You can see a long way from Border Patrol Hill. A clear day and good pair of binoculars get you visibility for twenty, thirty, sometimes forty miles into Mexico. It’s view broken only by the rolling terrain on both sides of the Amistad reservoir. This used to be a barren and canyon-strewn section of the...
In the face of a historic border crisis due to the intentional reduction of federal immigration law enforcement, legislation has finally been passed in Texas to help fill the gap and better secure America’s southern border. Gov. Greg Abbott was expected to sign the bill on Friday, Sept. 17—as the crisis at the border intensifies,...
The dramatic initial success of Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan, by any measure one of history’s most effective military offensives, gave way to 20 years of increasingly bureaucratic, decreasingly effective nation-building efforts, culminating in this month’s surrender to the Taliban and calamitous evacuation of Kabul. As the Biden administration planned what would become the August...
The debacle in Afghanistan is still unfolding, but it is already one of the signal disasters of American history. It’s usually premature to assess contemporary events in history’s light, so it’s a sign of just how bad things are in Kabul that I — a historian — am ready to put it alongside the Bay...
Weeks ago, San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin unwittingly drew attention to the real crisis at the U.S. border — human trafficking carried out by ruthless criminal organizations. “We need to also recognize a significant percentage of people selling drugs in San Francisco, perhaps as many as half, are here from Honduras,” he said. “And...
Backed into a corner by circumstances at the border and growing pressure from Congress, the White House on Monday renewed a public health order—Title 42—that allows the Border Patrol to turn migrants back at the border over COVID-19 concerns. That pressure from Congress came in the form of a discharge petition on a bill that...
Alma Barragan was a 61-year-old mayoral candidate in the small central Mexican town of Moroleon. On May 25, twelve days before the June 6 election, she stood at a campaign event, microphone in hand, speaking of a time in the idyllic past when the people of Moroleon could safely walk its streets. She urged an...
Numbers matter. Illegal immigration into the U.S.—particularly across the Texas border—is at levels we haven’t seen for two decades. But the heartbreaking video that emerged earlier this month of human smugglers abandoning a 5-year-old child at the border sums up the crisis better than any statistic can. As the child screams for help, one of...
As the crisis at the southern border rages on, House Democrats this week proposed a new appropriations bill for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that would severely cut funding to Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), while rescinding over $2 billion in border wall funding from last year. Ironically,...
The hope of employment is one of the main reasons unauthorized migrants continue to enter the United States. In Texas, undocumented workers make up 8.5% of the state’s total labor force. In addition to violating the law, employers who knowingly hire unauthorized migrants often take advantage of them by paying extremely low wages, refusing to...
What do you think of when you hear about El Paso, Texas? I was born and raised there, so when I think of El Paso, I think of home. I think of the early mornings when my family and I would cross the border to go to church with my abuelitos at La Primera Bautista...
On the high north bank of the Rio Grande River, an uninhabited home overlooks the river. Our small group — members of the Border Security Coalition who traveled to Val Verde County to see the border crisis for ourselves — stood on a pleasant green landing near the property, but we weren’t allowed to enter....