Latinos with DACA say they're being targeted in Texas, and a review of new Chicano vampire fiction by Laredo author Ito Romo, plus a rally in southern Arizona this weekend to save ancient cottonwoods from border wall destruction, and more!
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.
Spanning a thousand years and multiple continents, the new novel Filth Eaters casts vampires as the world's ultimate stateless people.
The co-founder of the Sidewalk School talks about racism and Black migration, border disinformation, and how governments could alleviate suffering at the border.
In 2019, Felicia Rangel-Samporano, a stay-at-home mom in Brownsville, Texas, joined forces with Victor Cavazos, a software engineer, to start the nonprofit Sidewalk School.
At first, the Sidewalk School focused on educational programs for children living in migrant camps in the Mexican cities of Reynosa and Matamoros, right on the other side of the Rio Grande. Five years later, in addition to offering education programs, the Sidewalk School has grown into a provider of food, medical services, shelter, and even tech troubleshooting for the U.S. government’s glitch-filled CBPOne app, which asylum seekers in Mexico are required to use to request an appointment with U.S. border officials.
Rangel-Samporano doesn’t see the need ending anytime soon, and she worries that disinformation is playing an outsized role in shaping Americans’ views about the border and the humanitarian needs there. It’s also affecting asylum seekers who are starved for accurate information about the U.S. immigration system, Rangel-Samporano says. Both the federal government and the Texas state government, which is investing billions in apprehension and detention under its Operation Lone Star initiative, should provide that information so that asylum seekers can make the best choices for their families, she says. “Giving people correct, accurate information,” she adds, “will do way more than giving them no information and putting up barbed wire and walls.”
Rangel-Samporano also talks about the lack of visibility and resources for Black migrants, who face racism and harsher treatment on their journeys. And she says that family separation is still occurring at the border. “It happens all the time and in so many ways.”
“If you really want to know what’s happening on the Mexican side of the border, follow the humanitarian groups like the Sidewalk School, who are working there,” Rangel-Samporano says. “We are there every day, seven days a week.”
Follow the Sidewalk School on Facebook or on X at @SidewalkSchool
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.
This conversation, hosted by Todd Miller, about a great borderlands adobe brick building project is going great, until Jacques Servin—of the political performance artist trickster and activist troupe called the Yes Men—fails to grasp the meaning of the term "border security."
Gabriela Rangel, executive director of Tucson’s Museum of Contemporary Art, was born and raised in Caracas, Venezuela. As a
Development Director Amelia Natoli discusses building community with recently arrived refugees and Tucson volunteers through harvesting food, making art, and fostering connection.
Independent news, culture and context from the U.S.-Mexico border.
