Border
John Cornyn’s Weaselly Immigration Record
How to say one thing and do another.
On a June afternoon in 2007, U.S. Senator John Cornyn sounded eminently reasonable. In a floor speech, the rangy, snow-haired Texan said that of all the legisla...Read More
Activists Rally for the Closure of Hutto Detention Center as Private Contract Rumors Swirl
Former detainees were among those criticizing ICE's attempt to secure a 10-year private contract for the facility and two others in Texas.
Dozens of activists rallied outside the T. Don Hutto Residential Facility in Taylor on Saturday, denouncing Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s push to secu...Read More
When ICE Emptied Out an All-Women Detention Center in Texas, Chaos Ensued
Women formerly detained in Karnes County Residential Center have been lost in the shuffle, facing moved or cancelled court dates, high bonds, and legal confusion.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced in September that it would turn a detention center just outside of San Antonio back into a family residentia...Read More
The Fear—and Hope—of Living in Sanctuary
After fleeing domestic violence in Guatemala, I’ve been living inside a Texas church for the past four years. I’m exhausted, but I won’t stop fighting.
Hilda Ramirez is an asylum-seeker from Guatemala who came to the United States in 2014 after fleeing domestic violence. Ramirez and her son, Ivan, now 13, were ...Read More
Editorial: Reckoning with El Paso
People like to believe things are getting better—but what happened in El Paso underscores just how little has changed.
As I write this editorial, I’m exactly three months into my tenure at the Texas Observer. In that time, I’ve had the good fortune to hear readers express ge...Read More
If DACA Ends, It Would Be a ‘Catastrophe’ For Dreamers
As many as 700,000 people could be directly impacted by the end of the Obama-era program.
On June 15, 2012, Juan Carlos Cerda was installing a fan on the second-floor bedroom of a house in Preston Hollow, a wealthy neighborhood in north Dallas, when ...Read More
Author William Lopez on How Immigration Raids Inflict Long-Lasting Trauma
“There are 364 other days in the year when people’s lives are shaped by the possibility of deportation or a raid.”
On a cold Thursday morning in November 2013, Santiago (a pseudonym) was leaving his apartment on the top floor of an auto repair shop in Washtenaw County, Michi...Read More
Federal Judges Temporarily Block Public Charge Rule, but Public Health Worries Persist
In Texas, where 5.6 million people live in mixed-status families with at least one non-U.S. citizen, the chilling effect from the proposed rule is likely to exacerbate alarming trends.
Last month, Elizabeth Hasse, an immigration attorney with the Tahirih Justice Center in Houston, spoke to a client about renewing her work permit. Hasse had hel...Read More
Up From the Desert
As a child, I hunted for fossils in the Chihuahuan Desert beyond my backyard. Those afternoons shaped the way I think about my fronteriza identity today.
I spent many childhood afternoons searching for sea fossils in the Chihuahuan Desert, finding geologic history strewn throughout the brown and dusty land. My ne...Read More