracted COVID-19 .
Nationwide , over 1,200 people at ICE jails have @ @ @

Trump is threatening to move August’s Republican convention from Charlotte, North Carolina, if the state’s Democratic Governor Roy Cooper doesn’t guarantee he can have a packed arena. On Monday, Trump accused Cooper of being “still in Shutdown mood.” The Twitter attack came just two days after North Carolina registered its largest daily increase in coronavirus cases.
On Friday, Trump said all houses of worship are essential, and threatened to override governors who refused to lift restrictions on them if restrictions weren’t lifted by the weekend.
President Donald Trump: “Some governors have deemed liquor stores and abortion clinics as essential but have left out churches and other houses of worship. It’s not right. So I’m correcting this injustice and calling houses of worship essential.”
Trump, however, does not have the authority to override state orders on places of worship.


democracynow--2020-05-27--"Horrifying Neglect": COVID-19 Deaths in ICE Custody Spark New Calls for Mass Release of Prisoners

This is a rush transcript .
Copy may not be in its final form .
AMY GOODMAN : This is Democracy Now !
, democracynow.org , The Quarantine Report .
I ’ m Amy Goodman , with Juan González .
Calls for ICE — that ’ s Immigration and Customs Enforcement — to release people from detention during the pandemic are growing , after a second person died from the virus Sunday while in custody .
A 34-year-old Guatemalan man named Santiago Baten-Oxlaj reportedly passed away due to COVID-19 after being detained at the Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a hospital in Columbus after being transferred there on April 17th .
Human rights advocates are calling for an investigation and say guards at Stewart have used SWAT-like teams to stop people there who tried to go on hunger strikes to call for their release amidst the pandemic .
Baten-Oxlaj is the second known person to die of COVID-19 in immigration custody .
The first was 57-year-old Carlos Ernesto Escobar Mejia , who came from El Salvador with his family in the '80s during the country 's U.S.-backed civil war .
He was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ only one who hadn ’ t been able to obtain permanent residency .
Escobar Mejia had been detained at the for-profit Otay Mesa Detention Center near San Diego since January .
The jail has the largest coronavirus outbreak of any ICE jail in the country .
When he died , Escobar Mejia had reportedly been in the hospital on a ventilator for over a week .
This is asylum seeker Oscar Nevarez Diaz , who ’ s jailed at Otay Mesa .
He could face retaliation for speaking out , but he described @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s Oscar Nevarez Diaz , who is also jailed at Otay Mesa Detention Center .
For more on what happened to his friend , Carlos Ernesto Escobar Mejia , at the Otay Mesa Detention Center , we ’ re joined by Ryan Devereaux , staff reporter at The Intercept , where he covered this tragic story in a piece headlined ” ICE Detainee Who Died of COVID-19 Suffered Horrifying Neglect.
” Tell us more about who he was and how he died , Ryan .
RYAN DEVEREAUX : Thank you for having @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Carlos Ernesto Escobar Mejia , as you mentioned , came from El Salvador in the 1980s , when he was a teenager , with his family , fleeing a civil war that had displaced roughly a million Salvadoran civilians , had led to the deaths of thousands of civilians .
So he came to the United States as a refugee .
And he had lived in this country for 40 years at the time that he was arrested in January of this year .
His siblings had obtained citizenship , but Carlos @ @ @ @ @ @ @ run-ins with the law in the ’ 80s and ’ 90s , and his last conviction was in ’ 93 , as far as his former attorney says .
He had sort of carried these demons of the civil war with him into his life as a young man , but , in the last decade and a half or so , had really turn his life around , by all accounts .
I mean , he continued to struggle .
He was confined to a wheelchair following a work accident last year @ @ @ @ @ @ @ right foot .
But according to those who knew him , he had sort of built his life around providing for his sister .
He found himself in Border Patrol custody early this year when he was receiving a ride from a friend outside of San Diego .
And really , being sent to Otay Mesa turned his life upside down .
He struggled to find a wheelchair .
And he happened to be landing in this detention center that was on a trajectory to become the sort of epicenter of coronavirus in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ went on , a request for bond was denied .
He , like thousands of others who have been picked up by ICE under the Trump administration , was kept locked up even as this virus was unfolding .
And according to the accounts of the men who were with him in his final days , they were doing everything that they possibly could to raise concerns about Carlos ’ s deteriorating health condition .
And Carlos himself was raising concerns .
And they say that those alarms that they rang fell on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Carlos died .
They believe that if action would have been taken sooner , if he would have been taken to a hospital early on , instead of being moved to a sort of unit meant for holding people suspected of COVID-19 , if he would have been first just taken to a doctor , there ’ s a chance he would have still been alive .
And so , these men who were with him are speaking out , at great personal risk , to try to correct the record on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this man , who unfortunately became the first person to die in ICE custody , which was a reality that everybody who knows anything about ICE detention was warning about from the moment this virus became a reality that we were all going to have to contend with .
JUAN GONZÁLEZ : And , Ryan , about the generalized conditions in these detention facilities , there have been instances where ICE has actually pepper-sprayed or maced the detainees who were trying to seek safer conditions ?
Can you talk about that ?
RYAN @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
So , we ’ ve seen a pattern over the last couple months in detention centers around the country of people rising up and trying to make their voices heard , speaking out to journalists and advocacy organizations , saying that “ We ’ re trapped in here .
We feel forgotten .
We ’ re terrified that we aren ’ t going to make it back to our families.
” People are staging hunger strikes .
They ’ re , like I said , talking to reporters .
The response from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , who , by the way , make a lot of money off of this whole apparatus of detention , has been essentially repression — you know , pepper spray and tear gas , retaliation against reporters who are speaking to people in detention .
That has been the way that ICE , and the companies that it has worked with , has largely responded to the situation .
And it ’ s worth keeping in mind that the population that we ’ re talking about are folks being held on civil immigration @ @ @ @ @ @ @ held for violating criminal law .
They ’ re not serving criminal sentences .
The upshot of that , the significance of that , is that the government could release these people at any time , if it wanted to .
It is choosing to continue to hold tens of thousands of people in jails .
They ’ ll call them “ detention centers , ” but what this is , in terms of the actual experience of it , is incarceration .
ICE ’ s detention numbers are lower than they ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ time , but we ’ re still talking about more than 26,000 people who are being held .
AMY GOODMAN : Ryan , in a moment we ’ re going to be joined by Erika Andiola , but I wanted to go quickly to the two other pieces that you have written about during the pandemic .
In March , two men at the Etowah County Detention Center in northern Alabama threatened to take their own lives , because they feared people transferred there by ICE were COVID-19-positive , and they didn ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pod or jail cell with them .
A person held in the jail streamed the protest live on his Facebook page as the two men stood on a ledge with nooses made from sheets wrapped around their necks .
They threatened to jump unless guards moved the new arrivals to a different unit .
This is a clip of the video of the protest , which was recorded by The Washington Post .
AMY GOODMAN : Ryan Devereaux , you reported on this story , headlined “ Burials Are Cheaper Than Deportations , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and Tesfa Miller , prisoners at Etowah County Detention Center , who described the conditions at the jail .
This is what they said .
AMY GOODMAN : Ryan , tell us more about these prisoners at Etowah County Detention Center and the ones that threatened to take their own life .
RYAN DEVEREAUX : Yeah , I think what these men are trying to express is something that you ’ re hearing from folks in detention centers all across the country , and that is the feeling of being forgotten in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s ripping through this country .
And what they ’ re describing is a system of detention and deportation that ’ s been built up over the last several decades to the point that it is now , you know , holding tens of thousands of people and refusing to release them , even as experts say that — the Department of Homeland Security ’ s own medical experts have said that these detention centers are a tinderbox — those are their words — for the spread of the coronavirus .
So , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Etowah County were really articulating the desperation that I just heard from the men who were detained with Carlos in San Diego on the other side of the country .
I mean , this is the message that is coming out of these detention centers fairly consistently at this point .
JUAN GONZÁLEZ : We ’ re also joined by Erika Andiola , who is the chief advocacy officer for RAICES Action , the advocacy arm for the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services .
She ’ s also the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Homeland Insecurity , which has just been launched .
Welcome back to the show , Erika .
Could you talk about the situation right now with these detention centers and Trump administration policy ?
ERIKA ANDIOLA : Yeah .
I mean , you know , a lot of us saw this coming .
A lot of us saw this being a ticking time bomb since the very beginning , you know , when we started seeing the pandemic getting bigger and bigger in different communities .
We knew that as soon as it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a matter of time before a lot of people — and in this case , there ’ s been hundreds and hundreds of people now who have been — have contracted COVID .
And as was mentioned before , we now have two deaths , Carlos and Santiago , who have passed away .
And unfortunately , the reason why we knew this was going to happen , you know , as RAICES , the sister organization RAICES Action , we have been hearing the stories of people since the very beginning of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to protect themselves , not having masks , not having soap , you know , many of them washing their hands with shampoo because they had nothing else to wash their hands with , not being able to socially distance .
And so , I mean , it was just really a matter of time before this happened .
And it ’ s just — you know , none of those folks , especially people who migrated seeking asylum , they did not do anything to deserve a life sentence in a detention @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Erika , if you — JUAN GONZÁLEZ : And , Erika , this policy now of the Trump administration for even asylum seekers , to immediately deport them back to their country , and actually got the backing of the head of the Centers for Disease Control as a public health issue ?
ERIKA ANDIOLA : That ’ s right .
They are using COVID-19 as a way to enact what they ’ ve been wanting to enact for a long time .
We know that Stephen Miller , Steve Miller from the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for — you know , since they got elected into the White House , they wanted to end asylum .
They have tried in different ways , through Congress .
They have tried to do it through the executive powers .
And now that COVID-19 is here and that there ’ s a pandemic and people are afraid for their lives and their security , now they ’ re using it to deny people the right to seek asylum in the U.S. And , you know , I also want to mention that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ own .
We know that for a fact .
A lot of our attorneys actually work with children in detention .
We have seen way less children now who are coming into the shelters , not because they ’ re being released into the community to be with their families , but because they ’ re being turned back to either Mexico or the countries that they migrated from , which is — you know , imagine , I mean , there ’ s literally children who are being sent back on their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ way of seeking asylum and the right that they have to seek asylum .
AMY GOODMAN : And I wanted to get your response , Erika , to — Ryan , if you could tell us in just 30 seconds about this final story you did about New Rochelle , which was the epicenter in New York at first , but what happened right before it with ICE raids ?
RYAN DEVEREAUX : Literally the day before Governor Cuomo sort of cordoned off New Rochelle as the epicenter of the epicenter in New @ @ @ @ @ @ @ making arrests .
They arrested a father in front of his wife and kids , took him into one of the detention centers , that became one of the first sites of coronavirus outbreak in New York .
And what I found in that reporting was that at the beginning of this year , the Trump administration , through ICE , was engaged in a really aggressive crackdown on so-called sanctuary cities , the political opponents of the Trump administration , and started filling ICE detention centers around the New York-New Jersey area @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who wouldn ’ t have been arrested in the weeks or months prior , as part of this crackdown .
And those facilities , where they were drawing people from the communities where the virus was spreading , became the facilities that first saw outbreaks of the coronavirus .
AMY GOODMAN : Erika Andiola , if you could jump off of that and also talk about why you ’ ve started your new podcast , Homeland Insecurity , launching today ?
ERIKA ANDIOLA : Yeah , we ’ re really excited to launch @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for that is because we ’ ve been wanting to tell the story of how DHS came about .
I know that there ’ s a lot of people who are skeptical perhaps about abolishing ICE or , you know , just imagining what this country would have been like without DHS .
And we want to tell the story of how at some point there was no DHS , at some point there was no ICE .
And the reason why we ’ re here was because of literally homeland insecurity , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ country , who became so afraid after 9/11 .
And , you know , in some ways , I myself , as an undocumented immigrant , now a DACA recipient , became the enemy for an agency that now has turned all of their power and all of their — you know , really their focus on people like myself , instead of really focusing on real threats like COVID .
COVID-19 really showed that now DHS , instead of really focusing on what could be real threats to the homeland , ended @ @ @ @ @ @ @ So , I unpack that history .
We have released first four episodes today .
AMY GOODMAN : We ’ re going to have to leave it there .
AMY GOODMAN : But we will link to your new podcast .
Erika Andiola , chief advocacy officer for RAICES Action , her new podcast , Homeland Insecurity .
And thanks so much to Ryan Devereaux of The Intercept .
I ’ m Amy Goodman , with Juan González .
Stay safe .

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The Quarantine Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González. Calls for ICE — that’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement — to release people from detention during the pandemic are growing, after a second person died from the virus Sunday while in custody. A 34-year-old Guatemalan man named Santiago Baten-Oxlaj reportedly passed away due to COVID-19 after being detained at the Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Georgia. ICE said he died at a hospital in Columbus after being transferred there on April 17th. Human rights advocates are calling for an investigation and say guards at Stewart have used SWAT-like teams to stop people there who tried to go on hunger strikes to call for their release amidst the pandemic. Baten-Oxlaj is the second known person to die of COVID-19 in immigration custody.
The first was 57-year-old Carlos Ernesto Escobar Mejia, who came from El Salvador with his family in the '80s during the country's U.S.-backed civil war. He was the youngest of five siblings, the only one who hadn’t been able to obtain permanent residency. Escobar Mejia had been detained at the for-profit Otay Mesa Detention Center near San Diego since January. The jail has the largest coronavirus outbreak of any ICE jail in the country. When he died, Escobar Mejia had reportedly been in the hospital on a ventilator for over a week.
This is asylum seeker Oscar Nevarez Diaz, who’s jailed at Otay Mesa. He could face retaliation for speaking out, but he described what happened.
OSCAR NEVAREZ DIAZ: We have had one individual pass away. He was our friend. He was here in Mike pod with me and the rest of the individuals here in Mike pod. He was an older gentleman. His name is Ernesto Escobar, Carlos Escobar.
He had underlying health conditions, and he had more than a month complaining to the medical staff that he was sick. He would be in and out of medical. First of all, he’s a person that had diabetes, and he had a — part of his foot had been chopped off, and he was in a wheelchair. So, he had to get insulin. He had bad problems to begin with.
But for over a month, he was sick, and he — and I have many people, more than — everybody in my pod is willing to attest to that. And on a lot of times when he felt sick, we would complain to the COs, and they would just tell him, “Oh, tell him he has to sign up for sick call.” “The nurses will come with the medication?” “Oh, tell him to sign up for sick call tomorrow.”
They don’t care here. They don’t care about us human beings. They don’t even see us as human beings. They see us, since we’re immigrants, we’re less than human to these people.They don’t care about us at all.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s Oscar Nevarez Diaz, who is also jailed at Otay Mesa Detention Center.
For more on what happened to his friend, Carlos Ernesto Escobar Mejia, at the Otay Mesa Detention Center, we’re joined by Ryan Devereaux, staff reporter at The Intercept, where he covered this tragic story in a piece headlined ”ICE Detainee Who Died of COVID-19 Suffered Horrifying Neglect.”
Tell us more about who he was and how he died, Ryan.
RYAN DEVEREAUX: Thank you for having me, Amy.
Yeah, so, Carlos Ernesto Escobar Mejia, as you mentioned, came from El Salvador in the 1980s, when he was a teenager, with his family, fleeing a civil war that had displaced roughly a million Salvadoran civilians, had led to the deaths of thousands of civilians. So he came to the United States as a refugee. And he had lived in this country for 40 years at the time that he was arrested in January of this year. His siblings had obtained citizenship, but Carlos had not. He had had some run-ins with the law in the ’80s and ’90s, and his last conviction was in ’93, as far as his former attorney says. He had sort of carried these demons of the civil war with him into his life as a young man, but, in the last decade and a half or so, had really turn his life around, by all accounts. I mean, he continued to struggle. He was confined to a wheelchair following a work accident last year that led to the amputation of his right foot. But according to those who knew him, he had sort of built his life around providing for his sister.
He found himself in Border Patrol custody early this year when he was receiving a ride from a friend outside of San Diego. And really, being sent to Otay Mesa turned his life upside down. He struggled to find a wheelchair. And he happened to be landing in this detention center that was on a trajectory to become the sort of epicenter of coronavirus in ICE detention. And as the weeks went on, a request for bond was denied. He, like thousands of others who have been picked up by ICE under the Trump administration, was kept locked up even as this virus was unfolding.
And according to the accounts of the men who were with him in his final days, they were doing everything that they possibly could to raise concerns about Carlos’s deteriorating health condition. And Carlos himself was raising concerns. And they say that those alarms that they rang fell on deaf ears and that as a result, Carlos died. They believe that if action would have been taken sooner, if he would have been taken to a hospital early on, instead of being moved to a sort of unit meant for holding people suspected of COVID-19, if he would have been first just taken to a doctor, there’s a chance he would have still been alive. And so, these men who were with him are speaking out, at great personal risk, to try to correct the record on what happened here, what happened to this man, who unfortunately became the first person to die in ICE custody, which was a reality that everybody who knows anything about ICE detention was warning about from the moment this virus became a reality that we were all going to have to contend with.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Ryan, about the generalized conditions in these detention facilities, there have been instances where ICE has actually pepper-sprayed or maced the detainees who were trying to seek safer conditions? Can you talk about that?
RYAN DEVEREAUX: That’s absolutely right. So, we’ve seen a pattern over the last couple months in detention centers around the country of people rising up and trying to make their voices heard, speaking out to journalists and advocacy organizations, saying that “We’re trapped in here. We feel forgotten. We’re terrified that we aren’t going to make it back to our families.” People are staging hunger strikes. They’re, like I said, talking to reporters.
The response from the government and its private contracting partners, who, by the way, make a lot of money off of this whole apparatus of detention, has been essentially repression — you know, pepper spray and tear gas, retaliation against reporters who are speaking to people in detention. That has been the way that ICE, and the companies that it has worked with, has largely responded to the situation.
And it’s worth keeping in mind that the population that we’re talking about are folks being held on civil immigration violations. They’re not being held for violating criminal law. They’re not serving criminal sentences. The upshot of that, the significance of that, is that the government could release these people at any time, if it wanted to. It is choosing to continue to hold tens of thousands of people in jails. They’ll call them “detention centers,” but what this is, in terms of the actual experience of it, is incarceration. ICE’s detention numbers are lower than they’ve been in a long, long time, but we’re still talking about more than 26,000 people who are being held.
AMY GOODMAN: Ryan, in a moment we’re going to be joined by Erika Andiola, but I wanted to go quickly to the two other pieces that you have written about during the pandemic. In March, two men at the Etowah County Detention Center in northern Alabama threatened to take their own lives, because they feared people transferred there by ICE were COVID-19-positive, and they didn’t want to be in the same pod or jail cell with them. A person held in the jail streamed the protest live on his Facebook page as the two men stood on a ledge with nooses made from sheets wrapped around their necks. They threatened to jump unless guards moved the new arrivals to a different unit. This is a clip of the video of the protest, which was recorded by The Washington Post.
DETAINEE: They’re not caring. They got three positive tested for the coronavirus in here with us. They brought them in here today [bleep] while we were sleeping. And they’re not trying to — they’re not trying to let them out of here. We’re telling them, yo, y’all gotta take them out of here, or we’re going to turn up in here. They’re threatening to shoot us with Tasers and pellet guns.
AMY GOODMAN: Ryan Devereaux, you reported on this story, headlined “Burials Are Cheaper Than Deportations,” and you spoke to Karim Golding and Tesfa Miller, prisoners at Etowah County Detention Center, who described the conditions at the jail. This is what they said.
KARIM GOLDING: This is the facility with the lowest standards in the U.S., right? There’s a lot of issues that we’ve been dealing with beyond the coronavirus, prior to coronavirus.
TESFA MILLER: We don’t have no help. And we’re so far removed from everything else, it’s like nobody notices. Nobody even know that we’re here.
KARIM GOLDING: The entire system is working to keep this facility open, because this is their money. This is small town U.S.A., and this is just how these private contracts benefit your community. If you’re not working here, you’re working at Goodyear. Goodyear just closed down or laid people off. So, other than that, you’re either working at McDonald’s or picking up paper on the side of the road.
AMY GOODMAN: Ryan, tell us more about these prisoners at Etowah County Detention Center and the ones that threatened to take their own life.
RYAN DEVEREAUX: Yeah, I think what these men are trying to express is something that you’re hearing from folks in detention centers all across the country, and that is the feeling of being forgotten in the midst of a global pandemic that’s ripping through this country. And what they’re describing is a system of detention and deportation that’s been built up over the last several decades to the point that it is now, you know, holding tens of thousands of people and refusing to release them, even as experts say that — the Department of Homeland Security’s own medical experts have said that these detention centers are a tinderbox — those are their words — for the spread of the coronavirus. So, the men that I spoke to at Etowah County were really articulating the desperation that I just heard from the men who were detained with Carlos in San Diego on the other side of the country. I mean, this is the message that is coming out of these detention centers fairly consistently at this point.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We’re also joined by Erika Andiola, who is the chief advocacy officer for RAICES Action, the advocacy arm for the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services. She’s also the host of a new podcast series called Homeland Insecurity, which has just been launched.
Welcome back to the show, Erika. Could you talk about the situation right now with these detention centers and Trump administration policy?
ERIKA ANDIOLA: Yeah. I mean, you know, a lot of us saw this coming. A lot of us saw this being a ticking time bomb since the very beginning, you know, when we started seeing the pandemic getting bigger and bigger in different communities. We knew that as soon as it got to detention centers, it was a matter of time before a lot of people — and in this case, there’s been hundreds and hundreds of people now who have been — have contracted COVID. And as was mentioned before, we now have two deaths, Carlos and Santiago, who have passed away.
And unfortunately, the reason why we knew this was going to happen, you know, as RAICES, the sister organization RAICES Action, we have been hearing the stories of people since the very beginning of not being provided with the right equipment to protect themselves, not having masks, not having soap, you know, many of them washing their hands with shampoo because they had nothing else to wash their hands with, not being able to socially distance. And so, I mean, it was just really a matter of time before this happened. And it’s just — you know, none of those folks, especially people who migrated seeking asylum, they did not do anything to deserve a life sentence in a detention center.
AMY GOODMAN: And, Erika, if you —
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And now —
AMY GOODMAN: Go ahead, Juan.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Erika, this policy now of the Trump administration for even asylum seekers, to immediately deport them back to their country, and actually got the backing of the head of the Centers for Disease Control as a public health issue?
ERIKA ANDIOLA: That’s right. They are using COVID-19 as a way to enact what they’ve been wanting to enact for a long time. We know that Stephen Miller, Steve Miller from the White House, has had this agenda for — you know, since they got elected into the White House, they wanted to end asylum. They have tried in different ways, through Congress. They have tried to do it through the executive powers. And now that COVID-19 is here and that there’s a pandemic and people are afraid for their lives and their security, now they’re using it to deny people the right to seek asylum in the U.S.
And, you know, I also want to mention that children are also being deported on their own. We know that for a fact. A lot of our attorneys actually work with children in detention. We have seen way less children now who are coming into the shelters, not because they’re being released into the community to be with their families, but because they’re being turned back to either Mexico or the countries that they migrated from, which is — you know, imagine, I mean, there’s literally children who are being sent back on their own, without necessarily having the proper way of seeking asylum and the right that they have to seek asylum.
AMY GOODMAN: And I wanted to get your response, Erika, to — Ryan, if you could tell us in just 30 seconds about this final story you did about New Rochelle, which was the epicenter in New York at first, but what happened right before it with ICE raids?
RYAN DEVEREAUX: Literally the day before Governor Cuomo sort of cordoned off New Rochelle as the epicenter of the epicenter in New York, ICE was in the community making arrests. They arrested a father in front of his wife and kids, took him into one of the detention centers, that became one of the first sites of coronavirus outbreak in New York.
And what I found in that reporting was that at the beginning of this year, the Trump administration, through ICE, was engaged in a really aggressive crackdown on so-called sanctuary cities, the political opponents of the Trump administration, and started filling ICE detention centers around the New York-New Jersey area with people from the community, folks who wouldn’t have been arrested in the weeks or months prior, as part of this crackdown. And those facilities, where they were drawing people from the communities where the virus was spreading, became the facilities that first saw outbreaks of the coronavirus.
AMY GOODMAN: Erika Andiola, if you could jump off of that and also talk about why you’ve started your new podcast, Homeland Insecurity, launching today?
ERIKA ANDIOLA: Yeah, we’re really excited to launch the podcast today. And the reason for that is because we’ve been wanting to tell the story of how DHS came about. I know that there’s a lot of people who are skeptical perhaps about abolishing ICE or, you know, just imagining what this country would have been like without DHS. And we want to tell the story of how at some point there was no DHS, at some point there was no ICE.
And the reason why we’re here was because of literally homeland insecurity, right? People who — in this country, who became so afraid after 9/11. And, you know, in some ways, I myself, as an undocumented immigrant, now a DACA recipient, became the enemy for an agency that now has turned all of their power and all of their — you know, really their focus on people like myself, instead of really focusing on real threats like COVID. COVID-19 really showed that now DHS, instead of really focusing on what could be real threats to the homeland, ended up focusing on people like me. So, I unpack that history. We have released first four episodes today.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to have to leave it there.
ERIKA ANDIOLA: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: But we will link to your new podcast. Erika Andiola, chief advocacy officer for RAICES Action, her new podcast, Homeland Insecurity. And thanks so much to Ryan Devereaux of The Intercept. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González. Stay safe.