Development Director Amelia Natoli discusses building community with recently arrived refugees and Tucson volunteers through harvesting food, making art, and fostering connection.
An expanding definition of "terror" ignites a more bellicose extension of the U.S. border abroad. A history of labor and mining and community written on borderlands' gravestones. And The Border Chronicle in Douglas and with Amy Goodman this coming week.
Just what did U.S. officials at the Border Security Expo earlier this month say about U.S. foreign policy, border extension, and a revival of the war on terror?
If you want to learn about border technology, listen to this conversation about a new book on surviving migration in the age of artificial intelligence.
Last week I attended the 17th annual Border Security Expo in El Paso, Texas, which focused on border enforcement technology. I mention this because I can’t think of a better person to talk to about this than anthropologist and lawyer Petra Molnar, whose new book, The Walls Have Eyes: Surviving Migration in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, is hot off the presses. I’ve been awaiting this book for years, and I was fortunate enough to interview Molnar for this podcast while she was in Tucson for a book event.
It is essential to know about border technology and its evolution, and how it affects people crossing borders and people living in borderlands around the world. Molnar, on the leading edge of reporting and analysis on this issue, helps us understand how border tech connects to larger political and economic power structures, and how it is not a humane alternative to a wall.
She splits her time across the hemispheres, in North America and Europe, which brings a global perspective to the book, and underscores the omnipresence of surveillance. And this is not Molnar’s first appearance at The Border Chronicle, check out her article on robotic dogs from 2022. You should also see her work at the Migration Tech Monitor and the Refugee Law Lab.
After we recorded the podcast, we took a trip to the border in Nogales. Lengthwise across the bollards was a narrow metal track that looked exactly like the encasement for a sensor system that I saw displayed by a company at the Border Security Expo. It was the first time I had seen this addition to the wall. Indeed, the walls do have eyes.
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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.
Come get a glimpse of the inner workings of the border industrial complex with these photos, text, and a video tour of the exhibition hall at the end. You will also learn about the national border security awards and who won person of the year.
With more than 40 percent of the U.S.-Mexico border now under military authority, we discuss our Border Chronicle/The War Horse investigation examining this unprecedented expansion of federal power and its impact on border communities.
When Alex González Ormerod, editor of the Mexico Political Economist, started researching his book about the Mexican right wing, he
Independent news, culture and context from the U.S.-Mexico border.
