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AMY GOODMAN: Well, we’re going to move from the Panama Canal right now to the issue of immigration. President Trump Tuesday night once again emphasized the importance of securing the U.S. border, blaming President Biden’s, quote, “open border policies,” accusing him of allowing migrants to, quote, “overwhelm” towns like Aurora, Colorado, and Springfield, Ohio. He went on to push for greater funding for border security to implement his campaign promise of mass deportations.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I have sent Congress a detailed funding request laying out exactly how we will eliminate these threats to protect our homeland and complete the largest deportation operation in American history, larger even than current record holder President Dwight D. Eisenhower, a moderate man, but someone who believed very strongly in borders.
AMY GOODMAN: Highlighting his designation last month of Venezuelan and Salvadoran gangs, as well as Mexican drug cartels, as foreign terrorist organizations, Trump then described Mexico as being controlled by cartels.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: The territory to the immediate south of our border is now dominated entirely by criminal cartels that murder, rape, torture and exercise total control. They have total control over a whole nation, posing a grave threat to our national security. The cartels are waging war on America, and it’s time for America to wage war on the cartels, which we are doing.
AMY GOODMAN: For more, we’re joined now from Phoenix, Arizona, a border state with Mexico, by longtime immigration activist Erika Andiola. She was the press secretary for Latino outreach for the Bernie Sanders 2016 presidential campaign, and she has a recent op-ed piece in The Arizona Republic headlined “Deporting immigrants like me won’t make eggs cheaper or your family safer.”
Erika, respond to what you heard Trump say last night.
ERIKA ANDIOLA: Yeah, nothing new. It’s the same type of strategy, right? You pick this marginalized group — in this case, the immigrant community — and you double down on ensuring that the American people create this image — right? — that immigrants are really the villain, the ones that are taking your jobs, that are stealing your wages, etc., etc. And the reality is, is that that is false. We know that the majority of immigrants in this country contribute greatly to the economy, contribute greatly to our communities. But, unfortunately, it is a great way for Elon Musk to do what he’s doing and keep people distracted — right? — thinking that they are going to make people safer by detaining grandmothers, DACA recipients, teachers, right? And that reality is far from the truth. So, there’s nothing new that he said, but he is doubling down on creating this image for the American people that immigrants are to blame for every single one of their problems, when we know who are really the ones who are slashing Medicaid and trying to get rid of Social Security for the American people.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Erika, could you talk about the latest month and a half of the mass deportation program that’s been occurring? The number of arrests supposedly have leveled off, but the number — and deportations are actually, according to the government’s own stats, fewer right now than they were under the Biden administration, but there’s a huge increase in the number of people in detention.
ERIKA ANDIOLA: That’s right. That’s right. That’s the plan, right? You have corporations, that literally own these detention centers, who have lobbied for years, for decades really, who have lobbied to ensure that we have more and more immigrants detained, so that they can continue to profit out of our people. So I’m not surprised that there is more demand from the Trump administration to ICE to continue to detain people. But the fact is that our people are ending up in detention centers, in detention camps.
And the reality is that the actual number of people who are in these detention centers, people who are getting arrested and placed in deportation proceedings, the majority of them don’t even have any criminal record. And some who do are actually people who just came, returned to the country after being deported, maybe to see their families again, what you call a reentry — right? — which it’s also labeled as a criminal conviction. So, what I’m trying to say is that the majority of our people who are detained right now, who are being arrested, are not necessarily the people who Trump was speaking about last night — the rapists, the — you know, whatever he says every single time. He paints this picture to make sure the Americans believe that those who are being arrested are really those who are posing a threat to the American people. But that’s farther — that’s really far from the truth of what I’m seeing and what I’m hearing from other organizations who are hearing, who are getting the calls from the immigrant community who are getting picked up for doing nothing, for maybe driving or just being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
AMY GOODMAN: I mean, I just heard the story of a Guatemalan American who was driving between two New York cities, right outside of New York City. She was pulled over by ICE. She was asked for her ID. She showed her driver’s license. She already has started to carry her passport. And then they said, “We want another federal ID.” She showed her passport, and they said, “We’re not letting go of you until you tell us where you illegally got this passport” — a totally legal ID. And they held her for hours on the side of a cold road as she saw person after person pulled aside. She said it was very clear they were people of color. Three people were taken into a van and handcuffed, until they finally released her. Erika Andiola, I want to thank you for being with us, longtime immigration activist. We’re going to link to that piece you wrote, “Deporting immigrants like me won’t make eggs cheaper or your family safer.”
