The campaign to "Drop the I-Word" has achieved some significant victories. The challenge now for the campaign—and for all of us who support it—is to realize far greater promise by ensuring that it be strongly linked to efforts to achieve systemic change.

With border policing an important component of the comprehensive immigration reform package proposed by the so-called Gang of 8, this photo essay offers a glimpse of how this intensley border controlled universe looks from two distinct vantage points. The first perspective comes from businesses that want to make a profit, and the other is seen through the lens of binational protesters six months after the killing of 16-year-old Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez by a U.S. Border Patrol agent.

Last month’s sequester-related release of immigrants from immigration detention centers brought praise from immigrants' rights advocates and impassioned criticism from conservative politicians. If the surprise move by ICE accomplishes nothing more, hopefully it will prompt us to ask whether we want to continue relying so heavily on confinement as a tool for enforcing immigration law.

On the Texas border with Mexico, the isolated and beautiful Big Bend National Park is unique. Without many Border Patrol agents, it defies the notion that border policing is an enduring part of this landscape. At the same time, it upholds the fundamental inequalities of national border and immigration policy.