endnotes | crossing the line

Every chapter in Crossing the Line: Finding America in the Borderlands is built on a combination of my personal experiences; ethnographic research, including first-hand observations, as well as interviews with featured story subjects and their collaborators; an extensive review of topic-specific and other related literature, including history texts and primary source materials, such as lawsuit filings, scholarly dissertations and other academic publications as well as research papers; journalistic reportage and more recently released non-fiction reflections on the subject of forced displacement and worldwide human migration.

Approximately one hundred people contributed to this project in ways both large and small—but always important. After obtaining their permission to capture their stories and share their voices, I invited everyone to collaborate in fact-, quote-, and chronology-checking. Roughly 85% of them rose to the challenge. For all others, I engaged professional fact-checkers to aid me in verifying all accounts through resources and statements already in the public record. Our methodology was to authenticate all stories through a two-factor verification process.

That said, memory is slippery and historical documentation—and truth—tend to evolve with time and distance. If errors remain, they are mine alone. I invite you to reach out to me here if you believe some aspect of the book would benefit from correction or updating. We can make changes in future editions.

This chapter was made possible thanks to personal interviews and interaction with Jodi Goodwin, Esq., as well as other Rio Grande Valley attorneys and humanitarians who worked with her, alongside her, or in observation of her throughout 2018 and 2019.

These collective accounts were further informed by the journalism of Jacob Soboroff (MSNBC) and Julia Ainsley (NBC), Ginger Thompson (ProPublica), Lomi Kriel (Houston Chronicle), Molly Hennessy-Fiske and Molly O'Toole (LA Times), Caitlin Dickerson (then of The NY Times), Hamed Aleaziz (then of Buzzfeed), Camilo Montoya-Galvez (CBS), Dianne Solis (Dallas Morning News), Miriam Jordan (WAPO), Robert Moore (Texas Monthly and El Paso Matters), and others who witnessed and reported on Trump & Co’s crimes against humanity, including Zero Tolerance and Family Separation as they unfolded in real-time.

To ground the chapter in historical context, I learned much from the work of Aura Bogado from Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting on the issue of the treatment of unaccompanied children in the custody of the US Department of Health & Human Services and the Administration for Children & Families of the Office of Refugee Resettlement. I drew awareness, as well, from the work of Susan Schmidt and Jacqueline Bhabha in Seeking Asylum Alone: Unaccompanied and Separated Children and Refugee Protection in the U.S. (2006). Their work also serves the perspective developed in Chapter Nineteen: Locking up Family Values.

For a full understanding and fact-checking on both lawsuits mentioned in this chapter—Ms. L v. ICE and Dora v. Sessions (see pages 12, 13, 14, and 17)—I interviewed ACLU lead attorney, Lee Gelernt, and child psychiatrist Dr. Amy Cohen of Each Step Home, who captured many of the testimonies of separated parents highlighted in the latter-mentioned suit. Both Lee and Amy were instrumental in informing my research for Chapter Twenty: Barbarians at the Gate and Chapter Seventeen: Kidnapped by Uncle Sam, respectively.

My research on the historical roots of asylum included a study of the 1848 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol, the 2013 Cartegena Declaration on Refugees, which allows a broader category of persons in need of international protection to be considered refugees, and other treaty bodies that make up the International Refugee Protection Regime, including the 1980 US Refugee Act, as a participant of the Oxford Centre for Refugee Studies 2021 International Institute. This included, as well, insights into the ancient tradition of asylum as it is expressed in the sacred texts of the world’s major religions.

My understanding of how asylum practices and laws are under threat today was further informed by my bi-monthly access to the US-based nationwide Asylum Working Group from the fall of 2020, as well as the highly readable must-read book by John Washington, The Dispossessed (see Bibliography).

For a thorough mastery of the roots and codification of international human rights transgressions such as “crimes against humanity,” “genocide,” and “mass murder,” I am indebted to the work of scholar Philippe Sands (see Bibliography). 

Other books on the topic of family separation—during Trump’s one-term administration and otherwise—that informed this manuscript and which I recommend without reservation include: Jacob Soboroff, Separated: Inside an American Tragedy; Laura Briggs, Taking Children: A History of American Terror, and Efrén Olivares, My Boy Will Die of Sorrow: A Memoir of Immigration from the Front Lines (see Bibliography).

My gendered statement on page 7, “Having fled their home countries, in large part to protect their children, they were emotionally and psychologically traumatized at losing them, most cruelly, to men in uniform,” was not a mistake. Historically, as I lay out in Chapter Thirteen: The Education of a Border Patrol Agent, only 5% of Customs and Border Protection and Border Patrol officers are women. My use of “men” here is, therefore, intentional.

The history, evolution, and importance of the Flores Settlement Agreement, mentioned in Chapter One, is further fleshed out in Chapters Twelve, Seventeen, Nineteen, Twenty-One, and Twenty-Two.

Big thanks to the original Angry Tías and Abuelas of the Rio Grande Valley—Jennifer Harbury, Cindy Candia, Joyce Hamilton, Madeleine Sandefur, Lizee Cavazos, Susan Law, and Elisa Filippone, as well as Nayelly Barrios—for the first-hand testimonies that provide the foundation for the stories to come. Not only does their collective story illustrate how the practice of “metering” traps the world’s most vulnerable people in danger and squalor in a government-sanctioned Catch-22, in defiance of US and international law as well as cultural and religious values, it also carries forward the thematic motif begun by Jodi Goodwin’s story in Chapter One: that once you bear witness the cruel injustices of the global Border Industrial Complex and so-called immigration systems, it is impossible to ever look away again—and why I entitled the Introduction of this book, The Subversive Act of Seeing.

Shoutouts of gratitude as well to the South Texas Pro Bono Asylum Representation Project (ProBAR), the Texas Civil Rights Project, RAICES, as well as San Antonio’s Interfaith Welcome Coalition and Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services (RAICES) — all first-responders to the Family Separation and Metering debacles. 

Hit tip as well to journalist Ginger Thompson, of ProPublica, who broke the story of family separation to the world. Click here for access to Ginger’s article. Click here for access to the  YouTube accompaniment to the cries of Alison Jimena Valencia Madrid, who would alert the world to what journalist Jacob Soboroff calls "the most spectacular policy fail" of the US government and the greatest human rights crime of a lifetime. 

Thanks, too, to writer Daniel Blue Tyx who was the first to capture the Tías’ singular story in book form and whose text, gifted to me by Tía Madeleine on my first visit to the RGV, was foundational to the development of this chapter and story.

You’ll find citations to Jacob and Daniel’s books as well as to Tías Jennifer’s book documenting the use of torture by the US government and CIA, particularly in Guatemala, in the bibliography. 

Additional thanks to Texas journalist Robert Moore, whose reporting I was glued to at the time:

Moore, Robert. Texas Monthly. Homeland Security Promises to Prosecute 100 Percent of Illegal Immigration Cases: The policy shift means that parents will be separated from their children if caught while crossing borders illegally. May 7, 2018.

Moore, Robert. Texas Monthly. Successful Immigration Program to End April 30: The Legal Orientation Program provides guidance to those facing deportation and is praised for saving taxpayer money. April 23, 2018.

Moore, Robert. Texas Monthly. Sessions Reverses Controversial Decision to Shut Down Immigration Program: The attorney general told a congressional committee he was deferring to its concerns about stopping funding. April 25, 2018.

This chapter was made possible thanks to my interviews with Elisa Filippone and the other Angry Tías, as well as Michael Seifert; the five Texas school teachers who joined forces to become Team Brownsville—Mike Benavides, Sergio Cordova, David Liendo-Lucio, Melba Salazar Lucio, and Andrea Rudnick—and Sister Norma Pimentel, executive director of Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley; the late James Pace, Brownsville native son and author of Mother of Exiles: Interviews of Asylum Seekers at the Good Neighbor Settlement House, Brownsville, Texas (see Bibliography); and several other RGV voices that we meet in later chapters, including Deaconess Cindy Andrade Johnson and Brendon Tucker.

Sister Norma’s witness of the conditions inside the Ursula hielera can be found in this article by the Global Sisters Report of the National Catholic Reporter as well as in this reportage in CRUX by the Catholic News Service. The work of Casa Romero during Sister Norma’s novitiate years is centered in this 1984 article in the Washington Post. And the life of the “game changer,” who Pope Francis also dubbed his “favorite nun,” is summed up in this article by Melissa Guerra in NewWorlder.

The historical references to the birth of the Sanctuary Movement during the Dirty War era were informed by Aviva Chomsky’s 2020 book, Central America’s Forgotten History: Revolution, Violence, and the Roots of Migration (see Bibliography); Susan Gzesh’s April 1, 2006, featured article in the Migration Policy Institute Newsletter; and this report by Kevin Sieff of the Washington Post, who writes about the Dirty War history repeating itself with Trump & Co’s Zero Tolerance and stepped up deportation machine, especially in El Salvador.

This Human Rights Watch February 2020 report, Deported to Danger, that US deportation policies do expose refouled Salvadorans to death and abuse upon return.

The reference on page 28 about “roughly seventy thousand families and an equal number of children traveling alone arriving at the border” in 2014 is explained in this Vox article by Dara Lind. The phenomenon is discussed in more depth again when it becomes the focus of Chapter Nineteen: Locking Up Family Values. 

Ronald Reagan’s 1981 inauguration speech, in which he promised that the US “will again be the exemplar of freedom and a beacon of hope for those who do not now have freedom” as he simultaneously shut the border to the refugees his Dirty Wars created can be found here. You’ll find deeper dives into this theme in Chapters Eleven and Fourteen. 

You can find more about the spontaneous eruption of the Families Belong Together movement and how it led to the repeal of Trump & Co’s Family Separation policy in this CNN report. Unfortunately, the separation of families by US immigration policies didn’t stop with the June 20, 2018, executive order, nor did it start with Trump & Co’s Zero Tolerance policy, as I will allude to at the end of Chapter Six: An Epiphany of Epiphanies, then illustrate and explain in Chapters Seventeen: Kidnapped by Uncle Sam, Chapter Twenty-One: Barbarians at the Gate, and Chapter Twenty-Three: Six, Seven, Eight Degrees of Family Separation.

I have many people to thank for the story weaving in this chapter. It was created from the strands of personal interviews with Woodson Martin, Brendon Tucker, and Cindy Andrade Johnson; Sister Norma, Jack White, and James Pace; the five Texas teachers turned Team Brownsville: Sergio Cordova, David Liendo-Lucio, Melba Salazar Lucio, Mike Benavides, and Andrea Rudnick, as well as Kathy Harington, who joined Team Brownsville's board, along with Woodson Martin, before the chapter is over.

These folks kept the machinery of welcome churning, alongside Gaby Zavala, Pastor Carlos Navarro, Pastor Abraham Barberi, lawyer Jodi Goodwin, and shelter operator Victor Maldonado. They, too, contributed first-hand storytelling to this chapter, as did Tía Joyce Hamilton. The story of their efforts to continue offering welcome even after the general US population looked away from the border as family separation faded from view can be found in this New York Times article by Jim Rutenberg: At the Border Town That the News Cycle Has Left Behind.

Also in the New York Times, enterprise writer Nicholas Kulish documented that summer how Trump & Co’s policies of forcing safety seekers to stay in Mexico emboldened organized crime. Kulish reported on the exploitation of the world's most vulnerable by human traffickers cashing in on Trump & Co's rollout of metering, then MPP in this interactive piece on the reality of bribes and shakedowns, kidnapping and days locked up in hideaways without food, called What It Costs to Be Smuggled Across the U.S. Border.

New York Times reporters Michael D. Shear and Thomas Gibbons-Neff, meanwhile, wrote about Trump & Co's election-season weaponization of the US-Mexico border to whip up fears about a make-believe “invasion” with their reporting on Trump sending 5,200 troops to Tijuana and ordering more concertina wire be woven into the already impenetrable border fortification there. At the same time, Trump's claims that destitute, road-weary people, carrying all that they owned on their backs, constituted a threat to a nation of over 330 million people, were disproven by his own Department of Homeland Security, which reported in 2017 that the border had never been more secure.

Sister Norma’s contribution, captured in two interviews with me, was corroborated by the Catholic News Service in this 2019 article in CruxNow.

Ashley and Gabe Casale told their own tale in a Huffington Post article entitled, I'm Camping Out In Front Of A 'Tender Age' Shelter With My Son. Here's What I've Seen. It took me some time to track Ashley down, but when I did, she confirmed the tale woven here from recollections of Tucker, Sergio, and Cindy Johnson, as well as her Huffpo article.

Information on the for-profit child detention industry also included in Chapter Twenty-Two: Ninety Days in the Desert, can be found in Sludge, which does investigative journalism on money in politics. In a July 3, 2019, exposé called These Nonprofits and Businesses Are Making Millions From Detaining Immigrant Children, Alex Klotch provides eye-opening statistics on the dozens of nonprofit shelter groups and for-profit companies making eye-watering amounts of money by detaining and transporting unaccompanied children, including the highest-earning kids jail profiteer that year Southwest Key, operator of Casa El Presidente, where Ashley, Gabe, and Tucker mounted their vigil. 

Jack’s "descent into madness," as he calls it, when he had just 24 hours to fold immigrant and refugee communities into the services at Good Neighbor Settlement House can be found in this local news report here.

In addition to Brownsville's Good Neighbor and Ozanam shelters, I also spent time touring La Posada Providencia with Cindy Andrade Johnson in San Benito and Loaves and Fishes in Harlingen with Tía Joyce, who stepped me through the efforts of her community to help transport asylum seekers from the bus station to area shelters, as well as the airport. In Texas as we went to press with Crossing the Line, Governor Greg Abbott and his attorney general, Ken Paxton, are trying to establish laws, such as SB-4, that will make humanitarianism such as that expressed by Joyce, Jack, Gaby, and others in 2018-19 against the law. Indeed, they could face prison time if they extended the same kindness today.

Information about Sergio and Mike’s recognition as GoFundMe Heroes of the Year is published here.

For statistics on the dwindling asylum success rates commensurate with the establishment of MPP, I recommend to you the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), a nonprofit and nonpartisan data gathering, data research, and data distribution organization in the S. I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University. TRAC was instrumental to me in providing and/or corroborating data throughout the process of writing of this book.

Research for this chapter was largely conducted at the Historic Brownsville and Stillman House Museums, which illuminated for me the centuries-long pattern of US demagogues and profiteers using “invasion” rhetoric as a pretext for war, human displacement, land-grabbing, and corporate greed. This historic reality, foundational to the birth of the US nation, was further brought to light by Juan Gonzalez in his impactful tome, Harvest of Empire (see Bibliography). It is thanks to Gonzalez that I found the link between Brownsville’s robber baron foundations and Citibank, which would contribute to the rape and pillage, and financial bleeding of Haiti, setting into motion the destabilization that continues to rock the island nation today. This will be further discussed in Chapter Eighteen: Who Built the Cages? But it starts here, with the founding of Brownsville, Texas, by father Charles Stillman and his son, Frank.

Equally important to this chapter were my interactions and interviews with Tía Cindy Candia, Lindsay from North Carolina, Sergio Cordova of Team Brownsville, as well as my old pal Roy and his friends and co-delegate from the Brooklyn Heights Synagogue. 

The story of the cautionary tale of how border walls create dead zones that decimate local meeting places and economic zones, can be found this February 14, 2020, report by John Burnett on National Public Radio’s Morning Edition.

Except for the research on the current movement of people and rates of displacement worldwide, this chapter was built upon first-hand observation and personal interviews conducted with refugees and volunteers on my second day in Matamoros, Mexico. I was able to erect walls of understanding onto the foundations provided by my guides and mentors that day—all of whom I’ve identified by pseudonyms to protect their identity—thanks to additional context gleaned from follow-up interviews with Melba Salazar-Lucio, her husband David Liendo-Lucio, and numerous Escuelita de la Banqueta volunteers from Austin; Pastor Abraham Barberi, Gaby Zavala, and Brendon Tucker; and finally with my personal doppelgänger from Global Response Medicine as well as Helen Perry, the handsome doctor, Dairon, and the affable young man with the gorgeous laugh, Ray—all of whom you’ll meet in greater depth in Chapter Seven: From Mosul to Matamoros and Chapter Eight: The First Big Lie. 

Crucial to the storytelling in this chapter, however, which is foundational to both the book’s structure as well as my journey of awakening to the issue of forced migration, was the week I spent in December 2019 as part of the Salzburg Global Seminar. 

¡Mil Gracias! to Clare Shine, former director of the Salzburg Global Seminar, for gifting me the invitation to attend the session on Education and Workforce Opportunities for Refugees and Migrants and become a Fellow of this incredible institution. This is where I met Patricia Vázquez, M.Ed., who in turn gifted me several copies of Bolay, by author and educator Irma Uribe Santibáñez on learning that I was headed to the refugee encampments of northern Mexico in January 2020.

I also have Tías Madeleine, Joyce, and Lizee—all birding enthusiasts—to thank for helping me to identify the great-tailed grackle and its seven splendid songs.

Finally, big shout-outs of thanks to Michael Benavides for all that he shared with me and taught me about the long-lasting effects and potency of trauma. Thanks to Mike, I sought training immediately upon returning home from that first trip across la linea in trauma-informed interviewing and writing techniques so that I would not cause any of my collaborators further pain by seeking to include their stories in these pages. This led, as well, to my subsequently obtaining a position with the Write to Life program of the UK-based non-profit Freedom From Torture.

I must start here by acknowledging GRM founder Pete Reid, who lost his life saving others in Bakhmut, Ukraine, in February 2023. I never had the opportunity to meet Pete. This chapter was constructed primarily from the oral histories of then-GRM director, Helen Perry, as well as her colleagues Blake Davis and Sam Bishop, who shared generously with me their expertise and experiences in crisis-based global health management as well as GRM reports from its unique beginnings in Iraq.

GRM’s Andrea Leiner also contributed to the storytelling in this chapter, as did Deaconess Cindy Andrade Johnson, Gaby Zavala, and Pastor Abraham Barberi, as well as Dairon Elizondo Rojas and Rainer Rodriguez, whose stories are featured in Chapter Eight: The First Big Lie.

Charlene D’Cruz, the focus of Chapter Nine: Sounding the Alarm, also added story strands into the weave of this chapter. So did all the members of Team Brownsville, including its board treasurer, Woodson Martin, as well as Tucker, Gladys Cañas Aguilar, and Joyce Hamilton of the Angry Tías. 

Yael Schacher of Refugees International confirmed Helen’s story of cold-calling US social justice and immigrant rights organizations to raise the money needed for GRM to establish a presence in Matamoros, government and UN funding being off limits to them there. Helen and Tucker were both instrumental in my growing understanding of the UN Refugee Agency's “Standards of Dignity”—standards the UN was unable to apply in the MPP encampments across the line without invitations from either the US or Mexican governments. That's why an organization such as GRM had to step in.

Larry Cox and Esther Garza, also grassroots healthcare providers of the once-thriving Casa Bugambilia shelter in Matamoros, were instrumental in providing background for this chapter. The story charting the rise and fall of Casa Bugambilia is recounted in Chapter Seventeen: Kidnapped by Uncle Sam.

The consortium of forty US law firms mentioned in this chapter and responsible for funding the dentist suite cum resource center is called Lawyers for Good Government. The legal clinics they helped to establish in northern Mexican border towns that continue to provide legal representation to asylum-seeking families and individuals still exist under the auspices of the L4GG's Projecto Corazon.

This chapter was made possible thanks to the oral accounts of Dairon Elizondo Rojas, Rainer Rodriguez, and Perla Vargas, corroborated by their GRM colleagues, significant others, and travel companions. 

The Trump “asylum ban” referred to in this chapter, as well as his administration’s other attempt to assassinate refugee protections one surgical cut at a time, are outlined in this December 2020 report by the National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC), A Timeline Of The Trump Administration’s Efforts To End Asylum

For information about Daniel Ortega’s about face and decent into authoritarianism—I was in Nicaragua following the overthrow of the Somoza-family dictatorship when Ortega was considered a popular hero, so way myself keen to learn more—I recommend this Guardian article as well as this reporting in La Républica.  

For citation and sourcing information regarding the work of Agathe Demarais to document the decades-long failures of US economic warfare through sanctions and how such actionscreate human displacement and migration, I refer you to the bibliography for Crossing the Line. You can access Juan González’s October 2023 report here: The Current Migrant Crisis: How U.S. Policy Toward Latin America Has Fueled History Numbers of Asylum Seekers.

Huge thanks to Charlene D’Cruz and Helen Perry for the first-hand testimonies that make up the bulk of this chapter. Added to their generous contributions are my own personal witness of their tireless efforts as well as that of colleagues at the watchdog organization, Witness at the Border. 

I take a deeper dive into the Dirty Wars that raged during the early years of Charlene’s career in Chapter Ten: Déjá Vu at the Border. But I also recommend this brief history of the US-funded Central American Dirty Wars that set the stage for human displacement and the refugee “crisis” we are experiencing today, written by Jeremy Scahill for The Intercept.

Trump’s 1990 celebration of an authoritarian’s act of massacre can be found here in Playboy. But if, like me, you can’t get behind Playboy’s member-only wall, no fear: this more recent recap in the US edition of the Independent surfaced after he harnessed Customs and Border Protection as his own personal police force during the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020.

Reporting on CBP predator drone surveillance in general can be found in this article by Vice, while reporting on potentially illegal CBP predator drone surveillance over Minneapolis—illegal because Minnesota’s twin cities are outside CBP jurisdiction—can be found in this article, also published by VICE. Additionally, cybersecurity reporter Jed Pressgrove for the online magazine, Government Technology, sounds the alarm about government surveillance overreach as well.

This national security briefing in The Hill covers how Customs and Border Protection agents came to be deployed as troops against peaceful protestors in DC’s Lafayette Square. To learn more about CBP’s little-known 100-mile border perimeter policing jurisdiction, I recommend this post by the Southern Border Communities Coalition, a program of Alliance San Diego.

For a complete chronology of SCOTUS’s 1970s rulings that chippred away our Fourth Amendment rights, you must read Nobody is Protected: How the Border Patrol Became the Most Dangerous Police Force in the United States, by political geographer Reece Jones (see bibliography), who documents how the US CBP, which includes the Border Patrol, has come to operate outside the US constitution. You’ll find links to all Todd Miller’s books in the bibliography as well: the one referred to in this chapter is entitled Storming the Wall: Climate Change, Migration, and Homeland Security.

Matt Apuzzo and Michael S. Schmidt, reporting for the New York Times in 2014, chronicle how the Department of Homeland Security beat back President Obama’s attempt to curtail racial and ethnic profiling in Border Patrol policing. For more on the impunity of the Department of Homeland Security agency cultures, and how its security-first mandate puts all our rights at risk, I again recommend documentation by the Southern Border Communities Coalition. 

My worries are echoed in this Washington Post column by Philip Bump, published on the 2020 anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, who writes that unidentified law enforcement officers disappearing peaceful protestors into unmarked cars presents a dangerous new factor to US democracy, undermining all our values and weakening our constitutional rights.  

This chapter, centered around Tía Jennifer Harbury’s first-hand experience—as a civil rights lawyer and a wife—of the impunity of the Central American Dirty Wars, unspools time in reverse chronological order to explain the unacknowledged fact of US colonization of Latin America and Caribbean. Dating to the 19th century and unfolding at the intersection of government-supported corporate resource exploitation and military might, this chapter aims to show how US foreign and economic policies exported the Manifest Destiny mindset south of the line, becoming a major driver in displacement and northward human migration that we experience today. 

I draw Jennifer’s story and voice from existing interviews in the public domain, our own personal interactions, US and Inter-American court filings prepared by Jennifer and/or her colleagues, as well as reportage about those legal cases. But perhaps most informative to me in writing this piece were Jennifer’s three books:

Bridge of Courage: Life Stories of the Guatemalan Compañeros and Compañeras;

Searching for Everardo: A Story of Love, War, and the CIA in Guatemala; and

Truth, Torture, and the American Way. (See Bibliography for citation information.)

Other books cited in the Crossing the Line Bibliography that were instrumental to my research for this chapter include:

Peter Chapman’s must-read history, Bananas, about how the United Fruit Company (now Chiquita) shaped worldwide corporate capitalism;

Aviva Chomsky’s long-overdue 2021 update on the US’s role in the region: Central America’s Forgotten History;

Lesley Gill’s 2004 exposé on the destructive force of the School of the Americas, to seed political violence throughout the Americas: The School of the Americas: Military Training and Political Violence in the Americas;

Juan González’s absolutely essential, Harvest of Empire;

Greg Grandin’s Empire’s Workshop, as well as his End of the Myth; and of course,

War is a Racket by Major General Smedley Butler, whose 1935 premise—that war, while vicious, is profitable and nothing more than an amoral means to distract the general public as one corporate purse or another is filled—I adopt in this book with regard to the Dirty Wars, War on Drugs, War on Terror, and our current Securocratic War (as Jeff Halper calls it) or War on Illegality (following Todd Miller).

Also pertaining to the content of this chapter, I recommend again Jeremy Scahill’s December 2, 2018 article in The Intercept: A Brief History of the U.S. Dirty Wars in Central America that set the stage for the Refugee Crisis about the US’s longstanding addiction to setting fire to others’ homes, then standing in their way when they attempt to flee. This topic also undergirds Chapter Eleven: Modern Problems, Medieval Solutions and Chapter Twelve: The Long View. 

For compelling reporting on how the US created the Salvadoran gangs, I learned much from William Wheeler’s 2020 long-form story in The Guardian. Also in The Guardian is this 2017 photo journalism essay about La Bestia by Veronica G Cardenas that is worthy of your attention, as is this NowThis video. about the deathly train journey. 

Jennifer can be heard in conversation with Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! during the family Separation debacle, during which they discuss how the Angry Tía passed the cries heard ‘round the world from a Border Patrol whistleblower to Ginger Thompson of ProPublica. 

Taken together, the chapter explains how US foreign policy since before the Monroe Doctrine, and put into place with Teddy Roosevelt’s big stick bludgeoning of Latin America and the Caribbean, created the vicious cycle of repression and corporate self-interest the US is trapped in today with regard to its southern neighbors, giving new meaning to today’s US foreign policy rhetoric of  bringing “security and prosperity” in the Latin American region. In other words, it just means more of the same.

As I alluded to in Chapter Three: Line Stones in David’s Sling, a 20th-century underground railroad sprang from the US-Mexico borderlands and spread across the nation between 1981 and 1990, when Ronald Reagan slammed the doors of “the exemplar of freedom and a beacon of hope” on the very people his Dirty Wars displaced and sent into flight. I knew early on in the process of writing this book, therefore, that I would include a chapter on the Sanctuary Movement. 

Imagine my surprise, however, when I discovered that little has been written about the objectors who challenged US law and risked arrest to protect people fleeing chaos and violence in Central America in answer to a higher law of conscience.

That meant I had to go directly to the source.

I traveled several times to Tucson, Arizona to speak with Reverend John Fife, co-Padre of the Sanctuary Movement; the head of the movement’s legal effort, Margo Cowan; and the woman whose close call with death from environmental exposure kicked off the sanctuary effort: Dora Rodriquez.

As part of our storytelling collaboration, Dora and I went to the location under two palo verde trees where she was discovered in the process of passing in July 1980. We were beaten there by Arizona artist Alvaro Encisco, whose now-multi-year effort to turn the Sonoran desert into a cemetery, art installation, and memorial to the great unknown I recount in the Conclusion: Buried Dreams. Dora's attempt to cross into the US via the desert as part of a group of twenty-six resulted in thirteen excruciating deaths. Alvaro has so far planted six crosses in their memory. 

Dora generously shared her migration story with me over the course of several visits and numerous phone calls. I have woven her tale into the first-hand recollections of John Fife, who was adamant that I write not just about his journey to activism, but that of Jim Corbett and other borderlands faithful as well. He introduced me, in turn, to Margo Cowan, who also generously offered her testimony. All three—Dora, John, and Margo—engaged in fact, quote, and chronology checking to ensure this chapter came out just right. My gratitude to them knows no bounds.

For more information on the principle of non-refoulement under international human rights law, I refer you to this UN document from the 1951 Refugee Convention.

Likewise, for more about the US 1980 Refugee Act, which I dive into in more depth in Chapter Twenty-Seven: Death by a Thousand Cuts, I suggest studying its original governmental source.

And if you’d like to learn more about the life and death of Archbishop Oscar Romero, I have two texts to recommend:

Matt Eisenbrandt’s 2017 title, Assassination of a Saint: The Plot to Murder Óscar Romero and the Quest to Bring His Killers to Justice (see Bibliography) as well as Tom Gibb’s earlier counterargument, published in The Guardian in 2000, of US CIA duplicity in covering up the investigation so that counter-insurgency advisors would not lose their ears and eyes.

A useful fact sheet supporting my contention that Latin America is the world’s most economically unequal region in the world—and how to fix it—can be found at this link.

Reporting on the El Mozote massacre can be found in this January, 1982, New York Times article by Raymond Bonner and in this Washington Post piece by Alma Guillermoprieto filed the same month.

***

Editorial Note: I traveled to El Mozote in 1990 with the sole survivor of the masscre, Rufina Amaya. I wrote about that day for this book, but when my publisher insisted I cut 60,000 words from the original manuscript (which was 180,000 words long!), that was one of the tales my editor felt could go. In the era of digital storytelling, however, nothing need be lost to the cutting-room floor. I will be posting my El Mozote story to Substack and when I do, I will link it up here.

The content of this chapter was made possible thanks to numerous reporting sources. I remain indebted, again, to journalistic reports of the war in El Salvador, specifically by Raymond Bonner, and Anna Guillermoprieto (see endnotes Chapter 11), as well as Mark Danner’s 1994 poignant investigation, and memorial, to the forgotten victims of the Cold War Dirty Wars: The Massacre at El Mozote (see Bibliography). My thanks also go to Roberto Lovato, author of Unforgetting: A Memoir of Family, Migration, Gangs, and Revolution in the Americas (see Bibliography), whose personal memoir brought to life again my personal recollections of living and working in the northern war zone from 1990-1994, during which time I visited the site of the El Mozote Massacre with the sole survivor, Rufina Amaya.

The story of Jenny Flores’s flight and incarceration came from court documents, as well as long-form reporting on what children had to endure before Jenny brought their plight into the US courts as lead plaintiff in the 1985 class action lawsuit – finally settled in 1997 – that Messers Carlos Holguín and Peter Schey filed to strike down the parents-only release policy and keep unaccompanied youth protected from horrendous living conditions in hotels turned prisons. The suit (Flores v. Meese; Flores v. Reno) now known as the Flores Settlement Agreement is still among the most powerful legal tools available to immigrant children’s advocates, as described in an American Bar Association explainer from Trump & Co’s zero tolerance and family separation debacles.

The first-person recounting of the story and history can be found in Georgetown University Law Professor Philip Schrag’s book Baby Jails (see Bibliography), as told to Dr. Schrag by Peter Schey. It is further supported by the story of Jenny and Alma’s flight and incarceration as told to me by Carlos Holguín in December 2022. Fact-checking was challenging owing to the passage of time and the elusive quality of memory. Where the two men’s tales and reflections differ, I defer to court records. And where such primary resources are also blurry, I say so in my storytelling.  

I was able to corroborate Mr. Holguín’s beautifully rich visual recollections of the Mardi Gras and other hotels turned INS detention centers through image searches in Google and the Library of Congress archives. 

The migration and refugee statistics I cite come from the trusted Migration Policy Institute blog archives from the era and more recently produced.

The antics of once Hot Dog King turned INS Regional Commissioner turned champion for Tanton network anti-immigrant causes turned Californian politician known for his inflammatory rhetoric, Harold Ezell, are well documented in LA Times reporters’ notebooks – also my main source for how Ezell and Tanton’s Prop. 187 taught the nation’s top immigration-control group in 1994 how to win the White House in 2016.

The Southern Poverty Law Center holds a treasure trove of documents exposing his decades-long project to perfect fearmongering and foment hate. You can find essential background on how Tanton grew the network that would eventually reach to the White House here, as well as in Reece Jones essential book on the nation-based art of exclusion, White Borders: The History of Race and Immigration in the United States from Chinese Exclusion to the Border Wall (see Bibliography). For more on Tanton’s multiples skirmishes in service of a wider war, you can hear it from the hatemonger’s mouth himself in this oral history conducted by Otis L. Graham, Jr. Among his many skirmishes was republishing the words of the notorious French racist, Jean Raspail, which Tanton acknowledges and celebrates as a service to the English-speaking, Western world in this essay penned in his own hand.

I am grateful to the scholarly work of Timothy Dunn to trace the roots of Operation Gatekeeper, which kick-started the weaponization of the borderlands to deter people from crossing the line through the threat of death just as NAFTA opened the border to the free and unfettered movement of goods and money. For proof that Gatekeeper was instituted with the express intent to thwart northward migration, I refer you to the Border Patrol’s own 1994 study:  "Border Patrol Strategic Plan 1994 and Beyond: National Strategy". U.S. Border Patrol.. 

***

Correction: In the first edition of Crossing the Line, I wrote that Operation Gatekeeper began six months after NAFTA. That may have been true informally within Border Patrol practice. But the official start was October 1, 1994, ten months after NAFTA began on January 1, 1994.

This chapter would not have been possible without the collaboration of justice warrior, Jenn Budd, who generously offered her time and tale in support of this book. My gratitude toward Jenn knows no bounds.

Our storytelling is scaffolded on numerous additional sources:

• public domain documents from the online Border Patrol archives;

• reporting by journalist-scholar Garrett M. Graff for Politico; and

• the work of such historians, memorists, and documentarians as

  • Carol Anderson,

  • Ken Burns,

  • Francisco Cantú,

  • Juan Gonzalez,

  • Kelly Lytle Hernandez,

  • Reece Jones,

  • Todd Miller,

  • Joseph Neivns,

  • Mae Ngai,

  • Javier Zamora, and

  • Pauline R. Kibbe, whose 1947 book outlined the issues of segregation, agricultural labor exploitation, unfair employment practices, and dangerous, substandard housing.

The influence of the research of all the above thought leaders can be felt throughout Crossing the Line (see Bibliography).  

Circling back to Jenn, you must read her memoir: Against the Wall. And here’s a Newsweek interview that digs further into her experience as a woman in a misogynistic federal agency during Border Patrol Training Academy.

For information on death by elemental exposure, I recommend you to

• No More Deaths,

• Humane Borders,

• Border Angels,

• Battalion Search and Rescue,

• the Colibiri Missing Migrant Project,

• Salvavison,

• Borderlinks,

• the Southern Border Communities Coalition, and

• the Samaritans of Tucson, Ajo, and Green Valley.

Contact any of these groups for information on volunteering your time to help with desert water drops as well as humanitarian searches for folks in search of safety who are stranded in the desert, left to die by US government policy. 

***

Author's Note: I wrote so as to show it, but it bears repeating: the US Border Patrol is the foundation onto which the entire US Department of Homeland Security apparatus was built. That is why cultures of racism, misogyny, impunity, and violence reign supreme inside the departmental agencies charged with keeping us "secure" as they conduct their so-called wars against drugs and terrorism as a means to stop people in search of safety. The cultural legacy of the US Border Patrol is a thing that crushes.

In July 2023, on the occasion of my second turn-in deadline with She Writes Press, Crossing the Line: Finding America in the Borderlands had ballooned to a whopping 160,000 words. My project manager, Lauren Wise, turned the manuscript right back to me, with another one-month deadline extension, a new publication date, and the mandate to “cut the work by 40,000 words, at least, though 60,000 words would be better.” 

Most of those words had been written on the topic of the so-called War on Drugs.

A writer often discovers what she thinks about a topic by writing; she must unpack all its complexities in order achieve clarity of thought and figure out how best communicate that. I am no exception: I had to research, study, and write the story of the duplicitous and deadly decades-long US Drug War to understand how to weave it into the overarching tale I wanted to tell. The effort cost me months. 

Throughout it all, my editor had been patient and sympathetic. But he worried it was becoming a rabbit hole. He urged me, repeatedly, to crawl out of it. The issue was germane, he conceded, but it was also taking on a life of its own, becoming a whole other book or a rehashing of others' books. So when we were down to the wire -- with one month to excise a full quarter of the manuscript or run the risk of not going to press in time for the 2024 election season -- he began with this section, transforming what were originally three chapters into one tight historical sweep that kept all my narrative intentions in tact. 

So shout of thanks to James Hertling -- and to all editors, everywhere -- for making their authors better.

The only quote I regret not being able to keep is from a 1994 Drug War confessional by John Ehrlichman, Assistant to President Richard Nixon and Watergate Conspirator: 

 “We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course, we did.” 

Chapter Fourteen was also greatly served by my personal interviews with University of Texas at El Paso Professor of Anthropology Josiah Heyman, who is also an Endowed Professor of Border Trade Issues and the Director of the Center for Inter-American and Border Studies. Joe provided me with my own personal research syllabus, including many of his own essays as well as the works of the following scholars (see Bibliography): 

• Carmen Boullosa and Mike Wallace

• Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera

• John Gibbler

• Ioan Grillo

• Dawn Paley

• Jeremy Slack, Daniel E. Martínez and Scott Whiteford, and

• Tony Payan.

Also influencing this chapter are the theses of Howard Abinsky and Lisa McGirr (see Bibliography).

The public domain archives of the Office of the Inspector General on the CIA, Contra, Crack-cocaine controversy were critical to the fact-checking process.

I am also indebted to the brave endeavors of narco-journalist  Anabel Hernández García, as well as the Border Patrol reporting of Melissa Del Bosque, particularly as it pertains to the rise of the Douglas Mafia.

Finally, my thanks go to Warwick University author-scholar Benjamin Smith, who first encouraged me to strip the manuscript of all superscript numbers, move my then Footnotes to Endnotes, and make them and my Bibliography available online to ensure that Crossing the Line would meet academy muster, while simultaneously being more accessible to the general public. He did the same for his 2021 book, The Dope: The Real History of the Mexican Drug Trade (see Bibliography), becoming my first inspiration.

The marriage of political and legal history as well as oral testimony and memory that brought this chapter to life was made possible thanks to extended conversations with the story’s central character, Robert Vivar; the esteemed input of Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, in his role as Policy Director at the American Immigration Council; and Magdaleno “Leno” Rose-Avila, a founding father of the gang prevention group, Homies Unidos, an organization set up by former gang members for gang members wishing to eschew violence and antisocial behavior in pursuit of productive, crime-free lives, while keeping young people out of gang life as well.

I had the honor of interviewing and shadowing Robert twice: the first time during his daily course of duties while still in exile in Tijuana, Mexico; then again north of the line after his – spoiler alert – November 2022 return home to California (see Chapter Twenty-three). In both places, Robert had committed himself to a life of service, seeing to the common good in the absence of governmental structures of compassionate care for the marginalized and destitute. He remains at the front lines of the movement to return unfairly deported US Veterans today.

When Robert and I met, I was already deeply ensconced in researching the “good” versus “bad” immigrant framing which, I agree with Silky Shah of Detention Watch Network, has caused the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to become dangerously and inextricably enmeshed with the US system of criminal judgment and punishment. Silky’s 2024 book, Unbuild Walls, is a must-read source on how the US came to build the largest, most-troubled, least transparent system of incarcerating peace-seeking people (see Bibliography).

The overlooked nearly forty-year project to expand of the legal distinction of “aggravated felony” bears all the blame for the structure many refer to as the “crimmigration” system. Not only has it provided the basis for the removal of tens of thousands of immigrants each year, writes Sarah Tosh of the Graduate Center of the City University of New York; it has also led to such innocent-seeming promises from politicians, across the spectrum, that the deportation machinery will target “felons not friends” and “criminals not children,” thereby normalizing the trope that the vast majority of immigrants are criminals and perverts coming for your wives and your jobs. 

Robert Vivar defies this characterization, and yet he fell victim to judicial system that penalized him not once but twice and threw his family into disarray. I include his story in Crossing the Line as one example in hundreds of thousands of lives that have been destroyed by the spate of 1980s and 1990s laws that Aaron Reichlin-Melnick stated to me must be turned back if we are ever to find any semblance of justice in our immigration system. In a world such as ours, where civil misdemeanors can rise to aggravated felonies just like that, the label of “criminal alien” has become a weapon – and one that goes unquestioned by the majority public. 

My profound thanks to Aaron for not only helping me to really understand the multiple legislative acts contributing to this hard and unjust reality, but for making sure I communicated them clearly and correctly in this book. 

Other top-line resources contributing to my understanding of the immigration-enforcement-and-incarceration business are

• Emily Kassie’s eye-opening report, Detained: How the United States built the largest immigration detention system in the world, a joint project for the Marshall Project and The Guardian

• German Lopez’s report for Vox, Mass incarceration in America, explained in 22 maps and charts, prepared in collaboration with The Sentencing Project

• This report, also by German Lopez for Vox and also germane to Chapter Fourteen, on the how has the war on drugs changed the US criminal justice system: The Drug War, Explained

• Jeremy Raff’s piece for The Atlantic exposing the “Double Punishment” faced by non-citizens of color caught in the crimmigration trap

• Dara Lind’s explainer (one of many must-reads by her on Vox) entitled The disastrous, forgotten 1996 law that created today's immigration problem

• This Vox video by Madeline Marshall and Melissa Hirsch, called The law that broke US immigration and explaining how it forced so many undocumented immigrants to stay north of the line

The effects of the broad legislative “reforms” from the law-and-order 1990s, instituted to curb the growth of gang culture in LA and other US inner cities, is also a focus of Steven Dudley’s book on the making of MS-13 (see Bibliography). Dudley illustrates, and Leno concurs, that not only have the resulting policy practices failed to combat gang violence in the US, but they’ve turned Central America and Mexico into some the most notorious homicide capitols in the world, spreading the phenomenon 100% Made in the USA to nations unprepared and ill-equipped to handle a problem foisted upon them and contributing to rise in transnational criminal organizations, many of which now traffic the individual the US myopia cause. 

Don’t believe me? Take a look at the work of California-based historian Kevin Starr (see Bibliography).

It’s a cautionary tale – one we’re repeating today – that comes from a xenophobic impulse to withhold welcome: “the tragic outcome of a tragic environment,” former gang member turned leader in gang prevention and violence intervention for Homies Unidos, Geraldo Lopez, states in his 2018 TedTalk.

My gratitude for the collaboration that resulted in this story chapter extend to many. It was Jenn Budd who suggested I include Anastasio’s story. The archives assembled by the Southern Border Communities Coalition, a program of Alliance San Diego, provided me with every detail of Anastasio’s dubious arrest and hideous murder, down to the names of the officers involved who were never held to account. You can find the full story on my Substack here. 

But it is thanks to María de Jesús Puga Morán, Anastasio’s partner of more than twenty years and the mother of their five children, that I got to know the man behind the story of US-government-sanctioned agency violence, driven by a culture of racial profiling and dehumanization without accountability. 

María, who agreed to speak to me when my journey across the line found me in San Diego in December of 2022, had just come away from a historic hearing under the auspices of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights that put the US government on trial for impunity. María’s bravery and fortitude in taking on the most formidable foe in the world knows no bounds. My respect for her has no limits. Hat tip to Maria’s lawyer, Andrea Guerrero, for arranging the meeting and acting as interpreter for María and me at what was a very busy time for her firm. 

For the one-page government resolution that sparked the global abrogation of 20th-century human rights commitments, unleashed our now security-first paradigm, and turbo-charged the transformation of the US southern border into a militarized zone where the US constitution no longer applies, click here.

In this April 2019 article, Why Was The Homeland Security Department Created?, Stuart Anderson, senior contributor for Forbes, joins me in questioning the purported versus actual role of the Department of Homeland Security. From a cabinet-level government entity created in 2002-03 “to prevent terrorist attacks within the United States [and] to reduce the vulnerability of the United States to terrorism,” the department seemed to have quickly lost its way, writes Anderson. Rather than keeping the homeland safe, the focus of department and agency leadership has clearly shifted in the direction of immigration enforcement and, specifically, stopping poor and dark-skinned asylum seekers from stepping on US soil. Cyber warfare receives little attention by the agency in comparison to the trumped-up threat posed by Central American refugees seeking safety, Anderson rightly points out.

Before his 2019 exposé of the US Border Patrol’s decades of agency dysfunction cited in the previous chapter, historian and author Garrett M. Graff blew the same whistle Jenn Budd would in 2015. Graff’s late 2014 investigation for Politico, The Green Monster: How the Border Patrol became America’s most out-of-control law enforcement agency, illustrates what Jenn experienced firsthand: that the agency “mandated to keep us safe from criminals and perverts, are too often the perverts and criminals themselves. Yet, they are rarely, if ever, held accountable for their actions” (Crossing the Line, page 155). Graff goes on to question — now ten years ago as of this writing — why people fleeing harm, hunger, and horror, who’ve survived the Mexican and Central American gauntlet, then turned themselves in to US border officials to request asylum, should be seen as such a mortal threat to the homeland. How the resulting demagoguery leads to more arms, agents, fortifications, and fences rather than shelters, showers, social workers, and sandwiches for people in need. And why Congress continues, again and again, to cave to the largest, most troubled, and least transparent law enforcement agency in the land: the same forces that, when ordered to kidnap children, did. 

Also writing on the history of the U.S. Border Patrol, from its xenophobic founding to its assault on the Fourth Amendment to its auto-coronation as "the premier national police force," is Reece Jones. All of his books are must-reads. But his 2023 publication, Nobody is Protected: How the Border Patrol Became the Most Dangerous Police Force in the United States, should be at the top of everyone’s list. When you’re finished reading this, grab Reece’s and Jenn’s books next as well as anything by Todd Miller and John Washington (see Bibliography).

Speaking of John Washington — Jenn is not the only person sounding the alarm on agency impunity. In his September 2018 account for The Intercept,  A Border Patrol Whistleblower Speaks Out About Culture of Abuse Against Migrants, John offers up the first-hand experience of Mario, a former Green Monster who left the force after two years because he could no longer stomach the routine inhumanity he witnessed, including withholding water from people in distress, including children.

Then there’s this 2014 reporting, by Andrew Becker for The Center for Investigative Reporting as well as The Washington Post, citing the words of once-Customs and Border Protection chief of internal affairs, James F. Tomsheck, ousted for attempting to bring accountability to his agency. When Tomsheck sought to investigate some agents' use of inappropriate use of lethal force, he found shooting cover-ups and corruption upward through the command structure, all the way to the top. Tomsheck confirmed Jones’ contention that the Border Patrol suffers from “institutional narcissism,” believing itself to be the premier federal law enforcement agency, believing itself to be above the law as well as the “constitutional constraints” it is meant to enforce. “It has been suggested by Border Patrol leadership that they are the Marine Corps of the U.S. law enforcement community,” Tomsheck told Becker. “The Border Patrol has a self-identity of a paramilitary border security force and not that of a law enforcement organization.”

Melissa del Bosque recounts in 2020, for ProPublica, how agents from Jenn’s era on the force, including Trump’s agency chief, Carla Provost, climbed to the top of the Border Patrol, then one by one retired, leaving corruption, misconduct, and a toxic culture in their wake. Carla Provost was one of 9,500 members of a secret Border Patrol Facebook group, writes A.C. Thompson in 2019, also for ProPublica, where agents joked about deaths of border crossers, posted sexist memes, and shared derogatory comments about female Members of Congress of Latin American origin.

Reporting for Mother Jones, Fernanda Echavarri decries ”the involvement of the largest—and in many ways least accountable—law enforcement agency in the country” in Portland, Oregon during the Black Lives Matter demonstrations of 2020. Dressed in riot gear, members of the Border Patrol Tactical Unit (BORTAC) beat “demonstrators with batons, pepper-spraying them, shooting nonlethal bullets at them, and even dragging them into unmarked vans,” raising the specter, as Charlene D’Cruz did in Crossing the Line, Chapter Nine, that the Border Patrol was harnessed as the personal police of a certain president with autocratic aspirations and turned on its national brethren. 

In this factual (not fictional) scenario, the real terrorist threat to the homeland – and US democracy – could be said to be the Homeland Security cops, themselves. Even the conservative CATO Institute signaled the need for agency reform, if not abolition, in the face of another hiring surge by the Trump administration. This 2017 report cites the same widespread corruption and mismanagement as well as discipline and performance problems in Border Patrol ranks Tomsheck called out years before. 

This chapter would not have been possible without Larry Cox opening to me his heart, his community contacts with the United Methodist Church and the former Casa Bugambilia, and his seven-year war chest of documentation. These included court filings; correspondence with legal representatives; letters to Texas politicians; email traffic with Department of Health and Human Services powerbrokers and Office of Refugee Resettlement bureaucrats; interviews with members of the press; messages of support addressed to US public servants on his and Nancy’s behalf; and the hundreds of messages from well-wishers and friends captured in a private Facebook group called Bring Keyla Home that express condolences as well as appeals not to give hope. I am especially grateful to the Cox family's inner circle and members of their sprawling legal team for corroborating Larry’s story from multiple angles.

For more information on Los Zetas and other transnational criminal organizations (TCOs) now active throughout Mexico and Central America — and the many ways in which the US contributed to their development, their cultures of impunity and violence, and the resulting capture of Mexican state authorities — I recommend the following titles (see Bibliography for details):

• Carmen Boullosa and Mike Wallace, A Narco History: How the United States and Mexico Jointly Created the “Mexican Drug War”

• Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera, Los Zetas Inc.:Criminal Corporations, Energy, and Civil War in Mexico

• Jason De León, The Land of Open Graves: Living and Dying on the Migrant Trail

• John Gibbler, To Die in Mexico: Dispatches from Inside the Drug War

• Grillo, Ioan, Blood Gun Money: How America Arms Gangs and Cartels, and El Narco: The Bloody Rise of Mexican Drug Cartels

• Dawn Paley, Drug War Capitalism

• Jeremy Slack, Deported to Death: How Drug Violence Is Changing Migration on the US–Mexico Border

• ​​Benjamin Smith, The Dope: The Real History of the Mexican Drug Trade

For more about the massacre that almost ended the life of Luis Fredy Lala Pomavilla and “Mexico’s gruesome war on migrants,” as Amnesty International dubbed it, see:

• This 2015 Amnesty International report; 

• This Guardian piece, citing the facts of an interview with Lala Pomavilla taken before he was disappeared into a witness protection program; 

• This analysis by Hannah Stone and this investigation by Gary Moore for InSight Crime; 

• This 2014 reporting published in the Independent implicating Mexico police officers in the routine mass kidnapping and massacre of people traveling to the US in search of safety;

• And my own story take published in Medium on the 10th anniversary of the crime for which no one has yet to be held accountable, entitled, “How Much is a Migrant’s Life Worth.” 

This 2010 New York Times opinion piece by the editorial board rightly states: “Mexico’s drug cartels are nourished from outside, by American cash, heavy weapons and addiction; the northward pull of immigrants is fueled by our demand for low-wage labor,” and is worth the read. It also exposes how “The American response to Mexico’s agonies has mostly been a heightened fixation on militarizing the border.” All facts that are no less true today, as is this: “We have delegated to drug lords the job of managing our immigrant supply, just as they manage our supply of narcotics.”

The Hague Convention on Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption, also known as the Hague Adoption Convention, is an international treaty that aims to protect the interests of children, birth parents, and adoptive parents in intercountry adoptions. It also addresses child trafficking and child laundering. The convention, which is widely recognized and enforceable in over 100 countries, including the United States, establishes standards for Hague Accredited agencies to follow. They are intended to safeguard children and prospective adoptive families.

With the trafficking of women and children an increasing global concern, I don’t mean to criticize the intent of either the Hague Adoption Convention or the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act. On the contrary, I believe we should increase the funding available to anti-trafficking programs and enshrine more rights for survivors.

My concern is that the US government has entrusted these treaty bodies to border cops trained in counter-insurgency tactics and indoctrinated to find everyone, even children, a potential threat to the homeland. Under their auspices, the tragedy of family separations is taking place every day! 

As with the critical task of making asylum eligibility determinations, the country needs a humanitarian body predisposed to see people as people, not as “criminal aliens” and “alien invaders.” As I crisscrossed the line from Brownsville to Tijuana asking borderlanders for their top-line solution to the border issues we face today, one common idea kept getting repeated and, according to Reverend John Fife (Chapter 11), it was floated all the way back in the 1980s: create a body dedicated to handling the delicate work of welcome to work alongside our bloated security agencies so that law enforcement entities can do what they were trained to do: stop baddies and drugs. 

Instead, US citizen volunteers are stepping up to wage a grassroots war of welcome. And our state and federal governments are criminalizing them for it!

For more on the 1997 outcome of the Flores Settlement Agreement and the protracted attack its protections endured during the Trump administration, I point you to this October 30, 2020 report by Human Rights First.

When Guerline and I met during her nine-hour Geneva-Los Angeles layover in London in August 2022, I pitched the idea of centering her family’s immigration tale at the heart of a larger, multi-generational saga I knew I had to tell: that of Haiti and how its sovereign rights to security and self-governance have been defiled again and again by western powers for well over two centuries. Haiti’s story represents the unacknowledged history of US interventionism and imperialism throughout the global south — the very story that has created the crises in forced displacement and migration we are failing to deal with responsibly today. It exposes the start of mass incarceration of peace-keeping people who also happen to be poor and of color, what many people impacted by the system have likened to “modern enslavement” and “state-sponsored kidnapping and torture.” It reveals the beginning of the end-run around the 1951 Refugee Convention that the wealthy world continues to perpetrate and which international Refugee Protection Regime seems unable to stop.  It illustrates how multiple US administrations crossed the line in repudiating their own legal obligations under the 1980 Refugee Act.

I pitched the idea to Guerline over a full English breakfast in Knightsbridge. And as we meandered eastward across London, from Kensington to Buckingham Palaces, through Green and St James Parks, over the Westminster and Millennium bridges, she shared the Jozef family odyssey you now see in Crossing the Line. We spoke non-stop for six hours, before I put her and her family into a cab bound for Heathrow.

A tireless advocate and ally to all, Guerline was one of very few story collaborators too busy fighting the good fight to participate in final fact-checking and verification of her chapter. Lucky for me, Guerline is a public figure, with numerous interviews, articles, and videos by and about her already in the record. Her views can be heard on the audio show she hosted, “Tales from the Borderlands and Beyond.” She was recognized by Politico in 2021 as one of the 40 Most Influential People on Race, Politics, and Policy in the United States, and has been featured in Forbes Magazine, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Time Magazine, The Miami Herald, Democracy Now, and many other publications. She has been honored in the human rights and immigrant rights worlds, receiving such accolades as"

• Las Americas 2021 Border Hero Award;

• 2021 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award; 

• 2022 National Haitian-American Elected Officials Network Community Champion Award; and

• 2022 American Immigration Lawyers Association’s Arthur C. Helton Human Rights Award.

• She was a Haitian Times' Newsmakers of 2022 and received the prestigious Dutty Boukman award. 

I was, therefore, able to double- and triple-check her story against these resources (as Guerline states: Anpil Men Chay Pa Lou, Many Hands Make the Load Lighter). But journalists don’t always get the details right, and they never engage their subjects as collaborators – in that, my methodology, my process for this book, is unique. So apologies if inadvertent errors were made.

Another resource was our podcast episode for From the Borderlands (formerly Witness Radio). It was during that chat, about the invisible wall created by Title 42, when Guerline first taught me about the recurring, multi-year Haitian exodus and diaspora.

Serendipitously, that story was further supported in May 2022 thanks to the five-part investigation by Emmett Lindner for the New York Times of the long, dark history of US and French anti-Black injustice against the Haitian Republic and people, known as the Double Debt. The piece recalls the confessions that Marine General turned whistleblower, Smedley Butler, disclosed in his 1935 exposé, War is a Racket (see Bibliography). It is also part of the tale told by Juan Gonzalez in Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in America, who first connected the dots for me that the original antagonists of Haiti’s tragic downfall — National City Bank turned CitiBank turned Citi — were the Stillman family robber barons of Brownsville, Texas, where my own journey of discovery begins (see Bibliography).

I have Haitian activist-scholars, Leslie Mullin and Judith Mirkinson, to thank not only for fact-checking the chapter draft but for gifting me a personal syllabus, which included the writings of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Haiti’s first democratically elected president, who was twice deposed by corrupt elites with the aid of Western powers, most notably, the US. It is a reality about which far too many of us have a clue. Nor do we have a clue, writes Aristide, about the negative effects of the neoliberal economic experiment kicked off in the early ‘90s just as the Jozef family was displaced.

Aristide’s 2000 book, Eyes of the Heart: Seeking a Path for the Poor in the Age of Globalization, is a compassionate treatise on behalf of people marginalized worldwide, and a word of warning to the Global North that neoliberalism would only increase worldwide poverty and inequality — for when the only measure of value is profit and the only measure of human progress is economic growth, Aristide writes, people lose (see Bibliography). Tragically, his message remains unheeded. 

It is from Aristide that I learned that, “In this age of unprecedented growth, more than 1.3 billion people live on less than one dollar a day. Three billion people, or half the population of the world, live on less than two dollars a day.” That one percent of people control 45 percent of Haiti's wealth; 85 percent of the population could not read and write in the year 2000; and over 500,000 children, mostly young girls, then lived in Haitian households as unpaid domestic workers — carrying water, cleaning house, doing errands, receiving no salary and no schooling. Not much has changed in the intervening decades. Indeed, things have only gotten worse. 

That is why the Haitian people run: because, as Guerline states, “you don’t take your life into your own hands like that unless it is too dangerous to stay.” That is why it is morally reprehensible that the US government – having largely caused the problems Haiti faces, dating back more than two centuries – continues to drop people in need back into a house on fire. 

In addition to Silky Shah and Kristina Shull (see Bibliography), whose works document the private prison system sparked by the xenophobic reaction to the Mariel Boatlift, I have the following journalists and legal scholars to thank for helping me to mark the modern manifestation of the US making many of the bank of others’ misery:

• Frances Frank Marcus, who in an April 1986 special report for the New York Times introduces us to the first “prison for aliens” to open in Oakdale, Louisiana, with capacity to detain more people than all border facilities, at that point, combined. 

• Harold Hong Koh, Esq., lead counsel in Haitian Centers Council, Inc. v. McNary (1992), which tells about the Haitian interdiction program to Gitmo: “its origins, its illegality, and its moral failings.” Find the 1993 decision here.

• Rupert Neate’s report, Welcome to Jail, Inc., for the Guardian in 2016 that locking up immigrants is“terrific, terrific” business for the booming private industry supplying doctors and nurses to jails and prisons. Indeed, it’s pretty lucrative for the food catering industries, as well as jumpsuit, prison bar, and human restraint device making businesses, etc., too.

• Clyde Haberman’s parallel conclusion, written for theNew York Times in 2016, that the tough-on-crime spree of the '80s and ‘90s spawned the boom in big yields for the dehumanists willing to benefit off human misery, like the heads of CoreCivic and GEO Group.

• This 2019 Washington Post op-ed by Smita Ghosh, then immigration research fellow at Georgetown University Law Center, pointing out the parallels between the xenophobia of the Reagan ‘80s, when a prison uprising of detained Cubans was explained away as being the act of “harden criminals,” rather than the reaction of people denied freedom; when Haitian asylum seekers were labeled, as a group, to be “considered at increased risk of AIDS;” and when the narrative spread that country had “lost control of [its] borders” and would, without detention, “crumble under the burden of overwhelming numbers.”

It’s important to remember, however, that the US has a long history in incarcerating “the other,” as Freedom for Immigrants teaches us.

• 1892: the first dedicated immigration detention facility in the world opens at the Ellis Island Immigration Station in New Jersey.

• 1893: Congress passes the first law requiring the detention of any person the executive and legislative branches deemed were not entitled to admission.

• 1910: the second dedicated immigration detention facility in the US opens on Angel Island, California.

• 1942: Executive Order 9066 provides for the internment of 120,000 Japanese-Americans during World War II, as well as German-Americans and Italian-Americans suspected of serving as enemy spies.

The next round of mass immigration detentions came in response to the Mariel Boatlift, but also, as we saw in Chapters Ten and Eleven, to Haitian and Central American refugees fleeing US-supported dictatorships, like Duvalier regime, as well as US-funded genocide and civil wars.

For more on the Mariel Boatlift, history of Haitian migration, and the politics of race-based exclusion, I recommend this piece in the December 2021 edition of the Anthurium A Caribbean Studies Journal 17(2) by Monika Gosin. Also worth reading is David Engstrom’s case study of the Carter Administration's response to the Mariel Boatlift, Presidential Decision Making Adrift: The Carter Administration and the Mariel Boatlift (see Bibliography) Engstrom argues that a faulty decision-making structure and ignorance of the historical dynamics of Cuban immigration contributed to the government's mishandling of the refugee crisis. The importance of the long-term historical repercussions to US immigration and refugee policy cannot be overstated.

Carter may have blundered, but the anti-Black attitude of the Reagan-Bush administration was deliberate and its intent to make an end-run around the 1951 Refugee Convention and 1980 Refugee Act was surgical, giving permission to other world powers to do the same. By way of contemporary examples of “push backs” and other forms of border management externalization practices they modeled, we have the tragic abominations of Italy, Australia, and the European Union. Indeed, as the US border pushes southward and into Mexico, so do Fortress Europe’s boundaries extend into northern Africa where the E.U. has funded the creation of a shadowy, secretive prison system run by rogue militias, especially in Libya. Tasked with keeping newcomers out of Europe no matter the human costs, writer Ian Urbino shows us in The New Yorker, November 18, 2021 edition, that where such brutality abounds, there can be no hope that human rights commitments will prevail.

For more on the topic of the EU's abhorrent response to worldwide human displacement and migrations — and I warn you, it’s a very hard read — I recommend Sally Hayden’s 2022 My Fourth Time, We Drowned: Seeking Refuge on the World’s Deadliest Migration Route (see Bibliography.)

Big thanks to Lee Gelernt and Philip Schrag for fact-checking early drafts of this chapter. Resources referenced include:

Books

Schrag, Philip G. Baby Jails: The Fight to End the Incarceration of Refugee Children in America. University of California Press, Jan 2020.

Documentaries & Films

The Least of These, 2009, explores one of the most controversial aspects of American immigration policy: family detention.

Journalism

Gagne, David, InSight Crime’s 2016 Homicide Round-up, Insight Crime, 16 Jan 2017.

Gogolak, Emily, What's Next for Immigrant Families in Detention? The New Yorker Magazine, July 30, 2015.

Lind, Dara, The 2014 Central American migrant crisis. Vox, Oct 10, 2014.

Talbot, Margaret, The Lost Children, What do tougher detention policies mean for undocumented immigrant families?The New Yorker Magazine, February 24, 2008.

Reports

ACLU report: Landmark Settlement Announced in Federal Lawsuit Challenging Conditions at Immigrant Detention Center in Texas, August 2007.

ACLU report: RILR v. Johnson,report on the case brought on behalf of mothers and children who fled extreme violence, death threats, rape, and persecution in Central America; were found by an immigration officer or judge to have a "credible fear" of persecution; yet remained incarcerated by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) as part of "an aggressive deterrence strategy" by the Obama administration.

Schmidt, Susan and Jacqueline Bhabha, Seeking Asylum Alone: Unaccompanied and Separated Children and Refugee Protection in the U.S., The Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth, June 2006.

United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. Global Study on Homicide, 2013.

My profound gratitude to Dylan Corbett, executive director of HOPE Border Institute, for entrusting me with the true story of the start of family separation under the Trump administration (or was it the Obama administration?) in El Paso. In addition to running HOPE, Dylan, a graduate of the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, coordinates the Vatican's Migrants & Refugees Section in Mexico, Central America, and the French- and Spanish-speaking Caribbean. Before founding HOPE, Dylan was a staffer to the bishops of the United States at both the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) Department of Justice, Peace, and Human Development and the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD), the national anti-poverty and social justice program of the USCCB.

Among the many learnings Dylan provided was introducing me to Homeland Security Investigations (HSI). One of the twenty-two Department of Homeland Security offices and agencies, the mission of the HSI is to dismantle Transnational Criminal Organizations and terrorist networks spawned by myopic US economic and foreign policies. 

Big thanks, as well, to ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt, Camilo Perez-Bustillo then of HOPE now of Witness at the Border, and members of Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center (who prefer to remain unnamed) for help with fact- and quote-checking this chapter.

Books (see Bibliography)

Davis, Julie Hirschfeld and Michael D. Shear. Border Wars: Inside Trump's Assault on Immigration. Simon and Schuster, October 2019.

Efrén Olivares, My Boy Will Die of Sorrow: A Memoir of Immigration from the Front Lines.

Soboroff, Jacob. Separated: Inside an American Tragedy. HarperCollins, July 2020.

Journalism

Associated Press. Honduran Border Crosser Separated from Family Kills Himself in Texas Jail. June 10, 2018.

Blitzer, Jonathan. New Yorker Magazine. How the Trump Administration Got Comfortable Separating Immigrant Kids from their Families. May 30, 2018.

Blitzer, Wolf. CNN. Trump’s second of five Secretaries of Homeland Security, and a former Marine General, John Kelly, says the administration is considering separating children from their parents to deter families from trying to enter the United States in a manner the administration insists on referring to as “illegal.” though seeking asylum is never illegal. Mar 6, 2017.

Burke, Garance. Washington Post. Federal agency says it lost track of 1,475 migrant children. April 27, 2018.

C-Span. HHS Secretary Unable to Say How Many Parents Know of Migrant Children Whereabouts. June 28, 2108.

Dart, Tom. The Guardian. 2,000 children separated from parents in six weeks under Trump policy. Sat 16 Jun 2018.

del Bosque, Melissa. The Intercept. The El Paso Experiment: A Public Defender’s Lonely Fight Against Family Separation. November 1, 2020.

Hennessy-Fiske, Molly. Los Angeles Times. U.S. is Separating Immigrant Parents and Children to Discourage Others, Activists Say. February 20, 2018.

Holpuch, Amanda. The Guardian. Trump's separation of families constitutes torture, doctors find: Evaluations of 26 people by Physicians for Human Rights provides first in-depth look at policy’s psychological impact. February 20, 2020.

Juvonen, Jaana, Jennifer Silvers. Washington Post. Separating children from parents at the border isn’t just cruel. It’s torture. We already knew it was inhumane. It also violates international law. May 15, 2018.

Kopal, Tal. DHS: 2,000 Children Separated from Parents at Border. June 16, 2018.

Kriel, Lomi. Houston Chronicle. Trump Moves to End ‘Catch and Release.’ November 25, 2017.

Miroff, Nick. Washington Post. Trump’s ‘zero tolerance’ at the border is causing child shelters to fill up fast. May 29, 2018.

Moore, Robert. Texas Monthly. Inside Texas’s New Tent City for Children: Texas Congressman Will Hurd visits a new detention center and rips Trump’s family separation policy.
June 16, 2018.

Moore, Robert. Texas Monthly. Trump Administration May Be Creating ‘Permanently Orphaned’ Immigrant Kids, Judge Says: The judge ordered the administration to begin finding missing parents and to reunite them with their children. August 4, 2018.

Moore, Robert. Texas Monthly. Dozens of Immigrant Parents Remain Separated From Their Children: A month after a federal judge’s deadline, more than 500 children remain in federal custody and away from their families. August 27, 2018.

Rose, Joel. National Public Radio. Doctors Concerned About 'Irreparable Harm' To Separated Migrant Children.June 15, 2018.

Thompson, Ginger. ProPublica. Listen to Children Who’ve Just Been Separated From Their Parents at the Border. June 18, 2018.

The World (Reuters). US says nearly 2,000 families have been separated at the Mexico border. June 15, 2018.

Reports

Borderland Immigration Council, Simon, Theodora; Edith Tapia; and Dylan Corbett; with support from Anai Ramirez. Discretion to Deny Family Separation, Prolonged Detention, and Deterrence of Asylum Seekers at the Hands of Immigration Authorities Along the US-Mexico Border. November 25, 2017.

Borderland Immigration Council, Tapia, Edith; Camilo Perez-Bustillo; Eli Beller; and Dylan Corbett; with support from Alejandro Marquez, Karen De Anda, and Ms. Brittany Hear, graduate students at the University of Texas at El Paso; Ms. Calla Couch and Ms. Beth Herdmann, graduate students at the University of Dayton; and graduate students from the “Research in Latin America and Border Studies” class taught by Dr. Jeremy Slack, assistant professor at the University of Texas at El Paso. Sealing the Border: The Criminalization of Asylum Seekers in the Trump Era. January 2018.

US Government Accountability Office, GAO-19-163. Unaccompanied Children: Agency Efforts to Reunify Children Separated from Parents at the Border. Oct 09, 2018.

Many people contributed their testimonies to the convergence narrative of this chapter. In (sort of) order of appearance, they include:

• Judge Kathleen Olivares and Analisa Cordova Silverstein, Loretto Academy alumni, and organizers of El Paso Cares—Liberty for All;

• Ashley Heidebrecht, social worker and community organizer;

• Adriana Cadena and Fernando Garcia, Border Network for Human Rights;

• Dylan Corbett and Camilo Perez-Bustillo, HOPE Border Institute;

• Melissa Bowen Rubin, Joshua Rubin, Margaret Seiler, and other members of Don’t Separate Families, Brooklyn, NY;

• Diana Martinez, history professor and organizer;

• Production and camera crew of Carbon Trace Productions, Springfield, MO.

Books (see Bibliography)

Briggs, Laura. Taking Children: A History of American Terror. University of California Press, August 2021.

Journalism

Bogado, Aura and Patrick Michels. US government uses several clandestine shelters to detain immigrant children. March 18, 2019.

Dickerson, Cailin. New York Times. Migrant Children Moved Under Cover of Darkness to a Texas Tent City.Sept. 30, 2018.

Kates, Graham. CBS News. John Kelly joins board of company operating largest shelter for unaccompanied migrant children. May 3, 2019.

Miroff, Nick. Washington Post. Trump’s ‘zero tolerance’ at the border is causing child shelters to fill up fast. May 29, 2018.

Miroff, Nick and Paul Sonne. Washington Post. Trump administration preparing to hold immigrant children on military bases. May 15, 2018.

Muldowney, Decca and Alex Mierjeski, Claire Perlman, Lilia Chang, Ken Schwencke, Adriana Gallardo and Derek Kravitz. ProPublica. The Immigrant Children’s Shelters Near You. June 27, 2018

Reveal: The Center for Investigative Reporting. The Office of Missing Children. December 21, 2018

Reports

Amnesty International. USA: Catastrophic immigration policies resulted in more family separations than previously disclosed. October 11, 2018.

Of Special Note

As of April 07, 2021, Caliburn International, LLC, calling itself “a leading provider of professional services and specialized technology solutions for the U.S. government and commercial clients worldwide,” announced its split into two new companies:

• Acuity International, which will be comprised of the company’s (i) Engineering & Technology, (ii) Advanced Medical, and (iii) Global Mission business units and;

• Valiance Humanitarian (“Valiance”), which will continue the company’s humanitarian efforts, primarily to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement.

The story convergence continues with oral testimonies, copyediting, fact- and quote-checking by the following story collaborators (in order of appearance):

• Joshua Rubin

• Ashley Heidebrecht and Diana Martinez

• Lee and Nancy Goodman of Hakafa Congregation, Glencoe, Illinois, speaking for Rabbi Bruce Elder

• Rabbi Josh Whinston

• Judge Kathleen Olivares, speaking for the senior class at El Paso’s Loretto Academy

• Camilo Perez-Bustillo, then of HOPE Border Institute, speaking for Father Rafael Garcia of South El Paso’s Sacred Heart Parish as well as for National Book Award Winner Martín Espada

• Ryan Matlow, Stanford University child psychologist and trauma specialist

• Thomas Cartwright, Karla Barber, and Julie Swift of what would become Witness at the Border

Documentaries & Film

Witness at Tornillo follows 66-year-old Joshua Rubin from Brooklyn, NY, an activist who became a fixture of the #FamiliesBelongTogether protests. He helped draw national attention to the teen incarceration facilities in Tornillo, Texas, and Homestead, Florida, by bearing witness—what he defines as the “subversive act of seeing.” Carbon Trace Productions, 2020.

Journalism

Bracamontes, Aaron. KTSM El Paso. Michigan Rabbi helping immigrants in Tornillo. October 31, 2018.

Burke, Garance and Martha Mendoza. US waived FBI checks on staff at growing teen migrant camp. November 28, 2018.

CNBC. Nearly 15,000 migrant children in federal custody jammed into crowded shelters. December 19 2018.

Delgado, Edwin. The Guardian. 'A dangerous precedent': Texans outraged at prospect of tent cities for migrants: Soldiers based at Fort Bliss believe construction of detention center is imminent as locals speak out against Trump’s crackdown. November 18, 2018.

Delgado, Edwin. The Guardian. Carols at Tornillo: protesters sing for children held in Trump's tent city: Beto O’Rourke showed up to boost locals and activists seeking to give migrants some festive season cheer. December 24, 2018.

Espada, Martín. The Progressive Magazine. Ode to the Soccer Ball Sailing Over a Barbed Wire Fence. January 28, 2020.

Hernández, Arelis R. The Washington Post. Trump administration is holding record number of migrant youths. December 21, 2018.

Kelly, Caroline. CNN. Watchdog: HHS not conducting key background check for staff at children’s detention facility. November 28, 2018.

Kopan, By Tal. The San Francisco Chronicle. ICE arrests undocumented adults who sought to take in immigrant children. Dec 10, 2018

Kotch, Alex. Sludge. These Nonprofits and Businesses Are Making Millions From Detaining Immigrant Children: Dozens of nonprofit shelter groups and several for-profit companies have made enormous amounts of money from detaining and transporting migrant kids. July 3, 2019.

Melson, Kayla. KTSM News, El Paso. Reports: Hundreds of migrant children transferred to Tornillo ‘tent city’. October 1, 2018.

Misra, Tanvi. Bloomberg. The Life and Death of an American Tent City: Over a period of seven months, a vast temporary facility built to hold migrant children emerged in the Texas border town of Tornillo. And now, it’s almost gone. January 15, 2019.

Moore, Robert. El Paso Inc. Democrats promise to review Tornillo migrant tent city if they win the House. Oct 21, 2018.

Moore, Robert. TexasMonthly. Relatives of Separated Children Are Now in ICE’s Sights: Unprecedented ICE access to ORR data turns safe placement screening into a mechanism for immigration enforcement, officials and activists say. June 23, 2018.

Moore, Robert. TexasMonthly. Tornillo Tent City Will Expand To Hold Even More Migrant Kids: The facility near El Paso will more than double its capacity for unaccompanied minors, expanding to 3,800 beds. September 11, 2018.

Moore, Robert. TexasMonthly. Tent City Operator’s Request for Policy Shift Could Reduce the Mass Detention of Migrant Children: Beto O’Rourke said the contractor is asking the Trump administration to stop sharing fingerprints of potential sponsors with immigration agents. December 15, 2018.

Moore, Robert. TexasMonthly. Thousands of Migrant Children Could Be Released With Trump’s Major Policy Reversal: Federal officials have reversed course and announced they will reduce fingerprint requirements of potential sponsors for detained children. December 18, 2018.

Moore, Robert. The Washington Post. U.S. opening 2,500-bed migrant facility in Tornillo, Tex., site of controversial child shelter.
July 12, 2019.

Parker, Richard. The Atlantic. After the Pittsburgh Shootings, a Thanksgiving Pilgrimage to the Texas Border: Rabbi Josh Whinston from Ann Arbor, Michigan, led his people to the desert in El Paso to help asylum seekers from Central America. November 22, 2018.

Vine, Katy. Texas Monthly. Behind Every Painting, a Desperate Kid: The “Uncaged Art” of Tornillo’s Detained Migrant Children. April 26, 2019.

Warikoo, Niraj. Detroit Free Press. Michigan rabbi leads caravan of faith to help immigrant kids in Texas. November 16, 2018.

Weixel, Nathaniel. The Hill. White House requests additional $190M for housing detained migrant children, Dem lawmaker says. December 6, 2018.

WNYC Studios. The Takeaway. Government Increasingly Uses Tent Cities as Number of Migrant Kids in Custody Surge. October 2, 2018.

Reports

American Academy of Pediatrics. Policy Statement: Detention of Immigrant Children. “In accordance with internationally accepted rights of the child, immigrant and refugee children should be treated with dignity and respect and should not be exposed to conditions that may harm or traumatize them.” May 1, 2017, reaffirmed, November 2022.

American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA). Trump Administration Lines Up End Run Around Protections for Detained Children. September 6, 2018.

Corbett, Dylan, Marisa Limón Garza, Camilo Perez-Bustillo, and Edith Tapia. HOPE Border Institute, Border Observatory 2019: Hope and Resistance at the Border. 2019.

Celebrity Social Media

Milano, Alyssa. Broadcasting live with activist Joshua Rubin from Tornillo discussing #FamilySeparation and the child detention. ‬November 2108.

Of Special Note:

Under Section 287(g) of the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act, also written into the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) of 1996, ICE can deputize local police departments to engage in federal immigration enforcement activities. Many states and localities have historically refused to participate in the 287(g) program as it more than not leads to illegal racial profiling and civil rights abuses while diverting scarce resources from traditional local law enforcement functions. A largely unused distortion of immigration enforcement priorities, it was revived nationwide under Trump.

Notes to come. Forgive the delay. But I’ve been out canvassing and speaking out against “mass deportations” since March 2024.

I know it’s atypical, but these are not typical times — neither in life, history, or publishing.

I’ve witnessed mass deportations. Chapter 32, Crossing the Line, is one of only two public accounts—that I know of— that document what actually takes place on an ICE-Air expulsion mission. Not only are they not pretty, they violate myriad US and international laws as they defy human decency.

How could I have known that one candidate for the US presidency would be promising such abominations as a daily part of life if given another administration? How could I understand the human and economic costs of such a plan and not speak out? How can it be true that approximately half the US population thinks this is a good idea?

I would have had these endnotes finished before Crossing the Line went to print, but I got swept up in thwarting the monster and his acolytes before I could finish them. Not gonna lie.

My outrage—and speaking tour to educate the public about mass deportations—and adrenaline—took over.

I’ll have these notes finished in a jiffy…just as soon as the 2024 election is over. Thanks for your understanding.

Sarah

Books

Documentaries & Film

Journalism

Reports

Notes to come. Forgive the delay. But I’ve been out canvassing and speaking out against “mass deportations” since March 2024.

I know it’s atypical, but these are not typical times — neither in life, history, or publishing.

I’ve witnessed mass deportations. Chapter 32, Crossing the Line, is one of only two public accounts—that I know of— that document what actually takes place on an ICE-Air expulsion mission. Not only are they not pretty, they violate myriad US and international laws as they defy human decency.

How could I have known that one candidate for the US presidency would be promising such abominations as a daily part of life if given another administration? How could I understand the human and economic costs of such a plan and not speak out? How can it be true that approximately half the US population thinks this is a good idea?

I would have had these endnotes finished before Crossing the Line went to print, but I got swept up in thwarting the monster and his acolytes before I could finish them. Not gonna lie.

My outrage—and speaking tour to educate the public about mass deportations—and adrenaline—took over.

I’ll have these notes finished in a jiffy…just as soon as the 2024 election is over. Thanks for your understanding.

Sarah

Books

Documentaries & Film

Journalism

Reports

Notes to come. Forgive the delay. But I’ve been out canvassing and speaking out against “mass deportations” since March 2024.

I know it’s atypical, but these are not typical times — neither in life, history, or publishing.

I’ve witnessed mass deportations. Chapter 32, Crossing the Line, is one of only two public accounts—that I know of— that document what actually takes place on an ICE-Air expulsion mission. Not only are they not pretty, they violate myriad US and international laws as they defy human decency.

How could I have known that one candidate for the US presidency would be promising such abominations as a daily part of life if given another administration? How could I understand the human and economic costs of such a plan and not speak out? How can it be true that approximately half the US population thinks this is a good idea?

I would have had these endnotes finished before Crossing the Line went to print, but I got swept up in thwarting the monster and his acolytes before I could finish them. Not gonna lie.

My outrage—and speaking tour to educate the public about mass deportations—and adrenaline—took over.

I’ll have these notes finished in a jiffy…just as soon as the 2024 election is over. Thanks for your understanding.

Sarah

Books

Documentaries & Film

Journalism

Reports

Notes to come. Forgive the delay. But I’ve been out canvassing and speaking out against “mass deportations” since March 2024.

I know it’s atypical, but these are not typical times — neither in life, history, or publishing.

I’ve witnessed mass deportations. Chapter 32, Crossing the Line, is one of only two public accounts—that I know of— that document what actually takes place on an ICE-Air expulsion mission. Not only are they not pretty, they violate myriad US and international laws as they defy human decency.

How could I have known that one candidate for the US presidency would be promising such abominations as a daily part of life if given another administration? How could I understand the human and economic costs of such a plan and not speak out? How can it be true that approximately half the US population thinks this is a good idea?

I would have had these endnotes finished before Crossing the Line went to print, but I got swept up in thwarting the monster and his acolytes before I could finish them. Not gonna lie.

My outrage—and speaking tour to educate the public about mass deportations—and adrenaline—took over.

I’ll have these notes finished in a jiffy…just as soon as the 2024 election is over. Thanks for your understanding.

Sarah

Books

Documentaries & Film

Journalism

Reports

Notes to come. Forgive the delay. But I’ve been out canvassing and speaking out against “mass deportations” since March 2024.

I know it’s atypical, but these are not typical times — neither in life, history, or publishing.

I’ve witnessed mass deportations. Chapter 32, Crossing the Line, is one of only two public accounts—that I know of— that document what actually takes place on an ICE-Air expulsion mission. Not only are they not pretty, they violate myriad US and international laws as they defy human decency.

How could I have known that one candidate for the US presidency would be promising such abominations as a daily part of life if given another administration? How could I understand the human and economic costs of such a plan and not speak out? How can it be true that approximately half the US population thinks this is a good idea?

I would have had these endnotes finished before Crossing the Line went to print, but I got swept up in thwarting the monster and his acolytes before I could finish them. Not gonna lie.

My outrage—and speaking tour to educate the public about mass deportations—and adrenaline—took over.

I’ll have these notes finished in a jiffy…just as soon as the 2024 election is over. Thanks for your understanding.

Sarah

Books

Documentaries & Film

Journalism

Reports

Notes to come. Forgive the delay. But I’ve been out canvassing and speaking out against “mass deportations” since March 2024.

I know it’s atypical, but these are not typical times — neither in life, history, or publishing.

I’ve witnessed mass deportations. Chapter 32, Crossing the Line, is one of only two public accounts—that I know of— that document what actually takes place on an ICE-Air expulsion mission. Not only are they not pretty, they violate myriad US and international laws as they defy human decency.

How could I have known that one candidate for the US presidency would be promising such abominations as a daily part of life if given another administration? How could I understand the human and economic costs of such a plan and not speak out? How can it be true that approximately half the US population thinks this is a good idea?

I would have had these endnotes finished before Crossing the Line went to print, but I got swept up in thwarting the monster and his acolytes before I could finish them. Not gonna lie.

My outrage—and speaking tour to educate the public about mass deportations—and adrenaline—took over.

I’ll have these notes finished in a jiffy…just as soon as the 2024 election is over. Thanks for your understanding.

Sarah

Books

Documentaries & Film

Journalism

Reports

Notes to come. Forgive the delay. But I’ve been out canvassing and speaking out against “mass deportations” since March 2024.

I know it’s atypical, but these are not typical times — neither in life, history, or publishing.

I’ve witnessed mass deportations. Chapter 32, Crossing the Line, is one of only two public accounts—that I know of— that document what actually takes place on an ICE-Air expulsion mission. Not only are they not pretty, they violate myriad US and international laws as they defy human decency.

How could I have known that one candidate for the US presidency would be promising such abominations as a daily part of life if given another administration? How could I understand the human and economic costs of such a plan and not speak out? How can it be true that approximately half the US population thinks this is a good idea?

I would have had these endnotes finished before Crossing the Line went to print, but I got swept up in thwarting the monster and his acolytes before I could finish them. Not gonna lie.

My outrage—and speaking tour to educate the public about mass deportations—and adrenaline—took over.

I’ll have these notes finished in a jiffy…just as soon as the 2024 election is over. Thanks for your understanding.

Sarah

Books

Documentaries & Film

Journalism

Reports

Notes to come. Forgive the delay. But I’ve been out canvassing and speaking out against “mass deportations” since March 2024.

I know it’s atypical, but these are not typical times — neither in life, history, or publishing.

I’ve witnessed mass deportations. Chapter 32, Crossing the Line, is one of only two public accounts—that I know of— that document what actually takes place on an ICE-Air expulsion mission. Not only are they not pretty, they violate myriad US and international laws as they defy human decency.

How could I have known that one candidate for the US presidency would be promising such abominations as a daily part of life if given another administration? How could I understand the human and economic costs of such a plan and not speak out? How can it be true that approximately half the US population thinks this is a good idea?

I would have had these endnotes finished before Crossing the Line went to print, but I got swept up in thwarting the monster and his acolytes before I could finish them. Not gonna lie.

My outrage—and speaking tour to educate the public about mass deportations—and adrenaline—took over.

I’ll have these notes finished in a jiffy…just as soon as the 2024 election is over. Thanks for your understanding.

Sarah

Books

Documentaries & Film

Journalism

Reports

Notes to come. Forgive the delay. But I’ve been out canvassing and speaking out against “mass deportations” since March 2024.

I know it’s atypical, but these are not typical times — neither in life, history, or publishing.

I’ve witnessed mass deportations. Chapter 32, Crossing the Line, is one of only two public accounts—that I know of— that document what actually takes place on an ICE-Air expulsion mission. Not only are they not pretty, they violate myriad US and international laws as they defy human decency.

How could I have known that one candidate for the US presidency would be promising such abominations as a daily part of life if given another administration? How could I understand the human and economic costs of such a plan and not speak out? How can it be true that approximately half the US population thinks this is a good idea?

I would have had these endnotes finished before Crossing the Line went to print, but I got swept up in thwarting the monster and his acolytes before I could finish them. Not gonna lie.

My outrage—and speaking tour to educate the public about mass deportations—and adrenaline—took over.

I’ll have these notes finished in a jiffy…just as soon as the 2024 election is over. Thanks for your understanding.

Sarah

Books

Documentaries & Film

Journalism

Reports

Notes to come. Forgive the delay. But I’ve been out canvassing and speaking out against “mass deportations” since March 2024.

I know it’s atypical, but these are not typical times — neither in life, history, or publishing.

I’ve witnessed mass deportations. Chapter 32, Crossing the Line, is one of only two public accounts—that I know of— that document what actually takes place on an ICE-Air expulsion mission. Not only are they not pretty, they violate myriad US and international laws as they defy human decency.

How could I have known that one candidate for the US presidency would be promising such abominations as a daily part of life if given another administration? How could I understand the human and economic costs of such a plan and not speak out? How can it be true that approximately half the US population thinks this is a good idea?

I would have had these endnotes finished before Crossing the Line went to print, but I got swept up in thwarting the monster and his acolytes before I could finish them. Not gonna lie.

My outrage—and speaking tour to educate the public about mass deportations—and adrenaline—took over.

I’ll have these notes finished in a jiffy…just as soon as the 2024 election is over. Thanks for your understanding.

Sarah

Books

Documentaries & Film

Journalism

Reports

Notes to come. Forgive the delay. But I’ve been out canvassing and speaking out against “mass deportations” since March 2024.

I know it’s atypical, but these are not typical times — neither in life, history, or publishing.

I’ve witnessed mass deportations. Chapter 32, Crossing the Line, is one of only two public accounts—that I know of— that document what actually takes place on an ICE-Air expulsion mission. Not only are they not pretty, they violate myriad US and international laws as they defy human decency.

How could I have known that one candidate for the US presidency would be promising such abominations as a daily part of life if given another administration? How could I understand the human and economic costs of such a plan and not speak out? How can it be true that approximately half the US population thinks this is a good idea?

I would have had these endnotes finished before Crossing the Line went to print, but I got swept up in thwarting the monster and his acolytes before I could finish them. Not gonna lie.

My outrage—and speaking tour to educate the public about mass deportations—and adrenaline—took over.

I’ll have these notes finished in a jiffy…just as soon as the 2024 election is over. Thanks for your understanding.

Sarah

Books

Documentaries & Film

Journalism

Reports

Notes to come. Forgive the delay. But I’ve been out canvassing and speaking out against “mass deportations” since March 2024.

I know it’s atypical, but these are not typical times — neither in life, history, or publishing.

I’ve witnessed mass deportations. Chapter 32, Crossing the Line, is one of only two public accounts—that I know of— that document what actually takes place on an ICE-Air expulsion mission. Not only are they not pretty, they violate myriad US and international laws as they defy human decency.

How could I have known that one candidate for the US presidency would be promising such abominations as a daily part of life if given another administration? How could I understand the human and economic costs of such a plan and not speak out? How can it be true that approximately half the US population thinks this is a good idea?

I would have had these endnotes finished before Crossing the Line went to print, but I got swept up in thwarting the monster and his acolytes before I could finish them. Not gonna lie.

My outrage—and speaking tour to educate the public about mass deportations—and adrenaline—took over.

I’ll have these notes finished in a jiffy…just as soon as the 2024 election is over. Thanks for your understanding.

Sarah

Books

Documentaries & Film

Journalism

Reports