VICE Does America (2016) s01e04 Episode Script

1 - Hmm.
- Abdullah.
Hmm.
There is a tire of our RV that is - What? - It c it cracked a little bit.
- And - The tire cracked? Whoa.
What the Isn't that shit crazy? How does this thing have air in it? Hey, guys, this is too small for the nuts.
The nuts are Wait.
Why would we even have that wrench? Why would Yeah.
Why would they give us a a wrench that doesn't even fucking work? - That's a wrench, right? - I think so.
- Yeah.
- These go here.
I know that.
- Oh, okay.
- But What is this? My name's Abdullah.
I work at Vice as a writer and reporter.
- Aah! - I'm traveling from L.
A.
to D.
C.
with my two co-workers Wilbert and Martina.
As the country gears up for the most polarized election in our lifetime, we're zigzagging across America, meeting people [Screams.]
Abdullah: and exploring the issues they care about until we reach our ultimate destination - Hey.
- the White House.
[Cheers and applause.]
Martina: We are from Brooklyn.
Uh, but we drove from California.
And we're going to Washington, D.
C.
We're traveling around the country, talking to people about politics and America.
- Man: Oh, okay.
- You know, so we're trying to, like, figure out, you know, where the country's at right now leading up into the 2016 election.
Is there anything that kind of pisses you off or makes you angry about the way the country's going in right now? It'd probably be easier for me to list the things - that don't piss me off.
- That's better.
- What makes you happy? - Probably can count 'em on one hand.
- Okay.
- But, you know, I mean, I I'm starting to feel, and I think a lot of the people in this country are starting to feel the same way, that, you know, we don't have any power anymore.
You know? Um, this is no longer the land of the free.
It's the land of the handout.
Corporations nowadays have so many tax loopholes that the man who's working and making $60,000 a year ends up taking home maybe $40,000.
But after you pay sales tax and all these other government fees and O and paying for medical care that's required by law and things like that, you know, your take-home is not much.
And is there a candidate that you see that could help bring the country to where you want it to go? A lot of people would disagree with me, but I'm starting to really like what Trump's having to say.
- Really? - He's a businessman.
Think about it.
- Our country's in debt - Mm-hmm.
Huge debt.
That man's not.
He knows how business should be run.
You know that that he thinks that all the immigrants from Mexico are criminals.
Did you know that? There are good people that come from Mexico.
In fact, when I was in Bakersfield, my greatest employee worked his way up, was running my store.
And his whole family came over here from Mexico.
And his stance on it was just this Me and my family busted our butts to get here the way the United States wanted us to be here.
A lot of immigrants are here because they can't live in their own country.
You know? They are The the goal is not come here in in in the, like, in an illegal way.
- And I have no problem with that.
- If if it happens, it's because they don't have any resources.
- You know? - I understand that.
The the people, like, do whatever they can to survive.
I know that it is very difficult to become a citizen of this country.
Everybody should have that right.
But at the same time, you know, because we can't open up the border to everybody, you know, I think that there should be checks and balances in place set up by people who are a little bit more educated on the topic than me.
Okay.
It it's really it's really good to hear, you know, what what you have to think what you have to say about it.
- Right.
Thank you for your time.
- It was good.
- You guys have a good one.
- You too, brother.
- Nice to meet you.
- I hope you love it here.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I love it.
I love it.
Let's go.
Abdullah: One of the most divisive topics of the 2016 election is immigration.
Although an estimated 2 1/2 million people attempt to enter the U.
S.
illegally every year, many of them never make it.
As politicians debate the safety of our borders, some citizens worry about the safety of those trying to cross.
The first stop on the Texas leg of our journey is Waco, home of the Baylor University forensic lab.
We're here to meet Dr.
Lori Baker.
She tries to identify bodies found along the Texas-Mexico border, most of whom are presumed to be undocumented immigrants.
Man: In South Texas, hundreds of unidentified bodies have been discovered, many dug out of the ground by a volunteer forensic team from Baylor University.
The smugglers are telling people, "Oh, it's going to be a short walk.
It's not going to be a big deal.
" And once they cross the border, they many times are abandoned there and left vulnerable to the elements of the desert.
- Hi.
- Hi, Dr.
Baker.
Abdullah.
- Nice to meet you.
- Nice to meet you.
- Will.
- Hey, Will.
- Martina.
Nice to meet you.
- It's so nice to meet you guys.
- So you ready for this? - Yeah.
- Yeah.
- Definitely.
Dr.
Baker: Come on in.
Let me show you around.
Wilbert: So what exactly do you guys do here? We do a number of things, most of which revolve around forensic anthropology.
And in particular, these are all undocumented border crossers that died trying to come into the U.
S.
Our ultimate goal in this lab was to identify these people and get them back to their families.
And what you guys are gonna help with is the process from start to finish on what we do with a new case.
How come a private university is studying this stuff and it's not, like, a federal issue? When I started this in 2003, I really thought, by now, we'd have some sort of federal entity that was doing it.
Right now, we're all privately funded.
From our point of view, it's a human rights crisis.
We have hundreds of people dying on our border.
They're not being identified.
They're being handled in improper ways.
Some of these individuals we found in the cemetery were buried in garbage bags, I mean, just horrific conditions.
But I've been told by politicians it's not their bread-and-butter issue.
Can you tell us what it is that you have here? Mary Lynn: Every single bag here is an individual case where artifacts were found and are waiting to be processed.
If we do an identification, everything can be returned to their family.
Including the bones? Including the body so that their family could bury them versus being stored in a box or being put in a large grave.
This case was actually exhumed in 2013.
They had shoes with them, which are a little bit more of an expensive brand from Mexico.
So chances are they're from Mexico.
And maybe we can narrow down the search.
This is actually their jeans.
And we see jeans get pretty torn up.
When I was processing these, I did find a wedding ring sewn into the waistband here.
- Uh-huh.
- Um, a lot of the times, people will sew in valuables or identification to hide it from the coyotes because the coyotes will often take things of value.
- They rob them.
- Yeah, essentially.
It does get pretty emotional with this stuff just like it does with processing the remains, so - This this part humanizes.
- Mm-hmm.
It does.
And, um, as you can see here, this person, they had just bought this crossing the border.
So you can see it's fairly new.
It still has its plastic tag on it - Oh, yeah.
- Where there would have been a paper tag.
So these things just give you more questions.
You know, what was this for? Was this for his family member? Was this for a kid? You know, we just try to take care of these as as best we can so that whoever he was getting this toy for can maybe see this toy one day and have that last moment.
Dr.
Baker: Just a warning As your body breaks down, there's a lot of smells because there are all these chemicals that are being released in the breakdown of the body.
- It's gonna smell bad.
- Do you ever get used to it? No.
Not really.
Okay.
So we're gonna work on this individual today.
We'd probably take one person at the head, one person in the middle and one person here at the feet.
How many would you say, like, dead bodies are all around us right now in this moment? Um, 2, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18.
And then, we've cleaned all of the ones that you see on the side.
So there are about 173 bodies here right now.
Whoa.
Dr.
Baker: If you want to put this individual on this autopsy table, and I'm just gonna take this tape off so that we can start opening it up.
Ooh.
I can I can smell it already.
- Really? - Oh, yeah.
Man: Uh, now, this part under a little bit - Ugh.
- Oh, my God.
Martina: I'm trying to be as strong as I can 'cause I'm really afraid of fainting.
Smells really bad.
And, uh, I'm really afraid of what we gonna see now.
Man: So we're gonna start folding this back a little bit.
- Mm-hmm.
- So honestly, it'd probably be easier just to kind of start Wilbert: Cut it down? Like, yeah, cutting into this little bit.
Woman: Just just watch the tips of your scissors, mainly.
- Not too much.
- Yeah.
Don't 'cause you don't want to snap So is that decomposed body right there? - Yeah.
- That's decomp right there.
- Yeah.
- Ugh.
Abdullah: It's a pretty visceral experience.
I had to step I breathed through my nose again.
And I almost threw up.
Um, this is the hip.
And this is the arm.
Wilbert: Am I trying to keep it all together? No.
We're just trying to get the bones into the buckets.
Woman: 'Cause this one was still attached.
- - Martina: No.
I I breathed through my nose.
I I mean, the smell bothers me a lot.
But it's not as much as I don't know.
- - Yeah.
Yeah.
Totally.
It just It's too much.
- Yeah.
It's - It's too much.
Tell me why someone would take such great risk to come to this country.
Some of them are mothers who can't support their children.
Uh, the first identification I made was, uh, a woman who came from the Yucatan.
She had two young daughters.
Her husband had left her.
She lived with her mom.
They had dirt floor floors, no indoor plumbing.
I mean, they they barely got by.
And she wanted to come to the U.
S.
so she could give her daughters a good education.
And her sister said, "If you do this, you realize there's a a good chance that you're gonna be raped along the way and brutalized.
Or you might die.
" And she goes, "Yes.
But if I don't, I can't give my daughters a different life than what I've had.
And they need an opportunity.
" - Wow.
- That's what I'm saying.
If they don't come here legally, it's because they cannot come legally.
So the, uh, solutions that the Republicans are offering are no solutions.
The only thing that they mentioned is to build a wall.
Yeah, which is insane.
When you have desperate people, they're gonna go to desperate measures.
This is a desperate person that desperately wanted to have a life and couldn't where they were.
Do you feel different when you have a body of a kid? Oh, my goodness.
Yes.
- Children are horrible.
- Ugh.
And since we've closed our borders, people can't come across and work and go back.
So they're bringing their whole families.
So we have these family units where grandmother's coming - Yeah.
- the children.
You you see small children.
And they get red so fast.
They can't regulate heat.
And they can't make this journey.
We have a lot of, um, sayings as we do this.
One of our mottos is, "The border is where the American dream goes to die.
" Martina: I'm super angry.
And if I hated politicians and their nonsense obsession with immigrants, now I hate them a million times more.
This is this is insane.
Abdullah: We have so much here in America.
And we don't want to share it.
If the huddled masses, the tired, the hungry, the destitute can't come from other places and find that opportunity here, I think that's disgusting.
Martina: I just felt overwhelmed.
I wish Republicans and politicians, you know, see this.
I I I really wish they see what we've just done in there.
This happened in U.
S.
soil.
And they don't care at all.
I don't want to talk shit about America either because, if I'm here, it's because I like it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Of course.
You know, if I didn't like it that much, - I wouldn't be here.
- Yeah.
But it sometimes is, especially on this trip, it's hard for me to accept that I want to be here.
You know, there's good things about America, and there's bad things about America.
And you can't throw the baby out with the bathwater.
You know? But we saw a really ugly side of something that's very real in this country.
You know? Martina: It only makes me feel bad because I've been so lucky.
My issues around immigration personally are nothing, nothing compared to what these people go through.
You know, I I don't even feel like like an immigrant when I compare myself to them.
Abdullah: After witnessing the underbelly of the immigrant experience in the United States, we wanted to explore the community of immigrants that have actually made it across.
Texas has one of the fastest-growing Mexican populations in the country and will soon be majority Hispanic.
And as generations continue to stay here, become citizens and vote, the Mexican-American influence on the United States has become undeniable.
So we're heading to a Mexican rodeo, called a charreada, to see how they do it down here in Dallas.
- [Woman speaking Spanish.]
- Abdullah: We're going to a charreada.
So we want to look, like, appropriate at a charreada.
[Speaking Spanish.]
This is awesome.
Oh! That's it.
That's my belt.
It was made for me.
I always wanted to be, uh, a cowboy, like Django or something, you know.
Hey! You look amazing! [Speaking Spanish.]
Martina: Those pants are a little bit tight.
No? You think these are still tight? I just I basically don't want anybody to see the outline of my behind.
- Of your junker? - Yeah.
[Laughter.]
- You look amazing.
- Yeah? - Uh-huh.
- You look you look very hot.
- Damn, Will.
- You look to be hot.
So are you guys part of the the family, Yoli's family? - Family business.
- Yeah.
I'm the oldest.
- She's the oldest.
- He's the youngest.
I'm the youngest.
Yeah.
Abdullah: And then, all your kids were born - Yeah.
We were all - in Texas.
- We were all born here.
Yeah.
- Oh, no kidding.
Abdullah: Immigration's obviously a big issue in politics.
Is that still a major issue for Mexicans in Texas? [Speaking Spanish.]
I feel like Trump sought to kind of pinpoint us and try to get publicity from it.
He's one of them that's taking advantage of that in a twisted way.
- Mm-hmm.
- And here in Texas, I have yet to see such hatred towards us yet.
That's one thing I wanted to ask, like, both of you guys as young people, like, what what you guys experience in terms of racism.
Or, like you're saying, you don't experience bigotry? Hugo: We have to be careful when we talk to the cops.
You know? Like, uh, 'cause they do see us like we might be, uh, trouble for them more than somebody else, you know.
I was walking home from, uh, Eastfield College.
And I was stopped, asked questions, what am I doing here, you know, like if I was up to something, but But we don't see it as racial profiling.
Like, we don't see ourselves, "Oh, well, we're Mexican.
That's why he stopped us.
" Yeah.
We see ourselves as Americans.
I mean, I see myself as American because that's what I am.
But at the airport, when I get pulled aside and have my bag searched, I know it's because I'm Muslim.
You know what I mean? Like, that's just a fact.
By definition, that's racially profiling.
Yeah.
When when that happens, you remember how I'm Mexican.
Right.
You remember.
You have your moment, like, "Oh, wait.
I'm actually not white.
" Abdullah: So this is the practice session for a charreada, which is essentially a Mexican rodeo.
- Oh, wow.
- Whoa.
Wow.
Abdullah: This is all about showmanship.
It's all about ornate costume.
And it's also about being Mexican.
Ochoa: Right now, we have one of our charros doing one of our suertes.
That's the bull riding.
And they're also gonna demonstrate a little bit of team roping.
Um, it's called la terna.
[Speaking Spanish.]
The charreada comes from Mexican.
But since we're in the U.
S - U.
S.
, it's - Yeah.
We It has to be a little bit of both.
Bit of both.
Yeah.
It started in Jalisco, I believe, um, just from ranchers, you know, like, playing around.
Later on in the '80s, that's when they invited the women to be a part of it.
[Speaking Spanish.]
- Wow.
- Wow.
[Speaking Spanish.]
Oh, my God.
Wilbert: I think I like this better than the dudes' style.
Yeah.
It's almost what I'm thinking.
It's it's pretty swagged out.
Abdullah: And it's about their synchronization, not just about individual bravado.
- Mm-hmm.
- Yeah.
- And they're really good.
- Wow.
- Oh, my God.
- Ooh.
That's so cool.
This is so beautiful.
- Whoo.
- Beautiful.
- Muy bien! - Amazing.
Gracias.
I want to do that.
Wilbert: Do you guys self-identify as Texans? Like, is that part of your personal identity? I mean, I was born here in Fort Worth, Texas.
Um, I do feel Texan.
But I'm also proud to say I'm daughter of Mexicans.
So I consider myself both ways.
And that's the way we plan on, you know, raising our kids, just, you know, have the same values of our culture and of also the Texas culture, so Do you guys agree with, like, the level of, you know, border protection and and all that stuff that goes on? It seems kind of persecutory.
Mm, to a certain point, it's good.
It's good.
I mean, you know, you don't want things coming back and forth, certain things like illegal stuff.
Um, what would you say? I mean As a parent, the drug part is a big issue.
I have two little girls.
She has a little boy.
But sometimes, you know, they say we're all drug dealers, all Mexicans.
Is there any political party that you would like to see running this country? I I think, uh, a woman would do a good job.
Just just my personal opinion.
- Muy bien.
- All right.
We'll see.
Why are why are the horses so mad? Man: If random strangers get on your back, what would be your first instinct? I would be very angry, too.
Yeah.
Just first instinct is to buck them off.
And that's it.
Abdullah: Let's go ride.
[Speaking Spanish.]
I like you, horse.
You're amazing.
And you're handsome.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Wilbert: Those boys were looking cold.
They took it to a whole 'nother level.
And the women were looking beautiful in the patterns and the colors and the designs.
And everything about it was just creative and exciting.
[Speaking Spanish.]
And that's what America's supposed to be.
It's, uh, when people come from a different place, they bring their own swag to the table.
And the table gets to be dope.
That's when America's at its best.
You're talking about immigrants.
They're just people.
You know, they have funny stories.
They have families.
They just want to live.