The DNA Archive Built to Identify the Border’s Missing Has Vanished
The Colibrí Center for Human Rights was a vital link between families and their missing loved ones. But now it's gone dark.
Newsletter
The "Open Border" Farce
In 2023, there were record contracts for private industry on the world’s deadliest land border.
10 min read
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A War Zone, Minus the War: One Year Into the Military Buildup of the U.S.-Mexico Border
An investigation into how President Trump’s emergency declaration along the southern border expanded military power, blurred legal lines, and helped spread the use of military-grade technology.
Inside Trump’s Plan to Finish Walling Off the Rio Grande Valley
Even sites once protected by Congress, including a butterfly refuge and a historic church, are slated for fencing funded by the “one big beautiful bill”—while the river itself is transformed by a floating barrier.
Big Bend Border Wall Blues: A Q&A with Journalist Sam Karas
“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.”
At the End of the Wall: A Reporter’s Notebook
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.