Columns
March 8, 2021
The Biden and López Obrador administrations should take the lead from solidarity organizations in the U.S. and Mexico and decriminalize immigration.
November 6, 2020
Appeals to childhood innocence helped enshrine undocumented kids’ access to education. But this fraught politics of childhood has also inadvertently reinforced criminalization.
September 25, 2020
Goodman provides insight into today’s crises, by documenting the history of three mechanisms of expulsion: formal deportation, voluntary departure (“return”), and so-called self-deportation.
July 25, 2020
C.J. Alvarez's new book encourages the reader to see beyond the infrastructure that litters the borderlands, question what we take for granted, and imagine what could have been.
May 14, 2020
As the Trump administration uses the pandemic to enact its border obsession, we must instead reframe our thinking around interdependence.
March 30, 2020
By defining violence narrowly, the asylum system—and human rights organizations that uphold it—legitimates deporting people back to face everyday injustices. The pandemic only further illuminates this inhumanity.
January 10, 2020
With new elections scheduled in Bolivia, the MAS party under attack, and the resurgent Right fortified by the de facto interim government, left-Indigenous unity is needed more than ever.
October 16, 2019
Devastating wildfires in Bolivia may affect Evo Morales's prospects for a fourth presidential term, or curb his governing mandate.
September 13, 2019
In his new book The Death and Life of Aida Hernandez, Aaron Bobrow-Strain captures why true border stories defy simplicity.
July 3, 2019
In the name of “sparking a reaction” from an indifferent public, images of migrant deaths decontextualize their reasons for fleeing and gloss over the impact of decades of prevention through deterrence policy.
June 6, 2019
No extent of reform can humanize an agency designed to criminalize migrants, deny their humanity, and profit off their detention and suffering. So Abolish ICE activists want to shut it down.
May 29, 2019
At least six children have died in ICE custody in the past year. As draconian immigration policy grows ever-more inhumane, we can only expect the suffering to increase.
March 8, 2019
Recent displays of state violence from CBP and the excessive militarization of Mexico-U.S. land ports of entry are normalizing the image of the U.S. at ‘war’ against the transborder community and asylum seekers.
January 17, 2019
Trump’s wall is just the latest incarnation of an old fixation.
December 28, 2018
Border security—supported by Republicans and Democrats alike—is responsible for the death of Jakelin Caal, the exoneration of the Border Patrol agent who murdered a Mexican teen, and the separation and death of thousands of immigrant families.
December 27, 2018
The Electoral Court's recent decision to uphold Evo Morales's fourth presidential bid has further polarized Bolivia, with the outcome of the electoral contest now far from certain.
December 18, 2018
Even as the U.S.-Mexico border reaches new heights of militarization, this year’s School of the Americas Watch border Encuentro (meeting) provided a space for cross-border healing, mourning, organizing, and resistance.
November 28, 2018
Central American refugees are confronting violence and harassment at the border after an arduous journey fleeing imminent danger in their home countries. How are binational solidarity groups responding?
November 8, 2018
When state-sanctioned practices of child kidnapping, family internment, and indefinite detention cut off the possibility of seeking asylum at official ports of entry, Central American refugees are increasingly forced to take ever-more dangerous paths into the United States.
October 22, 2018
The 7,000-person strong caravan from Central America has made international headlines and been targeted by the Trump administration. But the roots of the refugee crisis that led to the caravan go much deeper.
September 7, 2018
Jimmy Patiño’s Raza Si, Migra No: Chicano Movement Struggles for Immigrant Rights in San Diego, reveals connections between the early Chicano movement and immigrant rights today.
August 29, 2018
Will an inquiry into Bolivia’s potential ties to the massive Lava Jato bribery scandal help Evo Morales, or derail his bid for a fourth presidential term?
August 16, 2018
The Trump administration’s crackdown on unauthorized immigration obscures his larger effort: to prevent lawful forms of immigration for migrants and remake the racial composition of the country.
July 6, 2018
One mother’s recent deportation to her native Honduras reflects how the U.S. immigration regime not only separates families, but impels them to migrate to the United States in the first place.
July 5, 2018
On the U.S.-Mexico border, the Tohono O’odham Nation is forming a transnational movement to resist salt mining projects in the Gulf of California.