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.
"The border has always been a laboratory for authoritarian policies. Now they're being unleashed into the interior of the country," he says.
Jonathan Blitzer is a staff writer at The New Yorker who covers immigration, politics, and foreign affairs for the magazine. His recent piece for the magazine, “The Real Target of Trump’s War on Drug Boats,” highlights Stephen Miller, homeland security adviser to President Trump, as a driving force, along with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, behind the illegal and deadly strikes on boats in the Caribbean and Pacific Ocean.
As of the publish date of this piece on Tuesday, November 18, the Trump administration has killed an estimated 82 people in 21 strikes—a rapidly growing number since the first strike took place September 2, killing 11 people. The administration claims, without evidence, that the boats it is targeting are carrying drugs.
So how does this relate to the U.S.-Mexico border? For Miller, the boat strikes bolster Trump’s unilateral authority and expand the definition of the use of force, a project that began at the U.S.-Mexico border, where Miller and other Trump allies portrayed asylum seekers as “invaders” and “alien enemies” and advocated for a military response. The same model has now been deployed in the interior, where domestic policy is being “militarized” by the administration.
Do military deployments and occupations of U.S. cities mean the end of posse comitatus and that the military will now take a bigger role in domestic affairs? Now that the interior of the country is experiencing the Border Patrol’s violence and impunity, could this finally lead to the rogue agency being reined in? (Though obviously not during this administration.) These are just a few of the topics that we explore in addition to discussing Blitzer’s book Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here: The United States, Central America and the Making of a Crisis, along with how each U.S. administration has failed to acknowledge that U.S. policy and intervention are spurring much of the migration from Central America.
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.
