The personal, financial, and environmental costs of a border wall in Big Bend, locals revive opposition after Trump's announcement of a refinery in Brownsville and the Rio Grande Valley fights back after ICE shooting and raids, plus The Border Chronicle is seeking new paid subscribers!
“We love Big Bend the way it is. It does not need to change. We do not feel any danger, and we don’t want it to look like other places. And nothing makes a person who lives out here more mad than the idea of looking at a damn fence.”
Environmental advocates and residents say the long-proposed refinery threatens air quality and public health in a region already ringed by heavy industry.
"It's an obscene amount of money to destroy 16 river miles," says Cortez of Texas' new border wall plan.
In 2019, former President Donald Trump declared a national emergency at the border, making border wall construction a top priority. Some of that wall was slated for the city of Laredo, Texas. Tricia Cortez, Executive Director of the nonprofit Rio Grande International Study Center, based in Laredo, talks about her community’s “David vs. Goliath” battle against the Trump administration’s 30-foot wall. Now her community faces a new onslaught of proposed border wall construction by Texas Governor Greg Abbott.
“We love Big Bend the way it is. It does not need to change. We do not feel any danger, and we don’t want it to look like other places. And nothing makes a person who lives out here more mad than the idea of looking at a damn fence.”
Environmental advocates and residents say the long-proposed refinery threatens air quality and public health in a region already ringed by heavy industry.
Walking from a blasted mountain top--a planned site for new border wall construction--to a makeshift military camp along the border in a remote part of southern Arizona led to a tense yet revelatory moment.
Logan Phillips was born in Tombstone, Arizona—a town best known for Old West-themed gunfight tourism. In his new book, Reckon, Phillips explores his relationship to the unusual setting of his childhood through themes of masculinity, history, and land.
Independent news, culture and context from the U.S.-Mexico border.
