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Fernando Garcia and the Border Network for Human Rights pave the way for inclusive immigration discourse and human rights reform

Fernando Garcia is the founding director of the Border Network for Human Rights (BNHR). He has spent the last 25 years fighting for human rights in the U.S.-Mexico border region through his organization’s unique community approach and has successfully directed U.S.-Mexico border campaigns focused on human rights. Under Fernando's guidance, the BNHR continues to work tirelessly to educate, organize, and civically engage border communities so that they may empower themselves and demand the changes and rights they deserve.

The U.S.-Mexico border is the deadliest land route for migrants worldwide and 2022 was the deadliest year on record, as reported by the International Organization for Migration. Fernando Garcia works directly with migrant communities in El Paso, Texas, a town situated at the U.S.-Mexico border and at the center of discussions on migration.

As the founder and executive director of the Border Network for Human Rights, Fernando heads one of the leading human rights advocacy and immigration reform organizations at the U.S.-Mexico border. He founded this organization to fill the need for a “community-based human rights organization” that would give impacted community members a “voice on issues that they were being subjected to”. The Border Network for Human Rights now has a membership of nearly 7,000 individuals in West Texas and Southern New Mexico.

Leading this organization for the last 25 years, he has worked towards three main goals. In his own words, “The first one is to inform and educate members of the border community and migrants and refugees that come across the border about civil rights and human rights; it is important for us to combat misinformation and abuse through information. The second is to organize those members of our community at the border [including] residents, U.S. citizens, [and] migrants through community organizing strategies. Finally, to engage them to change their reality, to change strategies, [and] to change policies that are impacting them [such as] immigration policy, militarization, and criminalization.” 

Fernando believes that “the U.S.-Mexico border is going to shape the character and identity of the whole country for the next hundred years”. Looking at U.S. history, “Ellis Island [and] the Statue of Liberty created the idea of a nation of immigrants. But this time around, the U.S.-Mexico border is going to shape that idea. Either it is going to be about border walls and militarization, or it's going to be about diversity and inclusion. We don't know yet and our organization is at the center of that discussion at the border."

A Gallup poll found that, due to a large increase in the number of migrants trying to enter the U.S. at the Southern border in recent years, 41% of Americans want less immigration. The Border Network for Human Rights contributes towards changing the largely negative perceptions of immigrants which are prevalent in American discourse nowadays. 

In order to accurately reflect the realities of immigration, Fernando suggests that we “have the voices of the directly impacted communities present in all of these discussions, whether they are national or international. I think that something is lost if the discussions are happening only among politicians or academics and they don't [include] the people who are being impacted. For me, having that voice included in the debates about the border is important because there's this distorted idea that community members in particular do not understand their own reality. I think they understand it very well. I think we need to elevate that voice first.”

Fernando has observed a wider movement in the United States “to shape the next face of the country. For me, that movement comes in the form of human rights where all the minorities are coming together to understand that we have been impacted by the same systems, [such as] poverty, militarization, etc. Immigrants are going to be border residents and an important and relevant part of that movement. We're aiming to be part of that movement that changes U.S. policy, not only in terms of immigration but in terms of housing, health care, education, [and] anything else."

Fernando came to Salzburg Global Seminar to “represent and translate the concerns of thousands of community members living at the border who might not have access to this kind of discussion”. He viewed this as “the opportunity to bring their voices [and] their concerns about what is happening with them and what's happening in other borders in the world and how that relates to them”. 

One of the proudest moments from Fernando’s career will occur on November 18, 2023 when the Border Network for Human Rights celebrates its 25th anniversary. Throughout the years, the organization has upheld the “same framework of trying to achieve human rights through community engagement and participation” while adapting to new challenges.

Fernando Garcia attended the Salzburg Global American Studies program on “Beyond the Nation-State? Borders, Boundaries, and the Future of Democratic Pluralism” from September 19-23, 2023. The 2023 Salzburg Global American Studies Program focused on the contestations and renegotiations of boundaries beyond the nation-state, and how they are changing the representation of democratic pluralism.