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Brian Lehrer: The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, again, everyone. With me now is Maria Hinojosa, many of you know her from her work on the public radio show, Latino USA or from her Emmy Award winning work on television or her appearances elsewhere as a political analyst. We will talk some politics in this segment as usual when Maria comes on today, including why Donald Trump, whose original campaign centerpiece, was the lie that Mexican immigrants are dangerous to others is hoping for a rising share of the Latinx vote this year and seeing it in some recent polls.

He held the Latinos for Trump event in Arizona yesterday because apparently he sees hope there, and how is Joe Biden competing for votes in the many diverse Latinx communities. Today, we will also talk about American politics in the context of Maria Hinojosa's life because she has a new memoir just published called Once I Was You, a memoir of love and hate in a torn America. Maria, big congrats on the book. I don't know how you found the time with all you do, but it's wonderful. Thanks for coming on to show.

Maria Hinojosa: [laughs] Brian, I could not be more thrilled to be launching the book at WNYC with you. It's just really a pleasure to be on with all my fellow New Yorkers. You know how I did it, Brian, at one point I just told my team I'm not going to the office anymore. I would sit down and write every morning, including Saturdays and Sundays until I couldn't. I basically was in quarantine, so I was setting up for this experience. Thankfully here we are, publication day, woo-hoo.

Brian: Woo-hoo. You've already busted one big stereotype with this book that radio people can't write full sentences so thank you on behalf of all of us.

Maria: [laughs] I do think it's interesting that the whole issue of the writing. I talk a lot about imposter syndrome in this book. It's something that so far a lot of people have been intrigued by because it's like, "Wow, we don't really hear about people who have made it talking a lot about imposter syndrome." I deal with it, I dealt with it in the writing of this book.

I think it's okay to be a little bit insecure because if you don't have any level of humility or insecurity, you turn out to be somebody who, I don't know, I think we can all think of who that person might be right now who is leading our country in a very dangerous way. Then actually I think he's very insecure. I think that's the whole issue. Dealing with imposter syndrome, dealing with our insecurities and pushing through is part of the message

Brian: The title, Once I Was You. We first encountered the phrase at the end of the introduction to the book, you're writing about a child, a girl at the McAllen airport in Texas and you write, I see you because once I was you. Would you start by telling us about that little girl who you said you once were?

Maria: Well, me or the little girl I saw? Me, what ends up happening, Brian, is that in the writing of this book, it's coinciding with everything that has been the culmination of not just four years or three years of anti-immigrant behavior by this country that has crystallized under Donald Trump. The book is saying this has been centuries in the making, but the little girl that I was was actually unaware that I had almost been taken by immigration agents.

When I was a little girl at that age, like the little girl who I see in the McAllen airport, probably 10 years old, I was busy trying to be a good American girl. I was very proud of being Mexican in Chicago. I knew feeling invisible, but I certainly didn't feel the kind of hatred that the little girl at the airport who I encounter in the McAllen airport who ultimately, as you know, I use very harsh words. I say, "This is a child that is being trafficked, that is being transported, that is being kidnapped by the government." That--

Brian: Just for context, she had confirmed to you that she was being housed in a detention camp. This was in the family separation period of at least when it was much in the news and you described her situation as one of the modern harbors of the USA.

Maria: Right now, we're not traveling in airports. I haven't been to an airport since March, but when we were in airports, if you looked around you could see this. You could see children who were all wearing ill-fitting, cheap sweatsuits. You would look at these kids and you'd be like, "Who are they? Why are they are together? Are they a school trip? Are they a soccer team? No, they're not. They're not happy. What's going on here?"

All I'm saying is that children being trafficked exists right here in New York City. There are places where these children have been brought to right here in New York City. That notion of once I was you is I'm really trying to push ourselves to understand that these children could be our children. That children are being taken from parents and moved around, imagine. It is on all of us to be responsible to deconstruct this. I hope that my book-- Yes, it's my story but it's the larger context of how did this happen and the history of it. I hope that it means people understand that all of us have a responsibility in this.

Brian: One of the reasons that I asked you about that little girl's story so early on is that because one of the beautiful things about your book is that while telling your own story, you also center the stories of other immigrants who might not have the privilege that you have at this point of telling their stories in public. One of the ways that you connect yourself to the girl at McAllen airport is because once you were a girl at the airport, a baby, in fact, who was coming in with your family who had green cards, but then they told your mother they would separate you from her. Will you share that story?

Maria: Just even hearing you say it, I'm like, "Oh my God." Because I had to ask the story of like, "Mom, how did we get to Chicago from Mexico?" My dad was hired by the University of Chicago. He's a medical doctor dedicated to research and help to create the cochlear implant. We all get on a plane and we fly from Mexico City to Dallas and change planes in Dallas to go to Chicago. The way my mom told the story was that this very tall Texan immigration agent had said that I looked a little sick and maybe they needed to keep me and that my mom stood up to him and said, "Sir, my husband is Dr. Raul Hinojosa." Basically created a scene in the airport.

The story had always been like, "Oh my God, my mom is such a badass. Now I know why I'm tiny but mighty. She's such a feminist. She owned her voice." Then at the height of this horror that we were hearing the voices of these children crying, my mother calls me, I'm at an airport, I'm in transit and she says, "Mamita." She's in tears, she's heaving and she says, "That was you, it could have been us." I was like, "What are you talking about, mom? Mom, what are you talking about?"

She says, "Mihita, they tried to take you from me. Do you understand?" I was like, "Oh my God." She said, "I had to scream at that agent." She said, "Those mothers right now who have lost their children, that could have been me." That, Brian, was the moment when everything just changed in my life.

Brian: You only learned that story recently?

Maria: The story of coming and like, "Oh, he wanted to take you because you had a rash." It was like, we didn't focus on the taking part, we focused on the fact that my mom stood up to the guy.

Brian: Got it.

Maria: For me, I was always like, "Oh my God, that must've been some weird solo immigration agent, that was some weird dude. Where were they going to put me?" Well, it turns out, Brian, that they were taking children at that time, that was what was happening. There was, I haven't found it yet, I have to go back, but there was more than likely a room in the Dallas airport in the early 1960s where they were putting children, babies. Where did they end up? Where were they?

That I think is the horror is that I used to think, "Oh my God, it was just a fluke, it just happened to me." Then you're like, "Holy gosh, it could have been me. It absolutely could have been me." For having a mother who chose to speak out and own her voice and own her privilege frankly.

Brian: You described your mom early in the book just before moving to the US from Mexico, having the mixed emotions of ecstasy and shame. That was really evocative. Can you describe both things a little bit and how common you think it might be in other immigrants?

Maria: Oh my gosh. Everybody who's listening to this right now, knows exactly what I'm talking about because my father, for example, who became an American citizen, the first of the family. When we would go back to Mexico every year from Chicago by car, "No, papa. [Spanish language]" They insulted my dad, "Eres un vendido. [Spanish language] Eres un pocho. You're an American. Eres un gabacho. You're a gringo." It was all joking, but no, they were shaming my father because he had chosen to follow his mission of helping people to hear, those who were deaf and wanted to. They shamed him for moving to the United States. They were also secretly very proud of him and jealous.

On the other hand, my mom was like, "Wow." She was much younger. She was like, "This is an opportunity of a lifetime. I'm going to get to experience this incredible country. I'm going to learn all these things. I'm going to have an amazing experience." All immigrants, we experienced that. What I try to resolve in the book is to say that notion of, "[Spanish language]. I'm neither from there, nor from here," is actually our superpower. That is our superpower. If we are living in this country with or without papers, with or without citizenship, these are our American stories. We have to own them and tell them. They're not Latino stories or immigrant, they're American stories 100%.

Brian: My guest telling her American stories. If you don't already recognize the voice, it's Maria Hinojosa, host of Latino USA on Public Radio among other things. Her new memoir out today is Once I Was You: A Memoir of Love and Hate in a Torn America. We'll get to some politics of the day. The story of your life, of course, cannot be reduced to an immigrant story. Your intersectionalism, as you've described, many aspects of your life, is also a woman's story, a sexual assault survivor story, a journalist story, to be sure, a wife and mother story.

If people think of you as telling primarily an immigrant story, what other part of your life do you either like talking about a lot publicly or feel it's more important to, given the context of this book?

Maria: I love all of that. It is a book. It's like a feminist book because I'm growing up in the '60s and '70s. I am a rape survivor. I didn't even realize that until much later in my life. It all came tumbling out with the Christine Blasey Ford testimony and Brett Kavanaugh, and his resistance to accept what had happened. The lingering trauma of that. It is my longtime relationship with an African American woman who is my mentor. My first understanding of civil rights coming from seeing Dr. Martin Luther King speak.

Growing up on the South side of Chicago, living in Harlem now, which is where my company is based. My gosh, I haven't left Harlem since March. This is my community, my neighborhood. I love talking about the journalism side of it. I get into a lot of the ethics of the journalism issues that we face. Having been the first Latina in all of the newsrooms where I worked, which many other journalists of color are just like, "What? You were the first?" I was like, "Yes." I was the first at WNYC. My gosh, I remember going up to the old building there in the municipal building. That was my job. I loved clearly saying, "I know you want to box us in. I know, yes, there is the immigrant story.

I deal with immigration policy and history. Please understand that we as immigrants in this country are that. We are Americans. Talk to us about pop culture. Talk to us about religion. Talk to us about anything that has to do with your life," because that's the same things that are happening with our lives. I think, for me, talking about being a survivor of rape, I think most people may not expect me to be talking about that and also talking about the journalism side and writing for Walter Cronkite, and meeting him, and doing those things. Anything that helps to move it beyond. I don't say just an immigrant story, but to understand the complexity of our immigrant stories.

Brian: We'll continue with Maria Hinojosa and talk some politics of the day right after this.

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Brian Lehrer on WNYC with Maria Hinojosa, whose new book is Once I Was You: A Memoir of Love and Hate in a Torn America. To bring us to the presidential race of today, let me ask you to take us through a little bit of the political history that you do in the book alongside your personal story. How do you see the Republican party over the course of your lifetime and how do you see the Democrats? On the Republican side, note, we don't have 53 hours, but on the Republican side, a lot of people these days, say, Ronald Reagan, as believing in America as an open-borders country. At least, in theory, here's a very famous clip that gets cited as a contrast to Trump.

Ronald Reagan: I've spoken to the shining city all my political life, but I don't know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. In my mind, it was a tall, proud city built on rock stronger than oceans, windswept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace. A city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. If there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here.

Brian: That was from his farewell address. If you think that was a one-off, listeners, he came back and back to that kind of theory. Here's one other Reagan clip from another time.

Ronald: Rather than making them or talking about putting up a fence, why don't we work out some recognition of our mutual problems, make it possible for them to come here legally with a work permit. Then, while they're working and earning here, they pay taxes here. When they want to go back, they can go back and they can cross. Open the border both ways."

Brian: Talking about Mexican people and the Mexican border, obviously. Then, George W. Bush seemed popular with Mexican American voters in Texas and tried for comprehensive immigration reform as president path to citizenship for a better sealing of the border. That was supposed to be the trade-off, if that's a fair reduction of it. How do you see that arc or that internal Republican tension that led us to Trump?

Maria: This was really a difficult thing for me was to realize how both the Republicans and the Democrats have essentially thrown immigrants under the bus time and time again. Ronald Reagan did create the Immigration Reform and Control Act in 1986. That did end up legalizing about three million undocumented people. I know people whose children were named after Nancy and Ronald Reagan. Their Mexican children were named that because they were thankful to Ronald Reagan, though, they did not necessarily turn into Republican voting Latinos and Latinas.

On the one hand, Reagan was doing that, but if you remember back to the 1980s, he was also bombing Central America. He was sending military aid. All over North was corrupting the support for the Contra revolutionaries, who were against the Sandinista government, which was supported by the people. That's the perfect example, is that, on the one hand, Ronald Reagan was saying, "Wow, immigrants, let them come." By the way, interesting clip, "Let them come and work here. Let them come and get their work thing going on." It is understanding the economic benefit of immigrants. He did understand that.

On the other hand, he was destabilizing Central America in the 1980s. It's no surprise that Central American refugee children, mothers, men are still coming here to the United States now. Is it a pretty thing to have to say, that Bill Clinton signed the most destructive anti-immigrant laws in 1996? For example, this was--

Brian: Some people don't know that history.

Maria: This is basically Bill Clinton who ran on an anti-immigrant platform. It was Bill Clinton who was saying, "We need to take care of that border and those illegals coming over here." He hadn't yet add a famous ad. He was doing all of these operations. Bootstrap going down on the border and just, again, militarizing the border, in my view, unnecessarily. Signing into laws, for example, this notion that there are aggravated felonies. Look, there's a felony and it's a felony. What is this aggravated felony?

Well, now, an immigrant and only an immigrant can be charged with an aggravated felony, which therefore means he is deportable. Prior to that, the felony, if you had a green card, for example, like I know many people ended up serving a year or two for selling drugs on the streets and then change their lives around. Now you could be deported for that offense. It's like double jeopardy. He was signing into law all of these insidious little changes that would lead to where we are now. He was doing it at a time in 1996 when there really was an anti-immigrant fervor. That's what's so sad about it, because it was like, yo, Bill Clinton, you were doing this at a time when people really were not even on an anti-immigrant tip here, and that wasn't the vibe.

The reckoning, as I hear Ronald Reagan, I'm thinking about, "Wow, Republicans. What are you going to do in the future?" Because you could have had a future if Ronald Reagan's-- He was like Latinos or Republicans, they just don't know it yet. You could have had a future. What's going to happen to the Republican Party post-Trump? The Democrats, as we know, Brian, we're watching this in real-time. It's like they're missing the dance. It's like hello, Latino voters are going to put you over the top in that way that you want it to be massive, and you're still coming late to the dance.

Brian: How?

Maria: Well, I mean, how could it be that during the Democratic National Convention that any Latino or Latina on social media was posting the question of why are we invisible from the Democratic National Convention? Why is AOC only getting one minute? I don't care what the politics are behind it. I get party politics, but you now created a dynamic where Latino voters are saying, why were we invisible? That should never had been a question coming out of the Democratic National Convention, ever.

The fact that it is is their failure. I'll say it again, I'm going to say it right now, because the fact that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have not sat down with me when I sat down with every other candidate who gave me an hour, Brian. What's that about? Yes, Latinos and Latinas are engaged, but we want answers, and we want accountability. It's a mistake to just think that we are going to fall into line because the Democratic Party has some reckoning to do with these voters.

Having said that, I think many of them will not vote for Donald Trump because they are bearing the brunt of this horror, but there are Latinos and Latinas in Florida, in Texas, here in New York, who will vote for Donald Trump. It should not be surprising to people. When you are told to hate yourself when a candidate begins his campaign by insulting who you are. I'm a Mexican, a lot of people are like, "Geez, I don't want to be that. I'll be anything but that." We have to understand self-hatred. It's an ugly thing.

Brian: Maria Hinojosa, her brand new book is called once Once I Was You: A Memoir of Love and Hate in a Torn America. If you want to hear and see more of Maria Hinojosa, she's going to be hosting a virtual event in conjunction with the book released tonight at seven o'clock, technically, from the Hudson Library in Hudson, Ohio. I think you're in Harlem today, right? It is part of an ongoing virtual book tour with the full calendar available on her Twitter feed, which is @maria_hinojosa. Here is to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris doing an interview for Latino USA. If you're out there, Joe and Kamala, before you do the show, I know this is a local New York show in a blue state, do Maria Hinojosa show, so there you go.

Maria: Brian, hold on a second. I just want to say that is what allyship looks like as a journalist. As a journalist, that is what allyship looks like. Thank you, Brian, because we are very competitive in our field. For you to say do Latino USA first, I'm just-- Brian, that's why people love you because you are a good ally and you move with the heart. You're also a brilliant journalist. Thank you so much for this beautiful interview. I really appreciate it.

Brian: I'm genuinely touch coming from you, and I'm blushing right now.

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