Immigration is the toxic issue defining the US election. In Arizona, the debate is deadly

In the stretch of desert between Arizona and Mexico, Trump’s unhinged discourse has pushed the Democrats to the right on border issues. Could mass deportations be achieved without harm? I went to find out

In a nondescript parking lot in Tucson, Arizona, the toxic politics of immigration are omnipresent. I am here for the launch of a Republican car rally, where 100 vehicles clad in rightwing regalia have congregated in the dry heat in this southern part of the state, about 60 miles from the border with Mexico. Trump, who launched his political career in 2015 by describing Mexican migrants as “bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists,” has since plunged the discourse to even lower depths. From unhinged falsehoods about the consumption of pets in Springfield, Ohio, to the brandishing of thousands of signs reading “Mass Deportation Now!” at the Republican convention earlier this year, any nuanced leadership on the right has been largely superseded by a disturbing lust for cruelty.

Among the drivers here is a Trump supporter named Lupe Hernandez, a Mexican American who tells me she arrived in the US with a visa in November 1963 on the day John F Kennedy was assassinated. But she has cousins, nephews and nieces who came to the US without paperwork decades ago. They are all good, hardworking people, she says. I ask how she feels about Trump’s plans for mass deportation, given it could mean these members of her own family would be targeted for forced removal. She is happy about it, she says: “They could be deported, but they can apply to come back.”

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