“Telling the Truth about Immigration”: A Podcast with Isabel Garcia

“What we allow them to do on the border, is what they will do to you.”

By Todd Miller

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Border Militarization

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October 30, 2025

Longtime organizer and former Pima County Legal Defender Isabel Garcia starts the conversation off with an assessment of U.S. public knowledge of important historic issues such as the genocide of Indigenous people, slavery, labor, and immigration.

“What do people,” she asks, “know about immigration in this country?” This is the question that guides our conversation that spans decades, even centuries, but ultimately ends up assessing the current state of things under Donald Trump.

“What we allow them to do on the border,” she warns, ”is what they will do to you.”

Isabel Garcia and Todd Miller recording this podcast. (Photo by Steev Hise)

Isabel is the co-chair of the organization Coalición de Derechos Humanos, and has been on the frontlines of border and immigrant rights since the 1970s. In this conversation, filled with story-telling and biting analysis, Isabel tells listeners how she debated John McCain in the 1990s and schooled Bernie Sanders at the border during his first presidential run.

She also challenges us to “imagine what we can be,” and talks about the coalition they are forming called Defensa y Resistencia, which has a Stop the Kidnapping Campaign that directly confronts current ICE tactics. “We are openly going to protect our neighbors.” Isabel challenges listeners to do just that, by speaking up and plugging in.

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Author

Todd Miller is Editor-in-Chief and co-founder of The Border Chronicle. He is the author of four books that examine border militarization and its externalization, surveillance technology and industry, climate change, and the search for alternatives. His books include Build Bridges, Not Walls: A Journey to a World Without Borders (City Lights, 2021) Empire of Borders: The Expansion of the U.S. Border Around the World (Verso, 2019), Storming the Wall: Climate Change, Migration, and Homeland Security (City Lights, 2017), and Border Patrol Nation: Dispatches from the Front Lines of Homeland Security (City Lights, 2014).

Todd’s forthcoming book is a deep examination of water as a border issue in an age of climate-induced heat waves and drought. It will be published by Seven Stories Press in 2027.

Besides The Border Chronicle, articles by Todd have appeared in the New York Times, The Nation, San Francisco Chronicle, In These Times, Guernica, TomDispatch, and Al Jazeera English, among other places. He has also authored and co-authored reports on border surveillance, the border industrial complex, and climate change for the Amsterdam-based Transnational Institute, where he is a fellow.

Todd’s book Storming the Wall received the Izzy Award in 2018 for “path-breaking and in-depth reporting.” He also received first place in “Community immigration reporting” by the Arizona Press Club in 2013. Todd has a bachelor’s degree in Latin American Studies and Journalism from Prescott College, where he is also an adjunct professor.

In his spare time, Todd likes to travel, read, philosophize, and hang out with his two kids—whether it be going to a dance recital or being a basketball coach.