Rhetoric over border and immigration policy is front and center this election — both in Arizona and nationally.
At a campaign event at Tucson’s Linda Ronstadt Music Hall this month, former President Donald Trump was on stage for less than 15 minutes before leveling a familiar accusation about Vice President Kamala Harris and migrants at the border.
“She and Crooked Joe have destroyed our country with millions of criminals and mentally deranged people pouring into the USA. Totally unchecked, unvetted,” Trump said.
Harris, for her part, has focused on a bipartisan Senate bill that would have funded things like more Border Patrol agents, customs personnel, asylum officers — and more border wall. It failed to advance in Congress this spring, when all but one GOP senator voted against it. Here she is on the debate stage in Philadelphia this month.
“But you know what happened to that bill? Donald Trump got on the phone, called up some folks in Congress, and said kill the bill. And you know why? Because he preferred to run on a problem, instead of fixing a problem,” she said.
This summer, the Biden administration enacted a temporary rule that dramatically restricts asylum at the border. Most migrants apprehended between ports of entry now are sent back to Mexico through a fast-tracked removal process. Arrests and asylum interviews have plummeted as a result. Rights groups are challenging the rule’s legality in court, arguing it breaks U.S. law and international agreements about asylum access.
Trump, meanwhile, has promised mass deportations and additional border wall if he gets into office again.
Arizona shares a more than 350 mile long border with Mexico — and some Arizonans live right along or very near that boundary. So, what’s it actually like to be a border resident, especially right now?
Joe Garcia is the vice president of public policy for Chicanos Por La Causa, or CPLC, and the executive director of the CPLC Action Fund’s nonpartisan voter engagement campaign Latino Loud. He says historically, how immigration issues impact Arizona polls is complicated.
“At times it's sort of a schizophrenic voting pattern when it comes to immigrants in Arizona voting,” he said.
Like back in 2022, Garcia says, when Arizona voters passed a ballot initiative allowing undocumented students access to in-state tuition and scholarships. But, it’s also one of just a few states where many undocumented people still can’t get driver’s licenses.
And now, an initiative on the ballot this November will ask voters to decide on whether to require local law enforcement to carry out immigration-related arrests — a measure critics argue is similar to SB 1070, the infamous Arizona law shot down in the Supreme Court more than a decade ago.
“But one thing that can be counted on is immigration can be used as a wedge issue politically,” Garcia said. “And I think those on the hard, far, right use that immigrant issue far too often, but at the same time, those on the left haven’t done immigrants near enough favor.”
Rosario Carillo says she feels like she’s seen that firsthand.
She was born and raised in Rio Rico — a small town just north of the border city of Nogales. She says she was a John McCain supporter for years. Now, she’s voting for Harris.
“So for me it’s been a complete change, just because of the way the Republican Party has taken it so far, and I just can’t align myself with it anymore,” she said.
She says as a mother to two young daughters, this year she’s most focused on reproductive rights issues. But hearing the rhetoric around the border — where she lives — has also made an impact.
“Well, 2016 was about my race, so it’s, now it’s migrants, but in 2016, it was a lot of ‘Mexicans, Mexicans are here to do this, Mexicans are rapists, Mexicans are this.’ I was like, ‘well, I’m a Mexican,’” she said.
Carillo says she wants to see solutions from candidates instead. But what that means exactly depends on who you ask.
One sunny afternoon at the Burger King in Nogales, I meet Al Gonzalez and Ray Sworsky. The restaurant is perched on a hilltop overlooking the DeConcini Port of Entry a few hundreds yards away. It’s a busy crossing connecting Nogales, Sonora, and Nogales, Arizona, known as Ambos Nogales.
Rolling hills topped with colorful homes poke out from the Mexican side of the metal border wall, and a lineup of cars wait to cross on the Arizona side.
Gonzalez and Sworsky are here from Tucson. They’re lifelong friends who grew up together, and they came to Nogales to cross into Mexico today so Sworky’s wife could get some dental work done there.
Sitting at the table, you can tell they’ve been friends a long time. And they’ve got a lot of similarities — they’re both military veterans, both Chicago natives, and now, they both live here, in Arizona. But as for politics, Sworky says they try not to talk about it.
“Seeing that he’s on one side of the road, and I’m on the other side, we try not to get too involved in that. I don’t want to talk about it with friends,” Sworsky said.
Though, they admit they even have a hard time agreeing on that.
“I’ll talk about it, to Ray, I won’t hold back, because I think it needs to be talked about, face to face, yes we’re friends, yes we’re family,” Gonzalez said.
Sworksy says what he sees here in Nogales isn’t like how the border is being described this election season.
“I don’t see crowds of people storming the fences to get in here, you know, not in Nogales, they’re doing it probably in other places," he said.
Still, he thinks immigration is a big issue. He says he wishes there were a third option— but he thinks he’ll probably vote for Trump again this year.
“Well Trump said he’s gonna close the borders and get all these illegal immigrants out of the country, I don’t know how he’s gonna do it, I don’t care how he’s gonna do it,” he said.
Gonzalez is a Harris supporter. He says, for him, the choice is clear.
“The economy’s great, inflation is down, we looked at the gas prices, I mean, it’s in our faces, it’s telling us what to do and where to go,” he said, shaking his head. “I’m beating my brains out.”
And when it comes to immigration?
“Let me say this about immigration to start — I don’t think there’s an immigration problem,” Gonzalez said. “I think there’s a problem with the use of immigration as a lever to bring out hate, bring out negativity.”
Gonzalez’s parents came from Mexico City to Chicago. He says he doesn’t want to see immigration be used in the way he sees it happening now. But he hopes having more conversations can change that.
