Photo by Matt York

Last month on April 12, Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich filed a federal lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for a resumption of border wall construction along the U.S.-Mexico border. The reason? The National Environmental Policy Act.

The National Environmental Policy Act is a landmark law meant to assure that executive Federal agencies assess the environmental impact of any federal activity or policy. Brnovich accused the Biden administration of not properly examining how halting wall construction would lead to a surge of illegal immigrants resulting in severe environmental impacts.

One can’t help but tilt their heads in confusion. Republicans demanding harsher immigration policy is nothing out of the ordinary but…worried about the environment? Who saw that coming?

One group that wouldn’t be surprised by Brnovich’s move are ecofascists. Brnovich’s approach to the border wall aligns him with key planks of ecofascism. He blames immigrant “others” for environmental degradation and the dwindling population of white Americans. Brnovich’s invocation of the National Environmental Policy Act is another way to attack the Biden administration and demand a militarized border that cracks down on immigration. This probably shouldn’t be too much of a surprise. As we already know, the Republican party will use any opportunity to attack Biden.

Using environmental concern to oppose immigration is not a new phenomenon. John Tanton and his network of anti-immigrant groups have long peddled this position and are behind much of the anti-immigrant sentiment in the United States. Tanton and his network draw on a longer history of ecofascism and nativism.

The belief that immigrants and non-white “others” are to blame for environmental degradation was a prominent concern for some proponents of environmental conservation in the United States during the early 20th century. Figures like Madison Grant, an influential conservationist in this era, went to great lengths to protect the American bison, the bald eagle, the pronghorn antelope, among many other species. Yet, he was also a white supremacist, eugenicist, and harsh campaigner against immigration.

Brnovich is tapping into this old nativist history of ecofascism to raise fears about immigration and environmental degradation. He describes open borders as a source of pollution and a stress on natural resources – while ignoring the fact that the richest people in the world are the ones most responsible for carbon emissions. And though he seems to be concerned about reducing greenhouse gas emissions (at least only in relation to attacking immigrants), he recently joined a coalition of 12 states in filing another lawsuit against the Biden Administration for Executive Order 13990  that aims to tackle the climate crisis. Brnovich has a big-time penchant for hypocrisy.

But more concerning than Brnovich’s hypocritical positions on his recent lawsuits against the Biden administration, the border wall, and climate change is the fact that a prominent member of the Republican party has managed to wedge in an environmental agenda in his attack against immigrants.

It is a strategy that seems to be gaining momentum on the political right. Even Fox News host Tucker Carlson recently raised concerns about the environmental consequences of Biden’s border policies. Republicans are dredging up environmentalism’s dark history of nativism to use in their political playbook against immigrants. It isn’t enough to simply wait and watch it unfold; environmentalists have to be ready to face these attacks head-on.

Environmentalists need to make it clear that the real threat to the border and the environment are not immigrants – as much as Carlson and Brnovich may say otherwise – but the border wall itself. The wall cuts through a federal wildlife refuge, the Bentsen-Rio Grande Valley State Park, the gravesites of the Carrizo Comecrudo tribe, and the National Butterfly Center. The border is home to incredibly vulnerable animal and plant species and further construction of the border wall will inevitably threaten their existence.

Brnovich has never cared about the environment; he has simply used it as another pretext to attack immigrants. And it’s time to start calling him, and others just like him, by what they really are – ecofascists.