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This is On The Media. I'm Michael Loewinger. Immigration consistently polls as one of the most important topics for voters.
Well, some voters. According to a recent Gallup poll, immigration is the most polarizing issue of the last 25 years, with 48% of Republicans saying it's the most important issue compared to just 8% of Democrats.
This probably has something to do with the coverage of immigration in conservative media. And recently, right-wing pundits have begun to focus on one of the most dangerous parts of a migrant's journey north from South America. Here's Tucker Carlson. Last year, at least 520,000 migrants crossed it to come here. How did that happen? What is it? What is going on in the Darien Gap?
In March, New York Times reporter Ken Benzinger reported a story from the Darien Gap in Panama, which was once thought to be too perilous to cross, but which now sees thousands of migrants make their way through every month.
A podcast we listen to regularly here at OTM is the daily news show What Next? Hosted by our former WNYC colleague Mary Harris, who now works at Slate. And on a recent episode, Mary spoke to Ken Benzinger about this new right-wing media obsession with the Darien Gap. Here's Mary.
Ken says there is one man in particular who has made it his mission to get eyes on who is coming through this newly popular route on their way to the U.S. I really do point a lot of this to this one person named Michael Yan, who I talked to extensively about.
he in 2021 is at the January 6th event in Washington. He's at what became this insurrection, this raid in the Capitol, but he's not going into the Capitol, though he is on the grounds and he's there documenting it. And then he told me he later, you know, was at Joe Biden's inauguration in protest. And he told me that soon after the inauguration, he
he realized that immigration was going to be the big theme. And he had spent time in Eagle Pass in Texas and in El Paso and had met some people there who were from Panama who said, you got to come down to Panama and check this out.
And he, as early as February 2021, starts going down there to look around. And within a few months, he's decided that he needs more people to come and see it. They need more people with a bigger sort of cultural and media reach than he does to get out the message that the immigration sort of invasion is now focused there. That's the focal point of the world.
How many people at this point has he led through this region? He's a fascinating character to talk to, has tons of energy, and claims that he doesn't keep track of such things because people who keep track of the number of times they went to a place or the number of people they brought to a place are newbies and aren't legit. And that legit people, people who have really been down in the trenches, don't keep track of such minor details. Okay. Yeah.
But I finally got him after sort of multiple tries to say that it's been at least 60 people he estimates that he's brought down there. And among them are congressmen, candidates for elected office, podcasters, photographers,
Lots of social media influencers, people who work for conservative newspapers, a lot of people who work for Internet based web shows on the same platform as Steve Bannon's show called Real America's Voice. And so he's just he's brought a ton down there and it's gotten to the point where people in that world kind of are covetous of an invitation from Michael Young to get down there and check out the scene.
You went down to watch what happened when a conservative influencer named Laura Loomer went down for her tour. She's only 30 years old. She's a right-wing provocateur. She's run for Congress in Florida. She's described herself as a proud Islamophobe, though I believe she's distanced herself from that label recently, but she's been out there before.
What was she doing in Panama? Why did she want to go? Did this just become something you have to do if you are in this world? You know, that's exactly what I wanted to find out. My primary beat is looking at media figures on the right and sort of the right-wing media environment. She's one of the people I look at and follow on social media and see what they're up to. And
She's been very close to the campaign of Donald Trump and went to the primaries in Iowa and New Hampshire, essentially to boost Trump and more than anything to go after his opponents, to go after Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley in particular. Hey, everybody. Welcome to a new episode of Loomer Unleashed. I'm your host, Laura Loomer. And on today's episode, we're going to talk about how Ron DeSantis is an enemy to the January 6th political prisoners.
And she's got a very unique style. She likes to ambush people. She calls it loomering. She calls it loomering. Are you going to be endorsing President Trump when you drop out the night of the Iowa caucus or hopefully shortly after? An absentee governor who changed the law in Florida so that you could run for president. Answer a question, Ron. I thought you were never back down. Never back down, Ron.
Yeah, you get loomered when she sort of jumps out from behind a pillar and sticks a camera in your face. And she told me she has a she got a trademark or something with the government for the term loomered. So I just thought, well, I want to go see her in action. I didn't I wasn't able to go to Iowa, New Hampshire, but.
I'm going to go to South Carolina where the next big primary is and watch her there. So I was gearing up to do that. And then I was looking at her social media feed and she announces early in February that she decided not to go to the primary in South Carolina, that instead she decided to accept an invitation from Michael Yan to go to Panama to see the Darien Gap. I
I think that exposing this immigration issue will further help people understand why we need President Trump back in office as well, because this is just...
They see the border, they see politicians going and they, you know, you see people swimming across the Rio Grande, but I don't think a lot of people are aware of these Chinese communist encampments in the jungle in Panama and these Hamas and Hezbollah outposts and, you know, all the narco traffic. So Laura Loomer was shooting video the whole time you were with her. You were watching her do that. Is that right? I mean, yeah.
I'm sure there were moments down there where the camera wasn't rolling, but there were not many. Every time I saw her, someone was filming. And in fact, when I was talking to her, we were sometimes walking around between places where there weren't necessarily migrants around and the cameras were pointed right at us. So I was on camera next to Laura the whole time, sometimes two cameras at once filming me talking to Laura.
I want to talk about one video in particular because it really seemed to catch fire online. This is this video that Loomer took with a 20-year-old migrant named Ayub Ibrahim from Somalia. He had traveled to Turkey and Brazil and then to the Darien Gap on foot. What did Loomer want to know from him? The scene was they're walking around this camp and there's a lot of Venezuelans there. There's some Colombians, there's some Ecuadorians.
And here and there are people from the rest of the world and sort of sitting against a trailer and one person leaning up against a truck or a bunch of people who obviously look like they're from not from South America. Turns out they're Somalian. There's a couple of Somalian women wearing, I think they're wearing hijabs. And so the whole crew, not just Laura Loomer, but the whole crew sort of more or less fast walked over there and asked if anyone would talk. So they were clearly casting for what they wanted to see, which is someone Muslim. Yeah.
That's right. This guy, Ayub, I think was trying to be very polite. I think he speaks pretty good English. There was sort of maybe a bit of a pride in the fact that he speaks good English to be able to show it off, agreed to do this, and all the cameras pointed him. And the questions very quickly go towards American politics. So you guys like Ilhan Omar? Yeah, yeah. Why? Because she's one of us. She's Somali, from Somalia.
Then she went there by immigration, by refugee. Then she became a congresswoman. So I want to be like her. You want to be in politics? You want to go work in politics in America? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or anything. For now, I don't have any choice.
They're asking specific questions about Joe Biden and about Donald Trump and about immigration. And he's saying that he doesn't follow American politics very well, that he was, even during the Trump presidency, he was too young to even really pay attention, didn't know what was going on. But they're pushing him and asking him over and over again, sort of, do you support Biden or Trump? Who's better for immigrants? President Trump? By the time he was president, I was young. I didn't follow the politics, so, yeah. Who do you think is better, uh,
For illegal immigrants, Trump or Biden? No. Biden, of course. So you came because Joe Biden said our borders are open? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the sort of gotcha thing they kind of wanted him to say. You see this over and over. I saw it over and over with them is trying to get migrants to the point of saying they like Biden better than Trump, that they think Biden is good for migrants. Yeah, I mean, you were there when this interview was done, when it eventually was edited and uploaded online.
Did what was sent around seem accurate to the conversation to you? Well, I mean, it was real footage. And it so happened that I recorded the conversation as well. And there's three or four or five questions that...
Laura Loomer and others were asking at the tail end that don't end up on the version that's posted online. And these are questions, for example, they're trying to get him to admit that the United Nations or the U.S. government has secretly sent him money to help him pay for his voyage to the U.S. And he denies that and says he didn't get any help from anybody. And then they ask him, Laura Loomer asks him a bunch of questions about Islam. And I think trying to get him to sort of admit that Islam is
sort of thinks of women as second-class citizens or thinks of homosexuals as second-class citizens. And he doesn't take the bait, right? He keeps denying that he thinks that and he believes that people can do what they want. And he doesn't believe that religion should dictate people's lives. Those answers didn't seem to be what this group is looking for because they're on the cutting room floor. You won't find them on the internet, at least not the internet that Laura Loomer is posting to.
Yeah, and I think you said later after this interview was posted –
Laura Loomer went on InfoWars and talked about how people like Mr. Ibrahim were jihadists or people with jihadist tendencies. And my understanding is that's not what you actually saw from him. That was not at all what I saw from him. If anything, he's telling the story of trying to get out of a country with a problem with violent political fundamentalism or religious fundamentalism. And the story he told me and even to some degree what he told Laura Loomer was that that's why he left was to get away from that. And he took a huge
personal and financial risk to do so. And I made giant sacrifices to get there. And the last thing he wanted to do was
project that story. And I kept in touch with Ayub as he made his way further north. And this is a person who was excited about the idea of starting a new life in America and not living a life of risk and fear, and certainly wasn't a religious fundamentalist on any level. And he felt, you know, in conversations with me, very upset about the way the interview went. He felt that he was steered into places that he hadn't intended to go.
And I remember he asked me, he sent me a message saying, did anyone post video from that interview? And I said, yeah. And he said, will you share it with me? So I did. And he saw the video and he wrote me back. And he says, oh, my God, you know, you know the truth. Can you please post the truth? Can you tell the world what that conversation was really about? And he seemed really upset. We'll be back after a quick break. You've talked about.
a few different characteristics that right-wing influencers seem to be looking for when they go on these trips to the Darien Gap. You've talked about how they're looking for men in particular, not women and children. You've talked about how they're looking for people who aren't necessarily coming from South American countries. They're coming from China, Africa, Haiti, other places. And you've talked about how it's important to them to
to talk politics, to talk about like what do you want to do in the United States and also who do you want to vote for, even though that's not really going to be something they can do for a while, if ever. Why are those three or four things so important for them to capture? Like how do you think focusing on those traits helps shape a narrative for these folks? I mean, I think the way
The clearest answer to that is to look at what the goal probably is. And I think the goal is to foment fear about immigration, about migration, about demographic change in the country, and to also tie that to the current sort of political administration in the country, to tie that to the Biden administration and to the Democratic Party, and to say that the current administration is responsible for something that you should all be scared of.
to handcuff those two ideas together. Were people like Laura Loomer and Michael Yan transparent about that? Like when you asked, like, what's your goal here? Were they like, oh yeah, to make people scared?
No, but they are but Laura for example is very transparent about the fact that she wants Donald Trump to win I mean she she calls herself a journalist but Is totally has no problems whatsoever with also saying that she's an advocate for one particular candidate or a party and in this case It's Donald Trump and more than anyone else. I saw down there She wore that on her sleeve in every conversation She tried she tried to introduce the concept that Trump would be be the answer Michael Yon
didn't do that, but Michael Yan is also very openly against border policies. Michael Yan's kind of more plugged into the global kind of conspiracy-minded aspect of it. His take on this and that of several other people in his entourage is kind of like, well, the U.S. government is only part of a big system that's
that's pushing worldwide demographic change. So the Chinese, what are they doing? Many are coming for this reason or that reason. I don't know what all they're coming for. They're clearly mostly military age males. When you say military age male, that makes me think that you believe they're coming here to invade in a fight. Is that what you're saying? I think it's pretty obvious. And I think if you...
Their targets are broader than just the Biden administration. Their targets are, which I think they would characterize almost as like just a small piece of it or a tool of greater powers. The greater powers are things like the United Nations. He frequently talks about the World Economic Forum, which is the group that hosts the annual shindig in Davos where all the rich and powerful go. And then the Chinese government. Yeah. Yeah.
Michael Yan is kind of a bit of a puzzle to me. And I'm wondering what you thought of him after spending a good deal of time with him. Because it's clear he's made all these connections in the Panamanian government. You even talk about how, you know, people who are with him could go places in Panama that you yourself as a Times journalist couldn't necessarily go because he just had the pull with the local officials to get his people in Panama.
And to me, that just raises these questions of if he's the main way that journalists, quote unquote, people can see what's happening in this region. It just seems like a huge problem because he so clearly has an agenda. Right. I mean, he's a person who has an agenda. He's had an agenda for a long time. He's inserted himself into political hotspots for decades.
at least a decade, maybe longer, maybe 20 years, where this has become what he does in life. And he's kind of an ideologue and a true believer, and his true beliefs are often pretty far out there. And he is very observant
obsessed, I would say, with China and believes that China is doing many, many nefarious things all the time. More recently, he's been active in the Netherlands, where he's on the side of farmers who are protesting environmental regulations. But he said that really what's going on is that China is creating an immigrant drive towards Europe to wipe out the population in the Netherlands and to replace the Netherlands voting population with
sort of Syrians and other people from war-torn parts of the world. So he's got a kind of a consistent message to explain why all these things are happening.
I mean, my listeners might know it as the great replacement theory. And it sounds like he has the great replacement theory about everywhere. Europe, United States, just the immigrants are coming and they're there to take your vote, your money, whatever. Yeah, the global south is taking over the global north. And having him as sort of the organizer of, you know, on the ground, getting people into this movement is going to tell you a lot about what the movement's going to say.
You know, I'm pretty clear after reading your reporting what people like Michael Yan and Laura Loomer are advocating against because they use really strong language to articulate that. They are against a quote unquote invasion of migrants. But what are these people advocating for?
If there's a solution they can think of, I think it boils down to a couple of things. One, they think that all the nonprofits that are humanitarian nonprofits, like the Red Cross or Doctors Without Borders, and also all the UN international organizations, should basically just close up shop in Central America and should get out of there completely and offer no services whatsoever to migrants. That seems like a disaster. Well, they argue that they are incentivizing migration. And Panama has...
You could argue has responded. You know, Panama might say it isn't a response, but Panama basically booted Doctors Without Borders out of Panama, out of the Darien Gap region, saying that they hadn't complied with their sort of requirements for staying there. And so now that group, which was the primary place to offer much needed medical aid for migrants, is no longer operating in Panama. Yeah. I wonder if you left your trip...
feeling kind of despairing about what you're up against as a journalist? Like, there's only one story by you about these internet videos, but you said Michael Yon's taken 60 people into the jungle.
to get his point of view out there. Do you worry the balance is really off here? Yeah, I mean, I have to be careful, of course. You know, my job is not to advocate for one side or the other of the immigration debate, and I'm not an immigration reporter. But I do think my job is to try to get as close to the truth as possible and also to try to debunk or at least show different truths when things are not being presented in a way that's in good faith.
And it is frustrating because there's a lot of firepower out there pushing towards this narrative that I don't think reflects reality. And Michael Yon tells me he's going to keep making trips. And people like Laura Loomer say they may go back. They find it, you know, an important place to be, an important thing to be capturing on film to show back to America. Loomer recently announced that she's going to make a documentary. She's trying to raise $100,000.
to make a documentary based primarily on footage from her 10 days in Panama. She's going to call it The Great Replacement. Yeah, that's right, The Great Replacement. So it's basically underscoring the entire idea, this clearly false conspiracy theory that there's a plan to basically permanently install the Democratic Party in the U.S. by bringing in immigrants from other countries who will illegally vote and vote for Democrats.
And the idea that these people are coming to the U.S. to vote is absurd. They're coming to the U.S. to work and keep their fingers crossed that they can stay in a legal way and contribute to society and do the immigrant story, the immigrant dance that this country has been doing for, well, forever, but certainly for the last several hundred years.
This isn't to say that I don't think there isn't a serious problem out there. I mean, my colleagues at the New York Times have spent way more time than me in the Darien Gap and have documented the crisis that's going on there and have watched the human suffering, but also all the other toll it's taking on the region and the hemisphere and
how there is a real crisis there. The point is not to say that this isn't a problem, but the point is to say that labeling every immigrant as some kind of tactical weapon pointed at the U.S. is just not helping at all. It makes the situation even worse. Ken, I'm grateful for your time. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Oh, thanks for having me, Mary, and letting me go on about this. It's, to me, a really interesting and important topic. Thank you.
Ken Benzinger is a New York Times political reporter. He covers right-wing media and national campaigns. Thanks for listening to the Midweek Podcast. We have a really fun show for you this weekend. In the fallout of the completely bizarre chat GPT Scarlett Johansson scandal, I'm going to be diving into the world of tech reporting and asking, how should we be covering AI? How can we do it better?
I'm excited about this one. See you Friday. I'm Michael Olinger.
