All language subtitles for VICE - S05E26 Divide and Conquer - Crackdown in Honduras

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This week on Vice:

manipulating voting
districts to win elections.

Gerrymandering is all designed
for helping the politicians,

but not the ordinary citizen.

Do you think the makeup

of the state legislature right now

represents the North Carolina
population as a whole?

No, ma'am.

And then, the crackdown
of American gangs

in Honduras.

We're going to a new, US-style
penitentiary on the edge of town.

These guys have no idea how much
their lives are about to change.

Go, go, go!

We are not animals!

The results of the 2016
presidential election

reignited the debate

over whether the
electoral college system

is truly democratic.

This is the fifth time

a president has won
without the popular vote.

Most notably, the last time was in 2000.

What does this say about
the electoral college?

But an even bigger
question is being raised

over how the actual voting power

is distributed in American elections.

We've got to end the practice

of drawing our congressional districts

so that politicians
can pick their voters,

and not the other way around.

We've been drawing lines
for political reasons

all the way back to 1812.

It's a long American tradition,
but I think it's wrong.

Gerrymandering, or the
redrawing of voting districts

in favor of one political party,

has been accused of increasing
partisanship in Congress,

and the question of
its constitutionality

is now headed to the Supreme Court.

So we sent Gianna Toboni

to ground zero for the
gerrymandering debate:

North Carolina.

Take a deep breath in.

One more time, breathe in.

Nice, good job.

Go ahead, bring your
hands to your knees.

Drop your chin to
your chest. Breathe in.

Welcome to Asheville...

Take a deep breath in...

- ... where yoga...
- Exhale.

... is yoga with goats.

I was surprised to learn
that there was goat yoga

with equal rights petitions

and a lot of liberal people...

- Yeah.
- ... in such a conservative congressional district.

Yup. Well, the thing about our district

is it is kind of cut up a little bit.

- What do you mean, "cut up"?
- Um, the way that they do our districts,

Asheville would be a
very progressive district

if it weren't for the fact that

they've kind of cut it
right down the middle.

Congressional districts in the US

are typically supposed to
have similar populations,

resemble a coherent geographic shape,

and keep communities with
similar interests together.

Of the 435 congressional
districts in the US,

North Carolina has 13.

In one of those districts,
the city of Asheville's

large liberal-leaning population

made it competitive
for a Democrat to win,

until a 2011 redrawing
divided the city's population

into two otherwise
conservative districts

and permanently altered
the political landscape.

Asheville mayor, Esther
Manheimer, a Democrat,

has seen the city's representation

dramatically change
over the last decade.

The political environment here

is far outside of the average
of North Carolina, I would say.

After the 2011 redistricting,
how was Asheville affected?

It was dramatically affected.

Asheville used to have
a congressional district

that took in all of Asheville

and all of Western North Carolina,

and it supported

Congressman Heath Shuler,

who was an excellent balance

of what you get

when you add Asheville
to Western North Carolina,

because Asheville's very liberal,

but Western North Carolina
tends to be more conservative.

And then with redistricting

by the Republican state legislature,

Asheville was split into

two very conservative
congressional districts

where there's no question
these districts don't represent

where Asheville is on
the political spectrum.

By splitting the city
into two districts,

Asheville's liberal population
was absorbed by two other,

more populated, conservative districts.

So, what happened to the
influence of voters in Asheville?

They feel that their
voice has been eradicated

by gerrymandering.

Gerrymandering, or the
manipulation of district voting maps

for the advantage of
one political party,

helped ensure that moderate
Democrat Heath Shuler

would be replaced by one of
the most far-right Republicans

in office today, Mark Meadows.

2012 is the time that we're
gonna send Mr. Obama home

to Kenya or wherever it
is. We're gonna do it.

We caught up with Heath
in his former district.

Here's the city, and it once
was all the 11th District.

And now, Democratic-leaning precincts,

which essentially took in
the whole city of Asheville,

are now in the 10th district.

Redistricting in North Carolina
is done by state legislators

from the party in power
of the state House,

in this case, the Republicans.

When they were drawing the
lines, people were calling me,

"Would you like to have this precinct?
If you'll give up this precinct?"

I'm like, "That's not
the way this should work."

It's not fair to the community.

Let's draw these lines the
way they should be drawn,

based upon fairness.

Stop the gerrymandering.

The practice goes back to 1812

when Massachusetts
Governor Elbridge Gerry's

Democratic-Republican Party

engineered district lines

to help his own party

make gains in the state senate.

A cartoonist satirized
Gerry's voting district

as looking like a salamander,

and the term "gerrymander" was coined.

Since then,

voting districts have been
drawn much more precisely.

After 2010, Republican state legislators

took over the redrawing process

and have since been able to make ten

of the state's 13 congressional seats

safely conservative,

despite there being
more registered Democrats

than Republicans.

This GOP success in North Carolina

was actually part of a
broader and highly effective

national strategy called REDMAP.

We spoke to its
architect, Chris Jankowski.

So, you were the mastermind behind,

I think, what will be known as historic

in the great 2011 gerrymandering,

which is still, in many ways,
dictating politics in our country.

How did you decide to pursue that?

Well, it really started after
'08 and Obama's historic win,

where he really shifted a number of
political dynamics in the country.

And so, as Republicans,
we were looking at,

"Okay, what's the path back?"

And one of it was, obviously,

how do we get control of the
US House of Representatives?

What is REDMAP?

REDMAP is a strategic plan

to pool money, on the national level,

and invest it into the key
state legislative races,

where there was gonna be

a redrawing of congressional lines,

based on the census data,

and focusing on the states

that were either gonna
lose a congressional seat

or gain a congressional
seat to have maximum impact.

The direct results of the REDMAP
project on the state legislative level

was to put Republicans at
the table to draw the lines.

People ask me about REDMAP, and,
"Wasn't it so unfair, what you did?"

And I say, well, we took
the rules that applied,

we told them what we were
gonna do, and we did it.

And we did it in a year that was,
obviously, historic in itself.

Since REDMAP,

Democrats have lost more than
900 state legislature seats

across the country.

These state House wins
have given Republicans

unprecedented map-making power.

Voting rights scholar and lawyer,

Nick Stephanopoulos,

showed us one of the modern tools

legislators can use to redraw districts.

So, this is Maptitude for redistricting.

Maptitude will give you
information about the populations

of all of the districts
that you're constructing.

That would let you forecast

how different districts would perform

under different configurations
in future elections.

The city of Asheville, for example,

is split in two, because
if it were kept whole,

it might have been enough for a
Democratic congressional district.

So, what are you doing right now?

I've told Maptitude that I want
to add counties to District 11,

and I want them to
come from District 10.

You highlight as many of
them as you want to assign,

click the "assign" button,

and all of a sudden those counties

will now be in the
district you put them in,

and they will no longer
be in the old district.

As you can see, all of
a sudden, District 11

just swallowed up
two-thirds of District 10.

- In 30 seconds.
- Exactly.

No Democrats are gonna be
winning those districts.

- It's like a computer game.
- It's a fairly easy computer game.

And the two main
strategies to win that game,

and state elections,

are called cracking and packing.

Partisan gerrymandering
always takes place

through these two techniques
of cracking and packing.

"Cracking" refers to dispersing

the other side's voters

across a relatively
large number of districts.

And "packing" refers
to over-concentrating

the other side's voters
in a few districts

where their preferred candidates

consistently win by enormous margins.

So, just to be clear,
this process is legal,

and it's necessary across the country.

So, what's the problem?

It's necessary because
we need to make sure

the districts have the same populations,

but there is, effectively,
no legal limit whatsoever

to how extreme their partisan
gerrymandering can be.

And some of the most extreme examples

can be found in urban areas,

which tend to have dense
liberal populations.

To see the effects of cracking,

we went to North Carolina
A&T State University.

North Carolina A&T

is a historically black
college and university.

There are about 10,000 students here.

So, if you take 10,000 students,
um, that's definitely enough,

especially in a smaller,
congressional election, to swing a vote

- one way or the other.
- For sure.

A&T was actually split into
two different districts.

Right now, we're in
Congressional District 13.

- Okay.
- Um, this street is Laurel Street,

and this is the street
that divides the campus,

um, for voting purposes.

Their vote is now cracked.

So that building right there is
a different congressional district

- than where we're standing?
- Yes.

- Fifty feet away?
- Right.

So now that vote has been divided
exactly in half... 5,000 students.

Still significant,

but when you put this campus in
the broader map of the district,

it's a much smaller, much weaker vote.

So, while cracking is
used to break up votes,

packing clusters voters
of one party together.

We saw how Republican
legislators applied this technique

to smaller state House races.

Thank you, Bright Hopewell, for
this opportunity, once again.

Another Sunday morning

to come and stand before you.

Republican mapmakers

packed thousands of new minority voters

into state House Democrat
Garland Pierce's district,

a move that pulled minority
voters out of other races

that they would have
had more influence in.

- So, what's this here?
- This is House District 48.

- In the yellow?
- In the yellow.

And, like I said, it starts...

this is all the way to
Greensboro, North Carolina, 220.

And this is the furthest
point in the south,

which is Fairmont and Lumberton.

Representative Pierce's district

now weaves in and out of four counties,

across a hundred miles in the
southern part of the state.

So, why is the district
shaped like this?

To stack and pack minorities.

Do you think that the makeup of
the state legislature right now

represents the North Carolina
population as a whole?

No, ma'am.

No, ma'am. A neighborhood
should never be split.

Precincts should never be split.

They used the power of the pen

to really, uh, put themselves in
a position to lead for a while.

That effort has now led to Republicans

occupying 64 percent

of the state Assembly seats,

despite there being
more registered Democrats

than Republicans in the state.

This isn't just happening
in North Carolina.

The GOP went from controlling
14 state legislatures in 2010,

to 32 this year.

And as districts have been
redrawn over that same time,

maps that once contained blue

are consistently turning red.

With congressional approval
ratings at historic lows,

there's now bipartisan support

for the termination of gerrymandering.

This is a very, uh, dynamic
office you have here.

Well, this is the
Predator that I fought.

See, when you're a real stud like me,

then you fight the Predator
with your bare hands

and wipe them out.

Then here, the Terminator,
traveling through time.

Of course, if I could
do this in real life,

I would travel back to 1812

and wipe out gerrymandering.

In the movies it would be easy,
because you just would, you know,

go into the room where
they draw the maps

and, um, blow up the room,

throw everyone out of
the room, burn the maps,

and then have honest people

draw the district lines.

Gerrymandering sucks

because it's all designed
for helping the politicians,

but not the ordinary citizen.

Do you think that voters know

that their voter influence,
is, in some cases,

being taken away, or that their
votes are being manipulated?

Because it's a very complicated
issue, it's very hard to, kind of...

It's not the sexy issue that people
can jump on and get involved with.

So, uh, only recently
it has now come out,

because there's such a lack
of performance in Congress.

There's such a low approval rating

that people are saying, "Wait a minute.

We've got to do something about it."

When you first took office
as governor of California,

how bad was the gerrymandering here?

It was like Republicans were
all locked into one district,

and Democrats were all
locked into one district,

so the Republicans had to be

as far to the right as possible

in order to win.

The Democrats had to be

as far as possible to the left.

So how do you get them
together to agree to something,

or to at least compromise
to get something done?

I remember, before we did
the redistricting reform,

in California, we had 265
congressional elections,

and only one, in ten
years, changed party hands.

Only one. Think about that.

We, in California, went all out

and declared war on gerrymandering,

and we have done away with it.

But it's not going to ever be perfect

unless you literally take it away

from the legislators altogether.

That's the ideal thing, is
to take it away from them

and to have ordinary
folks create a commission

that has no interest in the party.

And the key thing now
is for the Supreme Court

to really understand the
complexity of the issue.

Until now, the Supreme Court

didn't have a way to
mathematically determine

the extent to which a district
had been gerrymandered by party.

But Nick Stephanopoulos
may have a solution.

You created a statistical measurement

called the efficiency gap. What is that?

So, the efficiency gap
is meant to be a measure

of the extent of partisan advantage.

The key here is to realize

that both cracking and packing

produce what political
scientists call "wasted votes."

So it will tell you, in a single number,

the direction and the magnitude

of a plan's partisan skew.

In October, the Supreme
Court will hear arguments

for a case about Wisconsin
state Assembly districts

that could open the door
for the efficiency gap

to be used across the country.

A new precedent set in this case

could also affect the balance
of power in Washington, D.C.

If they do that, that's
still a subjective standard,

and you can be assured
that there will just be

more lawyers and lawsuits
challenging these lines.

Do you have any regrets

for something that you helped to create?

No. I just don't.

I did it because I actually think

that putting Republicans in charge
of state government is a good thing.

Do I like polarization? No.

Would I like compromise?

Um, depends.

But I don't feel bad at all

about giving my party an advantage.

Because I believe, ultimately,
in what we're trying to do.

And it looks like the Democrats,

they're gonna do it, themselves.

So, it... there's become
and arms race quality to it.

Which I don't like, but I
don't... we don't tend to lose.

Twenty years ago,
American law enforcement

came up with a novel solution
to the gang violence surging

in immigrant communities in Los Angeles:

deport the gangsters back
to where they've come from.

But that created a new problem,

because returning criminals

from the notorious MS-13
and 18th Street gangs,

began regrouping in
their home countries.

And they got even stronger.

Now, nowhere was the
problem worse than Honduras,

which, as a result, has become one
of the murder capitals of the world.

But recently, the situation
has begun to change

and crime is actually
starting to decrease.

So we sent Vikram
Ghandi to find out why.

We're right now in Tegucigalpa,

riding around with the FUSINA,

which is a newly built
initiative from the president,

a military task force that is
patrolling cities around this country

to clean up gang violence
and drug trafficking.

The FUSINA is a national security force

that combines military
and police personnel.

So far, they've arrested
6,000 gang suspects

and seized more than
9,000 illegal firearms.

Over the course of a single week,

they execute hundreds of
raids and traffic checkpoints,

and thousands of random searches,

which authorities
believe has been essential

in helping reduce homicides
by more than 30 percent

in the last few years.

These units have their
eyes on two targets:

the 18th Street Gang,
and the infamous MS-13.

Both of these groups were
actually founded in the US

by young Central American immigrants

wreaking havoc across Los
Angeles in the early '90s.

Because so many gang
members were undocumented,

American authorities began deporting
convicted gang members en masse.

Tens of thousands of
these seasoned gangsters

ended up back in their home countries,

where they reformed their ranks

and began to thrive
under weak governments

profoundly ill-equipped to handle them.

Today, their operations in
Central America are so violent

that Attorney General
Jeff Sessions has said,

MS-13 could qualify as
a terror organization,

putting them in the same
class as Al-Qaeda and ISIS.

MS-13's motto...

is, "kill, rape, and control."

That's their motto.

Oscar Alvarez Guerrero

served as the minister
of public security,

and saw the rise of these
American gangs in Honduras.

When they came from US,
they were the heroes.

This guy who left, and five years later

came back a different guy.

And they want to be like him.

"I want to have these
pants, I want these tattoos.

I want la Vida loca."

What do they do now?
They are kidnapping,

extortion, drug trafficking,

human trafficking. They
have infiltrated police.

These hardcore gang members
are killing machines.

Here in Honduras, the gangs
don't only target each other.

Near the height of the violence,

almost 500 Honduran civilians

were being killed each month.

In our first trip, no
matter who we spoke with,

the response was the same:

that gangs were making
the country unlivable.

Record numbers of Hondurans

began fleeing from the
relentless violence,

making their way north, through Mexico,

to the United States.

But what was most shocking,

was that for all the bloodshed
and misery they've caused,

life for the criminals themselves

was relatively easy,

even when they wound up behind bars.

It's like a party in here.

They're selling snacks,
you can play pool.

There's girls in here.

How is this a prison?
I don't understand it.

From right inside the prison,

gang leaders can still
do what they want:

Give orders to subordinates,

get visits from their girlfriends,

and smuggle cell
phones, drugs, and guns.

Security and regulations were so lax,

that prisoners ran
full-scale businesses

where they could make goods
and sell them for profit.

This is a shoe factory
inside of this prison.

It's basically like a working city.

I've never seen anything like it.

What... It says "PUMA"!

As long as you weren't
on a gang's hit list,

life in the prison wasn't
much of a hardship at all.

But now,

under President Juan Orlando Hernandez,

things are starting to change.

His plan is to drastically
reform the prison system

and put the teeth back into
the threat of incarceration.

Ilama Penitentiary is
the first in a new wave

of US-style maximum security prisons,

where guards can closely monitor

the inmates' movements
and communication.

But Ilama is more than a lockup.

It's a message to lawbreakers.

Authorities allowed us
to go along with them

as they conducted a wave of transfers

from the older prison to
the new supermax facility.

Tensions are high right now.

These guys have no idea how much
their lives are about to change.

Okay, that's your first guy.

We were able to ride with
the lower-security prisoners

as they were transported by bus.

The high-asset violent offenders

travel by reinforced personnel carriers.

We're going to a new, US-style
penitentiary on the edge of town.

Hey, Gabacho.

We're about to go into the maximum
security wing of this new prison.

Soon, all of the hard criminals
will be transported here,

but right now, there are about 60 guys

who are some of the worst of the worst.

These inmates had been
placed a few months earlier,

and President Hernandez
gave us special permission

to interview the
locked-up gang members.

Tell me about the new conditions
in this new prison for you.

Are they better or worse
than they used to be?

While inside, we were
given the rare opportunity

to meet with two of
the 18th Street Gang's

most powerful leaders,

convicted of weapons
and extortion charges.

They'd originally been housed

in the prison went
to on our first visit.

But now they were feeling
the weight of incarceration

in a whole new way.

Now with a large number

of the gangs' leadership behind bars,

and crime in Honduras
dropping each year,

the authorities here in Honduras
believe that their efforts

in police and prison reform

are really working.

Much of this success is dependent

on Honduras's relationship
with the United States,

which, during the Obama administration,

provided hundreds of millions of dollars

in police and military aid,

raising the question of what will happen

with US policy moving forward.

And we will build the wall

as sure as you are
standing there tonight.

We need the wall.

The bulk of the new
administration's plan

to disrupt gangs like MS-13,

is to build a wall on
the southern border,

which would cost about
70 billion dollars.

But President Hernandez
believes it's more effective

and more affordable

to attack the problem at its source.

If there was a suggestion of
not continuing the aid here,

what would your explanation of saying

why it's important for the
US to continue that aid?

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