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Justin Giboney is an attorney and political strategist in Atlanta. He grew up in Colorado and attended Vanderbilt, where he was a defensive back on the football team. He was a Democratic National Convention delegate in 2012 and 2016 and is co-founder of the And Campaign. Here’s some of our discussion before a student audience, edited for space and flow.

How did football prepare you for politics? After I stopped playing football, I was looking for the rush of competition. Politics gave me the competition back.

Last week I made a trip to McAllen and El Paso, Texas, to meet with U.S. Border Patrol agents. In McAllen I met an agent who’s been serving in Border Patrol for 18 years. He told me something that I think underscores the real crisis at our border: The human cost of the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), aka the “Remain in Mexico” policy.

Much of the focus regarding the border crisis has been on the spike in numbers of families and children crossing the border unlawfully between ports of entry. I’ve heard countless people ask, “Why don’t they do things the right way and present themselves at the port of entry?” 

Well, here’s a story of someone who tried to do everything the “right” way, and it may end up costing him his asylum case and even endanger his life.

In March, I went on a three-hour ride-along with a U.S. Border Patrol agent around the San Diego–Tijuana border.

The Cedar-Riverside neighborhood in downtown Minneapolis is nicknamed “Little Mogadishu” because of its Somali American population. On Somali Street, a mall rests inside a wide, blue bungalow. There, different vendors in stalls sell traditional clothes, food items, and duvets. 

A few feet away, a two-story brick building houses the Masjid Darul-Quba mosque and a cultural center. Opposite the mall, several mothers stroll with their children in a small park. Signs for Somali restaurants and other small businesses dot more streets.

My first-ever visit to a jail-like setting took place during an October 2015 trip to Thailand, where I met with Christian Pakistani refugees.

There, at an immigration detention center in Bangkok, I met Arbab. At the time, he was 21, with soft brown eyes and an innocent smile. His dark, curly bangs and beard covered his face because he couldn’t cut them while in detention. He’d been stuck in a cell for more than six months, with no contact with his family and no money to pay bail. 

In February 2018, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) quietly changed its mission statement, removing a description of the United States as “a nation of immigrants.” The change reflected a shift in our government’s philosophy regarding immigration from one of welcoming strangers to that of border protection.