The ‘Red Revenge’ Tour: A Q&A With San Diego’s Pedro Rios About What to Expect in the Borderlands

This article originally ran on The Border Chronicle. Republished with permission.

The incoming Donald Trump administration is already moving fast on border and immigration enforcement in preparation for its second term. Thomas Homan — who ran ICE from 2017 to 2018 and was the architect of Trump’s family separation policy — was appointed “border czar,” a title that has been used sporadically over the decades (despite the Trump campaign’s claims, it was never a role played by Vice President Kamala Harris).

After his appointment, Homan called on migrants to “self-deport” and said “we know who you are and we’re gonna come and find you.” It also appears that hard-liner Stephen Miller will be the deputy chief of staff for policy, ensuring that border and immigration enforcement will remain front and center. At a speech at Madison Square Garden in late October, Miller said that “America is for Americans and Americans only.”

Today we talk with San Diegan Pedro Rios, who since 2003 has run the American Friends Service Committee’s U.S. Mexico Border Program, to hear his thoughts on the Trump election and what it means historically.

For more than two decades, Rios has been documenting abuses by law enforcement, advocating for policy change, and working with migrant communities to develop collective leadership across the U.S.-Mexico borderlands.

In the interview Rios also talks about what people can do: “We must not allow fear to cause us to despair so much that we become immobilized. I would suggest people plug in locally and where possible, by building protective communities with principles that uphold our shared humanity.”

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What were your thoughts when you saw that Donald Trump was going to win the presidency? I’m curious about your first instinctual response—especially about what this means for the border and borderlands?

I was dismayed but not surprised. The convergence of all things politics had been pointing in that direction—from the daily polls to the Democrats’ inability to read the room (err, country), even to Joe Rogan’s miserable three-hour Trump interview. But it still felt like a punch to the gut.

For a while, I could only think of the red “revenge tour” yard sign posted down the street on a neighbor’s lawn. What would “revenge” mean for an unbridled Trump and the government trifecta that was developing before our eyes? Will it become a no-holds-barred command with no arbiter to call out the unconstitutional?

Trump’s first run to the White House was all about building the border wall and contriving a fictional “bad hombre” bogeyman to fear and loathe. This time around, his tactical dehumanization of migrants was an extension of his 2016 campaign, but with a rabid vigor. He pushed false stories about Haitians eating pets and about Venezuelans having Aurora, Colorado, under siege. He helped mainstream the fringe white supremacist replacement theory that Democrats intentionally allow migrants into the United States to vote and change the electorate, ultimately to supplant white power. All of this with a militant Christian nationalist movement supporting him that has practically anointed him a divine intervention to a declining United States afflicted with liberalism.

For border communities, barbarism will be a hallmark of his second term, as it was for his first one. Decimating asylum will be a priority. Building more deadly border walls and infrastructure that disfigures sensitive ecological landscapes. Emboldening boots on the ground, since the Border Patrol union was an active cheerleader of his campaign. More people detained, including from the mandated mass deportations assaults, in open-air conditions and in expanded for-profit jails. All this will create needless suffering. It’s depressing.

What are your thoughts about the Democratic presidential campaign regarding the border? That the Democrats characterized themselves as the true border enforcers and didn’t offer too much of an alternative?

They are not wrong about being the true border enforcers. It’s been their MO for decades.

But now it’s become a political miscalculation because they don’t know how to propose policy grounded on anything else but deadly deterrence measures. The Democratic Party’s campaign on the border has prioritized enforcement since the 1990s, and the succeeding administrations, be they Republican or Democratic, have stacked their enforcement policies on the foundation that promotes human suffering.

The Border Patrol pressed forward operations in border communities that envisioned a militarized enforcement regime under President Clinton. He then pushed for criminalizing migrants and facilitated their deportations or ensured that private prisons would be busting at the seams from their profits. Thousands of migrants have died, turning the borderlands into nameless graveyards. Many people believed they could have found a better life in the United States, and many others were already living in the United States and got caught up in the deportation machine, tried to return to their families, and perished.

From this context, Vice President Kamala Harris erred in adopting the same old, tired Democratic Party formula that centers deadly deterrence instead of championing serious proposals addressing humanitarian needs or human rights protections for migrants.

She peddled a bipartisan Senate bill that Trump ordered Republicans to shoot down. That bill would have severely hampered asylum, increased the number of Border Patrol agents, and built more border walls. Sound familiar? There was nothing inspiring in her platform on reforming the immigration system.

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With Trump, do you expect any major shifts, particularly on the California-Mexico border? What should people expect?

Trump has spelled out what he will do in his second term, and it will be relentless rounds of punishing, cruel, and heartless measures that his advisers, some known to be white supremacist ideologues, will push forward. He campaigned on the promise of launching the largest deportation program in history, and that there will be no budgetary ceiling to stop it. He wants to strong-arm local and state governments by withholding federal funding, which could include disaster relief money, if they refuse to be complicit in the deportation operations. He is floating the idea of declaring a national emergency to access greater resources, of invoking the Insurrection Act to deploy the military, and of using the Alien Enemies Act to detain migrants without due process.

As has been the trend across the political spectrum, Trump, much like his predecessor, will increasingly rely on surveillance technologies to augment unaccountable policing in border communities and to expand its reach into the interior. This is a threat to civil liberties and privacy rights everywhere and for everyone.

Increased detention will likely happen, and even using military facilities for this purpose. I don’t doubt that they will continue to use open-air detention sites, as Border Patrol does now, to hold people for days without having to comply with their national standards. People will suffer, and Trump and his advisers don’t care.

And the border wall? New 30-foot border wall projects went up at Friendship Park in San Diego and in other places during Biden’s term, and it appeared that a Harris administration would have also permitted the same in the Senate compromise bill. I have no doubt that under a Trump administration, new destructive and deadly walls will be built.

How will the American Friends Service Committee respond on the border to the election? Do you expect any resistance, and what are the ways that people can plug into things?

We are assessing our resources nationally and consulting with our coalitions to prepare for a difficult term ahead. In San Diego, we are also consulting with community groups to identify ways to support people on the ground. There is already a lot of field experience with how to respond to immigration raids while keeping families safe. We are calling on all organizers to share their knowledge with others about best practices. We will continue to document mistreatment and abusive practices at the border and beyond. In California, existing networks with extensive experience are discussing strategies to create firewalls against policies that could jeopardize people’s lives.

We understand that working-class families will need to make hard decisions about how to protect themselves if they are targeted. Fear is a real, tangible threat that paralyzes communities when they don’t have the resources and the knowledge about how to defend their rights. But we must not allow fear to cause us to despair so much that we become immobilized. I would suggest people plug in locally and where possible, by building protective communities with principles that uphold our shared humanity. That is the type and scale of resistance we will need.

Todd Miller is a journalist with The Border Chronicle, which publishes original, on-the-ground reporting, analysis, and commentary about the U.S. Mexico border.