The Pencil Factory

German and his family are stuck behind the walls of a rusty old pencil factory in the jungle. When a Youtuber stumbles onto the scene with a camera, he may be their only hope. Thank you, to German, Eva, and Sasha. Thanks also to Julia Neusner. You can see more of Caya’s documentaries about tech and society on his Youtube channel “Slide Bean https://www.youtube.com/@slidebean.” Check out this story featured on Today Explained https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/today-explained/id1346207297?i=1000744173086%20! The Banished By Bargain project https://www.thirdcountrydeportationwatch.org/ is a great resource to learn more about the Trump administration’s third-country deportations. Produced by John Fecile and Caya, edited by Nancy Lopez, original music by Renzo Gorrio. Season 16 - Episode 59 Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices https://dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

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• 2:37Glynn Washington?

  On February 25th, 2025, under the cover of darkness, the plane took off from Yuma, Arizona. And according to the humanitarian group, Human Rights Watch, this plane was full of men, women and children that were all flown to Costa Rica, a place where none of them was from, a place that some of them had never even heard of. I'm listening in Washington, listening to Snap Judgment, a special episode recalling the pencil factory for reasons that will soon become clear. Snap Judgment.

• 3:12Speaker 01

  I remember getting these news that this plane was landing in Costa Rica and it was bringing some deportees.

• 3:18Glynn Washington?

  This is Jose Calleso. He goes by Caia.

• 3:21Speaker 01

  I live in San Jose, Costa Rica, born and raised. Actually, it was two planes that arrived from the United States, about 200 people total. And then they were just put on buses and then ferried off to somewhere in Costa Rica. They were going to be detained close to the Panama border, which is this really remote part of the country I had never been to.

• 3:45Speaker 01

  And nobody understood like what type of deportees they were, right? Are they, are they criminals as, as it's been claimed? Are they illegal immigrants? Are they Costa Ricans? Well, we'll figure that, no, they aren't not Costa Ricans. They're mostly from Asian countries, China, Turkey, Afghanistan. So, okay, but what's that about? Somebody had to go out there and, and see what was happening. And here I was, a Costa Rican. If someone's going to cover this story here now quickly, who else?

• 4:23Speaker 01

  So I planned as quickly as I could to drive out there one or two weekends after I heard the news.

• 4:36Speaker 01

  It's maybe, what, a seven-hour drive from San Jose? I brought along two journalists, two friends of mine.

• 4:48Speaker 01

  We arrived there late afternoon, maybe 3:00 or 4:00 p.m.

• 4:55Speaker 01

  We parked on the side of the highway and we just got out of the car. In this blasting heat, by the way, this is 95-degree weather. It's 100% humidity. And then we saw it on the side of the road, this blue sign, huge white letters. It said, "Katem."

• 5:17Speaker 01

  Rust is what I remember. It's a rusty fence, a rusty roof, this old and faded building, overgrown grass in front of it.

• 5:29Speaker 01

  "Katem" stands for Centro de Atención de Migrantes. It's this pencil factory, it used to be a pencil factory. It was actually owned by Faber Castel. And according to a Costa Rican newspaper, it was donated by this German company to the Costa Rican government, to be used as a place for food, for medical attention, as a shelter for migrants on their way north. And part of the agreement when Faber Castel donated this pencil factory was that it was supposed to be used as that, as a place to help, not as a place to hold people.

• 6:10Speaker 01

  The first thing I figured we could do is just scout the place. So I had brought my drone with me and I take off on the drone.

• 6:20Speaker 01

  We get this birdside view of this huge compound.

• 6:25Speaker 01

  We don't see a lot of people. They're probably all inside. I can see some laundry hanging from the fence, kind of drying out.

• 6:34Speaker 01

  The only group of people I saw was kind of walking towards this corner of the compound. And then I kind of see him sneak through this hole in the fence and just get into the jungle. Two or three minutes later, that exact group of three people just walk past me as I'm still flying the drone.

• 6:55Speaker 01

  They're wearing a white t-shirt and white Crocs. But it isn't clear to me if they're South American, if they're refugees or migrants that are using Katem just to pass by as shelter, or if they're the people that we came here to talk to. They just continue walking and cross the highway. But from the drone, I had seen this other group that was about 200 yards out from the side of the fence. And maybe that's who we go and talk to. So we brought this cardboard sign and this big Sharpie.

• 7:33Speaker 01

  It said "press" on one side, "prensa" on the other side, Spanish for "press."

• 7:41Speaker 01

  And we walk to the fence on the side of the highway. And I just stood there between the highway and Katem, just holding this sign, waiting for people to see it.

• 7:53Speaker 01

  We could see people kind of in the distance, right, sitting around in the shade, just trying to cover themselves from the sun. We can see a couple of people kind of walking around this big wall quietly. We hold up this sign for like two or three minutes and then suddenly someone sees it and they start approaching us.

• 8:17Speaker 01

  So this small group approached us, maybe three or four people, including one woman with dark hair and cut of jeans, covering her face with a piece of paper. And the first thing she says is, "No cameras, no cameras."

• 8:32Speaker 01

  The "no cameras" thing was the first surprise. You know, it was kind of like the first reflection that they were actually scared. I guess the question is, why are they scared?

• 8:44Speaker 02

  Uh, we, USA. Border, border.

• 8:50Speaker 01

  I don't know if it's the right thing to do, but I just pointed my camera down, but I kept recording. At least we could pick up some audio of what was about to happen.

• 8:59Speaker 02

  And now, do you, do you wanna go home, or do you wanna stay here? We don't wanna go home.

• 9:05Speaker 01

  The woman I was talking to was Russian.

• 9:07Speaker 02

  Russian, Russian, Russian. Oh, Russian? My husband, uh, know English very well. I call. Okay, thank you, thank you.

• 9:16Speaker 01

  And that's when I met German.

• 9:19Speaker 03

  Hello.

• 9:20Speaker 02

  Hello.

• 9:20Speaker 03

  Hello.

• 9:21Speaker 02

  We're from, uh, we're from local press.

• 9:23Speaker 03

  Okay, I understand.

• 9:24Speaker 01

  So German was this tall Russian guy. He was wearing this plaid shirt, thick muscles, some tattoos in his arms.

• 9:32Speaker 03

  Long dress shirt. Uh, we asked a political asylum into the United States and, uh, against our will, without signing any papers, they transported us here.

• 9:47Speaker 01

  So he told me, they're not illegal immigrants. They're not criminals either. They were trying to find asylum in the US, which means they were in danger in their home countries, which was completely different from what we had thought, right? At this point, we, we had expected them to be, to have broken the law in some way to end up stuck in this pencil factory in the middle of nowhere. But before I could ask another question, I see the police approaching. We don't know if we're gonna be arrested. We're not sure if we're ever gonna be able to talk to them again, so I just wrote my phone number on a piece of paper and handed it off to them. And then the police arrive.

• 10:33Speaker 01

  And they kind of stand at the very edge of the fence, blocking our conversation with the migrants.

• 10:41Speaker 02

  Pues, pues estamos afuera, no. Okay, pidieron permiso para ingresar, eso es lo que...

• 10:46Speaker 01

  They get our IDs, they write down our names, but in the end, they just tell us that we can't talk to them and that we need to go. So we just walked back to our car.

• 10:59Speaker 01

  So after the police sends us off, we've been standing in the heat and we see this bar about 100 yards down the highway. And it's not a bar in the way you would understand a bar. It looks like this is more like a shack in the middle of nowhere. But a beer sounds like a great idea. We walk out there. So as we're sitting down for a beer, I check my phone and there's a text. It says, "Hello, got your number. We'll share it with everybody just in case. My name is German." The first thing that surprises me is, okay, they have phones and they have internet. German starts sending me photos and videos that he's captured.

• 11:47Speaker 01

  Katem looks like this just big, old, empty warehouse. There's this like metal ceiling, which immediately makes me think how hot it must be in there.

• 12:00Speaker 01

  So many kids.

• 12:04Speaker 01

  You see kids and there's like playground area, colorful mats, surrounded by this small fence. No toys, just some mats. There's this crowded cafeteria. Honestly, it's not so different from what you would imagine a jail looks like inside.

• 12:30Speaker 01

  It suddenly felt like, well, this is it. We've, we've found our story. Because I don't think that at this point, anybody understood what was happening inside Katem. This is already so much more than we set out to do. We have contact with someone inside. And at this point, I have so many questions. So why are they here? Why were they sent here? How was that journey? And these are questions that German is probably not going to be able to answer over text. And then I remember the hole in the fence that I saw from the drone. And I asked him, "Do you know about this hole in the fence? Would you be willing to use it to come and talk to me?"

• 13:19Speaker 01

  It must have been around 6:30, 7. It was pouring rain, like one of the worst rains I've ever had to deal with. Yeah, he just kind of appeared, he was wearing his hoodie.

• 13:31Speaker 03

  Do you want to say your name for the camera, just so we have that record? Okay, my name is Smirnov German, Germanovich. Or Smirnov German, Germanovich. I'm Russian, but my name is German.

• 13:45Speaker 03

  Thank you, man. Thank you for coming. Do you have to get back soon, or are you sorry? No, I've got time. They don't control us, so I'll...

• 13:53Speaker 01

  I think he was very nervous at first. I remember he was speaking fast.

• 13:57Speaker 03

  When we bought tickets from Russia to Turkey and then to Mexico, they told us that it will be very hard to get into Mexico right now, that many...

• 14:10Speaker 01

  So he had fled Russia with his wife and his 6-year-old son. They took all of their savings, they sold all of their things, and they flew to Mexico. They were applying for asylum in the US, and they did the process through the Customs and Border Protection app. They had gotten an interview, and they were waiting in Mexico for about 8 months for that interview to happen. Just a few days before the interview was scheduled, he was cancelled. So in their complete desperation, they drove to the border near San Diego and presented themselves to the immigration officer and requested asylum. But the timing of that could not have been worse.

• 14:55Speaker 03

  When we came to the border, a supervisor, I think, a woman, asked us why we came here. I told her, "We came here to ask about political asylum." She told, "We've got new president. We don't give political asylum anymore." "We read the newspapers and something like that."

• 15:14Speaker 01

  It was January 2025. Trump had just come into office, and he put a stop to all asylum requests, stranding tens of thousands of people like German. And this was devastating to him, because he had made plans, he knew people in the US. He had a job lined up in California. He had shipped his stuff there.

• 15:33Speaker 03

  And then they put us into the cell.

• 15:38Speaker 03

  The temperature was very cold.

• 15:41Speaker 01

  So German and his family were taken to the Otae Mesa Detention Center. He told me, he was separated from his wife and his son, and sent with other men. He was put in a cell with up to fifteen other people. They had to sleep on the floor. There was a toilet in the middle of the room, the light was always on. He was very poorly fed, he mentioned that he lost a lot of weight. They were only allowed to shower every three or four days. Guards would mock them and insult them.

• 16:12Speaker 03

  We are shocked about how they treated us. And thankfully, we are still alive.

• 16:21Speaker 01

  He wanted to talk a lot about this, like, I think this pain was very recent for him. Because, you know, he had been there the week before, right, or two weeks before.

• 16:32Speaker 03

  On the 25th of February, they woke up at 3 a.m. Put everyone in handcuffs, but they told us that we are going to the military base.

• 16:44Speaker 01

  And after thirty-one days, they were put in handcuffs, put in a bus, and shipped out. They had no idea where. They were sent to an airport and put in a plane.

• 16:55Speaker 03

  They told us, "You are going to Costa Rica. You want it or you don't want it." They lied to us.

• 17:01Speaker 01

  I was like crouched, like shrinking, and like with a hunchback in the chair, just sitting next to him and listening to his story. You know, what do you do? I guess, you know, I don't want to say I'm a journalist, but at least I was wearing a journalist hat in that interview. Like, how do you react? Like, what do you do? How do you, how do you make them feel better? And I'm really sorry.

• 17:23Speaker 03

  But why, what are you sorry for? You, you did nothing bad. Your government did nothing bad. They're in there. You know, they cannot really say no to the United States. We know how politics works. They cannot. This is the most powerful country in the world, and they know how to make their business.

• 17:50Speaker 01

  German is right. Costa Rica is such a small country. Our economy is so dependent on the US for export and for tourism. This was before the tariffs announcement came out, so everybody was kind of on edge on whether, if we play nicely to the States, we're not going to get any tariffs. I don't think we had any choice but to comply or risk some form of political retaliation from the US.

• 18:21Speaker 01

  Can I walk with you as you go back? I want to walk with you.

• 18:26Speaker 03

  To the hole?

• 18:27Speaker 01

  So maybe after sitting with German for two hours, I asked him if he could take me to the hole.

• 18:38Speaker 01

  It had stopped raining, and as we walked through the jungle and we get to the hole in the fence and German walks in, my first thought is, what the hell am I doing here? Am I the right person to document this? Am I the right person to tell the world what US immigration and also the Costa Rican government has done to this asylum seeker?

• 19:06Speaker 01

  I see him kind of like far off into the darkness of Katem, and we just stand there trying to get some shots because this is obviously the way I want to start my YouTube video about this. There is only one word for what's happening here: dystopian. Because this is what we had to do to capture the story of the 200 detainees that the Trump administration deported to our country.

• 19:33Speaker 01

  So I get back to San Jose after another six-hour road trip back. And basically, the next one and a half to two weeks is, you know, working 8:00 PM through 1:00 in the morning every day to try and get this story cut into a decent video.

• 19:52Speaker 01

  I have to do this in my own time because this is not my job. My job is running a tech startup that also happens to make some YouTube videos about tech.

• 20:05Speaker 01

  When I first told my team that I felt there was a great story here, what they told me is like, "That doesn't really belong in our channel." And they're right about it. So this is a video that I had to put in my personal YouTube channel. It doesn't have a lot of subscribers. It's basically been abandoned for three or four years.

• 20:20Speaker 03

  We just want to make an attention to this situation because maybe it can help us and other people in our condition in the future.

• 20:30Speaker 01

  So German's interview was, of course, the biggest part of the video. If this story connected with anyone, it was because people were able to connect with German. Thanks a lot for watching. This story is bound to change a lot. It's an evolving story, but I wanted to give you a glimpse of what's happening today. I don't make a lot of videos on this channel, but I appreciate the subscription. And if you're into tech or business, make sure to check our videos. I'm really sad when a video that I make underperforms. And this video absolutely underperformed for me. I don't know how many views the video has today. I haven't checked. 10,000 people.

• 21:03Speaker 01

  Like, I chased this story because I think it's a million-view story. Something about the story and the way I put it together maybe wasn't exciting enough, or, I don't know. There's also so much terrible stuff happening in the world. I don't know if, you know, 200 deportees in the middle of nowhere in Costa Rica is relevant enough of a story.

• 21:25Speaker 01

  That's where it ends. Like, that's where the story ends. I have a job to do. I have a family to get back to. But only a few days after the video went live, German sends me another video.

• 21:37Speaker 03

  Hi, Kai. How are you?

• 21:40Speaker 03

  I've got an interesting thought. I escaped one prison to get to another.

• 21:46Speaker 03

  What for? I don't know.

• 21:48Speaker 01

  And then another one. And he keeps texting me.

• 21:51Speaker 03

  Hope dies last. And everything that I do, I do with the hope that it will help me.

• 22:04Speaker 01

  What else can I do? Like, is he texting me because he thinks I can help? Maybe he just needs somebody to talk to.

• 22:12Speaker 03

  This is what we are doing right now. We are exchanging with our videos, exchanging with our audios. I've got some reason to make this day useful.

• 22:37Glynn Washington?

  When we return, this story is not done with Kaiya, not by a long shot. Snap judgment.

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• 24:34Glynn Washington?

  Welcome back to Snap Judgment. When we left, Kaya, a YouTuber and tech entrepreneur in San Jose, Costa Rica, drove seven hours to cover a story that no one else had. 200 people were flown in from the US, many of whom had been seeking asylum to Costa Rica. And they were locked up in an old pencil factory in the Costa Rican jungle. And thanks to a hole in the fence, Kaya was able to interview one of these detainees, a Russian man named German.

• 25:08Glynn Washington?

  Kaya put up a video with their interview, expecting a huge response. There wasn't one. But now German keeps messaging him.

• 25:18Glynn Washington?

  Snap judgment.

• 25:20Speaker 01

  So I know I've become a bit of a lifeline for German. I talk to him more than I talk to many of my friends. And as the reality of their situation sinks in, the fact that he and his family are truly stuck here, he's sharing all these really complicated feelings with me.

• 25:40Speaker 03

  The feelings every day are the same. A lot of stress, a lot of worries, a lot of fighting with despair. We're still waiting, but what we are waiting for, we don't know.

• 25:54Speaker 01

  German is usually shirtless in the videos that he sends me.

• 25:58Speaker 03

  It's me. Sorry for being naked because it's too hot here. And usually when I wear a t-shirt, it's all in sweat. So this is the place where we live. And it's a bit messy here right now. I'm gonna clean this place.

• 26:18Speaker 01

  He and his family share this small windowless room with two other families, so 11 people total in this tiny, non-ventilated room. A couple of bunk beds, bars on the door.

• 26:31Speaker 03

  This is, guess who?

• 26:37Speaker 03

  My wife and who's this?

• 26:38Speaker 01

  He turns the camera to his son, who's holding a smartphone.

• 26:41Speaker 03

  He's doing, what's he doing? Duolingo. He's doing Duolingo, learning English.

• 26:50Speaker 01

  German's son, I'm gonna call him Sasha. That's not his real name, but I want to protect his privacy. Sasha is a small, skinny boy with brown hair. And he looks a lot like his dad. And in early April, after a month and a half or so that they've been stuck in Katem, it was Sasha's birthday. He was turning seven.

• 27:10Speaker 03

  And I told my wife, let's miss this birthday. And later, when we can come out, we will make the whole day for him. At first, she said yes to call me down. But later, she decided to make a birthday to him. So she made 100% job.

• 27:30Speaker 01

  German's wife, I'll call her Eva, also not her real name. She set up a limbo game and this whole playdate for Sasha and his friends, kids from 20-some different countries.

• 27:46Speaker 01

  She even managed to order a cake. She had to ask a favor from the child psychologist that visited the facility to bring one from the outside.

• 28:01Speaker 03

  She made this day perfect for my son.

• 28:15Speaker 01

  I feel like seeing his wife smile that day as their son blew out the candles, as he had to celebrate his birthday in this weird place. That was a big deal for German. Lately, he had been seeing her struggle.

• 28:32Speaker 03

  Yesterday, it was a very complicated day. My wife, she began to cry at the cafeteria during the eat because she was tired of all of this situation. And her mother called, calls her.

• 28:50Speaker 03

  And her relative calls her every day. And in her mind, she is already in Russia.

• 29:00Speaker 01

  I've been connecting these bits and pieces, details that they've given me about how their life used to be back in Russia.

• 29:08Speaker 01

  They were a middle-class family. They lived a pretty normal life in St. Petersburg. I believe not too different from mine. And everything changed in one moment.

• 29:22Speaker 01

  One day, German walks into the apartment and tells Eva that they need to flee the country because the police are after him. How? She married a fitness coach.

• 29:35Speaker 01

  German used to be a fitness coach. That's why he's so buff. But he took this side gig working as a poll worker at a polling place for the presidential election.

• 29:47Speaker 01

  The job of a poll worker is supposed to be collecting votes, or counting votes, or helping people vote. But in Russia, his job was just filling out ballots for Putin. This was fraud.

• 30:00Speaker 03

  I knew how they fraud on the elections, and I wanted to reveal it. It was my little revenge.

• 30:10Speaker 01

  German told me that he was angry about the war in Ukraine. He was tired of living under this regime all his life. So he decided to film himself doing this. And he was planning to send that video to the Anti-Corruption Foundation that was started by Alexei Navalny.

• 30:27Speaker 03

  I thought at the time was a genius at this time, that everything went by my plan. It was a very exciting moment for me.

• 30:37Speaker 01

  After filming this video, as he was leaving the polling place, he doesn't know why, but a security guard stopped him, asked for his phone, and saw the footage. German was caught.

• 30:50Speaker 01

  He was taken to a security room, and he was left alone while the guard went to call the police.

• 30:55Speaker 03

  I decided to escape. And I ran out of this security room, straight to the door, and just ran to the house.

• 31:07Speaker 03

  I know the consequences. You will be imprisoned, or you will go to the war.

• 31:14Speaker 01

  German was afraid that he'd be sent to the front lines in Ukraine. To him, this is a death sentence. And that night, when he got home, he told his wife everything.

• 31:29Speaker 03

  She was upset. She was upset, but the thing is, she didn't tell me that I was an idiot, but I actually was, because I made this situation happen. She asked me, "What we gonna do? What we gonna do?" Not, "What you gonna do?", but "What we gonna do?" At this time, I thought that I need to leave country alone. And she told that, "No, we are a family, so she's gonna be with me everywhere." And no, it encouraged me a lot. She's a real... She's my real wife. I don't know how to express this. She's a real wife.

• 32:18Speaker 03

  So I worry about my wife. I worry about my son's education because he is seven and it's time for him to go to the school. And I just don't want to be a failure for my family. But all these things, they push us very hard

• 32:40Speaker 03

  into despair, into the darkness.

• 32:50Speaker 01

  Alright, so I'm on my way now to pick German and his family up. I'm driving them to Gulpito, which is a small town. It's about a 45-minute drive from Katem.

• 33:01Speaker 01

  In early May, I drove out to Katem to talk to German again because I learned that he was now free to leave the center. The Costa Rican government had passed a resolution ending the detention of the people at Katem.

• 33:15Speaker 01

  German wasn't trapped behind the fence anymore. And since this was a long road trip, my plan was to spend the weekend there. I took my fiancee and daughter. They were kind of, or at least my fiancee was kind of invested in this story a little bit. Also, knowing that German was going to come out with his family. I guess I wanted to kind of level the playing field in the sense that, hey, I'm not just some YouTuber guy that's just trying to extract the story. Like, I have a family as well.

• 33:52Speaker 01

  We picked up German and his family at Katem. And that day, we went out for lunch at this marina that was near the hotel. A little bit like two families just grabbing lunch on a vacation.

• 34:07Speaker 01

  So different from the experience of the past three, four months for that family.

• 34:14Speaker 03

  One, two, three, one, two, three. Microphone check.

• 34:17Speaker 01

  But I'm still following up on this story. And we're at this hotel in Golfito. I'm shooting an interview with him. I had this burning question for German. Now that they're free to leave Katem, what were they gonna do? What were their plans?

• 34:32Speaker 03

  You said Canada, Australia are probably the best options for you if you get asylum. That's Plan A? Yes, this is Plan A. This is their dream number one. Okay, let's call it a dream.

• 34:43Speaker 01

  So German's dream right now is asylum in an English-speaking country. He is thinking Canada, Australia, England.

• 34:54Speaker 01

  Honestly, one of the reasons why he's been sharing this story with me in the first place is that he's hoping that we might get enough attention from one of those governments, that they might see his case and intervene. But that hasn't happened.

• 35:08Speaker 03

  What's Plan B? What's the next option?

• 35:12Speaker 03

  Well, Plan B is to go back to the United States.

• 35:16Speaker 01

  And I don't have to tell him that trying to get into the US would be a challenge.

• 35:20Speaker 03

  And I don't believe that with the current administration, it's even possible, even if courts say, yes, you can go back. They won't let you? Okay, the current administration won't let us. You know, I'm a fitness coach. I'm a fitness coach. I never made a deep research about how, what the society feels about immigrants. And I know when you speak about immigrants, you mostly speak about criminals. So immigrant is equal to criminals right now in the people's mind. Because that is image they create. And there are some reasons for this image being created, I know.

• 36:05Speaker 03

  But I never thought that I will be this faceless immigrant too.

• 36:13Speaker 01

  As for staying in Costa Rica, they're not even considering it.

• 36:17Speaker 03

  We know nothing about this country. We don't know language, we don't know culture, we don't have someone who can...

• 36:22Speaker 01

  They'd have to find housing. They don't even know if they'd get a work permit.

• 36:28Speaker 03

  We can't take these options.

• 36:32Speaker 01

  But as it turns out, there is one other option that he tells me about. It's one option that I know that German doesn't want to take, but he might have to.

• 36:46Speaker 03

  Maybe. I can't return to my country 100%, but my family can. So maybe it's better for my family that they can return and I will stay here. But this is, you know, this is not Plan A, this is Plan H.

• 37:04Speaker 01

  I can see how worried he is about his wife.

• 37:08Speaker 03

  It's difficult for her because she's a mother. First of all, she's a mother and she thinks about...

• 37:18Speaker 03

  She heard a lot of promises, she heard a lot of things from me because I told her that soon we will manage with this situation, but there is no end. We don't see an end and I sometimes don't understand what she's wanting to tell me. Sometimes she don't understand my feelings. And I know one family who returned to Russia voluntarily and they've got a little kid and they divorced immediately after all of this.

• 37:46Speaker 03

  But at the same time, I understand that we can make this hard decision easily because there is a possibility that we won't meet each other. You know what I'm talking about. So she will live in Russia, I will live in Costa Rica or another country.

• 38:07Speaker 01

  Alright, so this is a little voice note post spending the day with German. During the interview, German said that there's a chance that him and his... Like him, he'll stay and his wife and son might go back to Russia. Which tears my heart, man. I'm a parent as well. It would just break me to have to separate myself from my family. It would break me even more if it's my fault. And all for one mistake or for one, you know, attempt at doing the right thing, I guess. I can't imagine it.

• 38:54Speaker 01

  By the end of June, German and his family have been here for about six months. Of the 200 people that arrived in Khatem, only about 28 are left. Some return to their own countries, some just slip out of the fence and disappear. Now, the pencil factory feels practically empty. And from the texts and the videos that German keeps sending me, I see him and his family just hit rock bottom.

• 39:29Speaker 03

  Hi guys. I just had a panic attack here right now. Because I hate this place. I can't be here anymore. My wife lays down the whole day. And I just was at medic because I couldn't breathe. I can't see these rusty walls. I can't stand this climate anymore. This is awful. I don't know what to do.

• 39:59Speaker 01

  You know, seeing him like that,

• 40:02Speaker 01

  I could see how his wife could just take this chance and leave. Because it was just getting to this, to this extreme. And I'm sad. I'm really sad. Suddenly, like, there's this much bigger urgency, like, they feel how trapped they are. You know, I don't think that I can help every family out there. I realize that. But if there's something I can do to keep this family from breaking apart, then it's worth a shot.

• 40:51Glynn Washington?

  When we return to keep German's family together, Kaia throws a Hail Mary. Stay tuned.

• 41:10Speaker 05

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• 41:43Glynn Washington?

  Welcome back to Snap Judgment. When last we left, German and his family were deported to a pencil factory in rural Costa Rica and are considering splitting apart. German staying in Costa Rica, his wife and son potentially returning to Russia. But Kaia, a YouTuber who stumbled into this story, Kaia doesn't want to see that happen.

• 42:07Glynn Washington?

  Snap Judgment.

• 42:09Speaker 01

  Hey, German. Just stopping to say hi. I have been thinking of,

• 42:15Speaker 01

  you know, it could be useful for you guys to see the city or, and probably where you would live if you were to stay. Like, you guys are not considering Costa Rica as a place to stay. You know, would you change your mind, maybe, if you saw that Costa Rica is much more than this little glimpse of a very remote area that you've been presented with Katem?

• 42:47Speaker 01

  It takes us a couple tries, but in early July, finally,

• 42:53Speaker 01

  German and his family arrive in San Jose after a seven-hour bus ride. And the first thing we do is we go for pizza. We go to this park that's surrounded by high-rises. It's a cloudy and chilly day. It's definitely not my favorite kind of day in the city, but for them, for them, it's it's what they've been waiting for, especially compared to this heat and humidity in Katem. It's maybe the way a day in St. Petersburg looks like. And I can see that immediately, they feel more at home. They're city people. And at some point, German even tells me that he's got goosebumps. Even, you see these goosebumps?

• 43:39Speaker 01

  It's because of the air, finally, it's not so hot and I like this and I,

• 43:45Speaker 01

  it's my body reaction and it's my inner reaction, you know, it's combined.

• 43:52Speaker 02

  It's very unusual for me to speak on a camera. No, no, no, we're not gonna have the camera, it's just the audio.

• 44:00Speaker 01

  In this trip, I also got a chance to speak to German's wife, Eva, through a translator.

• 44:05Speaker 02

  You can do it in Russian. Yeah, aha, хорошо.

• 44:08Speaker 01

  While their son Sasha played on the carpet of the studio with some Legos.

• 44:16Speaker 01

  When we saw each other in Golfito, you guys told me that you guys were thinking of going back to Russia. And I was very scared because I didn't want to see your family break apart.

• 44:27Speaker 02

  Так, но... Да, хотела добавить.

• 44:32Speaker 06

  At some point, we were thinking to go back to Russia. However, now, thinking it through, I understand that that was the wrong decision to make.

• 44:42Speaker 02

  Сейчас, да, я понимаю, что это было бы, наверное, ошибкой.

• 44:47Speaker 01

  So, after the interview ends, I notice that Eva just keeps talking to her translator.

• 44:52Speaker 02

  Да, да, да. Да, действительно, вот эта вот поездка...

• 44:56Speaker 01

  Our translator had brought her mother along, who was originally from Russia.

• 45:05Speaker 06

  So now my mother is telling her about the loss in Costa Rica. And she's explaining that the kids have health insurance covered by the government,

• 45:24Speaker 01

  And I could see it in Eva's eyes. This idea of a life in Costa Rica was starting to settle in her mind.

• 45:39Speaker 01

  So after a weekend in San Jose, the family goes back to Katem. But only a week later, they leave the pencil factory again. Hopefully, for the last time.

• 45:54Speaker 03

  Hi, Kaya. So this is the beginning of our trip. We just left Katem. And I think in about seven hours, we will be in Monteverde.

• 46:13Speaker 01

  I know Monteverde as this beautiful, lush, really popular tourist destination. The poster of Costa Rica, like any image that you see about Costa Rica and rainforests, probably comes from Monteverde. And this group of Quakers lives there. And they're mostly Americans or descendants of Americans. And they have offered housing to some of the families in Katem for up to a year.

• 46:40Speaker 03

  So this is my first impression about our new place to stay. This place is far from everyone else, four or five kilometers away, down from the mountain, and it's the cavern in the woods. So you see...

• 47:00Speaker 01

  I can see that the place is just not what they imagined. It's remote, it's rugged, it's rainy. Their house is a small shack. It doesn't have insulation, it doesn't have internet.

• 47:14Speaker 01

  Their neighbor's dog barks all night.

• 47:17Speaker 03

  Oh, oh my god, oh my...

• 47:20Speaker 01

  Their sink is constantly running and overflows to the floor.

• 47:26Speaker 01

  And German is disappointed, so is Eva.

• 47:29Speaker 03

  She's still balancing between going home or staying here, but, you know...

• 47:38Speaker 01

  Slowly though, over the next few weeks, I can hear the tone of German's messages starting to change.

• 47:46Speaker 03

  I want to share with you my new expressions because, as I expected, they are different. We visited our neighbors, we spoke with them. Yes, most of them are old people, but I missed this communication. They're all of them, they're nice. And we've got a plan how to live here right now.

• 48:10Speaker 01

  He sends me videos from the classes that the Quaker community offers them in their meeting house.

• 48:17Speaker 03

  Touch the head?

• 48:19Speaker 01

  They're teaching them Spanish. They have pottery lessons, yoga.

• 48:23Speaker 03

  Today in the morning, we had high-intensity interval training classes. And it was very good for me because after that I was full of strength and I missed it a lot. Now we're climbing.

• 48:37Speaker 01

  They go on hikes in the mountains.

• 48:39Speaker 03

  He's my son, trying to climb everywhere.

• 48:43Speaker 01

  And towards the end of July, German sends me this video of his son riding a pony.

• 48:54Speaker 01

  German's walking alongside him, he's holding the camera, very proud.

• 48:58Speaker 03

  This is my son.

• 49:04Speaker 01

  And when I saw it, I realized that I think this is the first time I have ever heard German truly laugh.

• 49:35Glynn Washington?

  German and his family are among the thousands of people deported to third countries by the US since January of 2025. They are still living in limbo. They have not applied for asylum in Costa Rica. We don't know how many of the original group of pencil factory asylum seekers remain in Costa Rica. Only three families, including Germans, are still with the Quakers. We do know that some of the pencil factory folks went back to the US border to try to claim asylum again, and the government put them right back into detention again. Though at least a few families with kids were later released into the US while they waited for their asylum cases to proceed. But after this shooting of two National Guard members, an Afghan immigrant who'd

• 50:20Glynn Washington?

  recently been granted asylum, the Trump administration responded by immediately halting all asylum decisions. For how long? We don't know. We did reach out to the Department of Homeland Security to ask about the deportations to Costa Rica and the conditions that German told us he experienced at the border. They didn't respond.

• 50:56Glynn Washington?

  Big, big thanks to German, to Ava, to Sasha. Also, thanks to Julia Neusner. You can see more of Kaya's documentaries about tech and society on his YouTube channel, Slide Beam. Original score for this piece was by Renzo Goryo, was produced by John Faseo and Kaya.

• 51:31Glynn Washington?

  Now, if you miss even a moment, know that an entire world of Snap storytelling awaits. The Snap Judgment Podcast, available wherever you get your podcasts. KQD in San Francisco is Snap Judgment's orbiting Hall of Justice. Something's brought to you by the team that knows it when it sees it, except, of course, for the Oom producer, Mr. Mark Ristich, who, if he sees it, does not know it. No staff, studio's content may be used for training, testing, or developing machine learning or AI systems without prior written permission on Team Snap. The union represented producers, artists, editors, and engineers are members of the National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians,

• 52:13Glynn Washington?

  Communications Workers of America, AFL-CIO Local 51.

• 52:22Glynn Washington?

  And there's Nancy Lopez, Pat Massey Miller, Anna Sussman, Renzo Goriel, John Facile, Shayna Shealy, Kell Decot, Flo Wiley, Bo Walsh, Marissa Dodge. My name has been Washington. And sometimes, every once in a great while, this actually is the news. But on those rare occasions, rest assured, this still is P R X.