♪ john: tonight on "pbs news weekend." terror in moscow: the deadliest massacre in decades leaves russia on edge, just days after president vladimir putin was re-elected. >> they were just walking and shooting as they went along. there were five or six of them, they were just walking and just shooting like this.

they were just walking and gunning down everyone methodically in silence. john: then, as a ceasefire remains elusive, we examine what the israel-hamas war is doing to education in gaza. and, how the residents of a small town in wisconsin are dealing with a surge of migrants. >> major funding for "pbs news weekend" has been provided by. and with the ongoing support of these individuals and institutions. and friends of the newshour. ♪ >> this program was made

possible by the corporation for public broadcasting and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. john: good evening, i'm john yang. russian president vladimir putin has vowed to punish those responsible for the terror attack on a suburban moscow concert hall that killed at least 133 people and, according to russian officials, left about 145 more wounded. it was one of the worst acts of terror in russia in decades. throughout russia tonight, security has been beefed up. and in moscow, people are remembering the dead and offering help to the wounded. >> hundreds of people lined up in the rain in moscow this morning to donate blood and plasma, giving what they can for the wounded from last night's carnage. yekaterina: of course i was shocked and felt fear and horror. i've been to a concert at crocus myself and when i saw those horrible videos, i was shocked and in tears, en now, when i

speak about it. it was very scary to see it all. >> a branch of the islamic state based in afghanistan claimed responsibility for the attack, which began with gunmen storming the hall, firing point blank at people who had gathered for a rock concert. dave primov was among the crowd. dave: the shots were not sporadic, there were constant volleys of gunfire. we all got up and tried to move closer to the aisles. people began to panic, started to run, and collided with each other. some fell down and others trampled on them. >> witnesses said the attackers threw explosive devices that started a fire. this morning, a smoldering ruin was all that was left after the roof collapsed. investigators combed through wreckage looking for bodies and evidence. in an address to the nation, russian president vladimir putin said all the gunmen had been arrested. he never mentioned the isis claim of responsibility, instead

linking ukraine to the attack. pres. putin: now the main thing is to not let those behind this bloodbath to commit new crimes. all four of the actual performers of the act of terror, all those who shot and killed people were found and detained. they tried to hide and were moving in the direction of ukraine. there, according to the preliminary data, they had a crossing of the border prepared from the ukrainian side. >> putin provided no evidence to support his claim and kyiv denied any involvement. u.s. intelligence said they had warned russian officials of a planned isis attack in moscow. outside the ruins of the concert hall today, people left flowers at a makeshift memorial. among them, concertgoer anastasia rodionova, who says she feels lucky to be alive. anastasia: they were just walking and shooting as they went along. gunning down everyone methodically in silence. you understand only now that you

are lucky, really lucky. i came home, my coat was just covered in blood. apparently someone shielded me. >> putin declared tomorrow a national day of mourning as the search goes on for answers about the brutal attack. journalist michael weiss is the itor of the insider, an independent news outlet covering russia. he is also co-author of "isis: inside the army of terror." michael, what do we know about isis-k? this branch of isis that's claimed responsibility. michael: so isis-k is established in afghanistan, and they arranged against a host of other jihadi actors, including the taliban al qaeda, and they've been angling to hit russia for quite a while. if you look at their communiques and their propaganda, they reviled vladimir putin, one of the reasons being that russia maintains a partnership with the taliban, their sworn enemy. the united states has fairly good intelligence on their capability and their motivation because we occupy afghanistan

for more than 20 years, and clearly our departure has has not really interfered with the ability to collect signals intelligence, which is what i believe the united states passed along to moscow a little less than a month ago. on march 7, you will recall the u. s embassy put out a notice advising people to stay away from public events for the next and that indeed according to 48 hours. reporting was tied to a credible isis threat planned by russia. john: why did russian security miss this? michael: well, we don't know that they did. i mean, it's always possible that some guys can slip through or that the intelligence was not specific enough to identify the time, place and the kind of , culprits that would behind it. but look, i mean, it's no mystery that russia's security and military resources are predominantly pouring poured into the war of conquest in ukraine, and also at the domestic level. there's a lot of huge crackdown on dissent.

people arrested at alexei navalny's funeral a few weeks ago. they're cracking down on any kind of anti war demonstrations or protests. you know if you so much as post a news article from the new york times about russian casualties and in ukraine you could be thrown in jail for several years. so what we're seeing emerge in russia is a kind of neo totalitarian state and under those conditions, the idea that you know the perfidious americans are claiming that isis-k or some islamist group is trying to attack russia. you can imagine the paranoia at the level of the kremlin that they probably wouldn't credit that as plausible. they would see it as some kind of psychological operation. and i mean, indeed president , putin came out today and sort of pointed the finger at ukraine. even though it is highly implausible that ukraine had anything to do with this whatsoever. john: not only pointed the finger in ukraine, he didn't mention the isis claim of responsibility at all. what do you think is going on with that? michael: well, it's embarrassing

to putin, right? i mean, you know the the kind of leitmotif of his reign, at least in the in the first decade and a half was to reconstitute fortress russia. to make russia this kind of impenetrable security state, which at all but withered away with the collapse of the soviet union. you know putin himself, famously former lieutenant colonel in the kgb. the kgb was colloquially known as the sword and the shield. it was there to protect the state. the sanctity of the state. so for him, he's got a lot of egg on his face right now, because this wasn't just a kind of a terror attack where you , know, some lone wolf drove a car into a crowd. this was highly sophisticated. this has been planned for months. if you take isis at their word the russian security services claimed to have detained for of the assailants. and this was a, you know, machine gunfire into a crowded mall and concert venue but also a fire set to burn the whole place down, which it looks very much like they succeeded in that

respect. and now we're talking about over 100 people dead and many more wounded. so this is a this is going to be a trauma in russia. and so putin, i think is as is his want is trying to deflect blame away from himself to point the finger at, you know, mysterious, dark forces that are arrayed against russia. the question is the russian people going to buy it this time? john: and what would you expect putin to use this as sort of as a pretense in the war with ukraine? michael: well, that's one of the fears. yeah, i mean, if if he's saying that, you know the long dark arm of the ukrainian intelligence services, and, of course, behind them, keep in mind he always blames the united states. he thinks of ukraine as as a vassal not with no agency or sovereignty of its own. but if he's pointing the finger at ukraine, suggesting that you know these jihadis were making their way for the russian-ukrainian border -- not a very clever exit strategy for anybody who's just carried out an attack like that, by the way, -- one could hypothesize he's

using that as a pretext to escalate. now russia has begun to refer to this operation in ukraine, which is a war. it's no longer just a special military operation. there's been all kinds of rumors and reporting in the russian press about a possible mobilization campaign, meaning a huge call up not a partial mobilization like before. possibly another attempted attack an area of northeast ukraine a city that had been one , of the main targets in february of 2022, so we don't know. and as you can imagine, because of this it's led to any number of conspiracy theories. i have seen many ukrainians suggest that the russians themselves may have planned this as a false flag attack akin to the moscow apartment bombings. ukrainian military intelligence suggested as much, in this case, i have to be honest, i mean, you know, i've spent a long time studying isis and their tactics and their motives. it certainly seems to me like what you see is what you get here. isis-k looking to attack russia

and succeeding in a spectacular fashion. john: michael weiss, editor of the insider, thank you very much. michael: sure, anytime. ♪ john: president biden signed a $1.2 trillion spending bill to fund more than half e federal government through the end of the current budget year on september 30. final passage came in the senate at about 2:00 a.m., averting a partial government shutdown. the measure includes a pay raise for the military and increased border security spending. not included -- aid for either israel or ukraine. lawmakers are expected to take up those two items in early april after a two week recess. egypt says about 7000 aid trucks are being denied entry to gaza as the united nations warns of imminent famine. on the egyptian side of the rafah border crossing, un secretary-general antonio guterres said blocki the aid deliveries is a "moral outrage."

he said it was time to "truly flood gaza" with aid, as he put it, and called for an immediate ceasefire. a russian spacecraft blasted off from kazakhstan today, taking a crew of three to the international space station for a six-month stay. the team is made up of an american, a russian and a belarusian. it's one of the last remaining collaborations between russia and the west. and laurent de brunhoff has died. after he died, laurent nurtured his creation and, as father did, provided the illutrations of the elephant king of celesteville, it grew into a global fnchise. de brunhoff was 98 years old. still to come on "pbs news weekend." the living and working conditions for migrant workers on dairy farms. and, how a small town in wisconsin is dealing with the recent surge of migrants. ♪ >> this is "pbs news weekend,"

from weta studios in washington, home of the pbs newshour, weeknights on pbs. john: advocates of illegal immigration say foreign-born workers have long been a key factor iu.s. economic growth. and researchers say they've been crucial to the jobs recovery after the pandemic. but are immigrant workers sharing in the benefits of their contributions? for more than a year, propublica has been looking into the harsh realities of life for immigrant workers on midwest dairy farms. melissa sanchez is a propublica reporter. she focuses on immigrants and low-wage workers. melissa, over this several months of working on this story, what are the biggest takeaways that you came out, came out of this reporting with? melissa: sure, a few of them are just how dangerous the work is. i was not aware of it but workers are routinely injured and it's almost a normalized thing. workers say that if you haven't been hurt on a farm, then you really haven't worked on one before.

the danger is one thing. and then also the lack of regulation. like even though it's very dangerous, dairy work is less regulated than other kinds of work for for number of reasons, but particularly workers on small farms have fewer protections. and then the the immigrant nature of the work. almost everybody that i've met is an undocumented immigrant from central america or mexico who's on these farms. john: these farms are less regulated, than other, agricultural operations. why is that? melissa: so it's it's basically a technicality. the the way the laws are written, some of the farm worker protection laws that we have, they apply only to work that's seasonal or temporary, and cows are milked year-round. and that distinction sort of leaves this class of workers out. but but we know that farm workers are sort of exempt from a lot of other labor laws and protections, including overtime pay, for example. worker's compaws often don't cover small farms and a lot of these folks work on small farms. there's just like one after another after another of laws that leaves these people out. john: tell us what what sort of an average day is like for these

these workers? melissa: you know, the days are pretty wild. one thing to know is that workers work 60 to 80 hours a week, kind of on a regular basis, and the shifts are scattered. they might start a shift from 4:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. and then again from from noon to 2:00, and then again from 6:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. and this kind of erratic schedule makes it very difficult to sleep. and, and then depending on what their job is, it's either a lot of repetitive motions of putting on and taking off these tubes on and off of cows to pump out the milk, or it's work of shoveling and scraping cow manure and taking it to, to a manure lagoon on the site. it's pretty heavy, dangerous work. john: and then aside from the work, what are the living conditions like? melissa: i think one of the most important things to know is that it's really isolating work. people live in rural communities, often on the farms where they work. so it's routine for farmers to provide housing to the workers. and there's very little, if any, regulation on that housing. so we've seen workers who have decent, you know, mobile homes on a property, and we've seen

the houses on site with black mold in the bathroom ceilings or, you know, cockroaches, mice, ceilings that are caving in. when you live at work, you're living near your boss constantly, which is really hard to imagine. and part of the reason for that is that you can't drive legally if you're undocumented in wisconsin. and so workers are essentially trapped at work. john: how dependent or how important are these workers to the dairy industry in wisconsin? melissa: i mean, i've had so many farmers tell me that their businesses would collapse without immigrant dairy workers. i mean, farmers won't tell you on the record that they knowingly hire people who are undocumented. but off the record, they will. they they have to. they say that they can't they can't hire u.s. born citizens to do this work. and again, the shifts are really, really intense. and the pay isn't much better than what you would get at mcdonald's. so if you have a choice between shoveling cow manure all day or, you know, flipping burgers, you might choose the latter. john: is there a difference in the conditions? either the working conditions

or living conditions for immigrants who are in the country legally and or and immigrants who are in the country illegally? melissa: so yes or no. so it's important to know that with dairy in particular, there's no guest worker program, there's no agricultural guest worker program that they're able to access because dairy work is year round, unlike seasonal crop labor. and so other kinds of agricultural work does often and increasingly rely on and legal immigrant guest workers, their conditions. it is you know, it's hard to say , whether it's significantly better, but there are some more regulations and standards for that category of work and then the housing, etc. we've interviewed easily 130, 140 workers over the past year and a half. all but three or four were undocumented immigrants. john: i know you asked some of the people to reach out to you using a messaging app and leave some messages about this. we've translated them into english. let's listen to two of them. >> how was my experience working as an undocumented migrant in a

dairy farm? the truth is that it has been one of the most difficult work experiences of my life. it wasn't because of the work itself, but because of the way my boss would address me with insults and lack of respect. he would do this knowing that as undocumented we always fear , asking for help because of our migrant status. it was very difficult to work for this person. i believe that in all my working years, this has been the most difficult, and i hope that it doesn't happen again because it really lowers your self-esteem. >> the reality of being a migrant is very complicated, because the fact that we are in this country illegally, there are many things we have to be silent about. i think that the fear all migrants have is to be quiet, even if we for some reason decide to complain that some things are not right sometimes it can be about where we live or how bad the pay is, but we're still migrants and it's best if we're quiet and do not complain.

john: how representative or how typical are those are these messages to what you heard in your reporting? melissa: it's just extremely typical. i mean, a lot of workers feel that they're treated like less than human from from their employers, but they can't really do anything about it because because of their immigration status. it's really hard for people like that to speak up, to be willing to use their name. they're afraid of getting fired, getting evicted, getting deported. they are just real and present for years for these folks. john: did you ask the farmers of the people who run these farms about these conditions and what did what was their response? melissa: yeah, you know, we talked to maybe a dozen or so farmers over the past year and a half and it is hard. they're they're in a tight spot financially. they can't control the price of milk. and they don't always know what they're going to make. and a lot of farms, as you know, like go into bankruptcy each year. so they're not really required to do a whole lot. there's just not a lot of regulations for them. so a lot of them believe that they're doing the best they can for their workers. but when it comes to things like injuries, we have heard

farmers blame workers for their own, for their own problems, including their own deaths on the farm. and because there's little oversight, they're just they're st not held accountable. john: melissa sanchez, thank you for sharing your reporting with us. melissa: thank you for having me. ♪ john: the complications resulting from the influx of migrants is not limited to big cities like new york and chicago. pbs wisconsin's nathan denzin went to a small city in southern wisconsin to see the effects there. >> it is another generation of families coming here, trying to get jobs, feed their children, get their children through school. nathan: since 2022, around 800 to 1000 migrants have come to whitewater, wisconsin, putting a strain on local resources. some of the most vulneble in that population are children. >> we are trying our best to

advocate for these children. nathan: mcgill is a member of the whitewater school board and a second-generation immigrant from mexico. with this new influx of students, he said the school district needs more funding. wisconsin currently sits on a $3 million budget surplus. >> i would understand if there is no money th we would have to make hard decisions. but another is a surplus, it almost looks like the money is being dwindled in front of our faces. nathan: there are people and organizations that have stepped up to act as a stopgap. >> our mission is to meet the needs of the community, whatever they are. if they had never been here before and they see all these things and we tell them they can just have it, they do not understand. nathan: they are cofounders of the community space in whitewater. their mission is to provide everything a person might need, from bedding to furniture, to food, all for free.

>> i had the privilege of witnessing someone come in and have their worst day and just needing some support, some food, some whatever. seeing them slowly relax and realize, we will not ask them for any papers. nathan: the community space has been accepting donations since 2019 but has ramped up its efforts in the last two years. >> i would like to say there has been no crisis. have we had to stretch and adjust? absolutely. nathan: they are open tuesdays, wednesday nights and saturdays as a compolement to the food pantry. >> i can stand up and say, is there anyone here who is bilingual? and inevitably i will get a nine-year-old child and that is awesome. i ask if their parents are proud of them. >> half of what we do is share and give and half of what we do is how we make people feel. nathan: beyond food and shelter, migrants face a number of challenges when they first get

here. finding a job, speaking a new language and driving are top of mind. jorge is an advocate and first-generation immigrant from mexico. he said undocumented migrants are not allowed to obtain a drivers license in. wisconsin. >> we do not have public transportation. we have a taxi. it is available in whitewater from 7:30 in the morning until 5:00. >> i see it as a huge safety issue. if we are having people driving in snow for the first time, that is not a good situation. nathan: dan is the chief of police in whitewater. >> if someone is able to come here and take all of the testing, the written tests, physically do the driving test so they are safer as a driver, i am all for that. nathan: nearly 20 states allow undocumented immigrants to obtain a drivers license. >> the underlying theory is we

know we need resources for us in law enforcement, this is a political. we simply did more staffing. nathan: he said over the last two years his department's work has gotten much more difficult and time-consuming. >> one thing that has been difficult for us as law enforcement is working with population that generally speaking is not trusting of government because they come from a place where they do not trust their government. nathan: to try to get some help from the city, city officials sent a letter to federal officials in december. >> we need more officers so we can get out of control at the level the community is used to having us. nathan: the letter requested more than just a boost in law enforcement funding. >> this is a situation where we are a port town that has limited resources. we would like to help people make sure they are getting jobs, shelter, food, all those things. nathan: she is a member of the

whitewater common council. >> the real problem is not that there are people here but the city is not prepared. nathan: they say they have heard from local officials who seem willing to help. in january, senator tammy baldwin, a democrat, wrote a letter to president biden. she called for federal support for cities in wisconsin to help with the influx of migrants. during a visit to whitewater in november, republican senator ron johnson blamed what he called a flood of migrants on the biden administration. immigrant advocates worried were arrivals will become political scapegoats. they want to see the new neighbors welcomed to their community. >> it is contributing to the vitality in our community. it is where we see the future. nathan: for pbs news weekend, i am nathan denzin in whitewater, wisconsin. ♪ john: and that is "pbs news

weekend." . for this saturday, i am john yang. for all of my colleagues, thanks for joining us. see you tomorrow. >> major funding for "pbs news weend." >> consumer cellular, this is sam. how can i help you? >> a pocket dial. >> with consumer cellular you get nationwide coverage with no contract. it is kind of our thing. have a nice day. ♪ >> and with the ongoing support of these individuals and institutions. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy.] ♪ >> this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. ♪

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>>right now i am comfortable it's hard to want to give that up for a uncertain path >> so the trip that we're about to go on is gonna be a roughly two week trip around the state of wyoming i'm mostly looking forward to kind of pickin' the brains of some of the people that we're gonna be able to meet i don't see much opportunity for me here >> you end up sort of creating your opportunity i think we're a state of pioneers [music]