One day before the new secretary of Homeland Security was scheduled to testify on border security, a Nogales business owner joined critics speaking out Monday against the Trump administration’s plans to continue the “militarization” of the southern border.

John Anthony Sedgwick was one of several speakers from the Southern Border Communities Coalition who said President Donald Trump’s pledge to build a wall that runs the length of the U.S.-Mexico border would be “tremendously harmful,” in both an economic and humanitarian sense.

“The folks that are coming in the U.S. now are coming for humanitarian reasons, they’re fleeing from violence,” Sedgwick said on a coalition conference call Monday. “These guys are not walking across the countryside. The Mexican folks that were looking for work have primarily gone in the other direction, they’re going home.”

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