President Trump ran on a massive deportation platform. Now, early in his second administration, he began laying out immigration and trade policies that ground zero the town on the US-Mexican border for enforcement.
Nogales, Arizona, is one of these border towns. David Hathaway Sheriffs of the Democratic Party and Santa Cruz County, where Nogales is located. Hathaway’s family has lived in Arizona for generations, even before it was recognized as a US nation. He says that growing up, the “wall” of the boundary was just a livestock fence.
Now, steel walls line up above Nogales. Thanks to policies during Trump’s first administration, it is covered in razor sharp barbed wire.
“The optics on that fence look like a war zone. And while this is a very safe community, it discourages people from coming here,” Hathaway says. “My focus is not immigration or border concerns. No one will come across a fence here, as you would expect.”
Five Questions with David Hathaway
Have you noticed any differences near the border since Trump re-entered the White House?
“No. People are cheering their ears up to see if something changes.
“One of the things we’ve heard, 1,500 active duty forces are sent to the border. Well, there’s no indication that they’re heading yet. [We] I haven’t seen anything different here. ”
Do you need an army?
“No, these people are coming to work. They’re quoted as coming here and saying Trump is “coming here for rape, murder, drug sales.” It is cited as cited. That’s just not true.
“What I need is a functional guest worker program. When I was a child, like my grandparents’ generation, guest worker who couldn’t find an American to work for, if I needed workers from Mexico. There was a program – there was a way to get a job and then it had to be returned within a certain amount of time, otherwise the person would not get permission again.
“The council has to act in a place where these people can come here and have a legal pathway that comes for work and actually make it. That’s why they’re coming. He has not come here to commit crimes or go on to welfare.
“It’s not just anecdote to me. Looking at the FBI statistics, native-born Americans can commit three times more crimes than immigrants. So, these kinds of ratios, these memes Comments are just that you hear there and don’t fit the reality.”
Mexico says it will raise border security in an attempt to curb the influx of fentanyl coming to the US.
“This isn’t new. Trump did the same thing in his first administration. He threatened tariffs in Mexico and said, “I’m going to build a wall. Mexico is going to pay it. Which one they’re going to do? Are you going to pay that? They are going to pay it through tariffs, “unless you do something important to slow down the flow of immigration and drugs at the border,” he said.
“So what did Mexico do? In 2018, they sent thousands of troops (Mexican National Guard troops) to the border. They’re still there. They’re now going to Mexico Delaying Americans’ entry. Now we have a long line on the American side of Americans who go to Mexico for what Trump did. He has more in Mexico in his first administration We created a police state.
“So when he said the same thing this time, I said to everyone, “He’ll finally pull those tariffs back, swing as a hero and save everyone from the tariffs he was trying to impose.” He said. That’s exactly what happened. ”
What can we do to reduce drugs that come across borders?
“I am the head of the Federal Agency, the DEA in this community, and I worked for eight years in a South American career and watched the drug flow.
“The big complaint from Latin American countries is that you are a consumer nation, and if you weren’t consuming these things, then you don’t have that problem.
“I saw the drug war failure. I think you’re going to get rid of the cartel’s head, and then someone else will come to replace them. It’s just a basic economy. There’s demand. If someone will supply and demand.
“It creates violent clashes between rival gangs and police and people selling drugs. We shouldn’t rush to coincide.”
When it comes to massive deportation, what role does local leaders like you play in Trump’s plan?
“Trump was asked, ‘How are you trying to do this?’ You don’t have enough federal officers and you can’t use the military because there’s a law called the Posse Comitatus Act that says you can’t use the military as a police force. And he says he will use state and local officials.
“Where we stand now is 95% Hispanic in Nogales, Arizona, so I’m not going to do that here. So I’m going to put that tension between the community and law enforcement. They are not going to produce. They are afraid they will call 911 if they hear the intruders at the back door of their home., immigration officer.
“If they pass through these task forces that represent state and local officers as border patrol agents, it creates such tension between us and our community, so we won’t be involved in it.
“But when we talk about the construction of a huge detention center and the use of Guantanamo Bay, which was previously used to hold people without billing, we just suspend the residential corpus indefinitely. We’ll come back again. It’s very negative that we’re starting to look at this kind of racial profiling aspect again to see everything.”
Peter O’Dowd produced and edited the interview for the broadcast with Todd Mundt. Grace Griffin adapted it to the web.
