As DHS gaslights border communities, help document the reality on Wall Watch, our new community powered map for border wall construction, and a podcast from the resistance in Lochiel, Arizona, where protestors try to save the last ancient Cottonwood tree from bulldozers.
A vivid depiction of what has been happening during the last eight weeks of resistance against border wall construction in southern Arizona’s San Rafael Valley.
Wall Watch combines geospatial mapping, archival research, and community participation to provide the public with an accurate, continually updated record of border wall construction along nearly 2,000 miles of the international border.
Al Otro Lado’s Tijuana-based litigation and policy director examines the border, past, present, and future, through the lens of the invasive and futuristic surveillance apparatus that is already here.
A note to readers that we will be taking next week off for a spring break (aka our kids will be out of school). We will be back starting on March 22 and will have a whole host of new stories, reporting, podcasts, analysis, and discussion threads for your reading and listening pleasure in the months to come. As always, we are happy to hear any of your ideas!
On January 29, 2019, immigration attorney Erika Pinheiro, the Tijuana-based litigation and policy director of the organization Al Otro Lado, was detained and denied entry into Mexico. As you will hear in vivid detail in the following podcast, she was one of 59 attorneys, journalists, and activists placed on a watch list by the U.S. government.
From her perspective as a target of invasive border surveillance, Pinheiro insightfully examines the border, past, present, and future. Pinheiro describes when she and her colleagues quit their day jobs to do the legal and humanitarian support—as well as policy advocacy and impact litigation—for refugees, deportees, and other migrants along the Tijuana-U.S. border for Al Otro Lado. Indeed, at that moment in 2019 when she found out she had an alert on her passport, Pinheiro was working on a family reunification project in the wake of the Trump “zero tolerance” policy.
Here, Pinheiro also analyzes the transition from Trump to Biden by (among many other things) criticizing official rhetoric around “welcoming” Ukrainian refugees while deporting Haitians by the thousands. She also discusses the future of the digital border and paperless expulsions, a surveillance future that is already here.
A vivid depiction of what has been happening during the last eight weeks of resistance against border wall construction in southern Arizona’s San Rafael Valley.
Wall Watch combines geospatial mapping, archival research, and community participation to provide the public with an accurate, continually updated record of border wall construction along nearly 2,000 miles of the international border.
Worried about the future of democracy in the United States? Look to Indigenous histories; they have much to teach us about the struggle between liberty and empire.
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.
Independent news, culture and context from the U.S.-Mexico border.
