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.
The legal scholar and author of "Crimmigration Law" and "Migrating to Prison" on immigration detention reform, midterm elections, and what he’s watching for in 2022.
The Border Chronicle is happy to announce that we will have a new discussion thread on smart borders on Thursday, January 27 at 11:30 PT/12:30 MT/1:30 CT/2:30 ET. We will be joined by a group of people who have done extensive work on border technology and its impacts including the Deputy Director of the Immigrant Defense Project Mizue Aizeki, Geographers Geoffrey Boyce and Samuel Chambers, and journalist J. Weston Phippen. Beginning this month, we’ll be offering these discussion threads with invited experts for paid subscribers only. We are committed to offering as much of The Border Chronicle as we can free of charge. But as two working freelance journalists we rely on paid subscriptions to continue our reporting. Please consider supporting The Border Chronicle with a subscription for just $6 a month or $60 annually (a deal!) and help us become sustainable in 2022. We appreciate ya!
When Joe Biden administration took office in January 2021, there were promises of a new direction in border and immigration enforcement, and that the policies of Donald Trump would be left behind. Now a year later, it seems important to look at what has and hasn’t been done, and what’s to come.
In terms of the immigrant detention system, I thought there would be no better person to talk to than César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández, author of Migrating to Prison: America’s Obsession with Locking Up Immigrants. In the following audio interview García Hernández breaks down the actual promises of the new administration, and how they have held up over the last year, including the promise that it would remove private companies from immigration detention. García Hernández discusses immigration detention as a “core component” to the Biden administration’s enforcement regime that follows the footsteps not of Trump, but rather of the previous Barack Obama administration. He also raises concerns to keep an eye on as we move into 2022, a year that will be politically defined by the mid-terms, especially the potential for the administration to drift right to appease Republican hardline pressure. Thanks for listening!
César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández was born and raised in the South Texas borderlands in McAllen. He is an expert on the intersection of immigration and criminal law which was the subject of his first book Crimmigration Law, published by the American Bar Association in 2015 and updated in 2021. García Hernández is currently the Gregory William Chair in Civil Rights and Civil Liberties and a law professor at Ohio State University, and has been publishing crimmigration.com since 2009 where you can find a repository of his work.
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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.
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.
Independent news, culture and context from the U.S.-Mexico border.
