Darkness spreads across the borderlands and beyond

The borderlands of Southern New Mexico and West Texas is a region with a growing economy, robust universities, critical military installations and a multiracial, multinational population.

Its beauty is on display in scenic mountain ranges, vibrant cultural traditions, and a rich history that predates the existence of the United States and Mexico. It’s my home.

But darkness has descended on the El Paso-Las Cruces region. The U.S. Army and Border Patrol are surrounding us. And the Trump Administration is planning to build a massive deportation hub right here at Fort Bliss.

As immigration enforcement agents come under great pressure to meet quotas, we’ll increasingly be under threat every time we go out in public. This is especially true of non-white folks.

We might not be safe even in our private spaces. In the borderlands, we have reduced Fourth Amendment protections against law enforcement search and seizure. Federal agents may try to take our phones, search our vehicles, and even enter our homes without warrants as they look for people to deport.

This is the threat we’re living under as Donald Trump reshapes the United States into a more authoritarian nation.

It’s a prelude to a society in which none of us is safe from our government. The president is currently resisting direction from the U.S. Supreme Court to seek the return of a man his administration wrongly deported. If he succeeds, he’s coming for U.S. citizens next.

Militarization

None of this is an exaggeration. The New York Times told us in February that Trump “is developing a deportation hub at Fort Bliss… that could eventually hold up to 10,000 undocumented immigrants as they go through the process of being deported.” It will be a model for potential future facilities in Utah and near Niagara Falls.

The federal government has awarded a contract for up to $3.8 billion to operate the Fort Bliss detention camp, ProPublica reported last week. A company that once made tents for Lollapalooza has a new, lucrative and oppressive purpose as capitalism adapts to the times.

The exact location of the camp on the sprawling military base hasn’t been disclosed as far as I can tell. I suspect they may repurpose the facility in Doña Ana County at the base of the Organ Mountains that was used to house 10,000 Afghan refugees in 2021.

Meanwhile, the military is literally surrounding the borderlands. As I wrote in March, Trump plans to launch his border militarization efforts in New Mexico. His administration has already deployed soldiers to Fort Bliss and to Fort Huachuca in Southern Arizona — on both sides of New Mexico’s border with Mexico — to assist the Border Patrol. Their deployment includes 20-ton armored Stryker combat vehicles.

Last week, Trump issued an executive order giving the Department of Defense “use and jurisdiction” over federal land including a 60-foot-deep stretch that runs along the border through most of New Mexico, Arizona and California.

There’s an elementary school 900 yards from the border in Sunland Park. There are homes less than 600 yards from the border. It seems they will soon be neighbors with occupying U.S. Army soldiers.

The region’s inland Border Patrol checkpoints, which surround us to the north, east and west, have long been problematic, both when Trump was president and when he was not.

These checkpoints can also serve as chokepoints. Because we have collectively allowed abuses over decades instead of shutting them down, the checkpoints have immense potential to aid Trump’s plans for the borderlands.

Deportation

Border enforcement agents are under immense pressure to find people to deport. When we encounter them at a checkpoint — or even while we’re at church, out shopping, picking up our kids from school or walking in our neighborhoods — they’ll be looking at our skin, our clothes, even our tattoos and deciding whether those are grounds to detain us.

Meanwhile, DOGE is running a widespread effort to streamline mass deportation that includes cancelling Social Security numbers so people can’t work or access bank accounts. In addition to forcibly deporting folks, they’re trying to encourage “self-deportation.”

Trump’s people appear to be after any immigrant, even those with legal status, who has ever had any minor encounter with police that can justify revoking permission to live here.

The Trump Administration is also disappearing immigrants for expressing their right to free speech. Among those whose legal status has been revoked are at least nine students at New Mexico State University, 10 students at the University of Texas-El Paso, and several at other New Mexico universities.

Because federal law requires little transparency about the activities of border enforcement agencies, all we learn is what those agencies want to promote. That’s why it’s been so difficult to figure out what happened to 48 people ICE says it arrested in New Mexico weeks ago.

The entire nation is under threat, but in the borderlands, the danger is more acute. We have fewer constitutional rights because we live in what’s called the border zone. We can’t even drive to Albuquerque or Tucson without permission from the U.S. Border Patrol. An order from Trump could cut us off from the rest of the nation.

None of us are safe

Mass deportation is a test to see how far the fascists can extend this purge.

Trump and his press secretary have confirmed a desire to deport U.S. citizens to the same prison in El Salvador where they are sending Venezuelans. If they get away with leaving Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia to rot after wrongly deporting him, they’ll push further.

“Home-growns are next,” Trump told El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, on Monday, saying Bukele would “need to build about five more places” to accommodate detention of Americans.

Meanwhile, the president is considering whether to declare martial law because of the fake immigration emergency he’s manufactured. If you haven’t been paying attention because you don’t think Trump will come for you, it’s time to pay attention.

If Trump gets away with leaving Abrego Garcia in El Salvador, none of us are safe.

I do not consent

We must keep protesting. We must push Democrats in Congress to be more assertive in their opposition to the Trump agenda. A handful are truly leading in this moment, but most are not.

Organizations must keep providing aid to migrants and suing to stop abuses. We must support those groups.

We have to work to minimize the damage. But I fear that’s all we can do for the time being: slow the pace of deportation and militarization.

That’s why it’s so important that we take Congress from Republicans in next year’s election and put people in office who will check the president’s power. We must also defeat the MAGA candidate for president in 2028.

In the meantime, Trump has broad authority to destroy people’s lives and send them to their deaths in other countries. As a nation, we have given him the power to do that.

I do not consent, but my opposition seems to have little practical impact at the moment.

History will judge us harshly for this irrational, fear-driven and evil chapter. If you’re cheering it on — and many of you are — I’m ashamed to call you my countrymen.