S.O.S. (Stories of Service) - Ordinary people who do extraordinary work

The Shocking Truth Behind the 2021 Border Crisis with Lt. Col. (Ret.) Lenore Hackenyos | S.O.S. #232

Theresa Carpenter

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Headlines rarely match the ground truth. We sit down with retired Lt Col Lenore Hakinos to unpack what it took to stand up Camp Delphi in Donna, Texas during the 2021 surge of unaccompanied minors. As a joint planner with deep logistics and emergency management experience, Lenore helped build an expeditionary base camp—dorms, medical intake, process flow—all under HHS leadership with ORR and FEMA in support. What she found was a system designed for care but strained by scale: no biometrics at intake, thin sponsor vetting, rotating leaders, and case managers overwhelmed by tens of thousands of children needing placement.

We walk through how federal roles actually worked on the ground, why intake relied on paper notes and consulate calls, and the risks that come with speed without verification. From “recycled” identities to a transitory school built for kids who were supposed to stay mere weeks, the picture is complex and deeply human. Lenore’s team imposed order where they could—stop‑movement censuses, daily reconciliations—but the bigger tension remained: how to balance humanitarian urgency with anti‑trafficking safeguards and accountability that follows a child beyond the tent line.

The conversation doesn’t stop at the border. After retiring, Lenore channeled that same mission mindset into the American Legion, reviving a local post, supporting veterans’ services, creating scholarships, and rebuilding community traditions in a rapidly growing Texas county. It’s a reminder that while national policy can feel distant, local service is always within reach. Listen for a candid, expert look at HHS, ORR, FEMA coordination, migrant child placement, logistics under pressure, and what it means to serve when duty meets doubt—and stay for practical hope about building strong communities.

If this resonated, subscribe, leave a review, and share with someone who cares about border policy, child safety, and real‑world public service.

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SPEAKER_02:

A lot of times we hear about things in the news and we want to know more information. We want to know the story behind this story. And I know when I was reading online about the border crisis in 2021 during the Biden administration, I thought there had to be more to that story. I I didn't understand what was really going on at the border, and I didn't understand if it was a crisis, what was really going on, especially with the unaccompanied minors and other issues. And today I am so honored. I have someone who knows about this experience firsthand, but is also a friend of mine. So, Lenore, how are you doing today?

SPEAKER_01:

Well, thank you, Teresa. I'm happy to be here.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, I'm happy to have you and welcome everybody to the Stories of Service Podcast, ordinary people who do extraordinary work. And I am the host of Stories of Service, Teresa Carpenter. And as we always do, we kick these shows off with an intro from my father, Charlie Pickard.

SPEAKER_00:

From the moment we're born and lock eyes with our parents, we are inspiring others. By showing up as a vessel of service, we not only help others, we help ourselves. Welcome to SOS Stories of Service, hosted by Teresa Carpenter, here from ordinary people from all walks of life who have transformed their communities by performing extraordinary work.

SPEAKER_02:

And today I'm talking to Lieutenant Colonel retired Lenore Hakinos, and I might not be pronouncing that right. Is that correct? Hakinos. Okay. Hakinos. Yes. Perfect. A U.S. Air Force Reserve officer whose decades of service reveal extraordinary leadership, resilience, and humanity in the face of complex missions, both at home and abroad. Her distinguished career includes commanding the 111th Logistics Readiness Squadron, serving as a joint staff planner with Joint Enabling Capabilities Command, where I was also stationed, and shaping strategic logistics initiatives at U.S. Transportation Command. But one of her most defining experiences came during the 2021 migrant crisis in Donna, Texas, where she was deployed to Camp Delphi as part of Operation Artemis. Stationed at the Expeditionary Base Camp, she helped organize federal planning efforts to support health and human services and the Office of Refugee Resettlement, overseeing operations at a rapidly built site that housed more than 1,500 unaccompanied minors. What she witnessed there will shock you and may change how you think about the U.S. immigration programs and humanitarian response. But at the same time, she continued her service in the U.S. Air Force Reserve while working as a veterans program manager, developing programs supporting homeless veterans with housing, employment, and reintegration assistance. Her dual commitment serving her country while serving those who once wore the uniform reflects her deep dedication to people and purpose. And today, as commander of American Legion Post 380 in Texas, she continues to lead through compassion and example, empowering others to serve their communities long after military life. Welcome again, Lenar.

SPEAKER_01:

Thank you, Teresa. Again, I'm just happy to be here. It's a beautiful day.

SPEAKER_02:

It's a beautiful morning, nice Thursday. I don't normally do morning shows, but as we discussed earlier, I think both of our brains function a little better in the morning. And so it's nice. So it's nice to have a morning show to kick off my day and to kind of slowly get into the weekend. But first off, as I always ask all my guests who are in the military, which is like 99.9% of them, where did you join the military out of and why did you join the Air Force?

SPEAKER_01:

So I joined the Air Force in 1987. Um and I joined in Norfolk, Virginia. I was living there at the time, my first husband, and the why is a funny story.

SPEAKER_03:

Well I'll share it.

SPEAKER_01:

So my first husband had been in the army, and when we got married, he was stationed in Germany, and we loved Germany. And being in Germany and being 19 years old, you drink a lot of beer. So we drank a lot of beer. We really enjoyed ourselves. Well, he hated the army, he was in field artillery. It was a very bad job. So he got out and we went to live with his mother and stepfather in Virginia. And um, he had some GI Bill, but he didn't know what he wanted to do. And the job market wasn't real great for people with experience in field artillery. So we sat back and we thought, well, what can we do if we want to drink more German beer? Because that was the best thing we've ever done. And we said, Well, if I go in the Air Force, they have bases over there because I knew I was not going in the army. And and so I joined the Air Force. So I could try to go back to Germany and drink German beer.

SPEAKER_02:

And it would also be a great miss and and have this amazing lifestyle and be able to serve.

SPEAKER_01:

And I had no idea what the Air Force would give to me at that time. I had no idea how amazing it would be to serve this country for um close to 30 years. I I did not know. But my uh I went on from there, um spent two years on active duty. So I ended up, you know, I spent came to Texas first, which is where I am now, actually. Um and I spent two years on active duty, I had a baby, I took some time off, and then uh after my third child, I went back in the reserve and uh back into I started as a supply clerk as a E1. I made my way up to E5 in the reserve, and then I was selected for a deserving airman commission in 2002 and I became an officer then and then I spent the next twenty years uh in in the reserve and the guard. In the Air National Guard in uh Delaware and Pennsylvania, and from there I retired out of the Air Force Reserve again, where I was working as a joint staff planner. So a lot of a lot of background, a lot of breath and experience there.

SPEAKER_02:

So yeah, and you also did a number of combat deployments as well, correct?

SPEAKER_01:

No, I have never been to the sand. I tried to go, I deployed the wing to the sand. I sent all the planes, I loaded the planes with all of the stuff, engines and the all the equipment and everything that had to go. You know, I I was the um installation deployment officer, and we we could send everything, and they said, no, you're you're not allowed to go, you have to stay here. And I was okay.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, you go where you go where the military sends you, and some people wind up serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. Some people wind up like myself serving off the coast of Iraq and Afghanistan as as Navy sailors, and then some people, like I spoke to John Frankman last night, he always served in training commands and and did a lot of the stuff that would prepare, like yourself, people to go on deployment, but did not serve on those deployments. And I think sometimes as veterans or as anyone, we we tend to look at those types of services differently. And in my mind, they're all the same. Everything is service, and it's something that we all should aspire to do with so few people that will make that ultimate sacrifice. You never know what is going to happen. You never know if you're going to serve in harm's way, you never know where you're going to be stationed. It's many times not up to you. It is up to what the mission calls for. And that's really what we're going to get into tonight and really dive deep into is this one last defining mission that you had prior to you separating from the Air Force, correct?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. Um, so the those last few years, I was with the Joint Enabling Capabilities Command where we served together. I served there as a joint planner where we would um operationalize uh strategic plans that combatant commanders have on the shelf. We would take them off and put them in into motion to accomplish whatever the commander decided the mission was. So it was one of my final missions. You were with me on the final, final mission at um in Stuttgart. But this was earlier in the year, um, the border mission.

SPEAKER_02:

Correct.

SPEAKER_01:

In 2021.

SPEAKER_02:

So and I was part of that mission in an oscillatory way. I was just telling John about that last night. Many of us got stationed in Guantanamo um uh Guatemala and El Salvador and in other places for this Operation Enhanced Stability mission. I don't know if you remember that.

SPEAKER_01:

Yep, that's the one where Earl went out also. I mean one of our planners went. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Yep. And it was, I don't I defined it last night, and I don't know if I defined it well. So you might be able to help me, but I defined it as this mission that was supposed to distract from what was almost going on at the border because they wanted to show from a PR standpoint all the things that we were doing with our partners in in Guatemala, in El Salvador, things that had been going on for years with military forces and with the State Department, and they wanted to shift that attention away from the mission that you went on. Now, is that is that correct or is that kind of a a a sarcastic, you know.

SPEAKER_01:

I'll tell you when the Earl came back, all I said was, How was it? And he says, I think it's just gonna make it worse.

SPEAKER_03:

Well, and let's talk about it.

SPEAKER_01:

So I did I didn't sit on any briefings for that because I wasn't called um into that that mission.

SPEAKER_02:

Right, right. So you can't really comment on it. Yeah, I mean, I had a wonderful and beautiful experience working with the El Salvador State Department and working in the office, I think it was the Office of Defense Cooperation where the foreign area officers were, and they were doing amazing work. But did they need a bunch of extra planners to come in and work out of their offices and give them space and create space and do all these other extra things that we were trying to pretend like we were doing? I I don't personally feel like it was a value-added mission for for me or for the other couple people that were on that particular mission, other than the fact that we got exposed to this amazing organization. And I mean, to this day, I still have a lot of respect for the State Department. And I will never say anything but good things about my work uh coordinating with them, whether it was on an exercise or whether it was for this mission. But do I think that it was particularly needed or value added for us to be there at the time? That's my personal opinion based on personal experience. But back to your experience. So this one last mission that you went on, tell me a little bit about how that got started for you.

SPEAKER_01:

So the mission um down to work with the unaccompanied miners. Um, well, I was I was working back in Knockbook at the time. I was on active duty just waiting for a mission and work working on training at the JEC at the time. And so when a mission would come through, you'd take a look at it and see if it was something you thought you could help with or you wanted to go, or you were burnt out and you didn't want to go anymore. So we had a lot of flexibility in in choosing what we wanted to do. And um I had just come out of I had been in Texas for the COVID mission. Uh, I had fallen in love with Texas again, and I would had we had purchased some land, and I thought, well, let me just go, I'll get a little bit more breadth of Texas. I know I'm going to be on a mission, so I won't have it's not like vacation time.

SPEAKER_02:

Can you tell people a little bit about what the COVID mission was?

SPEAKER_01:

Oh, the COVID mission. Oh, well, we came to um US Army North at Fort Sam Houston. That was early in uh COVID in 2020. And we had um we ran urban medical task forces and logistics around military ones, around the country um looking for hoping to find a hot spot and to support the local communities with um military doctors and nurses and um teams for triage and things like that, in case we didn't know what COVID was gonna do at the time. We didn't know how big it was gonna blow, we didn't know anything about contagion, nothing. So um that was that was the one the first mission I was on in Texas. Um, but that was in 2020. So but then after after the election in 2020, uh things started to shift. You know, we were still uh heavy, heavy in COVID, but um this border thing started to happen. So go ahead.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, I was just gonna say a lot of people don't understand joint enabling capabilities command because it's not a command that a lot of people either have been stationed at or understand what we do. And it's a really unique command because you go and you work directly for the COCOM. So whatever combatant commander needs. And so they have a lot of missions that pop up that are unplanned, unscripted, and are not just an exercise. They are something that is real world that is popping up, whether it be the withdrawal from Afghanistan, whether it be Department of Health and Human Services, Operation Warp Speed, whether it be like what I did with Operation Enhanced Stability, whether it be what you and I did together with the war in Ukraine kicking off and uh UCOM needing additional people to come and help as planners at the UCOM staff. It can be anything. And this command has been in existence for God, maybe 15, 20 years. And it is an augmentation force that serves to help these combatant commanders for when their staffs need to be plused up, and they're people who can readily go downrange and do just about anything because we are, and I'm so glad we're getting rid of all those GMTs, because that's that's the bane of our existence. There is that we have to fall under every single COCOM's medical and training requirements, which consist of God knows how many, in my view, pointless. Uh just not always, but many of them pointless uh JKOs, joint knowledge online courses, and lots of shots, and we had to qualify for the Marine Corps standards for the gun range. And that was, of course, very challenging for me because I've never shot a gun in my entire life, but I made it and did it and forced myself through it.

SPEAKER_01:

But it took me two times.

SPEAKER_02:

It took me, I think I went there twice myself, but the first time was such an eye-opener that I knew like there was no way I was going to be able to re-qualify if I hadn't learned how to stop anticipating the recoil of the gun. And that was a huge in fact, that was one of the first videos where I went viral on LinkedIn was with me voicing my frustration with the gun range. And God, I just wasn't, I mean, as a Navy sailor, that just wasn't part of my training, was to be very proficient at shooting in a in a very high um qualified uh way, like in a in a way where the standards were a lot higher. Anyway, all that to say, this is a very specialized command that is unique among every other military command. It is a joint command, you get joint credit for it, but it is very dynamic. And as a reservist with job and other obligations, you guys have a lot more flexibility than us active duty. We were pretty much on a rotation, and when it was our time to go, or that our boss thought it was our mission, then we were just gonna go. But on in your shoes, you were able to pick and choose and be able to do things like go back to Texas uh because you knew that that might be a place you'd like to settle down and you thought it would be a good opportunity to serve at the same time. So this order okay, go ahead, back to you.

SPEAKER_01:

So I want to touch on the reserve portion because uh there were a I don't I don't know what the percentage is, but there was a high percentage of reservists in the gypsy in the plant planning element. And that brought two things. As you said, it allowed there was flexibility, people went back and forth between their mission, and we had to take I think it was two missions a year you were required to take, and they were usually six weeks to three months. But um other than that, every reservist brings to the table a separate set of skills.

unknown:

Okay.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh, great point. All right, that that the military's brought you up, trained you, taught you, exercised you, and then you have something else. So as an example, one of our I was in the logistics um section and one and medical fell under logistics. So we had logistics planners, medical planners, but one of our medical planners was a chiropractor. Okay, and so he brought a whole separate set of skills. Another one of them was a nurse, and so not only was she trained as a logistics medical planner, but she had clinical skills also. And so that made it a whole you had people, one of the guys was worked for the VA um with in the in claims, and so you had people with all kinds of things. For me, I'm I'm also been a teacher, I have a master's degree in education, and I've done a lot of other things besides just military logistics.

SPEAKER_02:

So so that's really cool. I you know, I never thought about that, and that definitely made what we were doing over there so value-added, and that's a big plug just for the military reservists and the professions that they bring to the table uh uh to any command. Any community any command, those any mission, and I've always enjoyed, in fact, in the public affairs community, we have a lot of public affairs officers that are also politicians and they're professionals in the news industry. And I love, or they're the founder of a public relations firm. And I love talking to those professionals because I feel like they bring an expertise that us active duty do not have. And that's a great plug for bringing on those reservists, and especially in a in a peacetime military. I believe that plussing up our reservist is value added to an extreme because there are those professional expertise that we're just not going to have in the active duty force. So great plug.

SPEAKER_01:

Why we call it a total force.

SPEAKER_02:

Absolutely. No, I love it. I love it. I love talking to you, Lenore. Anyway, so back to this mission, you had read about the border crisis, and you'd read that there were a lot of issues with people crossing the border illegally, there being an influx of people. I mean, I was reading at the time that people were being allowed to cross the border and didn't weren't being vetted very well. And then they were given a piece of paper and said, show up at this court date at this time, and lots of people weren't showing up. And this was this huge influx of people, and the border towns were getting inundated with people that they weren't able to support properly. So that was what I was hearing about the border. Tell me a little bit about what you were hearing and and how this came to be.

SPEAKER_01:

Uh the news was reporting all those things, obviously. I remember Ted Cruz going down to the border and taking some videos of you know buses and lines of people coming in um under bridges and things of that. That was on the big national news. And when this mission came through, it was specifically focused on unaccompanied children. And of course, your heart just says, Oh my goodness, these these poor children, I will, I will help children.

SPEAKER_02:

And when you say unaccompanied children, what what do you mean? Like they were just being buried without their parents, or or what was happening?

SPEAKER_01:

Well, that's what I had to get there to discover. What does that actually mean? Um a little bit uh more of my background. I had worked for FEMA in emergency management as a civilian for 17 months, um, a few years before this. And I knew that when they said this mission, um, so you had to have a lead federal agency in this type of um civilian mission. This is not a military mission. And so the lead federal agency was HHS, which makes sense um, because these are migrant children. And under HHS, you have an office called the Office of Refugee Resettlement, ORR. So it was ORR who was asked to provide for these children. That's their mission. However, they are not prepared for an influx of 1,200 children or 1,500 children to one location. Um so what they did was they brought out FEMA, who knew how to move logistics and how to assist in a crisis, and has um their whole incident command structure set up, the ICS system. And they FEMA was to come in to support HHS and ORR. And so within that structure, they asked for some of our military planners because we know how to build in, you know, very quickly an expeditionary base camp is what we would call it in in the service. We know how to put those pieces together to make sure that things will run very well or at least as best as they could. So with the FEMA experience and the military experience, I I felt like I was a really good fit for this mission because I would be able to go in and help them procedurally and organizationally. Um, so I got down there and I got there, I want to say just a couple days before the first buses came. And they were putting up tent a tent city with uh four large dorm areas to house the children, getting a medical facility, getting an in-processing facility, um, all of that. And it was right next to the CBP camp in Donna, Texas. So what would happen was we were just waiting for the buses and we didn't at first know exactly how these children we we heard there were caravans of children coming, okay? And you know, uh in my mind, I'm not going to try to say there's any blame on a child. So these are innocent people coming. And so we needed to be prepared, we needed to have medical care, we needed to see what we were going to do when they got there. Underneath of the umbrella of the leadership of the federal government, everything was contracted. The food, the logistics, the buildings, which were um connexes and trailers for all of the people to work in. Um, I'm I'm not hearing you.

SPEAKER_02:

Sorry. You have a picture, I think, of of you standing next to one of the buildings right here. May I show it? Sure.

SPEAKER_01:

So these were actually the border. That's the border wall.

SPEAKER_02:

All right, and then maybe this one.

SPEAKER_01:

That's that's the Rio Grande River, right?

SPEAKER_02:

Okay, never mind.

SPEAKER_01:

So anyway, so that's all right. We we went down there. I went down there with Pima and to take a look around to see what was going on. And what we saw was um CBP was sitting in their tents, their tents under the bridges waiting for people to come across. They weren't they were told not to patrol anymore. They weren't out at the border, they weren't out at the river. We just wandered on down there. Nobody said anything to us. Excuse me. And um we went we went in and we visited with CBP a little bit, and they said, Yeah, we're just waiting for the next bunch of them to come through, and then we're to process them and send them over to be processed. And I thought, well, how in the world is this patrolling the border? You know, not trying to prevent anything. So I knew right then that there was probably a problem with what was going on. So when the children started coming, um, they went through this in processing area and they came with a note that said who they were or a paper birth certificate that said who they were. We were instructed not to set up any biometrics on them. We were not to try to take any kind of um additional information. And how did they come in?

SPEAKER_02:

Did they come in through just buses?

SPEAKER_01:

They just big buses, big caravans of buses. Yes. Big commercial buses.

SPEAKER_02:

Who was was there a what were you told? Like, was there like a company within Mexico or somewhere else that was driving these buses?

SPEAKER_01:

No, I don't I don't know if the kids walked across the border and went through CBP to they had to go through CBP first. So I didn't see them on the initial transfer in. They'd go to CBP with what they had, something like that. Which is the border patrol.

SPEAKER_02:

What's the C stand for?

SPEAKER_01:

Oh, customs and border patrol.

SPEAKER_02:

Okay, got it. Okay, yep.

SPEAKER_01:

Um, so they went through their facility, and then if they deemed that they were unaccompanied and under 18, they came to us.

SPEAKER_02:

Gotcha.

SPEAKER_01:

So all in all, there were I have it written down, 12 sites in the countr in this country along the Texas, I mean the Mexico and Arizona, California borders where these sites were set up. Um they come in with just a passport, no passports, absolutely no passports, a birth certificate or a note that said, you need to call this number and talk to this person, this is their sponsor. And so they were then taken through um case management, and case management was sorely understaffed, and a lot of times they had young girls who were volunteers from the local community who spoke Spanish who were calling back to the consulate or back to their native country to say, Do you have a record of Juan Garcia um in your country with this date of birth? And they'd say, Yes, and they'd say, Okay, thank you. And that was vetting and case management.

SPEAKER_02:

I mean, how are how did you guys know that the person's name who was the sponsor wasn't a human trafficker or a prejudice?

SPEAKER_01:

They did not know. And sometimes three or four, no, so I was in a camp with boys aged 13 to 17. Sometimes these they would take three or four of them and say they're going to their uncle in Massachusetts, and there they go.

SPEAKER_02:

So this wow. So this was a name of somebody in the country who you guys didn't know if this person was really a relative or not a relative.

SPEAKER_01:

No.

SPEAKER_02:

Okay.

SPEAKER_01:

But at first I thought like there are all these parents in the United States who are missing their children and we're going to return their children to them. That is not what was happening.

SPEAKER_02:

What do you what what did you what do you think was happening? And you can speculate.

SPEAKER_01:

I I I mean the the big number, the big number that we tossed around was there's about 50,000 of these kids coming in this influx that we're going to be here to get at these 12 sites. And I it just always weighed on me. Where are the 50,000 parents who agree? Because they don't have their children.

SPEAKER_03:

Right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Why are they not trying to get to Mexico or trying to get to Texas to find their child? Why don't we have a line, a phone line for parents of the missing children?

SPEAKER_02:

Right. And what what did the um we you had translators? And the translators at the Office of Refugee Resettlement, they were volunteers from the local community who would talk to these children. What would the children say? Like what was their story?

SPEAKER_01:

They were they were happy to see us. They were happy to have a place that was giving them food that was clean, that provided showers and beds. They had been on the road for a long time. And I we heard um some of my fellow planners that were over in um female site said that the girls had, you know, been given birth control pills at the beginning of their trip because uh and morning after pills because they were just going to be consistently raped along the way.

SPEAKER_02:

Wow.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay.

SPEAKER_02:

That's just disgusting.

SPEAKER_01:

It is. And and so it started to become apparent to us as we're working in this that this is not somebody must be moving these children here. They didn't just get here in you know, coach buses by accident. And so there's another very disturbing thing that kind of opened my eyes to what was going on. So this is we worked I don't want I didn't work closely with CBP, but we had people that were going to CBP to get the children and bring them back. And one of the things we were told by CBP was that sometimes they uh occasionally they saw children recycled. So single adults were still not permitted to come into the United States. Okay, they were still doing some vetting and if you had a a man who was a certain age and he was on his own and maybe he had some kind of record, they were still trying to keep them out. But we would bring children through and place them somewhere. Sometimes ORR also had local facilities that were all full already, and some of the children went there. Um Catholic charities was very involved, they did visits to the camp. And um, and I'm not blaming anybody.

SPEAKER_02:

I'm just saying you're just telling me your experience.

SPEAKER_01:

And so CBP said that they will see children come through as an unaccompanied minor and come through a week or two later with a family unit, that they are now the child of this man and this woman who now had different paperwork and different name for the child.

SPEAKER_02:

So somehow the child was able to get from the United States back to Mexico. Back to Mexico, okay.

SPEAKER_01:

Yes, and to come back again to get the family unit to get more people into the country.

SPEAKER_02:

Why was the United? I mean, were you ever told by like CBP or anyone about why we were permitting this massive influx of undocumented and unaccompanied minors to enter into the country to begin with? Why were they not stopped at the border? Was anybody ever did anybody ever tell you guys that reason?

SPEAKER_01:

Everybody, because these people that I worked with, okay, and I will say every single one of them, okay, good Americans who want to do the best, who have taken an oath to do what they thought was right, and that the leaders of the country would do what was right, okay, to keep us all safe and prosperous. We we said we're going to fulfill our duty. Okay. And many, many times we're told don't question when I tell you this is your duty. Okay.

SPEAKER_02:

That's just crazy.

SPEAKER_01:

That's just crazy. I understand that. I mean, but you understand the mindset too. No, I do.

SPEAKER_02:

I did the same thing. I mean, we did the same thing when we went into Iraq in 2002, 2003. We didn't understand why we were going in there. We didn't understand if there were weapons of mass destruction or not. We just were told this is what you need to do, and this is what you are going to do. You are going to have this attack on this country, and your planes are now going to fly, even with many discrepancies that typically would have downed the aircraft, but now it's not going to down the aircraft. All the rules have changed because we're now at war, and this is just what you do. So I can completely understand where you're coming from. This was your mission. This is what you did.

SPEAKER_01:

Go ahead and put the picture up of the folks at uh who were out there in the mission with me. Because that's that was that was an incredible team that we had. We had the HHS and the ORR people, we had the public health service people, we had the contractors. Um, I had one enlisted Marine with me. Um, and really, these people, every single one of us, just wanted to help the kids. We didn't want to be doing anything to harm them in any way, shape, or form. So, I mean, that I give kudos to that team. They were fabulous.

SPEAKER_02:

And and this really, in my view, brings across a larger issue of can you question the missions that you're sent on and really understand why you're being sent to do them? And as an active duty service member, a reservist who's been called up for active duty, that's not your job. Your job is to just do it, no questions asked. Yeah, but this was an interesting mission because it involved children and it involved sending children to places that you just didn't know if the places that they were being sent were safe. You didn't know how no idea. So, how long would they stay at your facility?

SPEAKER_01:

So they were supposed to be in and out in a certain number. I think it was like three weeks. I have a bunch of papers, but I don't know. I would have deciphered them. Um so they were they were trying to track how many they needed, beds, um, and how quickly they were supposed to be in and out. Which was and even the programming of the whole thing was crazy because it said when they get there they're supposed to go to school now for three weeks. In a transitory school. So they built a school and they brought in teachers. Okay, which was nuts. Um so they were supposed to come in and out in a couple of weeks, but we just didn't have the the ability to move them that quickly and to find them, you know. I think I was there five or six weeks. I'm not positive. But the day I left, I left with the first group of children to leave the campus on my plane. So we kept bringing them in and bringing them in and bringing them in, and we didn't the process was not there to move them out, but they wanted to move them so quickly that they should have had, you know, the sponsoring organizations, um, like Catholic charities or one of the other sponsoring organizations didn't have the sponsors. And where are you gonna get sponsors for 50,000 children from Central America? I don't I don't understand.

SPEAKER_03:

Right. That's right.

SPEAKER_01:

That's where I ended. That's where the mission ended for me. I don't understand what in the world they're doing, what are they thinking? And now that you know, this administration is going to try to find these kids because there have been so many of them, you know, to try to recover them, to try to even find out where they went.

SPEAKER_02:

Right. Well, I will tell you, Lenore, I've done a little research, not a lot, on the issues of human trafficking. And it is a very ugly and disgusting industry from my little bit of research. And I'm really curious if any of the children who were in the camp shared any stories with your translators about what their journey was like, what they were doing, or was this this the kind of thing where it was so hush-hush about what they were like they were told a script, and this was the script that they were going to stay on.

SPEAKER_01:

I I think mostly it was a script. We were not, because of our role as planners, we were not um given regular access to the children. Um the one thing that I did have to do, they didn't know how to take a census. They didn't know how to take count of how many children were there. So every day they'd say, Oh, we're gonna take a census, it's four o'clock, let's do it now. And they'd go around and they'd be off two or three people. Their numbers never lined up. And so me being me, I said, All right, we're going to do a stop movement. That means nobody will move at seven o'clock tomorrow night, and we will get every name and we will get everybody counted, and that will be our census account that is official. And so I brought back every federal employee after the end of their duty day, and I said, I signed them each to a dorm and I said, you're each responsible for counting and noting every single child and every single name.

unknown:

Right.

SPEAKER_01:

And we finally got it. But that was the kind of thing, everything was very discombobulated. I mean, we were tr we were trying to do this as we were trying to plan. Go ahead and put up that picture with the post-it notes. So we had these charts about flow of children and who would go where and what are their stopping points. But not only did we have the flow charts, we were having to change where these post-it notes were and whether it was the right thing to do all the time.

unknown:

Right.

SPEAKER_01:

We had a meeting like that almost every day. And so it was there was a lot of confusion. I'll I'll put it that way. That's fine.

SPEAKER_02:

Do you think it was possible? And I'm playing devil's advocate because if I were listening to this, I would have these kinds of questions just as a lay person. Do you think it was possible that the Office of Refugee Resettlement or some of these larger organizations that were coordinating the big picture of this evolution? Do you think it's possible that they were vetting these children to their eventual destination? Because there was the vetting that they were actually from the country that they said they were from. There was no vetting that you're aware of that they belonged to a particular parent that was still living in that country. Was there any so no vetting on that side that you're aware of? Are you aware of any vetting on the side of, oh, now they're in the United States and they say they have an uncle in Massachusetts? So was there any that you're aware of?

SPEAKER_01:

I the people from ORR were completely overwhelmed. They, I do not think, to be quite honest, they were rotating their leadership every two weeks. Okay, so you had a senior GS, I don't know, 14 or something, coming in, taking over the processes and the camp for two weeks. And me having been there like two weeks with the first guy, then the second person came in, and after she did her initial what's going on here, you know, brief from everybody, she pulled me in my uniform into her office and cried. She says, I don't know how to do this, I know how to run at like an orphanage. I don't know how to do this. Help me. And so my next job became help her. Wow. And and then she was gonna rotate out after two weeks, right when she felt like she might understand what's happening, right, and get some sort of control over what the situation was.

SPEAKER_02:

It still boggles my mind that we let all these children in to begin with, and that's that's a bigger policy Biden decision, but I just don't have a feel for that. And now you mentioned that there are still ongoing searches for missing children, so there's children.

SPEAKER_01:

I've heard that in the news that they earlier this year were trying to figure out where all these children went.

SPEAKER_02:

Wow, this is a fascinating story, Lenore, about being in a position where you're being told to do something, and how did this make you feel to be able to see this firsthand and have all this experience too? You're you're not like a brand new airman to the military. You have had dozens of years of military experience. So to see something like this at the tail end of your career, what were you thinking?

SPEAKER_01:

I just first it was heartbreaking, and second, it was demoralizing because I'm saying to myself the government either doesn't know what it's doing, okay, or it's doing something wrong on purpose. And I'm not gonna be here long enough to figure it out.

SPEAKER_02:

Right.

SPEAKER_01:

But one or the other is what's going on.

SPEAKER_02:

So yeah, yeah. I mean, it's something that we hear about in the news, and unless you live in Texas or you live in a border town, or unless you're part of one of these organizations that is working on these issues, you really don't know what to believe and and what to make of what has happened. When you found out that Trump had won the election and started to tighten up the border, what was what were you thinking at that time?

SPEAKER_01:

What I always think, thank God. Because um, you know, I'm a I'm a law and order person. I I I think the laws are written in this country for a reason, and every single one of us who takes an oath should be beholden to those laws because that's what we take the oath to do. And obviously the laws were not being enforced and now they are, and now I live ninety miles, a hundred miles from the Texas border now. I'm west of San Antonio, and uh you know, we had I I've been here since the end of 2020. And um, you know, we had high speed chases in my county where they had migrants tumbling out of white vans and it was it was scary sometimes. There were things, you know, there were a lot of gang people in San Antonio and they're cleaning it out. And I I think you know, if if you look at Europe, okay, right now Europe is going to not allow you into Europe in by next year without a facial scan and four fingerprints. Okay. They they're going to you just can't come in and unless you can prove that and have a passport. I don't know what their refugee because their refugee situation is out of control. Right. So what we everybody sovereign nations need to be able to, you know, have a border that is secure.

SPEAKER_02:

I agree. I 100% agree. And I think that there needs to be a legal pathway to citizenship. Yes, and of course, there needs to be opportunities for people who want to move to other countries to prove that they can earn a living and be productive members of society, but just letting people in the border en masse doesn't does not solve the issue. And furthermore, it creates undue burden and undue stress on Americans. It just is not the answer to this issue, it doesn't solve the problem. And so, like you, I am glad to see these things. I I saw the videos that Elon Musk himself went down to the border and made some videos so people could see firsthand what was going on down there. And I can tell you, I like you, Lenore, I'm a law and order person. I just came back from San Francisco, where I go to college, and I stayed downtown, and I stayed in a decent hotel, but I was terrified to leave my hotel. I've never seen city streets like that. Open defecation, piss everywhere, people walking around hunched over because they're so cracked out that they can't function, and they're running into you as you're trying to walk. These huddles of people who are just almost like animals. It was disgusting. And I I don't even profess to know what all the solutions are, and we're not going to solve all those problems today on a podcast, but that that can't be what we want to see every American major American city devolve to. And seeing that firsthand really shocked me because I currently stay most of my time in a very small town in a very safe area, and it just broke my heart uh to walk and to see people with open sores. A guy had a foot that was just bleeding profusely and no care to it. He was sitting in a wheelchair, and I I just I couldn't believe and this was early, early in the morning where we were walking. My me and my classmate, I wouldn't walk to class. I mean, because we were we decided to do a walk uphill to University of San Francisco, and it was about a you know, hour and a half walk. And the first day we did it, we just we went down what Google Maps told us to do, and it was this awful route. So we never took that same route again, and I never walked to and from school without him. And the only time I was by myself was one time I took the bus home and then just walked a few feet from the bus to to my hotel. And then the very next morning when I left, I went right to where the train was to get to the airport. But I was terrified. I was like, I don't have a gun, I don't have mace. What am I gonna do this morning? And it's just that's sad. That's not the way we want our cities to end up. And when we just let everybody in en masse, it's not to say that everybody who lives in a border town or or lives lives in another country is a criminal. That is not what we're saying. But you have to have some consequences and some law and order in these areas, or people are just going to abuse children or they're going to abuse the laws because there's nothing to stop them from doing so.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, totally agree.

SPEAKER_02:

So, on a happier note, you have now transitioned from this military service, and you're now serving your community as a member of the American Legion. Tell me a little bit about that.

SPEAKER_01:

Yes, ma'am. So when we moved to Texas, my husband and I both retired, completely fully retired, very blessed to not have to um have a paying job. And so we started exploring, you know, things in the community. Um, he's a blue knight, he rides motorcycles for with law enforcement agent uh prior law enforcement. And I um was introduced, I was at a a meeting, and we were talking about elections and how uh elections needed to be secured because that would be what Americans want is a secure election. And so I met a gentleman there and I I got up and I spoke a little bit at that meeting, and he came up to me and I had introduced myself as a veteran, and he says, Do you believe belong to the American Legion? And I said, No, I don't. I I haven't joined any veterans organizations. He said, Well, I have an opportunity for you. And he went on to explain to me that there was an American Legion post in my part of the county that um needed a commander, it needed someone who could, you know, put pieces in place to move the post forward. And I thought, well, that sounded interesting. So I signed up um that was early in 2023, and from there uh we had a meeting and I became the commander of a post that didn't really exist. I had didn't have a meeting place, didn't have um very many members. There was about 12 members on the books at the time who were paying but not meeting. And um from there I have uh grown this post with the help of my fabulous American Legion team. Um we have approximately we have over 50 members now.

SPEAKER_03:

That's amazing.

SPEAKER_01:

We meet regularly at the firehouse, and we've had a few rapples to raise some funds. And last year our fire department, I so I live in a very very narrow piece of a county that is right on the edge of San Antonio, and we're there's 10,000 new homes being built here. Okay, right now. 10,000. It's burgeoning. Wow, it's just going to blow up. There is a new high school that will open next year on in this part of the county. And so a lot, a lot, a lot of growth. So this is what the person who founded the post anticipated this growth. But he lives down down county, so he's not able to really do this, and he belongs to another post. So last year, our fire department, which used to be volunteer, was taken over by the emergency services district, which is now funded through taxation. And so the fire department was told you don't need to do a barbecue anymore, you're not allowed to raise funds for the volunteer fire department. It'll eventually be disbanded. Well, that was the only community event in this part of the county. The one barbecue, and it had been going for 40 years. Okay. So we picked it up. We said, you know what? We can run that barbecue because I have a couple legionnaires who were fire were or are firefighters. And I've run large-scale events in the past. So we found a location up here that was owned by a legionnaire from down in the lower part of the county, and um we we took off with that and we had another success we had a really successful event. We served almost 200 meals. That's one of the things. Um had a band come in and just provided that for the the folks in this part of the county. That was in May of this year. So um in we've also placed a uh VA volunteer service organizer into the VA hospital, Audie Murphy. Um, she's come out of my post. She has a huge heartbeat to serve the veterans. Um, so she's going to be coordinating that regionally. And um it's it's just uh it's a it's a journey in progress. I'm I'm very, very proud of what the American Legion does for um veterans, first of all, of course, and for the community. We have to really start to defeat the stigma that the American Legion is it's not a bar. Okay, maybe people think I'll go to the American Legion, I get a three-dollar beer. But every post has its own personality. And as um legion legionnaires, veterans change, you know, there's a lot of us who are younger now. Um, it's not all World War II people. Uh we we have to be ready for that. We serve veterans from all eras now. And if if anybody works into an American Legion Post and they're new and the guys at the table are all old guys, and they say, You could sit over there and listen, that probably isn't a good post for you. In my post, um my executive committee is hack female. I am pro I'm not the oldest, but and not the youngest on my executive committee. And anybody's ideas are welcome because uh ideas are what we will act upon and we will grow with. And so we're moving forward from there, uh, continuing to serve. We will be working with the high school, uh, we have scholarships, they will have an Air Force junior ROTC program where we will be able to uh help facilitate s even some instruction with that and bring Americanism into the schools, um, which is part of our mission. Absolutely. And from there, they also appointed me. This was an appointment, I wasn't elected. I'm the adjutant for the third division in Texas, which means I have 165 posts and six districts that I um am administratively responsible for. And so I assist them in getting all their paperwork done, assist them with their memberships and any challenges that come along, uh, I'm able to help them.

SPEAKER_02:

So this is beautiful. It really is.

SPEAKER_01:

It's amazing work. It's it's really, I'm really, like I said, I'm very proud to be a legionnaire now. Um, my husband and I are also uh working on a church plant in San Antonio where we're working with the um Parismatic Episcopal Church, and we we have a new church that we've been working with for about three years now, and I'm kind of their operations person.

SPEAKER_02:

So you know it's it's so funny. Like as you talk about all these things, I I'm like, I need to go back to Mosaic Church. I need to go back to the VFW at Ocean Springs. Like I've started, I've I've planted seeds in some of these places, like I've joined the chamber, but I haven't yes, but I haven't um really made the the deep dive investments yet because I'm still working the podcast, I'm a college student going through the graduate school program, and we're still just getting our arms around what all this means with the VA and the TRICARE and as being a retiree, what are all the resources that we have now? And we just have to take these things one step at a time, but it is such an exciting honor to give back to the veteran community and give back to your local community. And I am always enamored by those who take a stand within their local community because that's something we all can do. I think we look at like the federal level or we look at those missions like the one you went on, and we go, My God, this is just so unwieldy. And I'm not going to be able to be a decision maker on any of those kinds of issues, but we can all be a decision maker on the local level. And you're a shining example. Of somebody who's doing that. So as we wind down the call, because I know we're at the top of the hour, I want to give you an opportunity to address anything that we didn't cover on the podcast or anything you would like to leave our audience with as we close this out.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh, well, I wasn't prepared for that, but I I think I think you're right. I'll I'll I'll tag along on that is that you know everyone can do something somewhere. It there's there's a place for people with their their gifts, their strengths and their interests to to make a difference in some way. It might be making a difference in one person's life. And it may be on a larger scale working with larger organizations. Um I used to have this quote from Mother Teresa uh on the wall of my office at one point. I didn't put it up in the house yet. Um but it says something like I can help only one. You know, one person at a time. And so even working with one with a larger organization like I am now, I work with one person. I work with the person that I need to see in front of me. Right. And you know, as a person of faith, it's you know, what would Jesus want me to how does he want me to treat this person at this time? And and I I do try to to grow people to encourage people to let them know their value in in the everyday of what they do.

SPEAKER_02:

I love it. Absolutely, it's beautiful. Well, thank you so much, Lenore. It has been such a pleasure to talk to you, and I will meet you backstage as I go full screen and say goodbye to the audience. But really, really honored to have you on the Stories of Service podcast.

SPEAKER_01:

Thank you, Teresa. It was my privilege to be here, and I'm glad to have you and call you a friend.

SPEAKER_02:

Me too.

SPEAKER_01:

Thank you.

SPEAKER_02:

All right, guys, that is a wrap. Uh, next week, I believe I have two guests again. I've been out of pretty good routine with having two guests a week, as I said. As I get more involved on the local level, I might scale back to just one a week or maybe one every two weeks. We'll we'll see where life takes us. But for now, uh, please enjoy the rest of your Thursday as we go into this fall weekend and getting ready for Halloween. And as I always close out these calls, please take care of yourselves, take care of each other, and bye bye now.