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."
This month, Hull’s worst fears came true as contractors for Southwest Valley Constructors and Kiewit started bulldozing and scraping land near her home to construct a 30-foot border wall.
The Border Chronicle hangs out with legendary journalist Amy Goodman, plus big tech and the "everywhere border" and a podcast about Latin American art and the borderlands and more!
One of the nation’s top immigration scholars cuts through the crap and lays bare this moment of border and immigration control, how we got here, and where we’re headed.
With Donald Trump, one thing has been constant since he announced his first campaign in 2016: the narrative that migrants are criminals. He says it with confidence and bluster, and he says it every day. But he goes beyond this, according to migration scholar César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández. Not only are migrants criminals, they are an “existential threat”—a threat to the fabric of life, to the entire country, to the very existence of the nation-state. What better way is there to justify and rev up an enforcement regime that could round up and expel millions of people?
According to García Hernández, however, Trump’s narrative didn’t appear out of thin air. “Trump is at the extreme edge of a decades-long campaign by elected officials, by intellectuals, by pundits to embrace this notion of migrant criminality, of dangerousness,” he says. Associating migrants with criminality or other unsavory traits, indeed, has been a longtime U.S. pastime. Look at Ronald Reagan, García Hernández points out, who called Central American migrants (many from Nicaragua) the “leading edge of the Soviet invasion.” Or George H. W. Bush, who described Haitians as “contagions.” Or Bill Clinton and his allies “going on and on about super predators,” and, subsequently, “the idea that young people coming from Latin America specifically … [will] engage in criminal activity.”
Perhaps there is no better person to assess the moment we are in than García Hernández, whose book Welcome the Wretched: In Defense of the Criminal Alien (New Press, 2024), is a deep dive into, and rebuttal to, this narrative that Trump has come to master. His previous book, Migrating to Prison: America’s Obsession with Locking Up Immigrants (New Press, 2019), also masterfully deals with issues of utmost importance to this moment. As does his first book, Crimmigration Law (ABA, 2015). García Hernández is the Gregory H. Williams chair in Civil Rights and Civil Liberties at Ohio State University’s Moritz College of Law.
In the podcast, García Hernández not only assesses Trump’s foundations but also examines the first three weeks of his new term in office. He also speculates on where we might be headed, including what resistance there might be.
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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.
Torre Centinela, a Mexican surveillance hub that will share intelligence with U.S. and Texas law enforcement is slated to open soon. Olivares discusses his investigation on Torre Centinela and the private corporation running it.
Independent news, culture and context from the U.S.-Mexico border.
