Thou­sands of peo­ple from Cen­tral Amer­i­ca are coura­geous­ly mak­ing their way north to seek refuge and com­pas­sion. What awaits them is a hos­tile U.S. bor­der, the U.S. mil­i­tary and a nation­al­ist fren­zy whipped up by right-wing politicians.

The migrants’ heroic decision to band together and move as one isn't without precedent.

It’s worth look­ing briefly at how we got here — and how we might get some­where better.

Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump has framed the migrants’ entire jour­ney as a plot of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty and lib­er­al donor George Soros. That’s an obvi­ous lie — and one shared by dan­ger­ous anti-Semi­tes and white suprema­cists like the Pitts­burgh shooter.

The notion that the peo­ple in the car­a­van are ​“crim­i­nals” attempt­ing to enter the Unit­ed States to do harm to Amer­i­cans is also false and offen­sive. First, giv­en the vio­lence car­ried out by Amer­i­can white suprema­cist ter­ror­ists in the last week alone, the notion that the threat to the safe­ty of peo­ple here lies out­side of the coun­try — among refugees — is bit­ter­ly absurd. But sec­ond­ly, there is actu­al­ly noth­ing ille­gal about approach­ing the U.S. bor­der and pur­su­ing asy­lum or refuge.

The case for Cen­tral Amer­i­cans receiv­ing asy­lum or refugee sta­tus is clear when one looks at the sit­u­a­tion that they are flee­ing — which the Unit­ed States bears tremen­dous respon­si­bil­i­ty for cre­at­ing. In 2009, for exam­ple, the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion legit­imized a right-wing coup in Hon­duras, which sparked a wave of repres­sion and vio­lence that con­tin­ues to dev­as­tate Hon­duran soci­ety today.

This came amid decades of fund­ing and arm­ing right-wing gov­ern­ments and forces in the region, nego­ti­at­ing free trade agree­ments and oth­er eco­nom­ic poli­cies that have made it impos­si­ble for many to earn a liv­ing. The Domini­can Repub­lic-Cen­tral Amer­i­ca Free Trade Agree­ment (CAF­TA-DR) with the Unit­ed States, which was passed under the Bush admin­is­tra­tion in 2004, has led to wide­spread aus­ter­i­ty and the loss of jobs through­out the region, forc­ing peo­ple to leave.

Through cycles of oppres­sion, incar­cer­a­tion and depor­ta­tion between U.S. and Cen­tral Amer­i­can cities, the Unit­ed States has played a key role in pro­duc­ing the noto­ri­ous gangs that many Cen­tral Amer­i­cans are fleeing.

So the real­i­ties of des­per­a­tion and dis­place­ment in the present — and hope for bet­ter futures — shap­ing the migra­tion from Cen­tral Amer­i­ca are more com­pli­cat­ed than most U.S. politi­cians let on. But the out­come need­n’t be more repres­sion, nor a boon to the right.

Europe’s Shin­ing Hour

The migrants’ hero­ic deci­sion to band togeth­er and move as one isn’t with­out precedent.

In 2015, peo­ple dis­placed from as far south as Cen­tral Africa and as far east as Cen­tral Asia streamed across the Mediter­ranean and into Europe through Greece and Italy. With migrants drown­ing in the sea in shock­ing num­bers year after year, the world watched as those who sur­vived the jour­ney walked togeth­er in their thou­sands toward Europe’s urban centers.

It was mov­ing and inspir­ing. And then in the fall came more inspi­ra­tion: Ordi­nary Euro­peans gath­ered to wel­come the refugees.

They mobi­lized and arrived at train sta­tions in Vien­na and Munich with clothes, toys and food, applaud­ing and embrac­ing migrants as they exit­ed the trains. They ral­lied in Copen­hagen and Lon­don, rais­ing words of wel­come for refugees and protest against the gov­ern­ments that had resolved to turn them away.

These were the most vis­i­ble acts of sol­i­dar­i­ty, but there were count­less, less vis­i­ble ones. In Aus­tria, rail work­ers vowed to trans­port refugees to where they need­ed to go, even if it meant work­ing with­out pay. In Greece, which was reel­ing from dis­as­trous lev­els of aus­ter­i­ty, res­i­dents and vaca­tion­ers received migrants on the islands, shar­ing what they had, build­ing com­mu­ni­ty and assist­ing them — in some cas­es in vio­la­tion of the law.

In all of these cas­es, ordi­nary peo­ple did­n’t wait for gov­ern­ments to open bor­ders or treat refugees with decen­cy. In many cas­es, ordi­nary peo­ple — refugees and res­i­dents of Europe — act­ed in defi­ance of governments.

Get­ting Ahead of the Right

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the sit­u­a­tion for refugees try­ing to get into Europe today is grim.

One could, then, see the shin­ing and hope­ful moment of 2015 as a fleet­ing one that mere­ly gave way to the resur­gence of far-right, anti-migrant racism. After all, the news out of Europe is dom­i­nat­ed by ris­ing fas­cist and fas­cist-adja­cent politi­cians and parties.

An inte­ri­or and deputy prime min­is­ter in Italy is mak­ing racist poli­cies tar­get­ing shops owned by immi­grants and designed to humil­i­ate them. A pol­i­cy in Den­mark sep­a­rates chil­dren as young as one year old from fam­i­lies that live in large­ly migrant ​“ghet­tos” (the government’s term) and enrolls them in manda­to­ry ​“Dan­ish val­ues” classes.

And then there are, of course, the walls and fences. Mace­do­nia and Hun­gary, which noto­ri­ous­ly cracked down on refugees in 2015, used the migra­tion as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to build bar­ri­ers on their bor­ders. Bul­gar­ia, Slove­nia and Latvia built fences in the same peri­od, fol­lowed by Britain and France build­ing a bar­ri­er at Calais to pre­vent migra­tion across the Eng­lish Channel.

While anti-migrant pol­i­tics are hard­ly new in Europe, right-wing politi­cians seized upon the 2015 sit­u­a­tion to turn the tide. But it did­n’t have to go that way.

In Europe, the right wing and the forces of repres­sion were bet­ter orga­nized than those in sol­i­dar­i­ty with refugees. They were able to take advan­tage of the sit­u­a­tion for their purposes.

As thou­sands of refugees from Cen­tral Amer­i­ca approach the Unit­ed States, those of us who want to wel­come them face the chal­lenge of build­ing the net­works of sup­port to receive them, and of rais­ing our voic­es in sol­i­dar­i­ty with them. The pub­lic con­ver­sa­tion is dom­i­nat­ed by the pres­i­dent and the right-wing media, and des­per­ate­ly needs an inter­ven­tion from those of us who believe that the free­dom to migrate is a human right.

Though the past few years have seen a racist back­lash sweep Europe, over 1 mil­lion refugees were able to enter the con­ti­nent in 2015 and begin new lives there. That’s a vic­to­ry, and was due to both the hero­ism of the refugees them­selves and the sol­i­dar­i­ty of Euro­peans who stood with them. And despite Trump’s out­right lies, the migrants haven’t pro­duced ram­pant crime in places like Ger­many. For what it’s worth, crime has actu­al­ly declined in Ger­many since 2015.

The out­pour­ing of sol­i­dar­i­ty in Europe in 2015 has been eclipsed by anti-migrant reac­tion. But just because things played out that way then does­n’t mean they will again. We don’t have to sur­ren­der to history’s past events; instead we should learn from them.

This time, let’s be bet­ter orga­nized than the right. With Trump threat­en­ing to deploy the mil­i­tary to the bor­der, it is time to speak out.

This arti­cle was pro­duced in part­ner­ship with For­eign Pol­i­cy In Focus.