Tag Archives: U.S. Customs and Border Protection
Documents: CBP Ignored Federal Biologists’ Input on Border Wall
Border security officials visited wildlife preserves in Starr County, then blew off the recommendations of the scientists they brought along.
In December 2017, a group of Customs and Border Protection officials met with federal wildlife biologists in McAllen for what CBP billed as a collaborative meet...Read More
Instead of Building Family-Friendly Jails for Migrants, We Should Just Stop Jailing Them
The processing centers are jails by another name, where men, women and children are kept in large group cells with no access to beds, full meals or even adequate drinking water.
While immigration politics play out on the national stage, El Paso is once again becoming a testing ground for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. As part...Read More
Valeria Luiselli’s Third Novel Reckons with the Trauma Inflicted on Migrant Kids
Lost Children Archive is not only an indictment of U.S. immigration policy, but a requiem memorializing every child who has ever lost their right to a childhood.
Early in Valeria Luiselli’s virtuosic new novel, Lost Children Archive, the narrator realizes she has entered an ethical minefield. She makes radio documentar...Read More
Texas Teacher Could Lose Her Home If Trump Gets Any More Border Wall Funding
The feds are moving on Starr County land that they don’t have funding to build on yet. Congress could still stop them.
Texas Teacher Could Lose Her Home If Trump Gets Any More Border Wall Funding The feds are moving on Starr County land that they don’t have funding to build on...Read More
Indigenous Activists Set Up Protest Camp at South Texas Cemetery to Stop Trump’s Wall
Environmentalists, veterans of the Standing Rock protests and Carrizo/Comecrudo tribal members are vowing to stare down the president's bulldozers.
The 154-year-old Eli Jackson Cemetery sits about a mile from the Rio Grande, south of the Hidalgo County town of San Juan. Encompassing about a quarter-acre, it...Read More
Texas Border Sheriffs: There is No Crisis and We Don’t Want Trump’s Wall
Despite Trump’s attempt to paint the Texas-Mexico border as a war zone, border counties are safer than the president’s own backyard. And local lawmen don’t believe a wall will do any good.
President Trump visited McAllen earlier this month to drum up support for spending $5.7 billion to build more border wall segments on the U.S.-Mexico border. He...Read More
Documents Reveal Where Trump Plans to Build His Wall in Starr County
New maps show that the president means to build through 162 tracts of private land in Roma, Rio Grande City and La Grulla, possibly razing a number of homes in the process.
For border residents, activists and journalists, information about Trump’s impending border wall is a rare commodity. The administration still hasn’t provid...Read More
The Texas Observer’s Best Features of 2018
Our favorite longreads of the year.
The Texas Observer’s Best Features of 2018 Our favorite longreads of the year. – by Rose Cahalan and Forrest Wilder December 26, 2018 Like children, itâ...Read More
Editor’s Note: The Long and the Short of It
Observer Editor Forrest Wilder on the importance of good longform storytelling.
This editor’s note originally appeared in the October issue of the Observer. I’ll admit it: for the last couple of years, I’ve paid little attention t...Read More