AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.

We end today’s show looking at immigration, a key issue in the presidential election. On the campaign trail, Democratic candidate Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump have competed to propose tougher policies for asylum seekers at the U.S.-Mexico border. Trump has promised to expand the draconian policies of his first term. Harris is vowing to hire thousands of additional border agents and intensify the militarization of the U.S.-Mexico border if she’s elected president.

Immigrant justice advocates have criticized Harris’s rightward shift on immigration and the border, policies that activists say only lead to a more inhumane treatment of immigrants, increasing migrant deaths, and detentions and the separation of families.

At a campaign rally in California over the weekend, Trump again threatened the mass deportation of over 10 million immigrants if he’s reelected, starting in Aurora, Colorado, and Springfield, Ohio, where the Haitian community of tens of thousands is facing a wave of violent threats after Trump and his running mate JD Vance falsely accused Haitian immigrants of eating people’s pets. Ohio Republican Governor Mike DeWine announced he’s deploying state troopers and conducting daily bomb sweeps in Springfield schools after a spate of bomb threats over Trump and Vance’s racist and unfounded comments, which they’ve both persistently defended despite the threats to the community.

Amidst this dehumanization of immigrants, a new film aims to give them a face as they speak in their own words about the war on immigrants in the United States, not just at the southern border but across the country, and the profitable business of criminalizing immigration. This is the trailer for Borderland: The Line Within, the new documentary by director Pamela Yates.

ALEX GIL: ICE is everywhere. The border is everywhere, for us, for immigrants.

MANAN AHMED: Everyone in that team knew what the border was inside of them.

SCREEN TEXT: A team of digital humanists is uncovering dark details of the Border Industrial Complex.

ALEX GIL: What if we knew the infrastructure that Hitler was building before World War II? What would we do with that knowledge?

MANAN AHMED: So that you go from your house to your Dunkin’ Donuts and you pass a detention facility, and you don’t even know that it exists.

ALEX GIL: The infrastructure that was being prepared —

MANAN AHMED: That was the endgame.

ALEX GIL: — was getting prepared massive separations, massive deportations.

MANAN AHMED: Right. I mean, that was the endgame.

ALEX GIL: Yeah.

MANAN AHMED: We kept saying that’s the endgame.

What does the removal of 12 million look like?

SCREEN TEXT: In the shadow of the Border Industrial Complex immigrants are building power.

GABRIELA CASTAÑEDA: I want to believe that the judge is going to allow me to stay here in the country. But if he doesn’t allow me, he has to know that I’m going to fight. I’m going to fight hard.

CARLOS SPECTOR: The system is geared towards like the old cowboy movie: “Give him a trial, and then we hang him!”

SECURITY GUARD: Put the camera down.

CARLOS SPECTOR: Give them due process, and then we deport them.

FERNANDO GARCÍA: If you accept the militarization of the border as we are doing it, then nothing is going to stop any other crazy agenda in the future to militarize Chicago, Los Angeles, New York.

GABRIELA CASTAÑEDA: You will always, in their eyes, be the enemy.

KAXH MURA’L: [translated] They make us feel like we’re worthless in this country.

GABRIELA CASTAÑEDA: [translated] We are the voice of those children who are crying themselves to sleep, asking for their mom or dad.

MILPA ACTIVIST 1: [translated] ICE shouldn’t be scaring us, intimidating us.

MILPA ACTIVIST 2: [translated] The people at the Capitol don’t need to be sitting here, because they have all the resources, because they have all the money.

ALEX GIL: Nothing bothers power more than you looking at their dollar signs.

MANAN AHMED: It wasn’t just a story about Trump and a few Republicans. All of the U.S. political scene were engaged in this activity.

ALEX GIL: We have to look at what’s happening right now in the United States. In this particular historical moment, the imminent danger is the rise of fascism. It threatens all of us. It threatens the promise of the United States. For all its flaws, it still promises something. And it’s something that we have to keep on fighting for.

AMY GOODMAN: The trailer for Borderland: The Line Within, five years in the making. It continues the work of director Pamela Yates over the past four decades and her past films, When the Mountains Tremble, Granito: How to Nail a Dictator and, well, 500 Years.

For more, Pamela Yates joins us from the capital of New York state, from Albany. And in El Paso, Texas, we’re joined by Gabriela Castañeda, an advocate with MILPA. That’s the Movement of Immigrant Leaders in Pennsylvania. She’s featured in the film Borderland: The Line Within.

We welcome you both to Democracy Now! I was with you both last Friday night at DCTV’s Firehouse Cinema when the film premiered. It is an epic work. It is a masterpiece, Pamela, especially coming out at this time of the election, when immigration is one of the top issues in this country in the election, and immigrants are being so dehumanized, from saying Haitian — Trump and Vance saying Haitians eat pets and to threatening mass deportation of immigrants, starting in Aurora, Colorado, and in Springfield, Ohio, where so many tens of thousands of Haitians live, invited there. Pamela, talk about your film.

PAMELA YATES: Sure. Borderland: The Line Within — and thank you for having us on the show today, Amy. And hello, and hello to all the Democracy Nowistas out there.

The film really is the story — you know, immigration is always consequential, but it is particularly consequential at this moment in time. And the film is really about people arriving in this country who are leaders, who become leaders, who are teaching other immigrants how to become leaders, who are building strength in immigrant communities. They’re not victims. They have agency. And they are teaching each other their constitutional rights as people living in the United States.

But on top of that, we’ve built a whole other story, which is the story of the digital humanists. These are humanities scholars who are using data to uncover what’s come to be known as the border-industrial complex, the billions of dollars of our tax money that is being spent to capture, incarcerate and deport immigrants into this country. We film the digital humanists in a kind of a liminal space, a space between the light and the dark, as they use the Freedom of Information Act and scrape the web for data to bring us what’s actually going on with this money, these billions of dollars that are being spent on the back of the suffering of immigrants in our country. It’s really the thing that I believe that we can contribute to the immigration debate, that we can contribute to the national conversation about immigration, that each person in the United States should know where their tax dollars are going.

AMY GOODMAN: This is absolutely key, because that imaging of ICE facilities across the country, with the comment, “the border is everywhere,” is astounding. How many ICE facilities are there, Pamela?

PAMELA YATES: There are hundreds, and they’re all over the country. And you may be living next to one, and you may not know it. They also use county jails. But they have a lot of private detention facilities, private companies that are making millions of dollars a year on incarcerating immigrants who have not committed any crimes. It’s a civil offense, and they’re being held there. And it’s shocking. And hundreds of dollars on each person each night is being spent to keep them locked up.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to turn right now to another clip of your film, Borderland: The Line Within. Our guest in El Paso, Texas, is Gabriela Castañeda. She’s featured in Borderland. Let’s go to that clip.

GABRIELA CASTAÑEDA: So, I’m currently in the middle of an immigration process. I’m fighting for cancellation of removal. The judge is basing his accusations on a report prepared by ICE stating that my house was used to stash undocumented immigrants and that I was transporting these undocumented immigrants within the country. This report was prepared several years ago, exactly right after we held protests outside a detention center. And they didn’t like it. Whether they like it or not, they can’t deport me for that, and they know that. But they can put together a report that’s going to make me look bad, and say, “You know what? We’re not deporting you for that. You’re more than welcome to protest and do whatever you want. That’s your First Amendment right. Oh, but you know what? We can deport you for these things.” ICE, you know, is against everything we’re doing, because, obviously, we’re challenging the status quo. They want to keep everything, you know, like it is right now: them having the power, them abusing families, them destroying families, and nobody saying anything. Well, that’s not the case. I said something. And that’s why I’m being targeted.

I want the truth. I want the truth. I want to believe that the judge is going to be able to see that and allow me to stay here in the country. But if he doesn’t allow me, he has to know that I’m going to fight. I’m going to fight hard.

AMY GOODMAN: So, that’s Gabriela Castañeda. She’s currently with the Movement of Immigrant Leaders in Pennsylvania, known as MILPA. She was with the Border Network for Human Rights. She’s featured in Borderland: The Line Within. Gabriela joins us now from El Paso, Texas. Your husband was deported. You have three U.S.-born children, Gabriela. And the fact that you’re with MILPA, Movement of Immigrant Leaders in Pennsylvania — Pennsylvania, a swing state — your thoughts about the environment and the rhetoric right now, as President Trump says if he’s reelected, he will begin mass deportations?

GABRIELA CASTAÑEDA: Hi, Amy. Thanks for having us. It’s a pleasure for me to be here.

Exactly, yes. What we are hearing not only from President Trump, that he’s going to deport us and he’s been preparing this massive deportation apparatus, we’re also hearing it from Kamala Harris, in the terms that she is also not speaking in regards to immigration as something really good. She’s trying to say to the world that “I can be as tough as any other Republican.” And that is problematic, because we have both parties failing the people here in the United States.

And what’s happening right now is that the immigrants are used as scapegoats. We are blamed for all the problems in the United States. We are bombarded daily with the false and immoral idea that if there are no jobs or decent wages or access to free medical care or decent housing, it’s because of immigrants. We went from being rapists and criminals to now eating pets in Springfield, which is obviously not true. The truth is that the needs of immigrants are no different from the needs of the rest of the population.

This film asks the people to internalize this thought: Who wins with family separations and deportations? It’s not the average American citizen. And while we continue to fight amongst ourselves, the poor people, other sectors, the structural problems in our nation continue to be not resolved.

The border-industrial complex has been trying to push down our throats this narrative that you must be afraid of immigrants, that they’re coming to take away your jobs, that we’re having an invasion, that we’re having open borders, because it’s very rentable for them. If they are able to instill fear in the population, then it’s easier for them to sell their goods.

We have one of the most militarized borders in the world, even when we are not at war with our neighboring country. We have Black Hawk helicopters that are used for wars. We have cameras, sensors, walls, more boots on the ground. And we just learned that the 2024 budget to protect the border is $25 billion. This is not an attack only on immigrants; this is an attack on every poor people living in this country, because while they’re using this money to protect us from who they think is the enemy, which is the immigrant, that money is not being used to improve our schools or infrastructure, public transportation.

And so, we need to understand that the problem of the immigrant is the problem of the white poor people and the Black poor people and that we need to come together to fight so that those needs become rights. But that’s only going to happen [inaudible] rights.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to go back to Pamela Yates, the director of the film, to talk about the other person featured in this film. You have Gabriela, who we’re talking to now, and Kaxh. And that relates to a past film you made, and it goes to the issue of asylum seekers coming into this country, fleeing often in countries — in Kaxh’s case, of course, Guatemala — where the U.S. supported right-wing death squads who killed so many of the population, perhaps hundreds of thousands, and what the aftermath of that caused, Pamela.

PAMELA YATES: Yes. Well, it opened up the country to extractive mining, to international companies coming in to take minerals out of the ground. And Kaxh Mura’l, the other protagonist in Borderland: The Line Within, is an environmental defender. He’s defending the Mayan ancestral lands in his village in the Ixil region of northern Guatemala. While he’s doing that and as he’s becoming a leader, he’s receiving death threats. And gradually, people around him are beginning to be killed. So he feels he must flee, and he flees trying to seek asylum in the United States.

And as he’s fleeing, he contacts me, because we knew each other from a past film, and he says [inaudible]. “Don’t come. It’s way too dangerous.” He said, “I’ve already left.” So, my role from then on was to work with him to document his story as he came, and also to try to find out ways to keep him safe —

AMY GOODMAN: And how long —

PAMELA YATES: — during the journey.

AMY GOODMAN: — was that journey, Pamela? How long was that journey? We just have 30 seconds.

PAMELA YATES: Two months. It was two months, the journey. And he was languishing for several years in Ciudad Juárez trying to get into the United States.

AMY GOODMAN: And what happens when he gets here is incredible. Pamela, in these last 20 seconds, what you’re trying to do this film as it opens all over the country?

PAMELA YATES: We’re now on the Abrazos Tour, which is a 26-country — sorry, 26 cities. We’re opening in 26 cities — North, South, East and West — in the United States. We hope everyone will join us. We hope everyone will become informed. We hope everyone will vote. And we hope everyone will learn about the border-industrial complex as it pertains to your congressional district.

AMY GOODMAN: Pamela Yates, I want to thank you for being with us, director of the new magnificent film, Borderland: The Line Within, and Gabriela Castañeda, advocate with the Movement of Immigrant Leaders in Pennsylvania, MILPA. I’m Amy Goodman. Thanks so much for joining us.