"Borderland: The Line Within": New Film on Who Profits from Deportations & Border-Industrial Complex

We speak with filmmaker Pamala Yates about her new documentary, Borderland: The Line Within, which explores the human impact of restrictive U.S. immigration policies and border militarization. The film tells the stories of asylum seekers fleeing violence in their home countries, activists fighting to protect the rights of undocumented immigrants, and others caught up in what Yates calls “the border-industrial complex, the billions of dollars of our tax money that is being spent to capture, incarcerate and deport immigrants.” She says the immigrants shown in the film are not victims but “leaders” who are “building strength in immigrant communities.” We also speak with Gabriela Castañeda, an immigrant rights organizer with the Movement of Immigrant Leaders in Pennsylvania, or MILPA, whose work is featured in the documentary. She faults both Republicans and Democrats for promoting anti-immigrant policies instead of using those same resources to improve the country. “What’s happening right now is that the immigrants are used as scapegoats. We are blamed for all the problems in the United States,” she says. Borderland continues the work of Yates over four decades and her past films, When the Mountains Tremble, Granito: How to Nail a Dictator and 500 Years: Life in Resistance.