Immigration

Demonstrators and local officials are embracing the U.S. president’s nationalistic posture as they rail against the caravan.

A few hundred self-avowed nationalists waving flags at a demonstration. A public official donning the signature red hat with white embroidered letters. An activist going on Fox News to warn of an “invasion.”

This isn’t Trump country. It’s Tijuana, Mexico, where more than 6,000 asylum-seekers who have been traveling in a caravan from Central America for over a month are arriving as they prepare to formally request asylum at the border.

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Tensions have been running high in the border town of about one million across from San Diego, Calif., since the arrival of the migrants, most of whom are fleeing broken governments rife with corruption and violence. Anti-immigrant activists in Tijuana have hijacked the rhetoric of President Donald Trump to agitate against the caravan members, who are staying in temporary refugee shelters set up by local authorities.

Trump for weeks cast the slow-moving caravan in the run-up to the midterms as a national security threat, warning without evidence that criminals and potential terrorists were in the mix. Two weeks after the midterms, the rhetoric seems to have stuck with a posse of tijuanenses who want the asylum-seekers out.

The local sentiment stands in stark contrast with the treatment the migrants received in southern Mexico, where towns doubled the size of their populations to give the Central Americans temporary refuge.

On Sunday, a group of demonstrators in the low hundreds gathered at a local park to protest the presence of the migrants with remixed Trump slogans like “Tijuana First” and “Mé-xi-co!” They had planned to march to one of the shelters where the migrants were resting, but federal police in anti-riot gear blocked access to it. That same morning, local residents woke up to a sign that migrants made and stretched between two palm trees that read, “Gracias Mexico por su ayuda y cariño” — thank you Mexico for your help and kindness.

Just a few days earlier, on Thursday, Tijuana Mayor Juan Manuel Gastélum had called into a television show and made his most jarring remark about the migrants yet: that “human rights are for the right humans.” He was later seen wearing a red hat embroidered with the phrase “Make Tijuana Great Again.”

“In this group of people there’s a series of vicious people who are dedicated to other activities,” Gastélum said, raising the possibility that many of the “undesirables,” as he called them, are using drugs. “I have to say there are some good people, [but also] some awful people for our city.”

Gastélum, who hailed Tijuana as a “city of migrants,” also accused the caravaneros of being rowdy and unclean. But on Saturday, they decided to organize themselves in small cleaning squads to sweep the city’s streets block by block.

Trump seized on Gastélum’s remarks Monday and fired off a tweet agreeing with the mayor’s claim that a lack of resources to take the migrants in was a reason they should go back.

“The Mayor of Tijuana, Mexico, just stated that ‘the City is ill-prepared to handle this many migrants, the backlog could last 6 months,’” wrote Trump, in reference to the interview. “Likewise, the U.S. is ill-prepared for this invasion, and will not stand for it. They are causing crime and big problems in Mexico. Go home!”

Meanwhile, U.S. immigration authorities had temporarily closed the border to unravel more concertina wire in preparation for what Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen called a plan to rush the border from some of the asylum-seekers. It was unclear where the department received such a warning, and a Customs and Border Protection spokesman told POLITICO on Tuesday that “both CBP and Mexican officials received the information from multiple sources.”

And then there’s Paloma Zuniga, a dual Mexican-American citizen who has created a Facebook page called “Paloma for Trump” with a following of 32,000 users. She attended the march on Sunday, but before that, her string of Facebook posts railing against “fake news” and praising nationalism reveal a history of Trump devotion.

When reports came out of Border Patrol agents fortifying the border, Zuniga was elated on Facebook: “OMG MEXICO/US border POSSIBLY SHUT DOWN !!!!!”

By Monday evening, after the military commander in charge of the U.S. troops deployed to the border told POLITICO the mission would begin winding down, she had a spot on Fox News.

“We should take of our Mexican people before we take care of anybody else, which is a very similar sentiment as Americans are having right now,” Zuniga told Laura Ingraham during her nightly show, “Ingraham Angle.” “Tijuana people are terrified … Tijuana will never be the same until these people leave.”

The tensions appeared to have been sparked in part by the fact that for a brief period, the migrants who were arriving in Tijuana set up shop in the town’s beach sector, displeasing locals and prompting a few residents to go to the area, where they began taunting the migrants. According to Mexican polling firms, over half of the population supports allowing the caravan to move freely through its territory, and another march in support of the asylum-seekers also took place on Sunday.

That public opinion of support has largely come to bear out in the government’s response, even though local governments have variously rescinded offers of transportation made to the migrants and last week about 60 individuals traveling in a bus to Tijuana were taken from the bus into detention by immigration authorities.

But as the migrants waded through the small towns on their way northward, residents would often line the streets and toss bags of food at them. Local organizers say that while race and class divides may be driving some of the nativist sentiments — Latin America has had a deeply ingrained class hierarchy since colonial times — U.S. leaders are most at fault for stoking fears.

“Discrimination has always existed, [but] it becomes stronger not just through rhetoric, but through actions,” said David Abud, a volunteer with Pueblos Sin Fronteras, which has accompanied the caravan since it left Honduras on Oct. 12. “They closed the port of entry and blamed it on the migrants … that generates rage and animosity against them.”

A pardon from President Donald Trump ensures that this year’s National Thanksgiving Turkey — now known as Peas — won’t be anyone’s dinner on Thursday, but it’s unlikely he’ll see another Thanksgiving.

“That turkey is so lucky. I have never seen such a beautiful turkey,” Trump said during a ceremony in the White House Rose Garden to mark the tradition. Peas and his alternate, Carrots, will now live out the rest of their days at a sanctuary called “Gobbler’s Rest” at Virginia Tech.

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Yet the reality for Peas and Carrots is not a long life in country retirement. Like all other turkeys that are raised for human consumption, they’ve been bred to be plump and tasty, but they grow so big that they are likely to suffer from a variety of health problems that put their lifespan at less than a year. Wild turkeys generally live three to five years.

Take, for example, other previous, adorably named National Thanksgiving Turkeys and their alternates — “Wishbone” and “Drumstick,” “Tater” and “Tot,” “Abe” and “Honest.” Most lived for just a few months after being pardoned. Only Tater, pardoned by former President Barack Obama in 2016, “exceeded all expectations” by living for two whole years, said Rami Dalloul, who helps care for post-pardon turkeys at Virginia Tech.

For animal welfare advocates, the pardoned turkeys are a national example of the lengths to which commercial breeders go to ensure that birds are well fattened for American dinner tables at the expense of the animals’ health and well-being.

“Hundreds of millions of turkeys are genetically manipulated to be unnaturally obese, which causes a tremendous amount of painful leg deformities, joint pain and heart problems,” said Josh Balk, vice president of farm animal protection at the Humane Society of the United States.

As one industry report notes, the birds are bred to grow so fast that they often suffer from skeletal and cardiovascular disorders, turning “Ben Franklin’s tree-perching ‘Bird of Courage’ into a flightless gargantua.”

The hulking, white-feathered masses that were renamed Peas and Carrots certainly look a lot different than wild turkeys, which are naturally brown and weigh half as much as a commercially bred turkey. The pardoned birds clocked in at around 40 pounds each; wild turkeys typically weigh 20 to 30 pounds.

Commercially bred turkeys are so large that their skeletons can’t handle the extra weight, which renders them flightless. They also suffer from joint problems and can’t reproduce naturally.

“Conventional turkeys are raised for consumption,” said Beth Breeding, vice president of communications for the National Turkey Federation, which presents the pardoned turkeys to the president each year. “Their lifespans can vary if not utilized for that purpose.”

Trump said Peas and Carrots were the first National Thanksgiving Turkeys that were raised in South Dakota. Their original names were Jeff and Ruben, according to a White House pool report. All 50 birds in this year’s “presidential flock” were raised in Huron, S.D.

Since June, the birds underwent various tests to see which could best handle being around large crowds, bright lights and loud music. They were fed a diet of corn and soybean meal to fatten them up with the expectation that nearly all of them would be sent to the dinner table. Peas and Carrots were the pick of the flock, and Peas won the right to be the official National Thanksgiving Turkey via an online poll.

The pair will now be under the care of Virginia Tech’s Department of Animal and Poultry Sciences, and the school will pay for their food and medical care.

Dalloul, who is responsible for checking on the birds at Gobbler’s Rest each day, said the presidential turkeys get to roam around campus and are commonly treated as celebrities, drawing crowds of admiring fans well after the Thanksgiving holiday.

But world-class care and veterinary attention can only do so much. “We take really good care of them, and try to keep them around the same weight,” Dalloul said. But, he added, “they don’t have long life-expectancy because they’re commercial birds. When birds live for a year, that’s a very big deal.”