Page 57 of 107 Days
As rain lashed the tarmac at Joint Base Andrews, a wet and miserable press pool huddled under the wing of Air Force Two, trying not to get soaked. Washington, DC, was experiencing the edge of Hurricane Helene.
Mark Kelly and I were headed to a drier climate in his home state of Arizona, where we would visit the border.
Even though the devastation of the hurricane was beginning to be clear, I knew I wouldn’t be able to visit the affected areas for several days.
It was important to stay out of the way of the emergency efforts and not add to their logistical challenges.
Search and rescue was underway, and first responders needed to focus all their efforts on relief and recovery without diverting their resources.
On my way to the border, I would get briefings from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). I knew that a significant amount of my time would be dedicated to supporting the relief effort and ensuring that the people on the ground got everything they needed and deserved.
Even so, Trump was slaying us in polls on this issue. He preferred to run on the problem, spouting incendiary language about an “invasion” by criminals and violent gangs, rather than fix the problem.
Never mind that immigrants are less likely to commit violent and property crime than American-born individuals, or that cities with more immigrants have similar or lower rates of violent and property crimes than areas with fewer.
Those statistics don’t register like powerful visuals of migrant caravans or large groups of desperate people wading across the Rio Grande, especially when the visuals are accompanied by hysterical commentary by the likes of Fox News hosts, designed to whip up anxiety and anger.
There is a bleak and tragic history in this country of demonizing immigrants: the Jewish refugees who were denied entry when fleeing annihilation in Nazi Germany; the Chinese, Italians, and Irish who were hated, vilified, and slandered in almost the same terms as the Right uses about today’s migrants; the Japanese who were interned, denied freedom and due process solely on the basis of their race.
Immigration had surged, and to some it felt like an invasion: we couldn’t gaslight the people who felt that way by denying the problem.
We did not succeed in making a passionate case for a complete immigration overhaul that combined securing the border with a better legal mechanism for the people who arrive here with a dream of success and contribution.
People who are no different from the parents, grandparents, or great-grandparents many of us love and revere who made a similar journey in search of an American dream.
I did not have time, in 107 days, to undo ten years of Trump’s demonization of immigrants. All I could do was show that we had taken measures that were working, and that I took the issue seriously and would continue to press for the comprehensive reforms we needed.
The challenge was to make this visit more than a photo op.
Mark and I flew to Tucson and helicoptered to Douglas, in bright red Cochise County.
The town of sixteen thousand people has close ties with its neighbor city in Mexico, Agua Prieta, as do many border towns, and the challenge is to facilitate efficient legal crossings, which are helpful for commerce, while cracking down on illegal ones.
It was a rough ride in the Osprey chopper, the rising desert air tossing us around as if we were in a spin dryer.
The temperature was also like a dryer—106 degrees.
At the busy port of entry, I listened as the border agents spoke of their challenges, and I thanked them for doing a tough job, covering about 260 miles of border.
Then we took a walk along a line of fence built during the Obama administration.
(Trump had once staged a photo op touting his “big, beautiful wall,” but he’d done it in front of a section that Obama built—of the many things I was prepared to say at the debate, this was one observation I regretted not delivering.)
Trump had four years to increase the number of border agents, to boost the number of border judges. He did neither. All he did was fan flames of hate and division, highlighting rare, tragic cases of violent crime while smearing the overwhelming majority of hardworking immigrants.
I was the one who’d walked through tunnels that traffickers used to smuggle contraband and broken up a heroin trafficking ring connected to Mexican cartels. I’d done the hard work to bring criminals to justice and relief to the families of their victims.