Do you have questions about the recent buoy debacle on the Rio Grande? Our reporting has you covered, plus an important new hire at The Border Chronicle, and our new project Wall Watch.
As floodwaters swept hundreds of one-ton border buoys downstream, international bridges closed, commerce slowed, and officials struggled to get answers from DHS about a project advancing despite local opposition, environmental concerns, and treaty questions.
Hundreds of massive orange buoys staged for a controversial DHS floating barrier project broke free near Eagle Pass and are now drifting toward Laredo, threatening bridges, commerce, drinking water supplies and downstream communities.
Yates, co-author of a new report on asylum processing, speaks of increasingly fragmented asylum policies at the U.S.-Mexico border as a historic number of people cross the Darién Gap.
It’s been almost a year since the U.S. government rolled out the CBPOne app, which was meant to reduce the number of migrants arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border.
But a historic number of people continue to arrive. In Lukeville, Arizona, people from all over the world line up to be processed by Border Patrol with the aim of applying for asylum, while in Matamoros, Mexico, migrants wait for months in camps with no running water or toilets for an appointment on CBPOne. And in Tijuana, and other border cities, wait lists grow for vulnerable migrants, just as they did for Title 42 exemptions. “I’ve never seen it so complex as it is now,” says Caitlyn Yates, a PhD student in sociocultural anthropology at the University of British Columbia, who released a new report, along with fellow migration expert Stephanie Leutert, giving us a snapshot of the increasingly complicated puzzle that is asylum policy at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Yates joins us from Panama, where she studies the migration flow through the Darién Gap, one of the most dangerous migratory crossings in the world. This year, the jungle crossing will have seen a historic number of migrants, she says, most of whom are on their way to the U.S.-Mexico border.
In February, the country broke an ominous record: over 68,000 people were being held in detention by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, more than ever before.
As immigrant families face detention, shrinking legal protections and the threat of deportation, Camp Hope offers children a rare chance to play, heal and dream. One former camper is headed to an opera conservatory in Italy.
Border Chronicle founders, Todd and Melissa, talk about how law enforcement surveillance, high-speed chases instigated by Border Patrol, unwarranted searches and seizures, and other heavy-handed policing that border communities have endured for decades has now moved into the interior of the country.
With interior Border Patrol checkpoints to the north, and the border to the south, DACA recipients in border communities feel under threat by multiple layers of law enforcement, from ICE to local police. Nowhere more so than in Texas.
Independent news, culture and context from the U.S.-Mexico border.
