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. 

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.

Instead of a “surge” in deportations, the U.S. government should be paying off its imperial debt to Central America.

As immigration enforcement and local police continue to merge, bureaucracy has become a crutch on which the U.S. immigration policing apparatus leans.

A shooting by a Border Patrol agent in southern California last week and a recent U.S. drone strike in Yemen that killed members of a weddding party share much: the persistent power of empire and its associated violence along the global "color line."

Jeh Johnson is the new head of the Department of Homeland Security, and thus oversees matters relating to U.S. immigration and boundary policing. An examination of his record makes clear that the new boss is more or less like the old boss. At the same time, Johnson brings baggage with him that is cause for worry.

In the wake of the passage of the Corker-Hoeven amendment in the U.S. Senate, last week's sentencing of the Villareal borthers, former Border Patrol agents, on corruption-related charges, is a vauable reminder of the elusive nature of so-called border security.

The notion of security applied by The New York Times in its disucssion of the U.S.-Mexico borderlands and Israel-Palestine obscures much more than it illuminates. In both cases, it helps to legitimate occupation and the associated forms of violence.

The number of migrant deaths in Brooks County, in the southern part of Texas, has exploded over the last year.

Two recent cases from southern California provide insight into the identity of those who smuggle drugs across the international boundary between Mexico and the United States. More importantly they highlight how the ludicrous “war on drugs” produces casualties of many sorts.

On October 10, a U.S Border Patrol agent shot through an opening in the boundary wall and killed José Antonio Elena Rodriguez, 16, in Nogales, Sonora. While the circumstances surrounding the incident remain fuzzy, the shooting appears to have been both unnecessary and easily avoidable. Moreover, it highlights the urgent need to de-escalate the multifaceted “war” in the borderlands and to demilitarize the region.

On the late afternoon of Saturday, June 30, members of the Mexican community of greater New York City gathered in Manhattan’s Union Square and cast their ballots in a a symbolic vote for the country’s president. The action illustrates the dynamic nature of the U.S.-Mexico border region, while serving as a manifestation of the ongoing struggle to define it.

While the Obama administration made promises last year to focus its “removal” efforts on those who pose dangers to national security and public safety, the overall number of deportations remains very high. The outcome is illustrative of how the deportation machine functions: if it can’t find “bad” migrants to send into exile, it simply produces them.

As the presence of drone in the U.S. borderlands becomes more pronounced, important lessons are to be drawn—from abroad and within the United States—regarding potential dangers ahead. They highlight the need to vigorously contest the the Department of Homeland Security's use of remotely-piloted aircraft for purposes of policing the border region.

While the Obama administration is touting its new immigration detention guidelines and showing off the federal government’s new detention facility in Karnes County, Texas, the larger picture of immigrant incarceration remains ugly. It is this fundamental reality of inhumanity, as a just-released report from New York University's Immigrant Rights Clinic makes clear, that we must keep our eyes on. 

A recent tragedy in the waters separating the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico led to dozens of migrant fatalities. In comparison to the intense reporting on the sinking of the luxury cruise ship, Costa Concordia, off of Italy's coast in January, media coverage of the deaths of Dominican migrants was poor at best. The disparity exemplifies who counts and who doesn't in a world of great inequality.

Maintaining inequality and injustice requires work, and the policing of the associated boundaries between the privileged and the disadvantaged. Increasingly, young people are involved in the project of exclusion—in the borderlands of the United States and Mexico, and Israel-Palestine.

A recent report on Border Patrol transportation raids in northern New York State demonstrates how "security" penetrates society in a virus-like fashion: it goes wherever it can. This has been reality in the post-9/11 era, where the Border Patrol has increasingly focused on interior enforcement, with harmful implications for human and civil rights.

A new report illustrates the tragic intersection of immigration policing and child welfare. Like the "collateral damage" brought about about by U.S.-war-making abroad, harm to children is an inevitable consequence of the ongoing "war" on  immigrants characterized as undesirable.

The human right to work is increasingly under attack in the United States, especially for unauthorized immigrants. The recent case of The French Gourmet restaurant in San Diego shows how bad things have become. It also highlights the need for human rights and migrant rights activists to directly challenge a system that criminalizes non-citizens for laboring without official sanction.

A major report released today by the humanitarian aid and human rights group No More Deaths paints a frightening picture of systematic and widespread abuse by U.S. Border Patrol agents of migrants in their custody. At the same time, it demonstrates the brutality inherent in the agency’s very existence and operation.

The Department of Homeland Security has revealed that it is employing a new radar system—called VADER—that has significantly augmented its ability to surveil the borderlands and the people passing through from high up in the sky.

Given the impossibility of U.S. drug interdiction efforts in the borderlands, the beauty of the drug war for those championing—and profiting from—its undertaking is that there can never be enough resources. In this regard, nothing succeeds like failure.

A recent report reveals that large increases in the number of individuals deported for drunk driving, minor traffic violations, and violations of immigration law have played a significant role in fueling the dramatic rise in immigrant deportations from the United States over the last few years. In doing so, it illustrates the dangers of embracing the slippery slope of deportation and the immigration enforcement apparatus more broadly—an error committed by all-too-many advocates of comprehensive immigration reform.

This past Sunday, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jose Antonio Vargas "outed" himself as an "illegal alien" in the pages of The New York Times Magazine. The reaction of many in the media establishment has been to dwell on Vargas's practices of deception that allowed him to "pass" for so long. In doing so, these pundits obscure and normalize the apartheid-like system which denies unauthorized immigrants many basic rights, and their complicity in its perpetuation.