IBad parking in Tucson, Arizona, the toxic politics of immigration are ubiquitous. I'm here 60 miles from the Mexican border in the dry heat of the southern part of the state to kick off a Republican car rally of 100 vehicles in right-wing paraphernalia. Trump, who began his political career in 2015 by describing Mexican immigrants as “drug carriers.” They bring offense. They are rapists,” the discourse is pushed to even lower depths. Unrelenting lies from the thousands of signs in Springfield, Ohio about consuming pets that read “Mass Deportation Now!” At the Republican National Convention earlier this year, subtle leadership on the right was largely overshadowed by lust that interfered with brutality.
Among the drivers here is a Trump supporter named Lupe Hernandez, a Mexican-American who tells me he came to the U.S. on a visa in November 1963. John F. Kennedy was assassinated. But she has cousins, nephews and nieces who came to the U.S. decades ago without documents. He says they are all good and hardworking. I ask how she feels about Trump's mass deportation plans, which could target these members of her own family for forced removal. She is happy about that, she says: “They can be deported, but they can apply to come back.”
It's a stark reminder of how entrenched Trump extremism is — and a stark contrast to the era Hernandez came from, shortly after Kennedy called for an embracing “nation of immigrants.” Polls now show that a majority of Americans support brutal crackdowns – in some cases, apparently, at the expense of their own relatives. The murky political strategy of blaming immigrants for almost all of America's failures and natural disaster responses to housing shortages – now so ubiquitous that it becomes easier to detach from reality.
Throughout Trump's first term, I've seen what these mass roundups from separating children at the southern border really look like. I've sat in Texas courtrooms watching parents reunited with their children in secretive, overcrowded detention centers filled with rights violations and suffering. A second Trump term will be even tougher.
Just before the car rally hits the streets, I ask people if such measures can be achieved without causing intentional harm. Most people are not interested. “I don't know [how],” says a woman. “But I believe Trump can do it.”
DThe next day, I ride with the Humane Borders team to the Sonoran Desert, 20 miles from Mexico. It's a nonprofit that leaves barrels of blue water for migrants to pass through and has logged more than 4,000 deaths here since 2000. The dangers of crossing have intensified in recent years, with routes becoming longer and more dangerous.
We hike a few hundred meters on the sand as the sun beats down and the temperature reaches over 37C (100F). I trip over a bush that leaves a scattering of thorns that are embedded in my feet through my trainers. While bleeding, the prospect of a five-day trip here feels unimaginable.
Although the volume of border crossings has decreased significantly this year, they reached a record peak at the end of 2023 – explaining a complex mesh of changes in global migration patterns, ultimately Trump-era restrictions and family groups traveling from Central America.
Joel Smith, my guide and volunteer with Human Frontiers, points out bullet holes embedded with glue in a water barrel we've come to inspect. Smith's life-saving water stations are often targeted by right-wing vigilantes, falsely promoting QAnon conspiracy theories. The desert is home to migrant child sex camps. He brushes off the threat with admirable indifference.
Smith has maintained these stations for decades now, and points to a bipartisan failure in Washington to address what he describes as a humanitarian crisis. Congress has not passed significant immigration reform since the 1980s. “It doesn't matter if we're talking about Barack Obama, Donald J. Trump or Joe Biden. Everything is one,” he says. “Death is the policy.”
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Ducson itself makes it one of the most competitive congressional races in the country. Incumbent Republican Juan Ciscomani faces Democrat Kirsten Engel, whom I'll meet early one morning before the sun rises.
Engel is a progressive, campaigning on climate science, ending Arizona's abortion ban and expanding healthcare access. When he contested the same seat two years ago, he was keen to push back the border's right-wing character. Condemns “this out-of-control place … criminals flock to our country” paintings.
Although his criticism has been accurate for two years, he is reluctant to reiterate it now. Like many Democrats, including Kamala Harris, Engel now supports a bipartisan border bill that includes several practical solutions. Fixing the country's broken immigration apparatus but also measures to placate hard-line conservatives, including an extra $650m (£496m) for Trump's border wall. (In a move of nihilistic cynicism, Trump called off the deal earlier this year to score points in the polls.)
There are elements of this compromise – namely border wall funding and a moratorium on, and indeed asylum rights – that would have been off-limits to progressives eight years ago. I wonder if Engel worries that Trump is influencing his own party to swing to the right.
He candidly admits that part of the influence of the former president – moved the country beyond the country. Decades ago JFK made promises for fair, flexible and generous immigration. “America has always been a pioneer of faith,” he says. “We want to stay that way. But we have to have an orderly process.
