Well, here we are at the beginning of 2025, and it’s time to continue preparing ourselves for what’s to come (I hope you all saw Melissa’s Tuesday report on the Border Chronicle Forecast for 2025). As we know, 2025 has all the makings of a historic year, with a new president taking office and many threats already on the horizon. Luckily, we have with us border expert Erika Pinheiro to break it all down. You probably remember that exactly one year ago Pinheiro—who is the director of the organization Al Otro Lado, which provides legal assistance and humanitarian aid in the borderlands—joined us to do the exact same thing. Then, she warned us that the narrative of “overwhelm” and “border chaos” would dominate the election year.
And now she joins us again (actually her third time; her first in 2022 was on the impact of surveillance). This time, she’s bringing an on-the-ground and insightful analysis about the first year of Trump and an assessment of Joe Biden’s last years in office. We discuss the exiting president’s border legacy, Trump’s plans for mass deportation, and the invasion narrative, which has invaded political and media discourse. Pinheiro makes the point that, far from the “open borders” narrative that droned on for four long years, “the Biden administration really teed up with infrastructure and a set of policies that will make the second Trump administration exponentially worse than the first.” She also talks about the potential for opposition, and its possible pitfalls, and she offers suggestions on how people can respond. In other words, Pinheiro offers a perspective simply not found anywhere else.
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