From the Borderlands

Thank you, Judith McQuistion, Lisa Seifert, and many others, for tuning into my live conversation with Dan Kowalski! We discussed, among other things, that:* Immigration is always a net positive for the host nation.* The current statute is something we built, so we can unbuild it in keeping with popular values and current historical context. We are not stuck with it, nor should we be, since it dates to an openly white supremacist past.* Our economy requires people to contribute to it to survive.* Authoritarians are masters at manipulating the limbic brain. But we can overcome fear through raising awareness and creating encounters with our immigration neighbors as well as our immigrant past.* We should be reimagining the system in every corner of the nation now, so that when these dark days are behind us, we’ll be ready to build something more realistic and humane from the ashes.* The focus on law enforcement, expanding the Gestapo, and its for-profit gulag will be our own undoing, bankrupting the nation as more people fall into vulnerability.Join me for my next live video in the app.Tales of Humanity is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Tales of Humanity at sarahtowle.substack.com/subscribe

Today, April 16, 2026, I join Moms4Good, MomsforTexas, Mother Forward, and the Blue Bunny Brigade, who have organized to get 10,000 of us moms across the country — and world, if you count me over in London — to make our national and state lawmakers face the brutal inhumanity of locking up children, and to turn up the heat until they #ShutDownDilley, #CloseTheCamps, and #ReuniteFamilies.To do that, we’re counting on you to call your state and federal elected officials today. Demand the immediate end to family internment in the USA, and the shutdown of the concentration camp in Dilley, Texas, operated by prison profiteer CoreCivic, by Mother’s Day. Find the toolkit here. Read on to learn more…It’s called the South Texas Family Residential Center. But don’t be fooled by the name. It’s a jail. A jail run by jailers. A jail that locks up immigrant children and youth FOR PROFIT, including Minnesota resident Liam Conejo Ramos, making a mockery of the party in power’s professed “belief” in family values and the sanctity of life. They are continuing an unacknowledged US pastime dating back to Bush 43… They are Locking Up Family Values. And they are making BANK doing it.Already convinced?Call your state and federal elected officials today!Tell them that locking up children and separating families is Not Okay! Demand that they tell Department of Homeland “Security” Secretary Markwayne Mullin to #ShutDownDilley, #CloseTheCamps, and #ReuniteFamilies by Mother’s Day!To learn more about CoreCivic, its heinous Dilley ‘Baby Jail,’ and the unacknowledged US pastime of locking up family values, please read on…I’ve been inside several facilities of the for-profit US immigrant Gulag. I’ve seen with my own eyes the punishing effects such confinement has on people. Fine people. People who are innocent of any real crime. I’m in touch with many who would make incredible contributions to our society were they not locked up and left to languish, sometimes for years, in daily contemplation about how to end their own lives. I can state, therefore, that the so-called “detention” and “processing” centers of the US immigrant Gulag are exactly as described in the testimonies of the directly impacted: “Torture chambers.” “Hell on Earth.” Places “built to break us.”“I don’t think they should grab immigrants who are innocent,like instead of grabbing criminals…they lock up children.”Ender, a 12-year-old kidnapped from Austin, Texas, more than 60 days agoWhen the first edition of Crossing the Line came out in June 2024, 80% of of the then-roughly 200-facility ICE Gulag was run by private prison profiteers, with the lion’s share of contracts going to GEO Group, formerly The Wackenhut Corporation, and CoreCivic, once operating as Corrections Corporation of America. Just seven months later, according to a February 21, 2025, analysis by Syracuse University’s Transactional Record Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), 90% of newcomers and asylum seekers to the US were trapped inside prisons run for-profit. They are black sites, where the mental health and well-being of everyone held hostage inside are being compromised forever. They are crowded congregant settings, aka concentration camps, where people, good people, are disappeared, and are now dying at a rate of one every six days, according to ICE researcher Austin Kocher.“I haven’t been happy since I got here. The officers have bad manner of speaking to residents…the workers treat the residents inhumanely…I want to tell you guys how I feel and is hell like…so much sadness and depression of not being able to leave…” Gaby, a 14-year-old kidnapped from Houston, Texas, more than 20 days agoThe Trump regime is on track to build an infrastructure capable of locking up more than 100,000 people on any given day — people who have largely committed no crime. Most shamefully, this includes children and youth: innocents who should be in school, not threatened with time in the SHU, the notorious “Special Housing Unit,” aka solitary confinement; innocents who should be allowed to play and run and draw and read, not be forced to remain quiet for 24 hours a day without books or toys or laughter or education. The so-called Pro-Life party, what’s more, is right now forcing teenage girls, some potentially impregnated by their US-citizens captors, to bring babies into the world without the benefit of prenatal care.No one should be locked up in places where they are denied medical attention, adequate nutrition, functional toilets, soap, and water worthy of drinking. No one should be provided only enough food to be kept from starvation; be made to withstand freezing temperatures day in and day out; and be forced to sleep under lights that blaze bright 24/7. No one should suffer retribution if they protest these inhumane conditions, file grievances against their captors, or attempt to speak to members of Congress or the press.But these are the daily realities in the US immigration Gulag. It is no place for anyone. It’s certainly no place for kids.“Since I got to this Center all I feel is sadness and depression…Not a lot of people know what is happening in the Centers where immigrants are placed…I have been in this country for 7 years…I have never been separated from my siblings…Since the day my mom and I got detained in Manhattan, NY, my life was instantly paused…All kids are being damaged mentally.” Ariana, a 14-year-old, formerly of Hicksville, New York,kidnapped at an ICE check-in more than 45 days ago“It’s unethical. It’s irresponsible. It’s unkind.” It is also well-documented that Children and youth experience confinement as torture. When they are traumatized this way, their bodies and brains stop functioning, a phenomenon known as toxic stress, which leads to life-long negative physical, emotional, and psychological outcomes.One present offender in the national pastime of terrorizing future generations also happens to be one of the world’s two largest private prison entities: Nashville, Tennessee-based CoreCivic. CoreCivic is profiting from the pain of school-aged children and babies.“Being locked up against my will is quite overwhelming, also I feel down about the idea that I couldn’t finish my school year.” Scarlett, a 17-year-old kidnapped from El Paso, Texas, time imprisoned unknownCoreCivic owns and operates more than 70 prisons and jails capable of enslaving more than 66,000 people, including immigrant non-offenders held in concentration camps that rely on inmate labor and denial of basic needs, like food and medical care, as a means of maintaining its highly profitable bottom line. Based on the company’s latest financial disclosures for 2025 and 2026, its annual revenue has doubled since the inauguration of the second Trump regime. Board members receive annual compensation packages ranging from $220,000 to $380,000, in cash retainers, meeting fees, and significant awards fueled by a stock buyback spree.“We’ve had a tremendous, tremendous second quarter,” stated CoreCivic CEO Damon Hininger during the latest earnings call, touting financial increases of over 100 percent compared to the same period last year.“We’re gonna have a very strong year,” he concluded, upon disclsing executive intentions to “lean way far forward” in support of Trump & Co’s ethnic-cleansing campaign. For CoreCivic, mass expulsion, no matter the human right violations, is good for business. They plan to invest five times what they have in the past to build out a transportation fleet of buses and vans to aid local law enforcement working in collaboration with the ICE and Border Patrol Gestapos to “quickly” move those kidnapped from their workplaces and out of their homes into the expanding immigrant Gulag.Indeed, plied with government contracts aimed at supporting shadow president Stephen Miller’s goal of expelling one million newcomers to the US every year for the next 10-15 years, CoreCivic and its chief rival, GEO Group, are laughing all the way to the bank. They are being enriched with taxpayer money made possible by the 2025 MAGA Murder Mandate — the Big legislative Betrayal the current occupant of the White House calls “beautiful” — which allocated $45 billion to boost bed capacity in the ICE Gulag to incarcerate more than 100,000 people at a time — people who’ve largely committed no crime. That includes children and youth.That’s an 800% increase in ICE’s budget from FY2024 for facilities alone.“ICE used me to catch my mom and now I am in jail [for 113 days] and I am sad and I have fainted 2 times here inside. When I arrived every night I cried and now I don’t sleep well, I felt like being here was my fault and I only wanted to be on vacation like a normal family.” Maria Antonia, a 9-year-old, traveling alone on a valid tourist visa, kidnapped at an international airport on arrival for a visit with her mom more than 113 days ago Texas has long been a willing contributor to — and benefactor of — the ICE immigrant Gulag. Seventy miles south of San Antonio, at CoreCivic’s Dilley Immigration Processing Center, 5,600 safety seekers, more than half of them children, have been imprisoned since it reopened in early 2025. Euphemistically referred to as the South Texas Family Residential Center, it is currently the nation’s only lock-up for immigrant families. But don’t be fooled by the name. Dilley is a jail. A jail run by jailers. A jail that locks up families, making a mockery of so-called family values.“I have been here for 70 days in this place. I don’t want to be in this place I want to go to school. I miss my grandparents. I miss my friends. I miss my uncles.” Mia Valentina, a 9-year-old kidnapped from Austin, Texas, more than 90 days agoWhat goes on behind Dilley’s concertina-laden fencing?That is the topic of Chapter 19 of Crossing the Line, Locking Up Family Values. Click the PLAY button above to give it a listen. ☝🏼☝🏼☝🏼Then circle back to find out about coming resistance actionsand how YOU can get involved…“Seeing how people like me, immigrants are treated changes my perspective about the U.S. My mom and I came to The U.S. for a good and safe place to live.” Susej, a 9-year-old kidnapped from Houston, Texas, more than 50 days agoComing Resistance Actions…If you are in or can get to Texas…On Saturday, April 18: All Aboard! Caravans of Moms will converge at the Dilley concentration camp to demand the release of children held there. We meet at noon. Join here. Saturday, April 25: Communities Not Cages National Day of Action to Stop ICE Warehouse Detention, organized by Detention Watch Network. Find out more and propose an action here.Friday, May 1: May Day Strong! No work, no school, no shopping. Sign the pledge and find or host an action at maydaystrong.org.Sunday, May 24: Divest from the Immigration Prison Industrial Complex! Join me, Dora Rodriguez, and other members of the Hope Knows No Borders Network for a creative brainstorm and workshop on all the many ways we, the people, can disrupt the ill-gotten gains of CoreCivic and GEO Group through boycotts and divestment. More info and registration link to follow. Until then… Be persistent. Be nonviolent. Bear Witness. Call your state and federal elected officials today!Tell them that locking up children and separating families is Not Okay! Demand that they tell Department of Homeland “Security” Secretary Markwayne Mullin to #ShutDownDilley, #CloseTheCamps, and #ReuniteFamilies by Mother’s Day!Stay strong, everybody. The only way through this is…Together,In solidarity,✊🏼 SarahAnat Shenker-Osorio Michael Podhorzer Andrew Free Pablo Manríquez #seeyouatdilley #destinationdilley #dillpill #iceoutTales of Humanity is a reader-supported publication. It will always remain free because not enough people understand our horrible, no good, really deadly immigration system. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Tales of Humanity at sarahtowle.substack.com/subscribe

Apropos of the final days of Holy Week 2026, the darkest moments in the Christian calendar — that still and scary time just before dawn — I wanted to share this piece from the archives: Alvaro Enciso’s Desert Monument to the Dead. I was back in Arizona on my latest speaking tour. I went for the Tucson Festival of Books — a guest of Rita Cantu and the Border Community Alliance. While there, I rode south into the desert three times: * To bear witness to the destruction of the San Rafael Valley by the last several miles of Trump’s boondoggle border wall, * To aid Humane Borders with a water drop run to Warsaw Canyon, * To plant crosses with Alvaro Enciso, Peter, and David, the same team featured in the archival podcast episode you access above — the same story that would become the concluding chapter of Crossing the Line: Finding America in the Borderlands, Buried Dreams. We were joined by a new member to the team, also named David, who was, completely coincidentally, one of my Binghamton, New York, hosts while on tour last fall. My reunion with Alvaro and his team, and their ceaseless attempt to memorialize the suffering of the great unknown, compelled me to dig up and listen to our audio collaboration, published more than four years ago. As I listened, I was taken with how eerily, hauntingly current it feels. And how appropriate to the season this statement is:“The cross is also a historical marker that was used by the Roman Empire to kill people. Remember, they used to hang them on crosses — false prophets, enemies of the empire. And they hung them out there for days in the sun without any water until they died, for everyone to see.“That’s exactly what’s happening here. People die from being exposed to the sun, without any water, on purpose.”—Alvaro Enciso, 2021Since 1994, rather than reimagine a US immigration system that respects human rights, lawmakers on both sides of the political aisle have openly leaned on the theory of Prevention through Deterrence, which I prefer to call Deterrence through Cruelty, because all it has ever done is to exact tremendous misery and harm, and to kill. Untold numbers of peace-seeking people, as well as innocent wildlife, have died or disappeared because of it.The policy epitomizes what happens when walls are erected around nations: They go up around human hearts as well. Though originally published in January 2022, the only updates to make to this audio-tale are the numbers contained within:* At least 12,000 people have now died an excruciating death in the Sonoran Desert (up from 10,000), based on the conservative estimate of one person dead per day since the strategy began.* Alvaro, Peter, and David have now planted 2,300 crosses, up from 1,200 at the time this podcast interview was published four years ago.* The then-already explosive FY2021 budget of $17.7 billion for Customs and Border Protection (CBP) — part of a $48 billion allocation for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) under the Biden administration — mushroomed following Trump & Co’s July 2025 passage of the Big Brutal Bill (what I call the MAGA Murder Mandate), which handed DHS $170.7 billion for border militarization and people trafficking, aka immigrant incarceration and expulsion, through September 30, 2029, bequeathing to DHS a purse larger than most national militaries, with* $51.6 billion earmarked for border wall construction, surveillance systems, and Border Patrol prisons;* $45 billion for expanding ICE concentration camp capacity; and* $29.9 billion for kidnapping, imprisoning, and expelling our neighbors, colleagues, family, and friends.What started for Alvaro as a dream “to reveal to the world the US government’s responsibility for turning the Sonoran Desert into a graveyard” has resulted in his transforming the desert into a cemetery, an art installation, and a memorial to the needless suffering of the unknown. It’s a work of monumental art, exposing government-sanctioned crimes against humanity. It’s art intended to lift the memory of those tragically and unnecessarily lost, while informing the living of the atrocities being quietly carried out in our names.It is art without end, apparently, as it parallels the same cruelty exercised by the Romans approximately 1,993 years ago, when one who preached the gospel of love and caring, of welcome and kindness, was forced to wear a crown of thorns that pierced his head and to carry the implement of his coming torture: a cross. Have we really learned nothing, people?Alvaro and I agree: Prevention through Deterrence, aka Deterrence through Cruelty, is exacting a quiet genocide. It is an expression of all that we should not be as a people and a nation. When these dark days are finally behind us, and we have the opportunity to build something new from Trump & Co’s ashes, we must end the policy of Prevention through Deterrence, as we tear down the structures that created it, particularly the Department of Homeland “Security,” which isn’t keeping any of us secure at all.Stay strong, my friends. The only way through this is… Together.✊🏼 SarahDon’t forget to tap the ♡ to like this podcast, and the 🔄 to share it. Tx!Tales of Humanity will always remain free because not enough people understand the human costs of an immigration system that privileges cruelty over kindness and “security” over human rights. If you like what I’m offering here — stories about radical care and mutual aid at a time of increasing fearmongering and hate — please consider becoming a paid subscriber. My gratitude in advance 🙏🏼. Get full access to Tales of Humanity at sarahtowle.substack.com/subscribe

On March 22, 2026, the fifth Sunday of the Lenten season, aka Passion Sunday, I had the great honor of addressing the incomparable St. Joan of Arc Catholic Community in Minneapolis, Minnesota, a parish renowned for its progressive stance and its focus on social justice. These folks rose ready, together, in the face of Trump & Co’s domestic terror campaign, “Operation Metro Surge,” to defend and safeguard the human and constitutional rights of their neighbors. For this lapsed Catholic, the daughter of a devout Twin Cities Minnesotan, who was en route to the priesthood when he met my mom, it was the perfect place to be welcomed back into the fold. Speaking on this topic during the sacred Lenten season of grief and giving, of reflection and renewal — the time of the passion, when we are called upon to express compassion — could not have felt more auspicious, more vital, or more urgent in today’s political climate. The story of Lent is mirrored in real life, right now. We are in that still and scary time just before the light of a new dawn, when folks just living their sweet lives are vilified, declared terrorists, arrested, shackled, imprisoned, denied food and water, and forced to participate in their own destruction, just as one who preached the gospel of love and caring, of welcome and kindness, was forced to wear a crown of thorns that pierced his head and to carry the implement of his coming torture. This is happening again every minute of every single day, inside the US’s deterrence to detention to deportation pipeline. And the cruelty is not okay. In the aftermath of ICE’s brutal and criminal tearing apart of more than 3,700 Minnesota families to date that we know of, according to the Deportation Data Project, under Trump & Co’s ethnic cleansing campaign for which they are developing a holocaust-style infrastructure of concentration camps, complete with transportation network, the community of St. Joan of Arc has been engaged in a spiritual centering down. Guided by the wise words of writer Sherman Alexie, as well as Christian theologian, educator, and civil rights leader, Rev. Dr. Howard Thurman, they have been preparing their heads, hands, and hearts for the ongoing struggle for social justice, that they may rise ready, together, when called upon again to do so. I am one more citizen marching against hatred.Alone, we are defenseless. Collected, we are sacred.We will march by the millions. We will tremble and grieve.We will praise and weep and laugh. We will believe.We will be courageous with our love. We will risk dangerAs we sing and sing and sing to welcome strangers.Sherman Alexie, 2017The community asked that I focus my remarks on where I find strength in these deeply dark and challenging times; about how I quiet my soul and my mind when there is so much to do and so many needs to meet, Every. Single. Moment. of. Every. Single. Day. About how I center down. But I had to admit that I am none too good at the practice myself. Indeed, I had to learn the hard way that working to straighten the bent arc of justice is not a marathon. It’s not even a sprint. It’s a relay. That’s why it’s so important to know who your allies are, and to hold them dear, because we all need to pass the baton at times, to step back and center down so that we may again lead. In fact, in the most tragic moments of last winter’s occupation, I was looking to folks like my St Joan of Arc hosts for answers. When under siege, when the worst of humanity’s worst impulses were unleashed upon them, it was Minnesotans such as these, like Chicagoans and Angelenos and Portlanders before them, who showed us that… When we live together as brothers and sisters, we rise together, too. Minnesota showed us that we can create a more inclusive world, where the stranger is welcomed and embraced, rather than shackled and expelled. And that we would be a much better people and nation for it. They are to be thanked for standing against government violence and for everyone’s human right to dignity, safety, and due process under the law, for being the light in our collective hour of darkness. And for giving me my mojo back!In this Easter and Passover season, and with Ramadan just behind us, I hope you appreciate my pre-Mass remarks offered to the St Joan of Arc Catholic Community on March 22, 2026. Please, listen to the audio or watch the video above, then circle back to let us know, in the comments below, where you find hope when an ethnic cleansing, a genocide, is unfolding right in front of your eyes? Don’t forget to tap the ♡ if you like this video, and the 🔄 to share it. Until next time, stay strong, my friends. The only way through this is…Together.✊🏼 SarahHow good it is to center down! To sit quietly and see one’s self pass by! The streets of our minds seethe with endless traffic; Our spirits resound with clashing, with noisy silences, While something deep within hungers and thirstsfor the still moment and the resting lull.With full intensity we seek, ere thicket passes, a fresh sense of order in our living;A direction, a strong sure purpose that will structure our confusion and bring meaning in our chaos. We look at ourselves in this waiting moment — the kinds of people we are.The questions persist: What are we doing with our lives? What are the motives that order our days? What is the end of our doings? Where are we trying to go? Where do we put the emphasis and where are our values focused? For what end do we make sacrifices? Where is my treasure and what do I love most in life? What do I hate most in life and to what am I true? Over and over the questions beat upon the waiting moment.As we listen, floating up through all of the jangling echoes of our turbulence,there is a sound of another kind —A deeper note which only the stillness of the heart makes clear.It moves directly to the core of our being. Our questions are answered,Our spirits refreshed, and we move back into the traffic of our daily roundWith the peace of the Eternal in our step.How good it is to center down!Rev. Dr. Howard Thurman, 1999Tales of Humanity is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Tales of Humanity at sarahtowle.substack.com/subscribe

Where were you on No Kings Day 3, dear subscribers? Let me know in the comments below. I was in the Twin Cities, hosted by the amazing St. Joan of Arc Catholic Community, and its Welcome the Stranger ministry, which put together a busy week of service, public speaking, networking, and story capturing for me. It was the perfect conclusion of another exhausting — but extremely fulfilling — leg on my now 20-month speaking tour following the launch of Crossing the Line: Finding America in the Borderlands (and the reason you haven’t heard from me in a while). It was also my birthday! And I was honored to celebrate in the company of 200,000+ Minnesotans, in person and in spirit, including members of my own extended family. You are all heroes to me. Surrounded by the peaceful vibes of ordinary folks moved to extraordinary kindness in resistance to the demented whims of a warmongering man-child and would-be king, we were serenaded by Bruce Springsteen, Maggie Rogers, and Joan Baez… We rocked to the Brass Solidarity band. Founded in 2021, in response to the murder of George Floyd, Brass Solidarity’s every tune expresses that Black Lives Matter… And we were roused to participation by Singing Resistance, a grassroots movement born of the violent federal occupation of Minneapolis that harnesses collective song-making as a form of nonviolent protest against ICE, injustice, and rising fear. During the pre-event gathering, Singing Resistance could be heard in the distance, performing the song I gifted to the movement for this auspicious day:From the steps of the gold-domed Minnesota state capitol in St.Paul, we enjoyed inspirational speeches by Indivisible’s co-founders, Ezra Levin and Leah Greenberg; state and congressional lawmakers, including Senator Bernie Sanders (D-VT); local grassroots leaders, many of whom I met and trained with during my time in the area; the incomparable Jane Fonda; and steadfast Robert DeNiro, who beamed in from the No Kings Day 3 rally in New York City — all of it deftly moderated by Lizz Winstead.Chilly temps and strong winds made for a nippy day, but the sun shone bright, with nary a cloud in sight, and the crowd exuded only warmth and solidarity. I saw no evidence of counter-protest by members of the MAGA cult. There was not even a hint, not a whiff, of the “left-wing violence” that the Trump regime’s propaganda machine tries to inculcate its supporters to believe is a thing. It isn’t. The only violence is MAGA violence, ICE violence, Border Patrol violence, Trump / Miller / Homan / Noem / Hegseth / Rubio / Vought / etc. violence. And their cruelty is not okay!They are the Worst of the Worst. Not us.We are peaceful. We are non-violent. Minnesota proved that. Plus…We make protest signs great again!Estimates to date state that we were more than 8 million in the streets for No Kings Day 3. And for every person who showed up to march and sing and chant and dream, there were three who could not make it due to work commitments or health concerns. That’s 24 million — more than the magical 3.5% of the population needed to throw off the yoke of rising authoritarianism. So, we cannot stop resisting now!Trump’s popularity has hit rock bottom. His base is crumbling. His madness spiraling. When pushed into a corner, he goes on the attack. And we already know what one of his next victims is: the upcoming 2026 midterm elections. He and his minions know they cannot win without cheating. So we must ensure that they cannot. But this week we celebrate. Wins are good. We continue to reimagine the world we wish to live in. And next week, we get back to the work of saving our democracy. To aid the effort, I’ll be back in your inbox soon with stories from the Minnesota and Arizona resistance communities. Stay strong, my friends. The only way through this is…Together!✊🏻 SarahWhere were you on No Kings Day 3? Let me know in the comments below. And please tap the ❤️ and “restack” emojis to get this post circulating. THANK YOU! Tales of Humanity is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Tales of Humanity at sarahtowle.substack.com/subscribe

“Bella Ciao“ is best remembered as an anti-Nazi and anti-fascist Italian folk song dedicated to the partisans of the Italian resistance, who fought against the occupying troops of Nazi Germany and the collaborationist fascist forces during the liberation of Italy during WWII. The exact origins of the song are not known, but female workers of the Northern Italy paddy fields set lyrics to the tune in the late 19th century to protest their harsh working conditions. A hymn of resistance against Nazism, fascism, injustice, and oppression, versions of “Bella Ciao” have continued to be sung worldwide since WWII. This inspired me to create new lyrics to the tune, representing the 21st-century US context under Trumpism.It is my gift to you, as well as to Indivisible and The 50501 Movement leadership and chapters nationwide for No Kings Day, March 28, 2026. I invite you to learn it, sing it, share it, and bring it to the streets wherever you happen to be that day. I will be marching in Minneapolis. Please contact me if that’s where you’ll be, too. Let’s sing ICE OUT! together…ICE OUT!A Resistance Anthem for the 21st Century USATempo: 88 BPMKey: A minorTime Signature: 4/4VERSE IAmWe feel their presenceWe see them stalkingOh Bella Ciao, Bella Ciao, Am7Bella Ciao, Ciao, CiaoCHORUS I DmThey will not stop us AmFrom our protesting E7 AmWe raise our voice as one in song.VERSE IIThey want our silence,For us to fear them,To look away, go away,Bella Ciao, Ciao, Ciao.CHORUS IIThey hide their faces.They leave dark traces.But we won’t let them steal our power.VERSE IIIFor we the people,We keep it peacefulReject their tyrannyThen as Now, Now, Now.CHORUS IIIWe’ll have no kings here.We hold our rights dearTo live in liberty and freedomVERSE IVThey will not stop usFrom our protesting.We raise our voices as one in song: ICE OUT!CHORUS IVThey want our silence,For us to fear them.But we’re all Minnesota now — ICE OUT!REPRISE IWe’ll have no kings here.We hold our rights dear.And we won’t let them steal our powerREPRISE IIThey want our silence.For us to fear them.But we’re all Minnesota now!Lyrics by Sarah Towle © 2026Recording produced by Ben Meyers with vocals by Sarah Towle.Tales of Humanity is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Tales of Humanity at sarahtowle.substack.com/subscribe

Resistance Strategy #1: Remain Focused.There’s nothing like a “war” abroad to divert public attention from the atrocities taking place right now in our own backyards. The Trump kakistocracy* is now waging a bombing campaign against Iran on behalf of International Criminal Court defendant, Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu, whose arrest warrant was issued on 21 November 2024 for starving and directly attacking civilians as a method of warfare; for the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts. Soon, it will be Trump, Hegseth, and Rubio’s turn. In the meantime, while everyone’s eyes are trained on Trump & Co’s illegal actions in the Middle East, the build-up of the ICE detention-to-deportation Gulag continues unabated. New concentration camps are coming to a distribution warehouse near you — even as Congress debates whether the ICE Gestapo should wear masks. These are concentration camps, paid for by us, the US taxpayer, thanks to a $45 billion allocation from the MAGA Murder Mandate (aka, the Biggest, Ugliest Bill), which is destined to go down in the history books as the payment system for Trump & Co’s genocide against the stateless.Kakistocracy: v. derived from Greek for “worst rule,” or “rule by idiots,” a government not by the people for the people, but by the least qualified, most unscrupulous, sycophantic bullies for the billionaire (and now trillionaire) class. Rule by the Worst of the Worst.Resistance Strategy #2: Don’t Look Away.As I reported on February 21, 2026, ICE’s parent agency, the Department of Homeland “Security” (DHS), has earmarked $38 Billion to buy 24 empty shipping depots to scale up its for-profit prison Gulag to 92,000 beds or more by the end of FY 2026. These warehouses will each cost roughly $100 million to purchase, then another $150 million to retrofit with toileting facilities, dorms, mess halls, plumbing, electrical wiring, sally ports, and double “no-man’s-land” styled fortifications, as well as coils and coils of razor wire. They are not a pretty sight. And until now, DHS has kept its Gulag well away from public view, in the deserts of Texas, Arizona, and California, and the rural countryside of Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi. Now, the build-up of Trump & Co’s human trafficking network, fashioned on Amazon’s shipping model, is happening right in front of our faces, in empty warehouses located near population centers and large flight hubs. Case in point: the concentration camp currently underway near Williamsport, Maryland, equidistant from the Dulles and Baltimore-Washington International Airports. Plans show that it will imprison 1,500 people on any given day, and cycle thousands through each year.But to expel people, ICE must fill its Gulag first. And according to Project Salt Box, the goon-squad is about to move on Baltimore, which only fuels my already boiling anger because that is my OG hometown. Resistance Strategy #3: Get In the Way! Like the former civil servant in Hagerstown, Maryland, who was DOGEd and is now filling her days by filing petitions against the regime for violating the National Environmental Policy Act, thus slowing down development of the Williamsport Concentration Camp, it is time to get hyperlocal and get in the way!And who better to teach us how than the original Rio Grande Valley resisters, whose work to mitigate the worst of humanity’s impulses under the first Trump regime, I spotlight in my book, Crossing the Line: Finding America in the Borderlands.We held a hybrid reunion on January 26, 2026, to check in with one another, offer mutual comfort, and prepare hearts and hands for another year of standing up to injustice and jamming the machinery of misery. In this podcast, you will learn how to join the frontlines while remaining resilient, with strategies of resistance that include:* Resistance Strategy #4: Think Hyperlocally.* Resistance Strategy #5: Know Your Rights and Your Allies. * Resistance Strategy #6: Know When and to Whom to Pass the Baton.CLICK THE PLAY BUTTON ABOVE TO HEAR FROM THE OG RGV RESISTERS THEMSELVES ☝🏼☝🏼☝🏼. There is incredible talent in all of our states, localities, communities, neighborhoods, and blocks. So, get to know your local allies. Find out what is needed and join, or put together, teams to meet those needs, from experts in water management to folks with a driver’s license willing to ferry the kids of impacted families to school. Most importantly…Resistance Strategy #7: Get Mad and Get Going.Write this message on your bathroom mirror, as Mark McDonald has:“Hope is presence, instead of paralysis; action instead of despair; and saying I will not let cruelty be the loudest voice.”Never forget that we are the hope. And the Cruelty is NOT Okay.Stay strong, everyone. The only way through this is…Together, ✊🏼✊🏼✊🏼 SarahFeatured Voices from Crossing the Line:* Cindy Candia, Joyce Hamilton, Jennifer Harbury & Madeleine Sandefur: Angry Tías & Abuelas of the Rio Grande Valley* Kathy Harrington & Andrea Rudnik: Madrinas de Justicia and former members of Team Brownsville* Cindy Andrade Johnson, Deaconess, United Methodist Women in Faith and La Posada Providencia Board Member* Jodi Godwin, Esq.* Helen Perry & Mark McDonald, formerly of Global Response Medicine* Gaby Zavala, Asylum Seeker Network of Support, and former Director of Resource Center MatamorosAdditional Contributors:* Karen Sturnick, Green Valley Samaritans* Maree McHugh, Silver City, New Mexico* Rev. Ali Lopez-Valcarcel, United Church of Christ, Rio Grande Valley* Pastor Mark Redwine, RGV* Esmeralda Lozano, City Commissioner, La Feria, TX[Full list of Strategies of Resistance to follow.]SAVE THE DATE: March 8, 2026The next meetup of the Hope Knows No Borders NetworkTales of Humanity is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Tales of Humanity at sarahtowle.substack.com/subscribe

Finally, everyone sees it, and everyone is talking about it, whether to decry it or to justify it. But it is not hiding in plain sight any longer…I speak of the lawless impunity of the entire, rotten Department of Homeland so-called “Security” apparatus and its paramilitary Gestapo forces posing as law-enforcement agencies: ICE and CBP, Customs and Border Protection, which includes the Border Patrol — an early 20th-century rebranding of the pre-Civil War era Slave Patrols and the Ku Klux Klan.I speak of the racism and deliberate cruelty that were baked into the US immigration system from its earliest incarnation and allowed to take root and fester even before 9/11 gave legislators an excuse to shift the Cold War-era iron-triangle funding obsession that brought us the Military-Industrial Complex armageddon machine to building up the now global Border Industrial Complex, instead.Today, the Border Industrial Complex encircles the globe like a second equator, cleaving the wealthy, predominantly white world from the less-wealthy, less-white one, creating a global apartheid where borders are becoming deeper, taller, angrier, more militarized, and more violent all the time. Built on the theory that if we make crossing borders as painful and perilous and as dangerous and potentially deadly as possible, the Border Industrial Complex is inherently cruel. And for the last 40-plus years, US Border Industrial Complex adherents have chosen to crank the cruelty, year upon year, rather than seek humane responses to the fact that it is our forever wars, the environment-destroying practices of our transnational extraction corporations, and the climate change fallout from our fossil-fuel addictions that cause the very human displacement and migration the Border Industrial Complex aims to thwart.Unable to stop the largest human migration in recorded history, the world’s wealthiest nations have spent the last 40-plus years determined to lock up and expel it instead, keeping it out of our sight and therefore out of our minds. I chart the evolution of this detention-to-deportation pipeline in my book, Crossing the Line: Finding America in the Borderlands. And nowhere is the cruelty of deterrence applied more ruthlessly and more visciously than within its opaque and now rapidly expanding concentration camp-styled prisons and the transportation network of charter airlines, buses, and armored jails on wheels that connect them, especially in Trump’s USA.Human rights abuses have gone unchecked inside this abomination of modern enslavement since well before he and his evil minions invaded US groupthink and the White House the first time. But under Trump’s white supremacist cabal, the steadily deteriorating conditions resulting from institutionalized cruelty and misery forced upon folks who’ve largely committed no crime have been unmasked.Today, February 18, 2026, we mark the seventh recorded death of an imprisoned immigrant just this year, and it could be the eighth as the fate of ICE’s youngest prisoner, 2-month-old Juan Nicolás, remains unknown. It is nearly the 40th death since the Trump regime’s second inauguration. And while I mourn for each life lost, and for every person whose human rights to freedom, safety, and a dignified life have been denied them by this wretched system, it is imperative that we unmask the crimes against humanity committed in our name and with our money by our detention-to- deportation pipeline so that we might abolish it — the sooner the better.The atrocities taking place inside the 200+ US detention gulag are hard to uncover. The atrocities taking place under Trump & Co’s mass deportation campaign, however, are even harder to perceive and document. On ICE Air’s Boxcars in the Sky, evidence of Department of Homeland “Security” impunity is whisked away with the individuals its agency operators shackle and return to harm. Indeed, it was purely by accident that I managed to track down and interview nearly five-dozen passengers refouled during Trump & Co’s first mass deportation campaign — the one few people knew about; the one they attempted as practice for the genocide unfolding in our name and with our money.From Crossing the Line: Finding America in the Borderlands, Chapter 32, “Locked In,” this is what mass deportation looks, feels, sounds, and smells like. And with stakes like these, nobody wins. Please listen and share. Click the playbutton above ☝🏼☝🏼☝🏼because we all need to know what happens on an ICE Air mass deportation flight, on an in-air Abu Ghraib, on today’s boxcars, though in the sky. Trump and his evil minions have weaponized immigration to drive democracy into crisis. They have harnessed that weapon to drive the US toward genocide against the stateless. Though they have corrupted the US Department of Homeland so-called “Security” apparatus to unleash the worst of humanity’s worst impulses again, we must understand that the cruelty of the system did not begin with them. We must, therefore, never go back to a previous era in immigration policies and practices, for that will only bring us back to this wretched place again. The only answer is abolition. But first, we must unseat Trump, Miller, Bondi, Noem, Homan, Bovino, Vought, et al., then build a more humane system and world from their ashes.Stay strong, everyone. The only way through this is…Together.✊🏼 SarahPS: Mark your calendars! I’ll be LIVE on Substack this Saturday, February 21, with a new feature: This Week in Immigration. Notification to follow…PPS: If you haven’t called your Members of Congress yet, do so today. Tell them, no more money for Trump & Co’s Gestapo:NOT ONE MORE DOLLAR FOR ICE. NOT ONE MORE DOLLAR FOR CBP.Tales of Humanity is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Tales of Humanity at sarahtowle.substack.com/subscribe

EMERGENCY FACT SHEET* PASTOR STEVEN TENDO, Applicant for Political Asylum * Originally from Uganda* Date of birth: November 24, 1984* A-number: 201-520-012* Kidnapped by ICE, Wednesday, February 4, 2026, Burlington, VT* Imprisoned at Stafford County Detention Center, Dover, NHSUMMARY:Steven Tendo is a respected Pastor from Uganda who suffered grave political persecution and repeated torture at the hands of government officials of his birth nation. In 2018, he presented himself legally at the United States Port of Entry in Brownsville, Texas, to request political asylum. As set forth below, he then suffered more than two years in an ICE detention facility without adequate medical care, resulting in grave harm to his health. (For details, listen to the audio of Crossing the Line, Chapter 29, Locked Up.)Steven was released in 2021 and moved to Vermont, where he resumed his work as a pastor. Despite substantial errors by the Immigration Judge, his initial petition for asylum was denied, and his appeal was unsuccessful. In November 2025, he filed a Motion to Reopen, now pending before the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA), based on the grim changes of circumstances in Uganda and his own continuing activism. He has attended all required hearings and appearances since his release. He was nevertheless apprehended by ICE at his place of work and detained on February 4, 2026.Returning Pastor Steven to Uganda shocks the conscience and violates the Convention Against Torture. We ask that Pastor Steven Tendo not be deported until the BIA has ruled upon his Motion to Reopen. We also ask that he be released from detention to guarantee his medical well-being.BACKGROUND:Pastor Stephen Tendo was born to a powerful family in Uganda and raised with the belief that he must serve his people. He received an excellent education and became a pastor, founding the very popular Eternal Life Organization International Ministries church. Steven organized community support projects, providing food, health services, and educational assistance to the needy. As the government repression and corruption grew in his homeland, he began a human rights campaign as well, assisting political prisoners and leading a voting rights effort. His work intersected with reform efforts by presidential candidate Bobi Wine, who has also been subjected to extreme persecution by Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni. Museveni has ruled the country with an increasingly iron fist for 40 years.The first time Museveni’s goons apprehended Pastor Steven, they tortured him, severing two of his fingers. He was arrested, beaten, and tortured as many as twelve more times. He was also repeatedly subjected to false charges of fraud, but was acquitted by the Ugandan courts of each and every claim. After attacks on him and his relatives intensified, he was forced to flee Uganda in 2018.Upon arrival in the United States, Pastor Tendo was promptly detained at ICE’s notoriously brutal Port Isabel Detention Center (PIDC) in Los Fresnos, Texas. Like so many single African men, he was denied bail despite being a lifelong sufferer of diabetes, having no criminal record, and enjoying many offers of support. His medications and glucometer were immediately taken away, and he went without adequate checks or treatment throughout his two years incarcerated at PIDC. This led to dangerously high blood sugar levels and blindness in one eye from diabetic related cataracts. He also became extremely dizzy and ill and began to suffer from very high blood pressure and repeated and painful boils across his body. Even when COVID broke out and swiftly spread to the detention facility, he was denied release despite his medical vulnerability. At this point, there was a strong outcry from the human rights community, and Amnesty International initiated a campaign for his release. On August 18, 2020, some 44 members of Congress signed a letter to the Director of DHS protesting his mistreatment and continued confinement.In 2020, ICE sought to deport Pastor Tendo regardless of his pending appeal to the Fifth Circuit of the denial of asylum. Although former ICE Director Pham agreed in September 2020 to stay the removal of Pastor Steven until such an appellate ruling, efforts were made to deport him in the middle of the night nonetheless. He was finally released from detention in 2021 and was able to move to Vermont. With the help of friends and supporters there, he began to heal and resumed work as a chaplain. He attended nursing classes, becoming a Licensed Nursing Assistant, and was working toward a Registered Nurse qualification when abducted by ICE. He has also worked with local youth to help them combat substance abuse and addiction. He is a genuinely fine human being and should be celebrated as an asset to any nation. He enjoys a network of very close community ties in Burlington. Yet, he has not forgotten his homeland. He remains outspoken about the situation in Uganda, and recently gave testimony to attorneys working on a case before the International Criminal Court.We are gravely concerned that, given the current turbulent political situation in the US, Pastor Steven Tendo could be whisked back to Uganda with little or no notice if he remains detained by ICE. A Ugandan official has made it clear that if this happens, he will be seized as he leaves the plane and killed. He will never arrive at customs.CALL TO ACTION:* Please contact your members of Congress today. The Congressional Switchboard operator, (202) 224-3121, will connect you to your Senate and House Representatives.* Tell them that Pastor Steven Tendo is at great risk of torture and extrajudicial execution if he is returned to Uganda. This is a violation of his human rights and an international crime known as refoulement. * Tell them he is also at great risk of medical harm and improper processing while in ICE detention. And that we urgently seek their assistance to demand his release.FOR ADDITIONAL BACKGROUND INFORMATION:Listen to Steven and my story collaboration. Click the play button above ☝🏼☝🏼☝🏼.FOR ADDITIONAL LEGAL INFORMATION:Contact: Brett Stokes, Center for Justice Reform Clinic, Vermont Law and Graduate School, 802-831-1104; Chrispher Worth, Center for Justice Reform Clinic, Vermont Law and Graduate School, 802-831-1104; Elizabeth Velez, Orr & Reno, 603-223-9171; Christina Thomas, Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton,404-815-6531; Fatma Marouf, Texas A&M Legal Clinic, 817-212-4123Tales of Humanity is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Tales of Humanity at sarahtowle.substack.com/subscribe

Dear Subscribers, I’m writing this to you as I watch Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show. “We are all America,” reads the football he carries throughout a performance that pulses with the best of the country and culture I grew up in, the place my heart will always call home. His final statement — naming all the countries that comprise America, from Argentina to Canada, as he dances back and forth across the Levi’s Stadium 50th yard line, accompanied by flagbearers from each nation — resonated deeply with me. This is precisely why I never refer to the United States as “America.” Even my book’s subtitle defies expectation, for it uses America not refer to a place, but to express a double-entendre: It is code for the mentality that allows this linguistic legacy of Manifest Destiny, of the era of enslavement and genocide and stolen lands, to still linger unconsciously in our speech; it is also a celebration of the rich diversity encountered in borderlands, where Americans from throughout the Western hemisphere meet and mingle in creative exchange. Referring to one country by the name of two continents, an isthmus, and numerous island nations perpetuates the US’s original white supremacy project, helping to keep it alive in the age of Trumpism. I urge you to call the place by its rightfulname: the United States of America, easily shortened to the USA, the US, or the States. Words matter because they form thought, which is apropos of this week’s podcast episode about the power of art and activism, like Bad Bunny’s, to tear down the walls that oppress and divide us…On December 7, 2025, I hosted a virtual book launch for two new must-read books poised to bring a potent, first-hand view of the walling-off of the US Southwest borderlands to audiences nationwide: Borderlings, a book of poetry and pictures by nature advocate Russ McSpadden, juxtaposes the extraordinary natural beauty and unique biodiversity of the US borderlands against the ecological devastation being caused by Trump & Co’s boondoggle and ecocidal border wall. Bearing witness from the front lines of border militarization in Southern Arizona, Russ pays homage to the resilience and interdependence of human and wildlife habitats, while revealing how walls serve only to fracture, divide, and destroy. ORDER BORDERLINGS HERE.Yo’Oko Roars, an art and storybook for children and youth by Kate Scott (author) and Virginia Maria Romero (illustrator), joins Borderlings as well as Crossing the Line in sounding the alarm that the act of erecting “an immense metal fence that makes no sense” cuts nations and cultures off from on another, making it impossible for people and wildlife to find their ways “home” again. Walls create loss, longing, exile, danger, and endangerment. The story of young Iris putting her body in front of the “monsters of metal” illustrates how we should be addressing our collective problems: by building bridges, privileging friendships, and acting in solidarity through mutual aid so that we may all roar again. ORDER YO’OKO ROARS HERE.So, why the delay in getting this important podcast episode to you? Mauerkrankheit.The book launch event coincided with one of my sisters, her daughter, son-in-law, and three grandchildren passing through London, where I currently live with my daughter, husband, and our dear canine companion, Gryffindog. They were traveling in celebration of my sister’s birthday, just as we were about to ring in my daughter’s milestone 30th year of life. Living abroad as we do, it’s a rare treat for us to get quality time with close relatives. We were thrilled, therefore, to extend an invitation to host them. We were looking forward to introducing them to our London, to breaking bread with them, to clinking glasses of bubbly at our home or pints of craft brew at our local Pub, and to showering our two birthday girls in song. But they refused to see us, erecting an emotional wall. They ghosted us, adding a secondary communications wall that left us in a state of unknowing for weeks. When they did reach out, they did so by proxy and through text messaging, hiding behind a technological wall and fracturing our family ties even further with a lie: The children had a bucket list of “touristy things” they wanted to do in London, evidently (FYI: The kids are 4, 6, and 8 🤷🏼‍♀️).None of these fences made any bloody sense. We are not above “touristy things.” And besides, who wouldn’t want to party with this guy? A wall of dishonesty wove, like concertina wire, into the double fortification of emotional and communications walls erected using a technology wall, leaving a “no-man’s land” of cold silence and conjecture between us. We could only conclude that they are Trump supporters. And knowing that we are most definitely not, choose to hold up the political wall he has weaponized to tear families, literally and (in our case) figuratively, apart.My heart exploded into a billion tiny pieces. I fell into a deep, dark malaise, which I’ve come to understand is a kind of Wall Disease, aka Mauerkrankheit: A psychological condition first identified in Cold War Berlin, which had particularly devastating effects on the residents of the walled-off Eastern Zone of the city, and is characterized by a combination of depression, rage, anxiety, and apathy caused by the oppressive presence of divisive and deadly fortifications. Then, coarse salt was rubbed into open wounds, with Trump & Co’s December putsch as their paramilitary goons marched into Minnesota’s Twin Cities, from which the Towle family hails. With “Operation Metro Surge,” the 2025-26 holiday season was turned upside-down by the very ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) walls of impunity we experienced in the summer of 2020, now on steroids. These were the walls of masked agents bearing armaments, rather than judicial warrants, that I warned in Crossing the Line could become an oppressive social reality if Trump & Co were allowed to invade the White House once more. The walls of militarized Department of Homeland “Security” (DHS) agents occupy Minneapolis to this day. Their walls of clubs and harassment tactics and tear gas canisters and rubber bullets and flash bangs and automatic weapons and belief in their immunity from legal accountability (they are not) have resulted in the execution-style deaths of two US citizens, Renée Nicole Good and Alex Pretti (may they rest in peace), as well as the kidnapping, incarceration, and expulsion of thousands of decent people just living their lives. The Reign of Terror unleashed by a “mad” (in the British sense) wanna-be king has rained economic devastation on the lives, futures, and businesses of Twin Cities inhabitants, who are still reeling from the unexpected erection of physical, militaristic, and extrajudicial walls. “The b******s are everywhere, patrolling in their SUVs with the blacked out windows, even in my very white neighborhood,” states one of my Minneapolis-based family members. “I live blocks away from the murders by DHS, and have been very involved in protests, observing and providing community support,” reports another who, untilthe rise in Trump fascism, had never been touched by ICE or Border Patrol impunity before. They are new to protesting, which illustrates yet another result of Wall Disease, the very thing that drove everyday Berliners to grab pick axes and tear the Cold War monstrosity down with their bare hands: activism fueled by anger at oppression that seeks to divide us and take away our right to roar…History shows us that in the face of state-led violence, some will succumb — like my sister, her daughter, and son-in-law, potentially (I can’t be sure, since they won’t talk to us) — choosing to turn away from the truth, much like the “good Germans” who allowed the Holocaust to happen. They will take others along with them, as my sister and her progeny did, when they walled off their hearts to me, and I crashed, overcome by Mauerkrankheit. Which is my way of explaining to you, Dear Subscribers, why it has taken me two whole months to produce and publish this important podcast episode. But thanks to Russ, Kate, Virginia, and the hundreds of thousands of heroic Minnesotans who are taking to the streets every day, I have found hope and my voice again. I am back and ready to ROAR once more!With the border now everywhere, we are all suffering from Mauerkrankheit. In this conversation with Kate, Virginia, and Russ, we discuss how we can and must overcome it. I hope you’ll draw inspiration and energy from our discussion, as I have Just click the play button in the image above to get started ☝🏼☝🏼☝🏼☝🏼☝🏼Then, be sure to buy and review these beautiful books. Help us to get them into the hands and hearts of those who, if they only knew, would be outraged too and compelled to say “no!” to Wall Disease and tear down all the barriers that divide us!CLICK HERE TO ORDERYO’OKO ROARS BORDERLINGSTales of Humanity is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Additional resources and content referenced in the podcast: Get full access to Tales of Humanity at sarahtowle.substack.com/subscribe

Hello subscribers, I’m writing to you from my first vacation in six years, since I started writing Crossing the Line in January 2020. As much as I’d like to remain unplugged, the news continues to move too fast. And in times like these, it’s impossible not speak out. I hope you learn something from this latest episode of From the Borderlands to fuel your efforts in support of the resistance. I’m wishing you strength. The only way through this is… Together. ✊🏼 SarahLike anyone who has studied the cruel practices of US immigration authorities, I’ve not been terribly surprised by the outrageous and arbitrary violence perpetrated by the goons patrolling the streets of Minneapolis — and other major US cities. Which is why I was puzzled by this recent the recent New York Times piece, written by some of the more trustworthy immigration reporters, too, that ICE and the Border Patrol suddenly, somehow, seem to have gone rogue; that before Noem, Homan, and Bovino (and of course Steven Miller), there were more law-enforcement heroes among the ranks who cherished the rule of law and were only interested in public safety. What a load of hooey.The Times account seems to request that we feel sympathy for the officers who look and act, and are armed just like a paramilitary army: Public disapproval and their mean bosses have hurt their morale. Boo hoo. Democrats, who we should have been able to trust to stand in the way of bequeathing ICE and CBP a budget to rival the largest global militaries, are now apologizing for their latest vote, just last week, to give Trump’s Gestapo forces even MORE money. Republicans, who bent over one after another to cast a yea vote in support of Trump’s MAGA Murder Mandate (aka the Big Ugly Bill), have finally blinked, disturbed by the violence that has beset the streets of Minneapolis. But that evil genie will not soon be wrestled back into its bottle.Here are the facts few elected officials seem willing to face or admit and have been unwilling to face or admit for several decades: The violence and the cruelty are baked into the DNA of the CBP’s Border Patrol and ICE. The roots of the Border Patrol can be traced all the way back to the slave patrols. They were the KKK and Texas Rangers, rebranded in 1924 as the Border Patrol. The Department of Homeland Security was built on those rotten foundations. ICE endorsed Trump for president all the way back in 2016, a historic first, proving they were infiltrated by white supremacists even then. And no amount of so-called “fair and balanced” reporting from any legacy media outlet is going to change that. Nor is grandstanding such as NY Representative Tom Suozzi’s, that “I failed to view the DHS funding vote as a referendum on the illegal and immoral conduct of ICE in Minneapolis.”Suozzi should read my book, Crossing the Line: Finding America in the Borderlands. I sent him a copy. I sent a copy to many MOCs that continue to stand on the wrong side of history by funding it. In Chapter 16, The Border Hardens, I shine a light on the 2010 murder of Anastasio Hernandez Rojas. Seventeen agents of ICE, CBP, and Border Patrol tortured him to death in broad daylight. The execution was captured on a passerby’s camera. All 17 agents were identified and named. None of the 17, nor their bosses, were ever held accountible. Anastasio left a widow, five kids, a large extended and loving family, and a community that adored him. The only difference between Anastasio and Alex Pretti or Renee Good was that he was undocumented, which is why you may never heard of his death. But they were all murdered. They were all murdered by the same forces and the same hapless mentality that had blinded our leadership for too long. ICE and the Border Patrol cannot be reformed. The rot is too great. May Alex, Renee, and Anastasio not have died in vain. May this be the moment when we realize how much the post-9/11 security-first paradigm has compromised all our values and tear this horrorshow — the reason we have a fascist in the White House today — all the way down to its racist foundations.Enough is enough! ¡Basta!☝🏼 Scroll back up☝🏼 to the top of this post ☝🏼 to listen to the full podcast episode: Slave, Border & ICE Patrols “Shoot First and Ask Questions Later”Featuring Chapter 16 of Crossing the Line, The Border Hardens,with shout outs to Todd Miller, Jenn Budd, Juan Gonzalez of Democracy Now!, and The Border Chronicle.Tales of Humanity is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Tales of Humanity at sarahtowle.substack.com/subscribe

Hey, everyone. Sarah here. Thanks for joining me for another episode of From the Borderlands ☝🏼☝🏼☝🏼. Podcast Transcript: Six years ago this week, I landed in Brownsville, Texas, to see for myself the inhumanity I then believed had been wrought by Trump, his acolytes, and puppeteers, folks like Stephen Miller, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, and acting director of ICE, Thomas Homan (to name just a few). The Family Separation crisis brought on by their zero-tolerance for border crossers, even those seeking safety, had been replaced by policies such as metering and the Migrant “Protection” Protocols (AKA the Remain in Mexico policy), which trapped the “world’s most vulnerable people,” borrowing the UN’s terms, in some of the most dangerous places on earth… and didn’t offer them any protection at all.Whether tearing families apart or turning them back to become fodder for organized crime, cruelty was their point.I went to bear witness. I went to learn and to serve. It turned out to be an Epiphany of epiphanies as I realized that the militarization of the US southern border and the systemic cruelty it spawned did not start with them: Trump & Co. Rather, they had been bequeathed a deterrence to detention to deportation pipeline characterized by the cruel and quiet enslavement of the many for the financial benefit of the few. This for-profit machinery of imprisonment and expulsion, what’s more, suffered no transparency or accountability, and human and civil rights abuses within it were rife. It was a system of misery that had grown up all around me — all around all of us — hiding in plain sight in the so-called Land of the Free. A bipartisan project, kick-started by the Reagan administration but allowed to expand by politicians on both sides of the aisle, including Democrats such as Clinton, Obama, and Biden.That my service coincided with an Epiphany celebration in the Matamoros, Mexico refugee camp of roughly 3,000 mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, aunties, uncles, grandparents, children, and tiny babies — an encampment, just one of many, created by US government policy — brought home this realization a well: that US administrations and citizens alike had largely betrayed the most enduring teachings of the Bible, the Torah, and the Quran,to welcome the stranger and treat foreigners as you would “the native among you,” for by doing so, “you might show hospitality to angels,” or, indeed, to the son of God himself.Instead, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, son of an avowed Alabama segregationist and a lifelong church-goer, invoked Romans 13 to defend their cruelty toward newcomers, stating that God created governments to maintain social order and that we would be wise to obey Trump & Co’s authority. It was the same scripture used to justify the enslavement and routine daily torture of Black people in his ancestral prison labor camps, aka plantations. He insinuated that Trump & Co’s governance was divine and that if we allowed kindness and compassion to stand in their way, there would be hell to pay — fire and brimstone all the way, for showing empathy.It was the stuff of Christian Nationalism, an ideology that “talks religion, but walks fascism,” which we’d seen unleashed under the banner of Unite the Right in Charlottesville, VA, in 2017. What I saw on the border during Epiphany 2020 was a potential standing paramilitary army posing as a border “protection” and “security” apparatus that could be harnessed and turned against us at any time: a Gestapo-like force infiltrated by white supremacists in the democratic USA that operated a for-profit gulag of then over 200 prisons that targeted Brown and Black people with deprivation and abuse. I saw a modern ethnic cleansing, or dare I say, a new kind of genocide.I decided to write a book for those like me who, if they only knew, would be outraged too. I entitled it The First Solution: Tales of Humanity from the Borderlands, a hat-tip to my literary mentor, Toni Morrison, who wrote in 1995:“Let us be reminded that before there is a final solution,there must be a first solution, a second one, even a third.The move toward a final solution is not a jump.It takes one step, then another, then another.”But my publisher, editor, and first readers agreed: the title would be too triggering for some; and too obtuse for others, particularly those too young to remember the Holocaust under German fascism; or those denied the opportunity to learn about it in schools taken over by Christian Nationalists intent on (literally) white-washing history. My editorial team changed the title to Crossing the Line: Finding America in the Borderlands, in which “America” does not connote a place, but is code for White Supremacy.During the feast of Epiphany one year later, on January 6, 2021, the same proto-fascist so-called Christians attempted to keep a would-be dictator in the White House through a violent insurrection that he fomented.And during the Epiphany feast of 2026, the same crackers who produced a made-for-Fox-TV “invasion” to whip up a moral panic among an indoctrinated electorate — folks programmed to look the other way as their white supremacist leadership carries out an ethnic cleansing of our Brown and Black neighbors while wielding an upside-down bible — these same crackers invaded a sovereign nation with which the US was not at war, and kidnapped that country’s president. With our money and in our name, they killed innocent people in the buildup, as well as in their wake, in an act of aggression that clearly defies international law. Then they launched a new White House website that rewrites the history we all witnessed with our own eyes on January 6, 2021.Another of my literary heroes, George Orwell, wrote decades ago:“... terrible things follow when leaders can create their own facts.”Trump & Co say their illegal act of aggression against Venezuela was intended to stop Nicolas Maduro from trafficking fentanyl to the US. But fentanyl isn’t produced in Venezuela, nor is fentanyl mentioned in the charging documents against Maduro and his wife. Cocaine is. But Trump & Co just let a known cocaine trafficker out of a life sentence in US federal prison, former president Juan Orlando Hernandez of Honduras. So cocaine trafficking can’t be the reason for their illegal invasion of Venezuela either.Could it be about oil, as Trump himself indicated? That would be on point.Could it be about distracting us from the regime’s intransigence to produce the Epstein files, which surely link their leader to a global sex trafficking ring from which he benefited? Most assuredly.Could it be about Putin’s hard-on for territorial expansion? The Danes, Canadians, and Cubans certainly think so, as do those who’ve been sounding the alarm for years that Trump is a Russian asset, a plaything of Putin.Could it be that Trump is a mob boss eager to enrich himself on the global drug trade as the head of the most powerful cartel angling to usurp all other cartels?Only time will tell.What is evident, today, is that Trump & Co have unleashed a war to seize our freedoms for the benefit of billionaires — and now a trillionaire — worldwide. They are the Worst of the Worst. And they are in the White House. And they do not wish to leave. Not. Ever.Crossing the Line was meant to be a historical chronicle. On November 3, 2020, we thought Trump & Co’s crimes and impunity were finally behind us. But on November 5, 2024, the book became a bellwether of what was to come in 2025, prompting my publisher and editor to agree: We are in the throes of a paradigmatic global shift, in which people seeking safety and dignity per their legal right under the post-WWII new world order are enslaved and disappeared, courtesy of the US taxpayer.On October 7, 2025, a second edition of Crossing the Line hit bookstore shelves. In the new Author Foreword, I offer some thoughts on how we, the people, can and must resist. Because these dark days will end, they always do. And we must be ready to build a more humane world from the ashes.Only we can fix this. But not if we stand down, or stand by.I hope you’ll find some inspiration from the all-new Author Foreword of Crossing the Line, second edition. Click on the play button above ☝🏼☝🏼☝🏼.Thanks for listening! I’ll be back in your ears soon with more Tales of Humanity From the Borderlands, which are now everywhere, including right in your backyard.Until then, stay strong, everyone. The only way through this is…Together.Sarah ✊🏼Tales of Humanity is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Tales of Humanity at sarahtowle.substack.com/subscribe

Seventy-seven years ago, on December 10, 1948, the newly established United Nations General Assembly unveiled the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). A response to the human carnage wrought by two world wars in 22 years and the genocide of 11 million people, including six million Jews, by Hitler’s fascist regime, the UDHR ushered in a paradigmatic global shift: Henceforth, the dignity and worth of all members of the human family were to be recognized equally and respected internationally, as well as within the borders of nations large and small.The UDHR was a declaration of principles, comprising 30 articles, built upon the foundational notion that we are all “born free and equal in dignity and rights,” without distinction of any kind, including “race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.” It announced that regardless “of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs,” we share the right to freedom from slavery, torture, degrading punishment, arbitrary arrest, exile, and “arbitrary interference with . . . privacy, family, home or correspondence, [and] attacks upon . . . honour and reputation.”The UDHR proclaimed our rights to movement, both within a country as well as outside of it; to safety, wherever we are in the world; and to seek asylum in another land if safety is denied us in our homeland. It gave us all equal rights to fairness and due process under the law, as well as “the right to a standard of living adequate for . . . health and well-being . . ., including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services.”Alongside the establishment of the United Nations General Assembly, the UDHR marked the advent of a new world order, “in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want.” If the human community had been able to stop the early-20th-century rise of fascism when the warmongers were still relatively weak, went the thinking of the nine-person commission tasked with drafting the document, the catastrophe of global conflict and the Holocaust could have been avoided. Therefore, centering humanity’s univerally shared values, “the highest aspiration of the common people,” would provide the new foundation on which to achieve “freedom, justice and peace in the world.”From December 10, 1948, the UDHR became the agreement governing global law. It gave rise to the International Court of Justice as well as the refugee protection regime, which followed in 1951 with the Refugee Convention, because “disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind.” The UDHR became pivotal to the post-WWII rules-based order, which disavowed the prevailing paradigm of “might makes right” in the hope of putting to an end the rule of the powerful by brute force or imperial domination.But then came 9/11, and the world order shifted again. This time toward a “national security” paradigm which, as I discovered in researching Crossing the Line, does not sit comfortably alongside the fundamental rights of human beings as prescribed by the UDHR.The 21st-century National Security State gave swift rise to the Border Industrial Complex, which now encircles the earth like a second equator, cleaving the wealthy, predominantly white world from the less wealthy, less white one, creating a global apartheid. Borders have always been tools of in-group/out-group exclusion, and therefore inherently racist. They have always been used by nation states to decide who’s allowed through the gate, and who isn’t. But today, the rights of nations have trumped the rights of human beings to the extent that the movement of folks in search of safety is increasingly thwarted, their fundamental right to asylum and due process under the law more and more often denied.What’s more, our fundamental human rights to dignity and freedom from arbitrary arrest and interference in the privacy of home and family, freedom from enslavement, torture, degrading punishment, and exile are being abused and violated in what heretofore has been the world’s most evolved democracy: the United States of America. Since 9/11 and the creation of the US Department of Homeland “Security,” an immigration gulag of more than 200 prison camps that incarcerate people seeking safety and a dignified life has evolved, hiding in plain sight all around us. Eighty percent of these camps are run by profiteers, who prioritize their bottom line over the rights of the humans they jail through brute force — and they are making billions. Within an increasingly hostile anti-immigrant political climate, stoked by the white supremacist Trump regime, sycophants such as Florida Governor Ron DeSantis have been given free rein to criminalize, round up, coral, and detain newcomers to the US and people seeking safety in concentration camp-like settings. A recently released report by Amnesty International, entitled “Torture and Enforced Disappearances in the Sunshine State” reveals mistreatment, in some cases amounting to torture, occurring at the Krome and Everglades (aka “Alligator Alcatraz”) Concentration Camps. It’s harrowing reading — real Deer Hunter stuff. But those subjected to cruel and degrading treatment are not prisoners of war. And the report is just one case study, focusing on two out of more than 200 facilities of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) gulag.According to my research for Crossing the Line, Florida isn’t alone: From sea to shining sea, people who’ve committed no crime are suffering abuses reminiscent of Hitler’s Germany, pre-UDHR. The tortures documented in this latest Amnesty report are common practice under the ICE paramilitary apparatus that knows no transparency and suffers zero accountability. Which begs the question:Can the 20th-century promise of universal human rights survive the 21st-century global obsession with national security, especially as fascism walks the earth once more?In this episode of From the Borderlands, dedicated to Amnesty International with profound thanks, I discuss just this question with Ute Ritz-Deutch, host of the Human Rights and Social Justice Program on WRFI Community Radio, Ithaca, NY. Click the play button above to hear our conversation!Are you enjoying Tales of Humanity?I’d be so grateful if you heart and restack this post before you go. Thank you! Tales of Humanity is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Tales of Humanity at sarahtowle.substack.com/subscribe

Hello Subscribers! I’m writing from New Hampshire today. I’m now 12 days and four events into the speaking tour, marking the second edition release of Crossing the Line. And my schedule is about to amp up, with events nearly every day from now until Halloween. I aim to keep posting as much as I can, because I’m learning so much and meeting so many people and have so much to share! But bear with me if communications become spotty, as most of my “free” time for the next month or so will be spent driving.Today’s podcast was drawn from the September 28 webinar of the Hope Knows No Borders Network, with Borderlands Coordinator for the Sierra Club, Erick Meza, and Russ McSpadden, Southwest Conservation Advocate at the Center for Biodiversity. They inform us that, even as I type these words, a place of outrageous and awe-inspiring biodiversity is being cleaved asunder by the outrageous disregard for the natural world on the part of a president and crony contractors who care only about lining their pockets — not for the future of the planet nor of the people, animals, and environmental integrity of the US borderlands and American continent.”It’s almost like border communities do not deserve the same kind of protection that the rest of the country does,” states Erick Meza. Which is racism. Plain and simple. Racism and greed are driving some of the richest biospheres of the Americas into extinction all because the US Department of Homeland “Security” has too much power, thanks to the 109th Congress of the United States.We’ve all been so focused — and rightly so — on the cruelty and lawlessness of the ICE Gestapo and the simultaneous destruction of the US government and judiciary; the government shut down, and the widespread loss of livelihoods. In the chaos, we may have forgotten Trump & Co’s first campaign promise — to Build the Wall — and taken our eyes off their continuing threats to the natural world. Tragically, Border wall building continues, and for only one purpose: to enrich Donald Trump’s campaign donors, which is otherwise known as “crony capitalism.” Steel bollards are going up in the beautiful and formerly pristine San Raphael Valley of Arizona as the desert water table is being drained and artesian water systems destroyed, all to mix cement and keep heavy machinery owned by North Dakota-based Fisher Sand & Gravel free of dust and debris. The company was only able to pocket 334 million of our tax dollars to build the wall after Kristi Noem waived dozens of environmental laws, including the Endangered Species Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, the Clean Air Act, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, and the Safe Drinking Water Act, to make it happen. The process, which cut the public out of decision-making, Erick states, flouted expected norms of accountability. Russ refers to the stretch of oak woodlands, grassland savannah, and mountainous “stepping stone” slopes Fisher Sand & Gravel workers are now bulldozing as “the most important wildlife corridor left in Arizona connected to Mexico.”The region is home to ocelots, javelina, pronghorn, and porcupines; bears, lions, and hundreds of species of bees; flying pollinators, such as bats, birds, and butterflies; and the majestic endangered northern jaguar, which conservationists like Russ have spent decades trying to save from extinction. It is an area uniquely untouched by humans, including those seeking safety and a life free from harm. The ugly and unnecessary monolithic steel barrier — painted black on the president’s orders so that it might burn human hands — is the “nail in the coffin” for biodiversity in the region, says Erick. Though erected, they say, to thwart human migration, we know from the first Trump regime that existing stretches of border wall have blocked animal routes, compromising habitats and threatening species. Construction disturbs wildlife, halts genetic interchange, depletes irreplaceable groundwater aquifers, disrupts the integrity of borderland communities, tramples cultural protections, and shreds environment-saving legislative precedent, as it robs budgets for schools and rural hospitals.It’s an unregulated experiment en route to causing a catastrophic continental crisis.Please don’t look away! Listen …Everyone must know about all the ways that this government is chipping away not only at our rights, but also those of our four-legged, flying, and finned friends, while they pick our pockets at the same time. Everyone must know the beautiful humanity that exists alongside the destruction. It may be happening at the border. But it is affecting everyone. Because, as Russ and Erick explain in this podcast episode, immigration justice intersects with planetary justice, which impacts human life and wildlife alike: border justice = environmental justice = migration justice. Rally for the Valley: Multicultural Border Happening November 15!Join Russ, Erick, and other borderlands conservationists to save the San Raphael Valley. Learn more about why we must stop this madness before it’s too late … and how. It may well include abolishing the Department of Homeland “Security,” which isn’t keeping anyone secure at all.The next meet-up of the Hope Knows No Border Workshop will feature Sarah addressing the Community Church of Boston on how immigration was transformed into a weapon to drive US democracy into crisis: October 26, 11:00 am - 1:30 pm ET. Tales of Humanity is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Tales of Humanity at sarahtowle.substack.com/subscribe

Hello Subscribers! The revised edition of Crossing the Line launches tomorrow, October 7! And I’m back on the road talking about how immigration has been weaponized to drive democracy into crisis. My goal is to aid in the building of the Resistance Choir, singing in glorious harmony, This is not the people we wish to be, one book talk, keynote address, and immigration study circle at a time.I spent the weekend with my Amnesty International family, where someone dubbed my upcoming event schedule Sarah’s Sweet Resistance Tour. Don’t you just love that?Today, I’ll be in person at the Woods Hole Library in Falmouth, Massachusetts. Hope to see you there.Over the weekend, I was in conference with the mightiest of human rights defenders, as I said. And last week, I joined discussions in North Carolina, North Texas, and Minneapolis, with academic, faith-based, and advocacy groups, respectively, who’ve adopted Crossing the Line to guide them in their commitment to stand up to the demagogues and profiteers who are making bank off the “brokenness” of the US immigration system.It’s a hybrid tour. So book your meetup now!When detention of peace-seeking people is the point; when dehumanization is a feature, not a bug; when evil walks the land once more and the only way to confront it is together, how will you stand up for human rights, human dignity, and human decency?Start by listening to this amazing conversation with the good folks at St. Joan of Arc Catholic Church in Minneapolis, who understand that we only have a democracy if we fight for it. And we only have a democracy if we remember our shared humanity.Click On The Play Button Above!Big thanks to Joe, Rosey, Rose, and Meghan of St. Joan of Arc’s Welcome the Stranger Ministry. Thank you for your Witness!Tales of Humanity is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Tales of Humanity at sarahtowle.substack.com/subscribe

Welcome new subscribers! And thank you to all who’ve selected to become paid supporters of my newsletter, Tales of Humanity, and podcast, From the Borderlands. I haven’t had a chance to thank you all personally yet. But know that my gratitude to you knows no bounds! You’ll hear from me soon. I’m just super slammed right now, preparing for the launch of Crossing the Line: Finding America in the Borderlands, second edition, on October 7, as well as booking speakers for the Hope Knows No Borders Book Club & Webinar Series, and my forthcoming East Coast speaking tour. The tour is taking me, so far, to Boston, Amherst, New Paltz, Harrisburg, Philadelphia, and New York City. There is still room in my calendar. So, if you’d like me to engage with your community, whether in person or virtually, please don't hesitate to reach out. For now, I give you my 95th publication here on Substack (can you believe that? I can’t!), with special thanks to Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Jenn Budd, Juan Gonzalez, Todd Miller, María de Jesús Puga Morán, and Dan Kowalski.IntroductionA little-known fact, something I learned while researching Crossing the Line, is that the whole of the United States is encircled in a 100-mile policing zone. This zone traces the entire perimeter of the lower 48: 100 miles eastward and westward from the Pacific and Atlantic oceans; 100 miles southward and northward from land borders with Canada and Mexico.This zone contains 2/3rds of the US population, 9 of our 10 largest cities, and 6 whole states, by my count, including Hawai’i, as well as the District of Columbia.Also little-known is that this zone is the policing jurisdiction of a 60,000-member force — and counting — that knows no transparency. And since the second Trump regime dissolved its Civil Rights and Civil Liberties ombudsman and oversight bodies in early 2025, this force now knows no accountability, which should trouble us all, for these were the troops turned on all of us during the Black Lives Matter protests of the summer of 2020.I speak of Customs and Border Protection, or CBP, one of 22 federal tentacles of the post-9/11 bulwark erected to combat terror with terror: the Department of Homeland Security, now the beating heart of the worldwide Border Industrial Complex, itself the offspring of the Cold War-era Military Industrial Complex.When Customs and Border Protection was inaugurated in 2003, it subsumed the US Border Patrol. That force, dating to 1924 — when the US was in the grips of a nativist, xenophobic, anti-immigrant raging fervor much like it is today — was built on the rotten foundations of white supremacist ideology, The Border Patrol deputized members of the Ku Klux Klan, former Slave Patrollers who’d traveled west after the Civil War to become Texas Rangers or to ride with the Mounted Guard of Chinese Inspectors. The job of the Border Patrol was to exclude and eject those deemed unwelcome by a US government then under the influence of a quack-science, called Eugenics, which would animate the rise of fascism in Germany within a decade.From the start, US Border Patrol policing practice relied on racial profiling. At the height of the civil rights movement, in the 1970s, the policy was questioned as unconstitutional. Yet, in a series of dubious decisions, the US Supreme Court gave the Border Patrol carte blanche to carry on as it had since its openly racist beginnings. It allowed for the relentless erosion of all of our constitutional protections, from unlawful searches and seizures, as enshrined in the 4th Amendment.Enforcement through racial profiling was inherited by the agency of Customs and Border Protection when it became operational in March 2003. The Obama administration tried to curtail the practice, without success. One Department of Homeland Security official told the New York Times, “We can’t do our job without taking ethnicity into account. We are very dependent on that.”[1]Racial profiling is now on its way to becoming the law of the land. On September 8, 2025, in a 6-3 decision made under its shadowy shadow docket, Trump’s Supreme Court declared that racial profiling by ICE is a-okay in LA; that ICE officers no longer need “probable cause” to pull someone’s car over or drag them out of their house or remove them from their job or their children in chains. Skin color, language, accent, and job description are now enough, in the so-called Land of Laws, to tackle, shackle, and put someone on a one-way bus to prison, then on a one-way plane to refoulement.“The net effect,” states immigration attorney Dan Kowalski, is “that every non-White person in America is now a target for ICE, even if you are an American citizen.”[2]For the moment, this new latitude afforded to ICE by the six conservative members of the increasingly criminal Roberts’ court is limited to Los Angeles. But it's just another in a long line of slippery slope; another tear in the fabric of the US Constitution; another step toward the normalization of authoritarian rule in the so-called “Beacon of Hope.”It’s only a matter of time — unless we stop it — that this constitution-free immunity, heretofore enjoyed only by CBP and only in the 100-mile US border periphery, will roll into an interior domestic location near you, complete with masked agents riding around in armored vehicles, their guns and tear gas canisters at the ready in the US and under the auspices of ICE.On the eve of engorging itself on a budget bigger than the DEA, ATF, FBI, Marshall’s Service, and Bureau of prisons, combined, ICE and CBP have been harnessed as the private paramilitary of a US president, just as I predicted they would be in my book Crossing the Line: Finding America in the Borderlands if given the keys to the Oval Office once more.Now that warning has come true. From October 2025, federal agents operating under the Department of Homeland Security will be funded by Congress to patrol the so-called “Land of Free” like Hitler’s Brownshirts, like Pinochet’s military junta, like Central American death squads, which by the way, were 100% made in the USA.How did we reach this wretched place?* By never facing up to the fact that we are a nation born from the violence of enslaving other people and the genocidal displacement of human beings caused by manifest destiny.* By legitimizing former Slave Patrollers and Bounty Hunters with guns and badges as Texas Rangers and Border Patrol agents.* By imprisoning Black and Brown newcomers as far back as 1980, when the first immigration prison, set up in a decommissioned missile defense site in Krome, Florida, kicked off the development of the world’s largest immigrant enslavement system in the world, 80% of which is operated for profit.* By developing laws that punish Black and Brown newcomers more harshly for misdemeanor crimes, while cutting off their pathways to citizenship at the same time.* By erecting a terrifying so-called “War on Terror” behemoth on these same rotten white-supremist foundations upon which the Border Patrol was established.* And by allowing for the 40-year evolution of a propaganda machinery which for too long has mainlined disinformation, hate speech, and lies into the veins of the US populace, posing as a purveyor of news, and creating the cult of MAGA.The rise of fascism in the US is inextricably linked to what I call the “Foxification of America.” Its adherents love to squawk about how migrant workers, asylum seekers, and refugees are a strain on local economies. But the business of jailing and expelling folks seeking safety and dignified life, per their human and legal rights, is a booming business in the USA, particularly in Greg Abbott’s Ruby-Red Texas, Ron DeSantis’s Ruby-Red Florida, and throughout the once Confederate Ruby-Red Deep South.According to the Sentencing Project, which advocates for prison abolition in the US, fewer than 5,000 immigrants were detained by the US federal government when, on September 11, 2001, the Pentagon was breached and the World Trade Center reduced to ash. As of this recording, on September 11, 2025, that number is over 61,000 people. And Trump & Co are en route to incarcerating 100,000 people, or more, most of whom — the large majority of whom — have committed no crime, no matter what pundits spew on Fox News. No matter what statements the White House and DHS spokespeople spin.That’s another thing I learned while writing this book: opaque federal agency spokespeople lie. They just lie. They just tell people what they want them to believe.By inauguration day 2017, writes American history professor and scholar of fascism and authoritarianism Ruth Ben-Ghiat, “the anti-democratic policies and actions that followed 9/11 had become normalized. Zones within the federal government, like DHS, rewarded authoritarian attitudes and policies.”[3]In other words, the US government’s response to 9/11 paved the way to our current democratic crisis. The first Trump regime tried, but the second Trump regime has succeeded in weaponizing immigration to drive a stake into the heart of US democracy. And the infrastructure of surveillance and repression born from the 9/11 attacks bequeathed to a sociopath the foot soldiers of fascism now training their arms upon us.From Chapter 16 of Crossing the Line…I give you the origin story of the Department of Homeland Security, which, from its beginnings, has failed to keep any of us safe at all. Click the link above.ConclusionWith the MAGA party in control of both Congress and the White House, the courts are now the principal battlefield where the fight for the soul of the nation is now being waged. As I record this in the wake of yet another nihilistic decision by the highest court in the land, whether the judiciary can safeguard our rights is a chillingly open question.Have Trump & Co succeeded in harnessing immigration to drive us into a constitutional crisis?Or can we, the people, save US democracy?For Strategies of Resistance…Subscribe to my Substack newsletter, Tales of Humanity, and my podcast, From the Borderlands, on Substack and wherever you get your podcasts. Please rate and review while you're there, as it really does help others find the show.Tales of Humanity is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.For a deeper understanding of how we reached this wretched place… I invite you to read Crossing the Line: Finding America in the Borderlands, available wherever print, e-, and audiobooks are sold. And if you would like to convene an Immigration Study Circle with your community, I’m ready to support you with discounts on purchases of books by the box, if ordered through me, and virtual meet-ups. Contact me through my website: sarahtowle.com. Or click the image below…For now, stay strong, everyone. The only way through this is… together.XOXO SarahThanks for reading Tales of Humanity! This post is public so feel free to share it.[1] Apuzzo, Matt Apuzzo and Michael S. Schmidt. U.S. to Continue Racial, Ethnic Profiling in Border Policy. New York Times, Dec. 5, 2014.[2] Kowalski, Dan. All People of Color: And some White folks, too. Involuntary Departure, Sept 10, 2025[3] Ben-Ghiat, Ruth. 9/11 as Shock Event: The Path to Illiberal Politics. Lucid, Sep 11, 2022. Get full access to Tales of Humanity at sarahtowle.substack.com/subscribe

Welcome back, everyone. I hope you have had a restful summer and that you’re returning to reality recharged and ready to resist! To help get you motivated…Dora Rodriguez and I are thrilled to share with you our August 3, 2025, conversation for the HOPE KNOWS NO BORDERS BOOK CLUB & WEBINAR SERIES: It’s our 30,000-foot deep dive into the global leviathan that is the Border Industrial Complex with Petra Molnar and Todd Miller.When it comes to the politics of deterrence, detention, and deportation, we can sometimes overlook that managing the movement of people around the globe is Big Business. Businesses funded by governments, and therefore paid for by us, are making Big Bucks at the intersection of migration and so-called “security.” They are developing the smart walls, surveillance systems, gulags, Gestapo forces, weaponized robotic dogs, and drones hiding in plain sight all around us, becoming more and more normalized, and impacting all our lives and all our rights — though some with more cruelty toward some than others. Dora and my guests for Global Apartheid & the New Jim Code are two of the most incisive analysts of the industry that tracks and transports people as if they were packages, right down to each of our government-issued bar codes, facial biometrics, and pupil scans. We call it the Border Industrial Complex. And it is everywhere, giving truth to what journalist and author, Jean Guerrero, writes in her Aug. 29, 2025, New York Times Op-Ed: the border is indeed invading us.Pop in the earbuds and pull up a chair. You won’t want to miss this critically important and informative conversation with Petra and Todd. Remember, the only way through this … together,SarahResources Referenced:Articles Guerrero, Jean. “The Border Is Invading America.” New York Times Opinion, August 29, 2025.Lewis, Talila A. “Trump’s Rule Attacking Disabled and Low-Income Migrants Has Violent History: The rule uses the same criteria against migrants that were used to keep Black people enslaved.” Truthout, August 27, 2019.Books Miller, Todd. Border Patrol Nation: Dispatches from the Front Lines of Homeland Security. City Lights Publishers, March 2014.Miller, Todd. Storming the Wall: Climate Change, Migration, and Homeland Security. City Lights Books, Aug 2017.Miller, Todd. Empire of Borders: The Expansion of the US Border around the World, Verso Books. Aug 2019.Miller, Todd. Build Bridges, Not Walls: A Journey to a World Without Borders. City Lights Books, April 2021.Molnar, Petra. The Walls Have Eyes: Surviving Migration in the Age of Artificial Intelligence. The New Press, May 2024.Nevins, Joseph. Operation Gatekeeper and Beyond: The War On "Illegals" and the Remaking of the U.S.–Mexico Boundary. Routledge, February 2010.Towle, Sarah. Crossing the Line: Finding America in the Borderlands. She Writes Press, June 2024.Rodriguez, Dora. Dora: A Daughter of Unforgiving Terrain. Resiliencia Publishing, July 2025.Projects & Initiatives (and who mentioned them)Blue Triangle Solidarity (Rosey)The Border Chronicle (Todd)Border Community Alliance (Steve)Dora’s Salvavision (Father Ray)Hope Knows No Borders Book Club & Webinar Series (Sarah & Dora)Migration & Technology Monitor (Petra)Sarah’s Immigration Study Circles:Find a developing list of resistance strategies here:Thanks for reading Tales of Humanity! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Get full access to Tales of Humanity at sarahtowle.substack.com/subscribe

Welcome new subscribers! I’m thrilled to share that our community is growing. Slowly, but surely, we are turning into a mighty chorus, singing ever louder in glorious harmony: this is not the people we wish to be! I am deeply grateful to all of you who have pledged to support this work, and while I intend to keep this newsletter and podcast free, I may soon need to turn to donations to cover my mounting costs at the back end, especially to run the Hope Knows No Border Book Club & Webinar Series. Until then, if you find my Tales of Humanity newsletter and/or From the Borderlands podcast useful, please consider recommending it to your friends, family, and community. We’re growing the movement for JUST migration here, which, in the face of rising fascism, means being billions of tiny grains of sand thrown into the gears of the evil machinery to keep them from turning, until these dark days are behind us. Because they will end. And when they do, we’ll be ready to lock elbows to build a better world from the ashes. The only way through this is … together. In Solidarity, ✊🏼 SarahOn July 1, 2025, the MAGA-controlled US Congress voted to do what I warned in my book, Crossing the Line: Finding America in the Borderlands, they would do if given the keys to the White House once more: turn the most-troubled, least-transparent law enforcement agencies in the land into a private presidential paramilitary. Bequeathed a purse greater than the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Bureau of Prisons (BOP), US Marshals Service, and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) combined, and signed into law on July 4th, ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) are now fully unleashed to feed Trump & Co’s detention to deportation pipeline.Less than one week later, ICE rocked the quiet community of Camarillo, California, when it rolled into Glass House Farms in fortified military-grade vehicles, supported by National Guard forces and the local Ventura County Police Tactical Unit armed and outfitted for war.In what is said to be the largest workplace raid in California history, 361 farmworkers were abducted and disappeared into the US gulag. One person fell to his death. Many others were injured. It was cruelty on a mass scale: one worksite; one day; 361 workers and their families — a harbinger of what’s to come.But here’s what the armed intruders probably didn’t count on: The Ventura County community stood up in defense of civil liberties, human decency, and human rights. To me, an outsider looking on from afar, their response appeared organized. It looked coordinated. It was not. But within the grassroots response of family members, community organizers, and journalists alike, there is much to offer the growing resistance nationwide.If you’re looking for strategic tips and tools to fuel your community’s efforts, you won’t want to miss this interview with folks on the frontlines of the July 10th Glass House Raids. I invited Glass House Farms leadership to comment as well, but they did not respond to my requests.While the July 10th Glass House workplace raids may have been the largest in California to date, they were not the largest in US history. That would be the attack on the Swift meatpacking plants on December 12, 2006, which involved over 1,000 ICE agents with the support of local police, simultaneously targeting plants in Utah, Colorado, Iowa, Nebraska, Texas, and Minnesota, and affecting as many as 20,000 workers and their loved ones. Then there was the August 7, 2019, raid on seven Mississippi poultry plants, involving more than 600 ICE agents and impacting 680 families.We must remember that in every case, when the raids are over and the dust has settled, when insurance claims have been filed and companies have been reimbursed for the cost of damages incurred, parents are gone; families are torn apart, possibly forever; children cry themselves to sleep at night, traumatized for life, not knowing if they will ever see their loved ones again.These are the real costs of our immigration policies. And they are human.If this is not the nation you wish to be, stand up for the children. Stand against tyranny and for the rule of law. Join the resistance today. Skill up on how we got to this wretched place with Crossing the Line: Finding America in the borderlands, available in print, eBook, and audiobook. Discounts available on books purchased by the box and ordered through me. DM me today. Links for engagement, donations, training, etc… * Humanitarian assistance: mixteco.org/donate* Legal assistance: 805undocufund.org* Civic engagement: buen-vecino.org Thanks for reading Tales of Humanity! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Get full access to Tales of Humanity at sarahtowle.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode of From the Borderlands…Author-activist and sister humanitarian, Abbey Carpenter, engages mi hermana de alma, Dora Rodriguez, and me on the topic of “Writing to Change the World” for the June meet-up of the Hope Knows No Borders Book Club & Webinar Series. It was a special occasion for two reasons:* We celebrated the coming launch of Dora’s new memoir, Dora: A Daughter of Unforgiving Terrain, now available!* And we marked the first anniversary of Crossing the Line: Finding America in the Borderlands by announcing the second edition, with an all-new Author Foreword and revised Epilogue framed around the second Trump regime’s first 100 days, coming to bookstores near you on September 2!Abbey drew inspiration for this webinar from a book by Mary Pipher called Writing to Change the World. A renowned psychologist and the author of 11 books, among them four New York Times bestsellers, Mary’s aim with Writing to Change the World is to help folks passionate about sharing their point of view craft clear and compelling messages, because, as Mary writes…In these tumultuous times, don’t we all want to be heard? Who doesn’t want to transform the world? Abbey engaged Dora and me on several subjects:* Our writing mission* Why storytelling?* Writing for catharsis* Story structure and voice* Writing to foster awareness and growth* The psychology of change* And how to end a story that has no end, as is the case in both my and Dora’s writing topic: immigration.We discussed the power of storytelling to touch hearts and change minds, even if only a millimeter at a time. How storytelling allows us to memorialize the lives of those now tragically lost. And that by naming that which is ignored and discussing that which is so horrible and overwhelming, we can expand readers’ consciousness and move them to collective action toward bringing positive change to a flawed world.It was such a joy to discuss the craft of writing for a change; to share this platform with my dear friend and Hope Knows No Borders Book Club & Webinar Series co-facilitator; and to connect with a new soul sister, Abbey Carpenter. We will reprise this craft talk when Abbey’s forthcoming book on her work for Battalion Search and Rescue, to find those lost in the US borderlands and bring closure to their families and loved ones, is ready for your review, so stay tuned to this space!We hope you enjoy our discussion. Click the play button above to begin. If you haven’t ordered, read, and reviewed our books already, you can find them here:Thanks for reading Tales of Humanity! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.Other Posts you might like by Sarah Towle for Tales of Humanity From the Borderlands: Get full access to Tales of Humanity at sarahtowle.substack.com/subscribe

Welcome new subscribers! I hope you’ll listen and share today’s video of the May meet up of the Hope Knows No Borders Book Club & Webinar Series. Talk about timely! Even my co-facilitator Dora Rodriguez and I could not have anticipated that our discussion topic would become a reality in Los Angeles just two weeks later. Click the button below if you’d like to learn more about our monthly series. Next event: June 22, 2:30-4:00 pm ET. In Chapters 9 and 16 of Crossing the Line: Finding America in the Borderlands, I warned that Trump & Co, if elected again, could harness the enforcement entities of the Department of Homeland “Security” — ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), which includes Border Patrol — to drive our democracy into crisis and toward authoritarian rule. These forces know no transparency. They suffer little accountability. They are trained in counterinsurgency tactics. They hunt, subdue, disappear, even kill, without worry about human rights and constitutional protections. If you ask them why, they will tell you: We’re just doing our jobs.While they are being, and have been, deployed like an army by the Trump regime, they are forces that were allowed to metastasize under administrations on both sides of the political aisle — for decades. Under orders now to deport 3,000 people a day, they are hunting and disappearing parents attending elementary school graduation ceremonies, families following the rules from their immigration court hearings, working people at Home Depots, in restaurants, at hotels, and on construction sites.Trump & Co are committing this violence against unarmed, non-criminal offenders with a purpose:* to provoke a citizen backlash, so they can* invoke the Insurrection Act, in order * to side-step the Posse Comitatus Act, so they can* turn US forces against all of us. And that, my friends, is martial law.The MAGA-party regime — let us be clear, it is neither “Republican” nor an “administration” — built their entire messaging machine on whipping up fears about an “invasion” at the US southern border. Well, I crossed the US-Mexico line from 2020-2024, researching my book. I saw no tanks or uniformed troops bearing arms. I saw only fathers and mothers bearing children in their arms, and all that they own on their backs.The only places that I’ve witnessed uniformed troops bearing arms in the US today is in our cities, both in the borderlands as well as in the interior. First it was balaclava-clad ICE cops and Border Protection cowboys hunting and disappearing fathers and mothers and children, shamefully zip-tying behind their backs the arms of school-aged US citizens. Now federalized National Guard troops and Marines have joined ICE and CBP’s wretched band, and with them has come not calm but more chaos.Let us be clear: The only invasion in the US today is the stepped-up southward-moving federal militarization of the borderlands, and the logarithmic escalation of the US Border Industrial Complex nationwide.Here’s what too few US residents understand: The whole of the US is encircled in a 100-mile policing zone, which is the jurisdiction of CBP. This area is home to 2/3rds of the US population; nine of our 10 largest cities, including Los Angeles; as well as six whole states and DC. Owing to a series of dubious 1970s Supreme Court decisions, our Fourth Amendment rights against unlawful searches and seizures no longer apply here, especially if you're a person of color. During the 2020 Black Lives Matter demonstrations, Trump & CO harnessed CBP forces, along with their interior counterpart, ICE, to clear DC’s Lafayette Park of peaceful protestors and disappear demonstrators in Portland, Oregon, into unmarked vans. With fascism now ascendant in the USA, we should be horrified, especially as we see the made-for-Fox-TV US military invasion play out on the streets of LA. My co-facilitator of the Hope Knows No Borders Book Club & Webinar Series, Dora Rodriguez, and I saw this coming, as have borderlanders from Texas to California — for decades. Indeed, a 2021 ACLU-Michigan report found that the expansion in Homeland "Security" policing and surveillance at the US northern border is only about 10 years behind the southwest.Just days before Trump & Co’s invasion of LA, we assembled an august panel to ask:What does the stepped-up militarization of the borderlands augur for the future? And what does it mean? Is it a prelude to martial law?We hope you’ll click the play button above and listen to the conversation in full.We hope, too, that you’ll share it far and wide because what’s happening in LA today could be coming to your town tomorrow, especially if you, too, are in the 100-mile policing perimeter that is the militarized US borderlands.With big gratitude to:* Dylan Corbett, Executive Director, Hope Border Institute, El Paso, Texas* Amerika Garcia-Grewel, Border Vigil, Eagle Pass, Texas* James Holeman, Battalion Search and Rescue, Silver City, New Mexico* Dora Rodriguez, Salvavision, Tucson Samaritans, Hope Knows No Borders Book Club & Webinar Series, Tucson, ArizonaURGENT Call To Action:Contact your senators today. Tell them to VOTE NO to Trump & Co’s “Bill, Beautiful Bill,” aka the “Mass Murder Bill” (Anat Shenker-Osorio), aka the “Terrible, Tyrannical Bill” (Stacy Abrams). It is an abomination, seeking to give more power to ICE and CBP. And that is a genie that cannot be rebottled. Thanks for reading Tales of Humanity! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Get full access to Tales of Humanity at sarahtowle.substack.com/subscribe

Welcome new subscribers! Thank you for joining the movement for JUST migration. I aim to post podcast episodes, webinar recordings, stories, news, event announcements, and calls to action weekly, though sometimes life and other writing deadlines get in the way. Like last week. Following an exciting update regarding Crossing the Line, my to-do list was unexpectedly hacked. But for a good reason! Stay tuned for more on that in my next post. Today, I’m thrilled to finally bring you Part II of Crossing Lines: Cruelty, Compassion, & the Real Border Crisis…In April 2025, I had the great honor of keynoting a Southern California Immigration Teach-In — a model event I believe communities across the nation should emulate. The gathering was the brainchild of Peyton Trilling, a high school junior at Agoura Hills High School, and Gina Muscatel, former Indivisible chapter leader and current Malibu Democratic Club co-facilitator. They pulled in long-time immigrant rights stalwarts and community organizers from Freedom for Immigrants, Mixteco/Indigena Community Organizing Project (MICOP), and Buen Vecino, as well as immigration attorney Gabriella Navarro-Busch, Esq., and immigration scholar, Dr. José Alamillo, CSU Channel Islands. These amazing speakers formed a powerhouse panel moderated by former California State Treasurer John Chiang. We hit a few roadblocks, including the original event host backing out at the last minute. But in true Southern California spirit, Gina and Peyton decided the show had to go on! They and found a new venue. However, there was no time for a sound check, resulting in quality issues with the audio recording — hence the delay in getting this post to you. We all felt it well worth doctoring, however, because the discussion was strung with wise pearls. And to aid your listening experience, we prepared a transcript of the event, which you’ll find below. If you haven’t listened to my keynote address yet and would like to, please find it here:But first, before you push play, I invite you to spread the love!With deep gratitude to Gina, John, José, Gabriella, Arcenio, Laura, Willy, Peyton and her family, and all those whose lives are being upended by rising US fascism and the the most aggressive federal assault on immigrants in modern US history, I am making this offer to all groups, like them, wishing to raise awareness and grow the movement for Just Migration through community outreach and education:* Turn Outrage Into Action! Share Parts I and II of Crossing Lines: Cruelty, Compassion, & the Real Border Crisis* Create a Book Club or Study Circle with Crossing the Line.Obtain books at a generously discounted rate on boxed purchases of 24, if ordered through me. * Zoom Me In For Group Discussions.I can also share with you the model harnessed by Gina & Peyton for our April SoCal Teach In: Crossing Lines: Cruelty, Compassion, & the Real Border CrisisAnd now I give you Crossing Lines: Cruelty, Compassion, & the Real Border Crisis, Part II (push play above)Transcript:Gina Muscatel, Host:Okay, now it is my honor to introduce to you today our panel moderator. Oh, but first, I ask our lovely panel to come on up and take your seats. Thank you. These are the people doing the work who are going to hopefully teach us what we can do to jump in there and help.Okay, so as they get settled, I will go ahead and introduce our panel moderator. He's a dedicated public servant, a visionary leader, and someone who has made a lasting impact on California's fiscal landscape. Throughout his remarkable career, John Chiang has consistently demonstrated a deep commitment to the people of California. Serving as state treasurer from 2015 to 2019, he managed the state's finances with unwavering focus on fiscal responsibility, innovation, and transparency.Under his leadership, California was able to navigate some of the toughest financial challenges with resilience. Beyond the numbers and policy decisions, though, John's commitment to social equity and financial justice has set him apart. He has consistently fought for solutions that create economic opportunities for all Californians, especially those in underserved communities. And he has been a strong advocate for education, affordable housing, and environmental sustainability.Today, as we gather here, we have the privilege of hearing from someone who has not only shaped California's landscape, but has also worked tirelessly to build a more equitable and sustainable future for all.Please join me in welcoming John Chiang.John Chiang, Moderator:Well, good afternoon.It's an incredible pleasure to be with all of you. I am an FOP — a friend of Peyton —since her birth. I had the incredible fortune of as my old office mate, her Dad, and I had the pleasure of watching Andy and Heather meet and date, and then witness their joy and four apples in their eyes, the birth of their incredible four daughters, when my sister was still with us.My sister was an immigration attorney for a formidable congressman, Congressman Howard Berman, and then went to work at the INS as an immigration attorney. She, like you, had this incredible conscience. She had this incredible courage, and I just wanted to thank you and hope you have a great future.We want people, we want especially you, who have a better view of our humanity and will act upon it. So, thank you so very much for all your hard work.I am so excited to moderate. I will stay out of the way of an incredible panel. They bring a great cross-section of academic expertise from industry, an immigration law practitioner and civil rights advocate, those who lead community and nonprofit organizations, who can share the experience of those who are affected, those who take bold action, and tell us how we address this and how we come together.As stated by Sarah and your beautiful remarks, I appreciate the incredible imagery from the narrative of your book, and what we need to do to heal and grow together.To make sure we can create a diverse humanity, and focus on a leadership example to many countries.And so our first panelist is a distinguished professor from nearby Cal State University Channel Islands, José Alamillo.Dr. José Alamillo, Panelist:Yeah, I'm not distinguished, though.John Chiang, Moderator:We don't want to use a distinguished academic or formal term, distinguished in your work.He has a doctorate from UC Irvine, he has a great sense of perspective on immigration. And so, Dr. Alamillo, if you would share, especially in these current times, the immigration points and narrative history that you think are most relevant to the audience?Dr. José Alamillo, Panelist:Yes, thank you, John.I teach immigration history at Cal State Channel Islands, just down the road in Camarillo, and I think a couple of things that Sarah pointed out, I think are really important, is that we really need to understand the roots of migration.And always, you know, in my immigration class, when students are, you know, fairly new to the subject, I always make sure that they understand one phrase, at least. Something that they can take with them. And that is immigrants are here because we were there, meaning that they're here with us as neighbors, as our, you know, co-workers, because the U.S. was in their homeland, in their country.And so we really need to understand the reason for migration. That's one of the central points that I try to teach my students. Not only with, like you mentioned, the U.S. intervention in Central America, but they can be next door.You know, the U.S. was next door to Mexico. At the turn of the century, we had U.S. railroad and agricultural companies buying up land all over Mexico that created a displacement of many of the citizens who then would migrate to cities to find jobs. But if they couldn’t find jobs in the cities, they would have to then go to the border area. And in the border area, they were either recruited or enticed to go and work in the same industry that they were in their homeland, like agriculture and railroads.So we really need to understand those roots of migration because they're fundamental to understanding why we have this issue with so many migrants, right? So many immigrants in our country.So that's one point.The second point is that, you know, last year was the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Border Patrol. But also the immigration law that created it, which was known as the Johnson-Reed Immigration Act, or Immigration Act 1924. And so one of the things that I did is that I, along with one of my colleagues, we put together a special issue in the California History Journal on 100 years of the border patrol.And so we need to understand the evolution of this agency because it's really, if you think about it, it's one of those agencies that really does not live to help people, but actually to do the opposite.You know, when this country was founded, we had federal agencies that were really helping our citizens, like farmers, the Department of Agriculture, and then we needed to get them educated, the Department of Education.But then we created this border patrol agency to essentially do the opposite.It's not to assist, it's to really enforce the borders. To take them back.And when you look at the actual origins of the Border Patrol, it wasn't just former KKK members, those are also former Texas Rangers. This is actually a group in Texas that were literally trying to kill Mexican people, citing them for going onto property or, you know, mishigas. And so if I would say, you know, looking at the origins of the Border Patrol is really important because it really makes us think about what is the purpose of what we have, what is now known as ICE, right?And I recommend one particular documentary on the border patrol, and that is the massacre that took place by the Texas Rangers. Many of them went on to become border agents. It's called Porvenir Massacre in Texas. It's an amazing documentary that looks at the sort of violence along the border.It was in 1918, it was the Porvenir, P-O-R-V-E-N-I-R Massacre in Texas.That really looks at how it's vigilante groups hunted down Mexican immigrants and literally overnight massacred an entire group of them in Texas. And the other point too, the law that created the Border Patrol, the 1924 Immigration law, was really set up to create a white nation. It was supported by eugenicists, by white supremacists. And when you look at, well, how is it that they created this quota system?Well, think about how they did that. You know, it's not like the, you know, Chinese Exclusion Act that was very clearly racist, right? It's in the title. But when you look at the Johnson-Reed Act, it's really made up of two senators that were very much white supremacists in support of eugenicists, right?The idea of that is the Euro-racial blood. And that we need to preserve that purity.Well, these senators essentially, you know, not only created quotas based on the 1920 census, because in the 1920s we were a more diverse nation. They went back to 1890, when we weren't as diverse, and they used the 1890 census to create the quota system, which is basically taking 2% of every country from Europe and Asia, right, and then only allowed 2% to enter the U.S., I would say that again, 2%. And including some of the European immigrants, right, they were literally restricted under the quota system.So when you look at the origins of this law, it also created and designed a particular type of population they wanted in this country, and that was really a privileging and preserving of Europeans that were coming from Northwestern Europe, not Southern Eastern Europe.So, I'll leave it there.John Chiang, Moderator:Thank you.Gabriela, welcome.Gabriela Navarro-Busch is a board-winning attorney recognized for her pro bono service. She's a former board member, a former president of the Ventura County chapter of the Mexican-American Bar Association. She served on the board of the California Rural Legal Assistance, has been practicing since 2001. So she brings an unbelievable perspective of the immigration system.Gabriella Navarro-Busch, Esq., Panelist:The first thing I want to do is I want to thank Peyton for bringing this group together. When I was your age, there was a lawyer that inspired me to become a lawyer. And in high school, I had a fight for myself in order to be able to stay in school, and then eventually I became a lawyer.I started practicing immigration law during the Bush administration, during Obama, during Trump, during Biden. And I don't like using the term Trump 2.0 because it kind of says that this is a better version of him. It's a more evil version of him.And the one thing, you know, I don't like to take his name. I used to call him Beetlejuice. But I have to, we have to make sure we stamp everything that is going on with his name on it. During the first Trump administration, many of my colleagues were deciding to throw in the towel and discontinue practicing immigration. At that point, I said, this is when they need us the most. This is not the time to back out.I was personally involved in and had family members that were U.S. vets that were deported, and despite any actions that I could take as an immigration attorney, I wasn't able to save two of my brothers. Both of them were U.S. vets that were deported.One died within five months of his deportation, and the other one was able to remain in Mexico and was able to make a life for himself, but because of the struggles he had on his own, he eventually died in 2023.I've often said that if you're going to be undocumented, it's better to be undocumented in California. We have laws here that actually protect a lot of immigrants. We've been very instrumental since before even the first Trump administration to be able to pass laws to protect immigrants. We've been able to protect many immigrants that are victims of crimes in order for them to be able to pursue some type of avenue for legalization.We do have the Trust Act that limits the ability and restricts local law enforcement from holding people for immigration. Although it continues to happen, we still see it. So what can I do as an immigration attorney?Number one, it's not the time to throw in the towel as much as I want to.Number two, is we have to continue to fight. There's been an executive order that was written in order to limit the rights of the person’s right to counsel and to scare attorneys from representing asylum seekers.There's another law, “Show Me Your Papers.” It will be a matter of time when American citizens, U.S. citizens, are going to be forced into identifying who they are and where they're from.So what I do, I do a lot of “know your rights” presentations.I know everybody’s pushing a book. I'm not responsible for this, but this is something that I provide in a lot of literary rights presentations. It's just a book that tells people what they need to do, how they should learn rights in both English and Spanish, and the famous red cards.These cards have been instrumental. In holding back detention as best they can.Thank you so much again, Peyton, for having this, and I'll send it over to your next speaker.John Chiang, Moderator:Welcome, Arcenio Lopez, the Executive Director of MICOP.MICOP focuses on uniting indigenous leaders in Ventura County to strengthen the history of the folks of the Mixteco community. And perhaps a good way to add to the conversation would be, what should lesson one be for the rest of us?Arcenio Lopez, MICOP, Panelist:Well, thank you.I am Arcenio Lopez. I'm the Executive Director of the Mixteco Indigena Community Organizing Project. We are a nonprofit in the tri-counties — Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, and we've been in Ventura County for the last 20 years.We serve the indigenous migrant communities. The majority of us are from Mexico. But I think it's important to mention that we are on indigenous lands. This is the continent of native people.In Mexico, there's about 68 indigenous nations still alive and still being under persecution and trying to make us believe that we don't belong to this continent. But we are part of this continent.So our organization, I think this is not new, definitely is more concerning.I think our communities are pretty afraid. But the fear is not something new for us, as migrant people. When the border was created on this continent, indigenous people here in Ventura County. We come primarily because of the agricultural industry. I will say that 6 out of 10, if not 7 out of 10, farmworkers that have come here, and I will say that the whole area of agriculture and agriculture of the state are farmworkers that are indigenous people. 60-75%. That means that … will come from the inhabitants of our community. People who are main members with … goods. As a lot of our languages …, we speak our own native languages. At my place we speak Mixteco, but we have at least 12 different languages in our county, or indigenous languages in our county.So our organization, for the last I would say, six weeks, eight weeks, we've been very active doing what was already shared, know your rights workshops. But also being very active and trying to build our rapid response plans.How the Rapid Response plans look like is still struggling a lot. We are developing multiple Rapid Response plans. Those plans that make sense for us to try and protect our communities, but also plans that are trying to protect our own organization because our own organization, as a 501(c)(3), is also under threat.So it's been a lot of work lately, but if I could just throw this out there for a call of actions, what are some of the things that I see you can do?You can reach out to us.You can reach out to our 805 UndocuFund organization.Besides the rapid response plans, there's a lot of things you can help us with. We just were able, two weeks ago, we were able to win one of the cases, the very first person that was detained in the city of Oxnard. He got released under a bond.So we want to, one way to that, the one thing that we were struggling with is trying to get funds to pay for these bonds.He needed transportation, maybe something that would be helpful in these cases is providing transportation to these individuals.Some of these individuals that are being detained right now. There's two or three in Santa Barbara County. Their families need emergency assistance with rent, food, and clothes.So there’s multiple things you can support with our organizations. But I would say it's mainly reaching out to either us or reaching out to the 805 UndocuFund, which is one of the organizations that is following the Rapid Response Network.Happy to share more if there's more time.John Chiang, Moderator:So on a side, during President Trump's first term, California's litigation was successful 80% of the time against Trump's actions.Welcome, Laura, with Freedom for Immigrants.This organization addresses many issues, or some of the issues that Sarah talked about in regards to the complex. This is the immigrant-led organization that is leading the effort on immigrant incarceration.Laura, Freedom for Immigrants, Panelist:Thank you, Peyton.Thank you, Sarah, for the amazing presentation.I didn't know what I was going to talk about today. It was really going to be a game-time decision for me. It was a game-time decision for me to even walk in the front door.So I am directly impacted.[apologizes for emotional response]I was incarcerated in a California state prison for something I didn't do over 20 years ago. I spent 15 years incarcerated, and then I got out. And in the middle of the pandemic, in June of 2020, I was released.[apologizes again]Since I was released, well, I was released on a law called Penal Code 1172.1, which at the time, in 2019, when I was brought out to court, there was approximately 150,000 people incarcerated in California alone. Thirty-four people had been recommended for resentencing under that law.That is how tiny the needle was to thread it through.But I was sent out to court for resentencing. And because Penal Code 1172.1…sorry…is for people that have shown exemplary or above and beyond rehabilitative efforts. And while I was incarcerated, I became a leader, a mentor, a facilitator, a trainer, and I founded organizations.One of the latest organizations that I founded was a youth mentor organization here in Southern California.I was part of a movement.I created the very first walk-a-thon in honor of victims of crime at CWF. That is now an annual walk-a-thon that happens with all of the proceeds going to the victims’ fund in Matera.And so I got out. I came out of court, and then I was caught in the middle of the pandemic. So that's a whole other webinar, I guess. But I was there for ten months, and eventually, I was resentenced by my sentencing judge to credit time served.Also, I think it's important to note that, you know, I'm an immigrant. I was brought to the United States when I was three months old.I didn't choose to be born here — the place that I was born is literally a little bit under a mile from the U.S.-Mexican border.So I didn't choose where I was born, and I didn't choose where I grew up, but I did grow up in California, in Orange County, in the city of Santa Ana. And so I became a legal permanent resident when I was a child.But because of my conviction, I am now at the top of the list for Trump, and so I think that we're going to wake up to another era. And I have to make a decision about what I am going to do with myself, right? Because I don't want to go ahead with it, I don't want to go forward, right?I'm still legal in this country. But I knew that I would be a priority.And as soon as I got out in 2020, I became an organizer. I was organizing on the streets of Orange County. I became the coordinator for the Orange County Rapid Response Network. And then in 2023, I became executive director at a national nonprofit company for immigrants. And we do work all across the state. And we focus a lot on California.I can talk a lot about what fire renovation does if you want. But I felt like my story was important for you all to hear today.And so fast forward, right? We also do Know Your Rights plans. We do emergency, I do emergency response training. And I do emergency planning training for people like me. And we have to create, you know, value preparedness plans.And I can tell you that that's something you see. It feels like you're fighting. And I've made a decision.And I've been doing all the work that I've been doing. I've also got married. My husband is here today. I got married in 2022. We got married on November 4th, 2022, and closed escrow on our house on November 14th 2022.I got my first car out of the dealer.I've been doing everything right, and so having to make the decision to leave my house was not an easy one.I don’t get to see my husband for…And it's uncomfortable because I'm always worried about my safety, and I have to look, and I have to ask him to make sure you’re not being followed. And when you go home, you look around at cars, at people. We have cameras now. We have all of this stuff that goes with keeping me safe. Keeping me here. What I’m trying to avoid is getting served a notice to appear because once that happens, I’m done.I don't want to be taken to mandatory detention and mandatory detention because of my convictions. And so it's been hard.So when they said, you know, when Sarah was talking about opening your doors to people, it's real.I have people that have opened their doors to me so that I can be safe. You know, I need to move around. And those are the people that — I don't call them allies. I call them accomplices.And so I encourage you all to become an accomplice.John Chiang, Moderator:Willie is our next speaker.Willie is Executive Director of Buen Vecino, a Ventura County-based nonprofit organization focused on immigration rights, civil rights, affordable housing, racial justice.His parents were big followers of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s peace movement for justice and opportunity. So, Willie, thank you and thank you for all you’ve done..Willie Lubka, Buen Vecino, Panelist:Okay, thanks.Welcome everybody.Great to see you all.Buen Vecino is a grassroots advocacy and community organizing group based in Ventura County. We were founded between the election of the first Trump regime and his inauguration. One of our co-founders is an amazing retired Newbury Park High School teacher, Amy, who's right here.We have found that since January 20th this year, the sense of people living under threat locally in Ventura County has intensified and is great and is causing a lot of stress for people. And you have to just think about living your daily life under the constant reality of potentially being abducted.We have unaccountable troopers, stormtroopers in our county, abducting people, disappearing them every day. And when this happens, it creates an emergency for that individual and for their family.So people are living under emergencies and under the fear of kidnappings that are occurring. People get disappeared. That's what's happening.We are dedicated to trying as much as we can through anything we can do to prevent that from happening, to opposing and preventing the detention and deportation of our immigrant neighbors in Ventura County and throughout the state. CLU did a study last year that estimated there are more than 60,000 non-citizens living in Ventura County, and at least 20,000 children of those non-citizens are living in our town.That's 10% of the population. It's a huge number of people.So, many people have talked about know-your-rights education. It's something we're very active in doing as well.We've also heard about the red cards. We've provided red cards. If you don't have one, you can take it.[Oh my God, I'm getting a one-minute sign. There's no way I'm going to achieve that.]Take red cards and read what's on them. It's basic rights that are afforded to anyone in this country, regardless of their immigration status. And one of the things we learned in doing know your rights presentations in the community, which we have done since we were founded eight or nine years ago, is a lot of us just innately feel like we have to obey or we're being a bad person. And we're trying to disabuse people of that notion and realize, no, the person giving you the order might be a bad person.Stand up for your rights.Don't open your door.Exercise the right to remain silent and teach your family.One of the things that can happen is if ICE knocks on the door of your home or your car and says, let us in; if you crack open the door, that's permission. Once you crack open the door, they can bust in. They have the legal right.You don't open it.But if you have children in the family who don't know them, that can lead to your rights being violated. So it's important for the whole family to have this know-your-rights education.I just want to share something with you that Trump Border Czar, Tom Homan, said in a CNN interview: He said that know your rights knowledge is making it very difficult to carry out his mandate. So we're doubling down and we're going to do as much Know-Your-Rights education as we can.What can you do?I'm just going to rattle off some things, and then I'll stop so we can have Q&A.The Rapid Response Network that exists, the one that Arcenio talked about, we're part of the steering committee with 805 UndocuFund and MICOP. We need volunteers to be trained as legal observers. Legal observers show up when ICE is active in the field and witness what's happening, ensuring people's human rights are protected. If they're violated, it’s caught on film.We train people to keep their safe distance. We only want people who are citizens to do this. We need more volunteers to be trained and be available to show up.The other major part of being a volunteer legal observer is supporting families. We help them find legal resources when we can. Sometimes we give rides.We had a case last week where somebody's child was suddenly abandoned because they had been arrested by ICE. We had to pick up the child and take them to a safe place.So if you're interested in becoming an observer, in getting trained, and doing what you can as a legal observer, please contact us. We need more people, especially in the East County.Keep your eye out for legislation, at the state level and the federal level, that helps protect the immigrant communities and support it. Let your electeds know. We're going to Sacramento next week to advocate for a number of bills. One of them is called Assembly Bill 49, the California Safe Haven Schools and Childcare Act. This would be a state law that would prohibit immigration agents from entering schools without the approval of the superintendent or principal and without a duly signed warrant signed by a judge. We should pass that bill and others like it with community members’ support for electeds.We're going to be meeting with Henry Stern and with Jacqui Irwin to ask them to support this bill. If they waffle, we're going to be calling on community members to follow them and email them, and let them know this is important to people who live here.Follow immigrant rights organizations, including those that are mounting lawsuits against the Trump administration. The court system is one of the main buffers we still have against the unfettered steamroller that is trying to roll out across the country.And I see some ACLU people here. ACLU is one of the many organizations that's doing heroic work in the courts.I also want to mention something. I met Laura through a coalition we're both part of, called ICE Out of California. This coalition was the driving force behind the laws —The Trust Act, the Truth Act, and SB54, the California Values Act. This coalition is statewide, it is powerful, and we are working still to promote, build at the state level and to help make our state of California a safer, more welcoming place for immigrants to live in peace with their families.One of the other major activities of this coalition is what we call individual freedom campaigns. This is where individuals like Laura are seeking relief from being hunted by immigration.And I want to mention that there are QR codes. Please scan them. Please scan them and follow the links. There's the opportunity to actively support these individual freedom campaigns.And I want to mention one more to you specifically. And it's a freedom campaign right now to urge Governor Newsom to pardon an individual named Sithy Bin. That's S-I-T-H-Y B-I-N.Google his name, Sithy Bin. You will see his story.Oh, and you will find the links to his pardon campaign on those QR codes.Sithy Bin. I had the honor of meeting him, like Laura and so many others, who are labeled by people who don't know them as criminals. He's an amazing individual who many of us would be blessed to have as our neighbor. A community leader who is working to make California better, to be a mentor, to be a leader, and someone who deserves to stay here with his family. Read his story, sign the petition, and follow his individual freedom campaigns.A couple more things, and then, okay, I want everyone to be thoughtful.I'm sure we are, but it's worth repeating about the lack of the news.Calling a person an “illegal” implies that their very existence somehow violates the law. No human being is illegal. Terms like this erase people’s humanity and are used to justify their mistreatment, abuse, and exclusion.The same thing applies to people who've been convicted of a crime and incarcerated. When we label people with terms like criminal, felon, and convict, their identities as human beings are being erased.We should call them mother, father, daughter, son. People's humanity should come first.This is really important because something we hear all the time, including from Democrats, is, well, if they're immigrants and they're criminals, do you want them here?Well, let me tell you a little bit about myself.When I was a teenager, I started experimenting with drugs when I was 15. By the time I was 16, I was a hardcore drug addict, and I dropped out of high school. And soon after that, I was convicted of committing crimes and incarcerated. Unlike Laura, who was convicted of something she didn't do, I did the crime, and I was incarcerated. And I'm not going to talk about what I did as a teenager, because I am still ashamed.But I found recovery. I found 12-step programs. I found sobriety. I've been able to live a life of productivity, of spirituality, of becoming a father, and being able to do something like work with Buen Vecino.But if I hadn't been born in the United States as a citizen here, I'd be one of the criminals that so many people in the media and our politics would say, the only difference between me and Laura is where we were born.When you hear people talking about getting immigrant criminals out of here, please, think of Laura. Think of me. Think of human beings. Look up the story of Sithy Bin. Think of Sithy.John Chiang, Moderator:I think you get the sense of urgency that we have, especially with the latest updates.Willie gave us a lot of homework for those of you who are listening to quite a few takeawaysBut for the panelists, can you give like one or two separate takeaways, and then we'll take questions.Dr. José M. Alamillo:Resist. We need to resist and we need to push back against what's happening in our country. Become a member of the ACLU. Right now is the moment, because our rights and much liberty are being taken away.So I would say that we need to resist and help our neighbors out.Gabriella Navarro-Busch, Esq.:What I would say, ¡si se puede! I mean, it’s something, it's a rallying cry that was started by Cesar Chavez, and I think we can continue it.Thank you again for being here.Arcenio Lopez, Organizer:Last week, a labor leading organizer was detained in Washington. That's another kind of reality, such a reality check for those who are fighting for human rights, are also now being tagged as criminals.And we are being also the targeted. And they're coming after us.So my advice is to get to know your neighbors, to get to know your nonprofits, organizations, who are doing social justice work, do more human rights work, and connect, sign up for their newsletter, reach out, and ask how can I support?Because it's real. How do you trust?And I don't want to say this, but hopefully I won’t be saying that probably one of our organizers, including myself, will be detained. So I really appreciate the books and how you were telling the stories on how the real life happens in the region.Because that's exactly what happens. I already was there when I was crossing the border, and I was feeling like I was not a human being, that I was the most awful criminal person, and the humanity side of it was missing and was not really treated as a human being.There's a lot we can do, just that's my advice: just get connected to your non-profits, reach out, there's tons of ways you can support us in the movement. This is a movement. We as native indigenous people, we know that we need to be part of the resistance, and we need you to be part of the resistance. We need you.Laura, Organizer:I echo what everyone has already said, so get connected.And then also my invitation earlier to become an accomplice, but also just research and education is like so important, right?Because once you become part of it, once you start taking these steps and you start plugging into your local ACLU, your local nonprofit, and you start doing the work, there's going to be adversaries, right?And we don't, we're all of us on this panel, it's not just like an everyday affair. Like it's: we have to face opposition every single day, whether it's from our administration, whether it's from our community, whether it's from our neighbors, sometimes it's within our own families.And so we need to be ready to answer those questions, like our moderator said earlier, right? What do you say when someone says, So what do you mean? Do you want open borders? And be ready to defend your conditions.It's not just about like, you know, jumping in and doing something because it feels good, but it's really educating yourself about what you're doing so that you're able to respond to the people who are going to attack your position.Willie Lubka, Organizer:I'm going to add two more things.We need to get to work now in preparation for the 2026 election. That means registering young voters. If young people vote in higher numbers, things will change.We need to engage people in what's called civic engagement. Follow what your city council is doing. Get involved, understand that our voice matters, and be engaged. It's not just voting, it's understanding what people are accountable to after being elected and being engaged.And I want to especially lift up youth leadership development.One more thing. One more thing.I just want to respond to the gentleman with a red hat. It's not a MAGA hat. The hat has a message on it that expresses how a lot of us feel. It’s a “We’re Fucked” hat. We have to attend to our spiritual and emotional well-being under the environment we’re in right now. It is so easy to feel it.Day by day, we have to maintain hope, strength, faith, and commitment.For me, one way I do that is by associating with heroes like these folks.Sarah Towle, Author:I just think it's also important to keep in mind that when they came after our compañero in Washington, Leo?Arcenio Lopez, Organizer:Leo.Sarah Towle, Author:When they come after heroes, like Leo, chipping away at his due process protections, they are chipping away at our due process protections.So we need to stand up today because when they come after us, if we don't stand up for them, there will be no one left taking care of our protections.Willie Lubka, Organizer:It is all of us.It is a community, a group.And we need to all be 100% in on this.Thank you very much, everyone.Thanks for reading Tales of Humanity! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. 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Welcome new subscribers! I hope you find the latest podcast episode beneficial. It was recorded as part of my monthly community discussions and workshops with fellow author-educator-activist Dora Rodriguez. The next meet-up of our Hope Knows No Borders Book Club & Webinar Series is Sunday, May 25, and we hope you’ll register to attend. You’ll find more information following the post below. In the meantime…The Revolution Will Be BroadcastThings are bad out there, folks. No doubt about it. ICE is sowing terror across the land, hunting and abducting our community members with the complicity of local police, Customs and Border Protection, the FBI, National Guard, etc. As the Trump regime chips away at what few rights remain for the newcomers and safety seekers among us, so go our rights as well.Many of us are struggling to understand how we got to this wretched place. But as I illustrate in Crossing the Line: Finding America in the Borderlands, it has been a multi-decade project during which our elected officials, on both sides of the political aisle, as well as first the right-wing then, increasingly, the mainstream media, effectively pulled us further and further and further to the right.The result has been 40+ years of very bad policy making, leading to very bad budget appropriations and congressional expenditures that have funded and fueled the unbelievable expansion of the Border Industrial Complex, creating a cruel deterrence to detention to deportation pipeline fraught with human rights abuses that the pundits and politicians love to decry as “broken” but which they just can't seem to fix.Why?Because it works just fine for the demagogues and profiteers who benefit from it.Where are we now? Rising fascism. A government run not by the people for the people but by the bullies for the billionaires and Broligarchs, in the words of Anat Shenker-Osorio. A wannabe authoritarian regime that has harnessed the ICE gulag and Gestapo handed to them by their presidential precursors. A xenophobic regime that has weaponized immigration and immigrants to whip up a moral panic and drive US democracy ever closer to a constitutional crisis, if we’re not there already.The Trump regime and its congressional MAGA-party sycophants are right now attempting to expand the ICE Gestapo and gulag system with 10,000 additional ICE raiders and another 80,000 ICE prison beds through a shadowy budget process — called reconciliation — that aims to decimate such social benefits as public education while it boosts spending into the hundreds of billions dollars for more southern border militarization and mass deportation. All to fund a made-for-Fox-TV “invasion.”Folks, we're living in the upside-down……where the highest court in the land, the Supreme Court, rules 9-0 — an unprecedented outcome, I might add, for the conservative Roberts court — that the Trump regime must facilitate the return of a man they abducted and forcibly disappeared into a concentration camp in El Salvador only to find that evil-wizard-behind-the-throne Stephen Miller manages to convince half the nation that it was a 9-0 decision in the regime’s favor just by saying it’s so.We're living in the upside-down……where the regime gets to turn off admissions for legitimate refugees that have been waiting in line for years — decades even — determined to migrate to the US the “right way,” as it fast-tracks resettlement and citizenship for white descendents of South Africa’s former apartheid state, claiming that the are running from a genocide that simply does not exist.Eschew the Language of Fear and Division. Choose Language That Touches Hearts and Changes Minds.Now, I know folks are feeling desperate. I know I am. But we can resist: We can refuse their lies, and we reclaim the narrative. And what better way to do that than with our language?That is why mi hermana Dora Rodriguez and I focused the April meetup of our Hope Knows No Borders Book Club & Webinar Series on how language has enabled the relentless, propaganda-fueled shift to the right. We believe that with awareness as to how commonly used nouns, frequently brandished slogans, and empty positional arguments perpetuate the regime’s fearmongering and hate, we can encourage people to think more critically and, in turn, use language to confront their disinformation, rewrite their heinous narrative, and tug the nation back to its senses.The Revolution Begins Now. With Us.Like all revolutions, the revolution in speaking the truth will have to start with us. If each and every one of us chooses our words more carefully, we can influence the thinking of the people and communities we touch until even members of the media and of government are using labels to describe things as they really are: * not arrests, but abductions; * not detention, but imprisonment, for profit; * not deportations, but renditions to concentration campsto name just a few examples.In solidarity and with high hopes for engendering deep social change at the thought level, Dora and I offer you the audio of our April 2025 workshop:Shifting the Paradigm: Finding the Words to Touch Hearts and Change MindsJoin us for our next workshop, May 25, 2:30-4:00 pm ET, on the human and environmental impacts of the unrelenting expansion of the Border Industrial Complex. Click the image to register…If you find this podcast and project worthy, my friends, please share it far and wide because the only way through this is… Together.In Solidarity,SarahThanks for reading Tales of Humanity! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Get full access to Tales of Humanity at sarahtowle.substack.com/subscribe

Welcome new subscribers! And apologies if my first posting for you is a repeat of Austin Kocher's recent interview with me, published on May 8, the date Germany surrendered to the Allied Forces 80 years ago. It was such an animated interview that Austin and I decided it deserved to be shared out via my Substack, too. And as I'm just getting back from a research trip to Berlin, during which I traced the parallels between today’s rise of US Fascism with that of Hitler’s Third Reich, I am a bit behind with my own postings. I am thrilled, therefore, to rev my content-creation efforts back up by re-circulating Austin and my book talk. And I’ll be back in your inboxes with Berlin reflections as well as the recording of the last Hope Knows No Borders Webinar shortly. Until then…In Solidarity and With GratitudeI am profoundly grateful to Austin Kocher for so many reasons. To start, his dogged determination to track ICE knows no equal. ICE is a notoriously opaque immigration law enforcement institution. Since I began bearing witness to its actions in 2018, ICE has only grown more dangerously Gestapo-like, aiding and abetting the Trump regime as it transforms the US into a police state. During the 2024 presidential campaign, while on tour with Crossing the Line, I often fielded concerns about a second Trump & Co regime harnessing the US military against its own people. That may well happen. But I commented regularly that they don't need the military, at least not right away, because they have ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) — a combined 80,000-member force (and counting) that acted as the first regime's paramilitary army during the Black Lives Matter protests in the summer of 2020. I write about how both Homeland “Security” agencies have already been turned on us in Chapters 9 and 16 for Crossing the Line: Finding America in the Borderlands.ICE and CBP suffer no transparency and little accountability, as evidenced by today's balaclava-wearing hunters and kidnappers of our community members, colleagues, family, and friends. If ICE had its way, we would know nothing of its missions and abusive actions. Thanks to Austin's constant tugging at the veil, we still have at least a clue as to its reach and breach of our constitutional rights and democratic values. For this reason, I urge one and all reading this post to subscribe to Austin's Substack today.Austin's scholarship, what’s more, is admirable and prolific. The rate at which he pumps out data analyses and ICE explainers here on Substack is a sight to behold. More than that, his perspective is astute, which is why I approached him, back in the fall of 2023, to ask if he would consider blurbing Crossing the Line pre-publication. I was then new to writing on the topic of immigration. I was without any academic or media affiliation. Yet, Austin said yes, and he followed through. His generous assessment of my book buoyed me, lifted my confidence, and helped to fuel me in what for any writer are the final, exhausting, deadline-filled months leading up to launch day and the marketing journey beyond.This is what Austin wrote:"Crossing the Line is a well-researched yet accessible exposé of border policies that harm migrants and undermine the promise of America. From the ‘family separation’ policies of the Trump administration to the massive growth of immigrant detention, Towle’s ability to weave together first-hand stories of accidental activists—including priests, attorneys, and concerned locals—with the broader policy context is on display in an ambitious book infused with a profound commitment to humanity and justice. Every concerned citizen should read this book.”“Every concerned citizen should read this book.”My gratitude for Austin's endorsement knows no bounds. He didn't just read my book; he understood and articulated back to me the underlying mission I set out to achieve: to raise awareness among folks who, if they only knew, would be outraged, too, about US cruelty toward newcomers and safety seekers. That is why, when he asked to interview me about the book and my writing process, I jumped at the opportunity. Our hour-long chat was rich and varied. In his introduction, Austin writes, "Sarah and I talked about the brokenness of the U.S. immigration system, yes—but also about the people who refuse to look away. Drawing from extensive on-the-ground research along the U.S.-Mexico border, Sarah brings readers into contact with the individuals and communities who are doing the real work of welcome and resistance."We discussed the outsized contribution of women to both humanitarian aid and migrant survival, and why storytelling matters in a landscape flooded with rhetoric. We talked about language, discussing why slogans like “Save Asylum” often fall flat, while simple human truths like “Their Hope Knows No Borders” and "Our Cruelty Is Not Okay" have the power to touch hearts and change minds.Calling it a "primer" text on the immigration issue as well as a "manual" for mass mobilization, Austin highlighted the capacity of Crossing the Line to help grow the movement for Just Migration. We expressed our shared commitment to that cause and our shared hope that by moving so fast to devolve our democracy into an autocracy, Trump & Co may have sparked their own undoing by giving more people more reasons to resist.Resistance is stronger with knowledge.For this reason, Austin and I hope you'll consider reading or listening to Crossing the Line to enable your personal journey toward demanding: * The abolition of the for-profit mass incarceration of peace-seeking people; * An end to the mass deportations, in shackles and chains, of the world's most vulnerable among us; * A more thoughtful interrogation of how our foreign and economic policies create the conditions for others' displacement; and * The creation of pathways to citizenship for all our neighbors, colleagues, family members, and friends who have been denied fair treatment for too long, by a racist society whose powerbrokers love being able to make big bucks off their labor and/or prolonged incarceration. Because asylum is never illegal; humans are never aliens; and enslavement and oppression take on many forms.One final comment before you press "play" and another point Austin and I touched upon in our talk... Until we, as a nation, face up to the worst aspects of our collective past, including the practices of chattel slavery, genocide, and punitive "law and order" policing policies, we will never heal, and thus cannot progress. In this, we need only look to post-WWII Germany as an example. More about that in a future post, very soon.Stay strong, dear friends. The only way through this is... Together.Sarah"If you're interested in immigration, public policy, or just trying to understand how we got here and what we can do differently, I hope you’ll listen [to this conversation]. Sarah’s voice is a powerful one, and this conversation reminded me again that we all have a role to play—even if it looks different for each of us." Austin Kocher, Syracuse UniversityThanks for reading Tales of Humanity! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Get full access to Tales of Humanity at sarahtowle.substack.com/subscribe

Last year, from June 10 to Thanksgiving, 2024, I criss-crossed the United States, engaging with faith- and community-based organizations as well as learning groups of all ages and stages on the central topic of my book:How our “broken” US immigration system works just fine for the demagogues and profiteers of the Border Industrial Complex that benefit from it, which is why we’ve achieved no human-centered reform to the system in four decades.For seven months, I traveled from sea to shining sea, raising awareness about the deathly deterrence-to-detention-to-deportation pipeline: an infrastructure of destruction and an instrument of oppression, hiding in plain sight all around us, that * has been used by administrations on both sides of the political aisle against the most vulnerable among us;* could be used against all of us, and was during the Black Lives Matter protests of the summer of 2020 by Trump 1.0; and, I warned,* would be used “on day one” from a second Trump administration in a way that would challenge both our values and our self-understanding, if the monsters gained access to the White House once more.As I traversed the country, a powerful presentation model quickly emerged — one that I recommend to all those now seeking to thwart the regime’s use of the cruel and unrelenting machine: Wherever I spoke, I endeavored to include on stage with me local grassroots warriors of welcome who’ve been tirelessly working on behalf of Just Migration for years.My thinking was this…Though Crossing the Line: Finding America in the Borderlands is being read and studied by more and more Book Clubs and Social Justice Groups nationwide, for which I am grateful, I was just passing through. If, however, after introducing my book, offering my rallying cry, and calling audience members to action, I could then pass the mic to the area leadership to share all the ways folks might get involved right outside their front doors, that would enable a more sustainable effort to pierce the pro-immigration echo chamber and bring more people into the movement for Just Migration.So, when Gina Muscatel and Peyton Trilling approached me about flying to Los Angeles to speak to members of the Civic Engagement Program at Peyton’s school, I shared this model with them. The result was a sight to behold! Gina, the founder of her local Indivisible chapter and co-facilitator of the Malibu Democratic Club, invited the participation of one local leader, who engaged the commitment of another, until the event included additional learning communities, detention watch groups, and farmworker advocacy networks, in addition to area Democratic Clubs and Indivisible chapters. Coordination grew, too, taking this idea of combining awareness-building with local leadership engagement and resource sharing to new heights, even as the march of the MAGA regime to squash dissent and frighten immigrant rights activists into silence came to LA with my arrival.Agoura Hills High School got cold feet, canceling the event while I was in the air. But Peyton would not be thwarted. She and her family found another venue. And the event swiftly transformed into a broad-based community Teach-In.It was an honor to be invited to keynote what turned into a model event for communities across the nation to emulate. So, as a way to give thanks to Gina, Peyton, and all the Crossing Lines event facilitators and participants, as well as to further spread their love, I am making this offer to groups like them, wishing to raise awareness and grow the movement for Just Migration in their local area:* Call your members to action! Share with them my keynote address by tapping the play button on the link above.* Create a Book Club or Study Group, using Crossing the Line.And obtain books at a generous discounted rate on purchases made by the box. * Zoom me in for group discussions, at no additional cost.Contact me directly for details on any or all of the above. Meantime, enjoy Part I of Crossing Lines: Cruelty, Compassion, & the Real Border Crisis. Part II to follow.Don’t forget my workshop with Dora Rodriguez this Sunday, April 27, 2:30-4 pm ET: Changing the Paradigm: Finding the Words to Fight Back. Thanks for reading From the Borderlands! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Get full access to Tales of Humanity at sarahtowle.substack.com/subscribe

Welcome new subscribers! And hello to one and all! THE HOPE KNOWS NO BORDERS BOOK CLUB & WEBINAR SERIES kicked off on March 30, 2025, with a focus on providing Sanctuary & Building Railroads. As the US Department of Homeland Security's 80k-member+ forces — ICE and Customs and Border Protection, which includes the Border Patrol — continue their Reign of Terror, disappearing people with no criminal record into its 200+ prison Gulag, which now includes a high-security concentration camp in El Salvador, we must:RESIST government overreach as a civic duty;REFUSE government lawlessness as a legal responsibility; RECLAIM our values as a democratic nation and communities of faith; and RECALIBRATE our moral compass, letting it — not Fox News — be our guide. There is a reason the MAGA party doesn’t want history taught in our schools: because there is much to be learned from the actions of folks who’ve walked before us, modeling how to wrangle the long arc of history toward justice. The only way to avoid allowing the worst of the worst human impulses to rear their ugly heads again is to examine and understand 1) how some among our predecessors excused evil, finding justification in the unjustifiable; as well as 2) how other more courageous souls stood against them, even at the risk of their personal safety, to say, No! We are better than this! We must be willing to confront the human-made atrocities of our past — genocide, mass murder, enslavement for profit — in order never to repeat them; in order to stop them from ever happening again.In this first webinar of the Hope Knows No Borders Book Club, we do just that. We dig into our immigration past to learn from the co-padres of the 1980s Sanctuary Movement, Reverend John Fife and Dora Rodriguez (Crossing the Line, Chapter 11), of Tucson, Arizona, as well as current Sanctuary providers, Reverends Babs Miller and Jim Rigby, of Austin, Texas. Among the many insights you will discover in this podcast are:* We’re not the “Statue of Liberty country” we’ve all been taught to believe in. We are a white supremacist state from the founding. “We are South Africa with nuclear weapons.”* Now as then … and the time before that … churches, universities, unions, individual dissenters, and communities allied in justice are being targeted for defending the most vulnerable among us. * We must protect victims of persecution because, since the Nuremberg Tribunal following the Holocaust, human rights have taken precedence in international law over the actions of the state. They are the highest standard to which we can all be held.* This historic moment is an opportunity to call this country to its conscience. But it will require us — the grassroots — to do it because we cannot rely on our elective officials right now.* It is ALL our civic, moral, and legal responsibility to hold the federal government and its agency actors accountable for their violations of human rights and international law. * Until these dark times are behind us, we must provide a bulwark against the monstrosities to come. We must commit to becoming a trillion tiny grains of sand that jam the gears of the machinery and keep it from turning.When they come for your immigrant neighbors, family, colleagues, and friends, don’t look away because you think you’re not one of them. Understand that the denial of their due process and constitutional rights today means the denial of your due process and constitutional rights tomorrow. If Mahmoud Khalil, a green card holder, can be imprisoned and expelled simply because the people in power do not like his views, then all our constitutional rights to Freedom of Speech and Assembly are under threat. If Kilmer Abrego Garcia can be mistakenly caught in an ICE dragnet and renditioned to lifetime enslavement in a third-country prison camp without due process under the law, then all our due process protections are compromised.REMEMBER the primary lesson from the Sanctuary Movement: Activism is not “Civil Disobedience” when it’s the government crossing the line. It is our Civic Duty, as well as our moral, legal, and spiritual responsibility, to protect all victims of human rights violations and to hold all bad actors, even the federal government, accountable for their crimes.To paraphrase Jim Corbett, who you’ll meet in this podcast, we cannot let the worst of the worst happen on our borders and in our communities in our lifetime. On behalf of John Fife, Dora Rodriguez, Babs Miller, and Jim Rigby, and with my profound gratitude for their participation, I hope you make time for our timely and important discussion. (Transcript available behind the tab at the top.)The only way through this is together,SarahThe Hope Knows No Borders Book Club & Webinar Series:* A monthly meet-up on urgent topics in immigration* Every 4th Sunday of the month* 2:30-4:00 pm ET* via ZoomNext Meeting date: April 27, 2025Topic: On Criminalizing the CaregiversSuggested Pre-reading: CROSSING THE LINE, Chapters 12, 15, and 20.Thanks for reading From the Borderlands! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Get full access to Tales of Humanity at sarahtowle.substack.com/subscribe

This time last year, with my publisher anxious to get Crossing the Line to press and into public hands during the 2024 US presidential campaign, I struggled to bring to a close what, it turns out, is a tale with no end.Only so many pages can fit between the front and back cover of a book. And there was so much more I wanted to share:- About the 140+-year history of mass expulsion from the United States that has resulted in the deportation of more than 60 million people since the 1880s.* – About the 100+-year bipartisan project to target for deliberate exclusion those deemed unworthy of participation in American democracy;– About the 40+-year bipartisan militarization of our borderlands against a series of made-up boogeymen fomenting made-up wars;**– And the 30+ year go-to border management strategy of “prevention through deterrence” which operates under the theory – debunked by three decades of history – that if we make migration to the US as painful and perilous and dangerous and demoralizing as possible, people just won’t come.All of the above, a grand historic failure brought to us by elected officials on both sides of the political aisle, created the conditions to enable a mad “king” and court of delusional jesters, posing as governors, attorneys general, high-court judges, Border Patrol chiefs, and self-proclaimed “czars,” to squander billions upon billions of taxpayer dollars to stop an “invasion.”Except, there is no invasion.There is no war.There are only people. People doing what people have done since time immemorial: move away from danger and toward opportunity. Many of our own ancestors included.Today, these folks arrive at our gates fleeing unspeakable violence, trauma we can never understand, and the tyranny of starvation. They come not bearing arms, but bearing children in their arms. They come carrying all that they own on their backs.Yet, at this historical juncture, they crash into a reality so alternate, a mentality so destructive, it finds justification in the unjustifiable: victimizing the victims, criminalizing the caregivers, and celebrating the true barbarians — our elected officials and their gatekeepers — as the so-called “good guys” keeping us “secure.”When I began to write Crossing the Line, I did so with a different title in mind. I wanted to call it The First Solution — a nod to my literary hero, Toni Morrison, who reminded us back in 1995 that:“before there is a final solution, there must be a first solution, a second one, even a third. The move toward a final solution is not a jump. It takes one step, then another, then another.”The question at the heart of my project from the start — what kept me peeling back the layers and layers of history to understand how we arrived at this wretched, demonic, dystopian place — was just this: Is the United States of America spearheading the commission of a quiet, unacknowledged genocide of people on the move? And if yes, how close to another “final solution” are we?My publisher didn’t like The First Solution as a title because it didn’t state what the book is about: immigration. My closest confidants, many of them Jewish, found the title too triggering. They welcomed the change.Several scholars and first-readers questioned my use of genocide in this context as it did not comply with the word’s official definition under international law: acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group.The concepts of “crimes against humanity” and “genocide” are only as old as the aftermath of World War II, created in the wake of one state’s mass murder of target populations during what came to be known as the Holocaust. These groups included activists and vocal dissidents of Hitler’s white supremacist regime; folks whose gender identities didn’t didn’t conform to the male/female binary; the itinerant Romani people; and six million Jews.Today’s multiple global crises — such as our forever wars, climate breakdown, exploitative economic practices that have led to morbid extremes in wealth inequality — these factors have displaced, to date, more than one in every 100 people on the planet. They force folks every minute of every day, somewhere in our world, to pull up stakes and run; to move through inconceivable dangers in search of perceived safety. It is therefore no longer just one national, ethnic, racial, or religious group that is being affected. Multiple national, ethnic, racial, and religious groups are under threat in today’s world. Together they create a new human social group — as of yet unrecognized in the official definition of genocide — when, their homes turned into the mouths of sharks, they flee. Too many never make it to any promised land, however, as places of safety are walling themselves off, becoming islands buttressed by fortresses; their portcullises raised; their armies unleashed to patrol the gates and fences as well as to extend borders, conveniently, to places where human rights abuses can occur unchecked and with impunity.While en route, this social group — people on the move — fall prey to the global scourge of human trafficking, itself a byproduct of our wall building and border externalization; itself perpetrated by Promised Land powers. Chief among them, the so-called leader of freedom and democracy. The civilization now in decline, governed not by the people for the people, but by the bullies for the billionaires.***Indeed, the Ides of March 2025, saw a US administration invoke an arcane 227-year-old wartime authority — the 1798 Alien Enemies Act — to justify the rapid arrest and deportation of Venezuelans on the move under the pretext of an alleged affiliation with a transnational criminal organization. The operative word here being “pretext” as the administration has yet to offer proof that the “over 250 alien enemy members of Tren de Aragua,” in the words of Secretary of State and Chief Sycophant, Marco Rubio, had anything to do with any gang at all. Many family members of the expelled have come forward to shout out that this is fake news of the most inhumane proportions.Even Judge James E. Boasberg of the Federal District Court in Washington, DC, said, No! to Trump & Co. He said, You cannot abuse the 1798 wartime legislation to summarily deport these people for the simple reason that the US is not at war with their home nation.For context, this is the same legislation that shamefully put Italian, German, and Japanese immigrants to the United States in concentration camps on US soil during WWII. Trump & Co had already tried to remove and intern these Venezuelans on the move at the US concentration camp in Cuba’s Guantanamo Bay, which I spoke about in an earlier episode of this podcast.But that didn’t go over too well with the US courts and public. So, in two passenger planes operated by the ICE-Air contractor Global X, they suddenly emptied the offshore prison facility, whose name is synonymous with torture, in late February. Perhaps they had already secured the heinous deal to pay El Salvador $6 million as an offshore ICE contractor, for that is where Trump & Co sent these so-called gang members, and in defiance of Judge Boasberg’s order, too.In other words, Trump & Co rejected federal court orders, abusing a wartime power despite there being no war, to remove roughly 250 individuals as young as 14 years of age, targeted for criminalization simply for being Venezuelan — a national group — without affording them due process under the law. Then Trump & Co trafficked this group to the unsafe third country of El Salvador.A shocking highly produced three-minute video shows these 200-some-odd people on the move being dragged under armed guard into Nayib Bukele’s mega-prison, where people go in… and never come out. Where torture is the rule of law. Where the US has once again turned up the heat in the art of the cruel, cruel deal set in motion by “prevention through deterrence” in the 1990s. The very bipartisan practice that, according to my research, ultimately brought us to this wretched, demonic, dystopian place, where no one is safe under Trump & Co’s white supremacist regime:Not Venezuelans, in particular.Not people on the move, in general.Not activists, like Jeanette Vizguerra, a mother of three US-citizen children and one of Time Magazine’s most influential people in 2017, who was then living in sanctuary in a Denver church. Jeannette was ambushed by ICE agents on St Patrick’s Day and is now locked up.Not legal US permanent resident green-card holders speaking out against genocide, like Mahmoud Khalil, a man who has no criminal record, yet was arrested by ICE and passed from one black site to another, from New Jersey to Louisiana. He is a political prisoner, whose freedom of speech rights, if quashed, will undermine all our First Amendment protections.So, not you, potentially, for protesting the rapid repeal of rights we’ve long held dear.And not me, potentially, for shouting into the wind (even though it feels most of the time like no one is listening).The American Civil Liberties Union compared the transfer of the roughly 250 Venezuelans on the move to Bukele’s notorious mega-prison with “the darkest episodes of human history, including slavery and Nazi concentration camps.” Sadly, it is not the first time the US has expelled people back to likely persecution and death. We said “never again,” the first time, following WWII. Yet, here we are, aiding and abetting mass misery and mass murder once more.From Chapter 33: Boxcars in the Sky, I give you my observation of Trump & Co’s first mass deportation campaign. The one few people knew about. The one I document in Crossing the Line: Finding America in the Borderlands, where “America” does not indicate a place but is code for white supremacy...On May 13, 1939, a passenger ship called the MS St. Louis set sail from Hamburg, Germany, with more than nine hundred Jews aboard. Hitler’s rise to power had emboldened followers of Nazi ideology. They were confiscating Jewish homes and burning down synagogues and Jewish businesses. In the face of such unabashed, unacknowledged, unpunished hate-based crimes, the nine hundred Jews took flight. Now refugees, they were determined to seek safe haven in the United States of America.They were prescient. The development of the Nazi gulag was already well underway.The Jewish exodus faced an unforeseen hurdle, however, for such concepts as “crimes against humanity” and “genocide” had not yet been defined, much less codified. There was no Universal Declaration of Human Rights to provide a framework upon which to build a global refugee protection regime. There was no Refugee Convention to value the right to asylum and ensure that no human being ever face refoulement ever again.The US had long been a Beacon of Hope for European Jews, and many of the refugees had family there. So the ship captain steered the St. Louis toward the so-called Land of the Free. But Cuba, then the gateway to the US, would not let the refugees dock. They met the same chilly response in sunny Florida.After three weeks sitting with the Land of Immigrants in sight, the refugees were running out of food and water. The St. Louis was forced to reverse course and return its passengers to potential harm. It landed in Antwerp, Belgium, on June 17, 1939, minus a few individuals, who’d hurled themselves into the sea in fear of what was to come. Another 254 would number among the six million Jews rounded up, corralled, and deported in boxcars on one-way journeys to Nazi death camps, like Auschwitz.Tracking Omni Air International N207AX as it flew its reverse course back over the Middle Passage was for me like witnessing boxcars in the sky.Today, according to my colleague Tom Cartwright, who tracks the deportation machinery I describe in Chapters 29-33 of Crossing the Line, several charter airlines and other transportation companies collaborate in a sprawling, semi-secret network, operating within more or less thirty-five US airports engaged in trafficking people — always in chains — in an international infrastructure that extended to 134 airfields in 119 countries worldwide as of one year ago, when my book went to press. It is, quite simply, a machinery of destruction that mushroomed in the second decade of the 21st century, doubling in size since 9/11, until approximately 100 ICE Air planes expel an estimated 11,000 individuals every month on these Boxcars in the Sky.I’ll reflect again on the horrors exacted upon people on these flights in another episode. Until then, consider this…The ICE detention-to-deportation pipeline makes complicit every industry it touches. I’m talking about airport “fixed base operations” that provide fueling, hangaring, tying down, parking, and logistics. I’m talking about pilots and flight attendants and their unions. I’m talking about cleaning crews and other support staff.It is also supported by all of us. The “suckers,” in the mindset of the mad “king,” who are still obligated to pay taxes. We fund his cruel, illegal, perhaps deadly pursuits. And they are expensive!It’s time we stopped clinging to the definition of genocide written after the Holocaust. A new kind of genocide is underway. It has been building for years. It is the global mass persecution by the billionaire class that results in the increased displacement and forced migration of people each year, leading to their misery and potentially their murder whether by state or cartel violence, drowning, environmental exposure, prolonged detention, deportation and refoulement to Bukele’s notorious prisons, or right back to the persecutors one fled. Spearheaded by the United States, it is now a global cancer that has hardened hearts around the globe as it has used public monies to enrich the entrenched forces that comprise the Border Industrial Complex.Perhaps it’s time to update the definition of genocide.Perhaps my book’s original title, The First Solution, was not so far off after all.The only way through this is together. So transform your outrage into action: Get smart — read Crossing the Line and join my story collaborators each month for the Hope Knows No Borders Book Club and Webinar Series — information and registration link below — then Get Going: Rise up; Speak out; Resist.Crossing the Line is now available in print, e-, and audiobook formats and can be found wherever you listen to buy your books. Please, always support Indies, if you can.If you're a Substack subscriber, I’d love to hear from you in the comments. If you’re an Apple or Spotify listener, please rate and review as really does help others find the show.As for the next four years, there is no time for despair. Mobilize! We are all in this together. Remember, Hope Knows No Borders. And cruelty is not okay.Thanks for reading From the Borderlands! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.Recommended Reads:*Goodman, Adam. The Deportation Machine: America's Long History of Expelling Immigrants. Princeton University Press, May 2020. **Miller, Todd. Border Patrol Nation: Dispatches from the Front Lines of Homeland Security. City Lights Publishers, March 2014. Todd Miller ***Shout out of thanks to Anat Shenker-Osorio for the framework of the US now being governed by bullies for billionaires. Get full access to Tales of Humanity at sarahtowle.substack.com/subscribe

Listen, Like, Share... This was Mama Sass’s demo version before heading into the studio. The Nashville Country Rock version can be found on YouTube here with an admittedly better chorus lyric: (Begging forgiveness for all the IP credits I’m unable to cite.)Thanks for reading From the Borderlands! This post is public so feel free to share it. Get full access to Tales of Humanity at sarahtowle.substack.com/subscribe

83 years ago—on February 19, 1942—President Franklin Delano Roosevelt issued Executive Order No. 9066, which became the basis for the forced displacement and incarceration of over 120,000 people of Japanese descent during WWII. They were rounded up, taken to processing centers, and interned in ten concentration camps operated by the War Relocation Authority (WRA) in California, Arizona, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, and Arkansas. Interned individuals were allowed to bring with them only what they could carry, leading to the tragic loss of homes and businesses. About two-thirds were U.S. citizens. In too many cases, families were separated.The annual Day of Remembrance observed across the United States on February 19, allows all of us to recall the horrors of forced removal and incarceration experience of those affected by Executive Order 9066. We remember this stain on the national soul so that it may never, ever be repeated. We gather in dialogue and discussion to educate and inform the public about the repercussions of governmental overreach and injustice to keep it from happening again.This Day of Remembrance, 2025, is an urgent and poignant moment because history is indeed repeating itself, most notably at Cuba’s Guantámo’s Bay. But also in immigration prisons around the country, 80% of which are operated for profit.Like our 120,000 Japanese-origin brothers and sisters, more recent newcomers to the US are being painted with the brush of criminality and ruthlessly interned by the US government or being expelled without due process to uncertain fates. We must stop it.Here are the facts from the real world:Trump & Co are right now making moves to triple the size, even quadruple the size, of the US immigration detention system, which is already way too big and way too costly. We’re talking imprisonment under ICE—US Immigration and Customs Enforcement. A quasi-military law enforcement arm of the Department of Homeland Security that knows no transparency and suffers little accountability, and whose abysmal human rights record is already well established and well documented.As of this recording, Congress provides ICE funds to imprison 41,500 people on any given day, the majority of whom are not violent criminals but people seeking safety and a life free from persecution in the United States of America. Eighty percent of those hard-earned taxpayer dollars are passed onto prison profiteers such as ​​CoreCivic and GEO Group each of which brings in annual revenues in excess of $2 billion and runs between them running more than 200 immigration detention facilities in the US already.As I explained in a recent podcast episode entitled, Who Are The Real Criminals In Trump 2.0's Mass Deportation Story?, these and other prison profiteers are more interested in their bottom line than in the health and well-being of the people they routinely rob of their freedom and dignity in violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. As with the xenophobic WWII internment of Japanese-Americans, this is modern enslavement. And the routine human rights abuses committed by for-profit prison contractors make us all complicit to their crimes against humanity because we’re paying for it.Now Trump & Co 2.0 want to expand the already rotten system to three times its current size.Even as they tear apart the US Department of Education, blow up the soft power of USAID, and attack what’s left of the social safety net in the US — itself already picked apart since the Reagan era — they are making moves to drastically expand the abusive detention-to-deportation pipeline by negotiating new contracts with private prison companies; by deputizing local and state law enforcement entities to conduct ICE raids for them; and building more black sites on military bases, the most notorious of which is Guantánamo Bay.Again, with history as our guide, any use of Guantánamo Bay is never good.Otherwise known as Gitmo, Guantánamo Bay is synonymous with US state-sponsored torture during the Bush 43 administration, following September 11, 2001, against individuals alleged to have links to Al Qaeda.But perhaps less well known are the atrocities his father, Bush 41 permitted at Gitmo, 10 years before, that time against Haitians fleeing unspeakable violence in their homeland.Bush 41 turned Gitmo into an open-air jail, greenlighting the now worldwide phenomenon copied by Australia, Israel, the UK, and the EU called “border externalization.”It was his administration’s way of making an end-run around both the 1951 Refugee Convention and the 1980 US Refugee Act, which state that anyone can request protection anywhere once inside the territorial boundaries of that nation no matter their means of arrival.Through the winter of 1991–1992, nearly forty thousand Haitians took to the Caribbean Sea in dinghies and fishing boats, fleeing rape, repression, and extrajudicial massacres; forced disappearances and the violent plundering of entire neighborhoods by the Haitian military and para-military goon squad, called the Tonton Macoute, that operated under the brutal thirty-year father-son Duvalier dictatorship. The preceding February, Jean-Bertrand Aristide had been sworn in as president of Haiti after winning 67% of the vote in what was heralded as the island nation’s first democratic election. A Salesian priest and liberation theologian, he promised to put food on the tables of Haiti’s slum dwellers and rural poor; and to redistribute property concentrated in the hands of the few wealthy landowners. But first, he had to dismantle the para-military and military forces that had for so long terrorized the Haitian people. Naturally, the goons didn’t think much of that plan, so they drove the former priest into exile just seven months after he took up residence in the presidential palace.The US government did very little to stop the coup.Then, by ordering the US Coast Guard to divert the boats of Haitian asylum seekers away from US shores and toward Guantánamo Bay, Bush 41 prevented folks in search of safety from stepping foot on US soil where they could exercise their legal right to request protection under international and US law. By caging the refugees indefinitely at Guantánamo, the US government under Bush the Elder effectively “offshored” the asylum process.“You don’t take your life into your own hands like that unless it’s more dangerous to stay,” states Guerline Jozef, Co-Founder and Executive Director of the Haitian Bridge Alliance. Guerline is a celebrated humanitarian and human rights defender. Among the many well-deserved accolades she received was being named one of the BBC’s 100 most inspiring and influential women of 2024. She is also one of my 100 collaborators and mentors whose stories are centered in my 2024 exposé of the human costs of the broken US immigration system, Crossing the Line: Finding America in the Borderlands.As I write in chapter 18 of my book, in the winter of 1991-92, the Windward Passage, like the sandy Sonoran Desert, became a migrant graveyard. Many of Guerline’s Haitian brothers and sisters perished then, buried at the bottom of the Caribbean Sea.Like his presidential predecessor, Ronald Reagan, with regard to Central American refugees seeking safety in the US, Bush 41 refused to acknowledge that Haitians were indeed fleeing a “well-founded fear of persecution.” He labeled them “economic migrants” rather than “refugees” and instructed the US Coast Guard to interdict them outside US territorial waters and “push” them to the US naval base at Cuba’s Guantánamo Bay.There, everyone—even children—was held in a vast cage encircled in chain link and coils and coils of barbed wire. The Defense Department called the Guantánamo detention center a “humanitarian mission.” But the refugees were subjected to deplorable conditions.Professor Brianna Nofil, author of The Migrant's Jail: An American History of Mass Incarceration, states in a recent interview with Andrew Free on his Substack#DetentionKills, that the depths of the atrocities that happened at Guantánamo Bay in the ‘90s are not fully understood even now. What we do know is that asylum-seeking Haitian men, women, and children were made to sleep without privacy in rows of military-style canvas cots in barracks with a leaky tarpaulin roof and garbage bags taped over windows to stop the screaming ocean winds. They were given inedible, spoiled, often maggot-infested food. The medical care was, at best, ineffective and, at worst, abusive, with treatments sometimes denied; sometimes performed without informed consent.For most of us, the injustices of our government were out of sight, and out of mind. To justify warehousing Haitians in need of safety at the Guantanamo Bay black site, the Bush administration also harnessed a trope common to authoritarians and dehumanizers dating to the dawn of time: this time, rather than labeling everyone a “criminal” as Trump & Co are doing, they whipped up a moral panic to convince the US public that all Haitians were potential carriers of HIV-Aids.The AIDS epidemic had been with us for a decade then. We knew it was passed through blood, saliva, and semen. It was ludicrous to claim that an entire nation group was a vector. Indeed, fewer than three hundred Gitmo detainees ever tested positive for the virus. And yet this group was tarred as “diseased” and vilified by the US public, which bought into Bush & Co’s lies hook, line, and sinker.Those who knew better sued the Bush 41 administration for denying the refugees due process under the law. So Bush & Co brought immigration judges to them. They cycled the refugees through the asylum review process at rocket speed right there at Gitmo, denying them access to legal representation as well as the time and resources, like telephones and fax machines, to gather evidence in support of their claims. Despite horrifying tale upon horrifying tale, most were deemed to be coming to the US to work, even orphaned children, and deported—dropped right back into a country the US government knew to be embroiled in a military and paramilitary reign of terror against civilians.When the Guantánamo facilities began to groan under the weight of the increasing refugee numbers, Bush 41 just ordered the US Coast Guard to push everyone back to Haiti, regardless of whether they had a credible fear of return or not.Twenty thousand Haitians came to be trapped at Gitmo under Bush 41. To put that number in perspective, Trump & Co are promising to make room there for 30,000 people they are tarring with the trope of “criminality” even though after only three weeks the preponderance of evidence already suggests this is fake news.Another big difference between the Bush and Trump concentration camps at Gitmo: Bush was intent on keeping people out of the US. Trump aims to expel people who are already in the country, many of whom have been in our communities long enough to have put down roots, married US-citizen spouses, and brought up US-citizen children—just like the thousands of Japanese Americans jailed during WWII.Many of Trump & Co’s targets have filed for asylum and are waiting for their claims to make their slow way through the beleaguered immigration court system. Some of those already detained and even deported have been US citizens. Others should be protected from deportation by such legal processes as DACA, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, that this regime appears intent on ignoring or fully flouting.No sooner had I exposed the mendacity of ICE top brass, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, and Trump Border Czar Tom Homan’s statements they are only removing hardened criminals—“the worst of the worst”—than White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt alarmingly confirmed that, indeed, both administration and agency are lying through their teeth. Under the Trump Administration, according to Leavitt, every person without the proper documentation is a target.If Trump & Co’s multi-pronged detention expansion plan is realized……it could triple or even quadruple the immigration detention system’s current capacity, bringing the number of people detained at any given time in the US and at Gitmo to well over 120,000—roughly the number of Japanese Americans interned in concentration camps as a result of FDR’s Executive Order No. 9066, signed 83 years ago.Understand that Gitmo is not exceptional. The injustices that all those incarcerated there will likely confront will be on steroids. But it is not the only immigration detention black site, where peace-seeking people are warehoused for profit by the US government, out of sight, and out of mind, off-limits to their families, attorneys, advocates, and friends. This is happening right now—and has been for decades—in over 200 prisons spanning the continental US.Trump & Co’s plans to detain thousands of people, potentially tens of thousands of people—whether in county jails, federal prisons, on military bases like Guantánamo Bay, or in El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s notorious torture chambers—take us back to some of the most shameful times in human history. Not the least of which is Family Separation.In effect, we’re back where we were in 2018, under Trump 1.0, with billions of taxpayer dollars being spent to tear families as well as communities apart while simultaneously cutting funding for programs and services that help all of us every day. The only winners in this scenario are the private prison profiteers willing to make bank off the backs of people who’ve been locked up despite having committed no crime other than entering the US without inspection as a means to pursue protection under asylum conventions.The other “winners,” maybe, are the local economies that for too long have become dependent on a single job creator: prisons.On this Day of Remembrance for the 120,000 individuals of Japanese descent wrongly and ruthlessly imprisoned during WWII, I urge you not to sit idly by. Trump’s violent crusade against immigrants is a distraction from the real work needed to create safe, secure, and thriving communities across the United States and the world.While Trump & Co whip up a moral panic about the so-called criminals walking among us with one hand, they are picking our pockets with the other. They are scapegoating the outsider for the benefit of demagogues, profiteers, Broligarchs, and Kleptocrats.The moment demands a national outcry. Call your Members of Congress today. Tell them to oppose Trump & Co’s cruelty. Insist that they boldly deny Trump & Co the resources they need to carry out their un-American and unconstitutional intentions.Tell them that if it’s government waste they are after, they should start by cutting funding to ICE and any other Department of Homeland Security agencies that are right now being harnessed to carry out terrorizing raids, mass detention, and mass deportations. They are the enemy within.Remind them that the vast majority of their constituents oppose the use of their taxpayer dollars to fund a violent and destructive crusade. According to polls, 72% oppose using military funds for immigration enforcement. Even among Republicans, 58% reject the use of the US military to enact deportations.In 1983, a report commissioned by the Carter administration, called Personal Justice Denied, found little evidence of Japanese disloyalty during WWII. It concluded that the internment of 120,000 people had been the product of racism only. It recommended that the US government pay reparations to those who had been needlessly and unjustly detained.In 1988, President Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act, which officially apologized and authorized a payment of $20,000 (equivalent to roughly $52,000 today) to all those who had been incarcerated during the infamous Japanese internment and were still alive when the act was passed. The legislation admitted that the government's actions were based on "race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership."We cannot, we must not let these atrocities happen again.RESIST! The only way through this is together. CLICK HERE to access the Hope Knows No Borders Network. GET INVOLVED!Thanks for reading Tales of Humanity From the Borderlands! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.Image Information: A painting by the artist “Michelet,” a Haitian interned on the U.S. Naval Base from late 1991 to June 1993, depicts a brutal crackdown at Guantanamo Bay’s Camp Bulkeley. This image can be found in this December 12, 2018, Haiti Liberté article by Kim Ives. Credit: Carol Halebian.UPDATE: Feb 21, 10:00 am ET. While I was driving this post to publication, my eye momentarily off the chaos, Trump & Co reversed Biden’s extension of Temporary Protected Status protections for 521,000 Haitian refugees to the US. The regime announced yesterday that protections from deportation and currently approved work permits for these mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, aunties, uncles, and grandparents will expire in August 2024, leaving another half million people under threat of forced removal by this government! Get full access to Tales of Humanity at sarahtowle.substack.com/subscribe

Hey everyone, Sarah here. Thanks for joining me for another episode of From the Borderlands.Today, I want to shine a light on the notion of “criminality” in US immigration enforcement because it’s a word that’s bandied about a lot without explanation. For example, Trump & Co state that ICE raids are targeted, that they are only going after “bad guys.” Border Czar, Tom Homan, says that every time a media outlet puts him on camera. But basic evidence would suggest otherwise: ICE is surveilling apartment buildings in Silver Spring, Maryland; boarding school buses in Alice, Texas; raiding places of business in New Jersey; racial profiling all along California byways.The truth is that Tom Homan is not telling the truth.Never mind my short list of collected first-hand reports, my friend and fave immigration data wonk, Syracuse University Research Professor Austin Kocher writes in his February 3, 2025, Substack newsletter [link below] that the numbers present a reality that is the polar opposite of White House and Department of Homeland Security blah-blah. Basically, there is simply no way for Trump 2.0 to achieve the mass banishment of their dreams without targeting non-criminals.This difference between rhetoric and reality does not surprise me. My general takeaway after dealing with ICE while researching Crossing the Line is that the Department of Homeland Security agency—which knows no transparency and suffers little accountability—hides behind these fantastical statements issued by faceless spokespeople who rely on our taking their word as gospel. They rely on our believing that they have the best interest of people at heart.Tom Homan himself is a product of the anti-immigrant Tanton Network that’s been infiltrating our politics—and groupthink—for decades. Another falsehood he maintains is that ICE has the highest standards of incarceration of any nation in the world. Well, if that’s true, we should all be horrified. The routine brutality and human rights abuses experienced by people trapped under the cruel knee of ICE are legion and well documented. It isn’t common knowledge, but you have only to scratch the surface to find that the civil rights and civil liberties complaints committed by agency actors are myriad and mounting.Sadly, this shouldn’t surprise anyone either, given the fact that 80% of ICE prisons are run by for-profit corporations, like GEO Group, CoreCivic, LaSalle Corrections, whose priority interests are not the health and wellbeing of their captives. Their priority interest is their bottom line.They are running a business. Their revenue model is warehousing people until they are expelled. So why feed them enough? Why spend on their medical needs? Why provide soap and masks even during a pandemic?Basically, it is modern enslavement.But getting back to Homan’s claim that his agents are only targeting “criminals”—there is nothing original in this strategy. It is part of the dehumanizers’ playbook going back to the dawn of time: to paint the “other” with the brush of “criminality” in order to justify committing cruelties against them.It’s been a part of the US immigration landscape since Congress put Chinese workers under attack in the late 1800s. But today’s tale of US federal officials tarring everyone with the trope of “criminality” dates back to a 1916 book called, The Passing of the Great Race.The language parroted by Trump, Homan, Stephen Miller, Fox News talking heads, and their anti-immigrant ilk can be found in this book, which posits that too many non-whites in the US will augur the eventual collapse (read: replacement) of the “greatest, most desirable, and superior human race on earth.”The book was the work of a lawyer and conservationist named Madison Grant, who espoused a quack science, called eugenics. His conclusions were harnessed by the Trumps of his day to whip up fears that anyone not of Northern European stock was something to be feared: a “diseased and criminally inferior” devil walking among the folk. This created a moral panic following 40 years of unprecedented migration from eastern and southern Europe, that non-whites posed a threat to the future greatness of the US nation.It was perhaps the country’s first Culture War, and it played an active role in Congress passing the Emergency Quota Act of 1921. Known as Title 8, § 1325, of the US legal code, this is when we first see humans referred to as “aliens” and when entry into the US without inspection by a border official first becomes criminalized. The legislation also put into place for the first time caps on how many newcomers would be permitted to set foot on US soil and where they could originate from.The follow-up Immigration Act of 1924, Title 8, § 1326, also known as the National Origins Act, further tightened the quotas, made them more durable, and stipulated penalties for what was now considered “unlawful entry.” Mexicans, who had moved throughout the region without issue for centuries, who lived and worked and had family on both sides of the line, were no longer allowed to cross unless they could pass a literacy test and purchase a visa.The quota system, which advantaged northern Europeans with wealth and those who already had family ties in the US, remained in place until 1965, keeping America white for several generations. Then came the Civil Rights Movement, and the quotas came under attack for being racially discriminatory. The 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, also known as the Hart-Celler Act, abolished a quota system. Since then, racist white guys from John Tanton to Donald Trump have fretted about their people becoming an endangered species in the US; about their people being replaced by the “wrong sorts.”They’ve been out to reverse the effects of the Hart-Celler Act ever since. It’s been a long haul, but they’ve finally arrived at their destination, aided by a steady 40-year transformation of legislation that lawmakers on both sides of the aisle fell for… if they even noticed it was happening.It started—as so much of today’s crises do—with Reagan. His 1988 amendments to the Immigration and Nationality Act invented the concept of “aggravated felony.” It defined the term narrowly at the time, limiting it to murder and trafficking in drugs or firearms, which didn’t raise any flags. But it also made immigrants deportable for such offenses and mandated indefinite detention of all noncitizen “aggfels” until their deportation could be realized.This would provide a legal loophole just waiting for determined white supremacists to manipulate.That opportunity came six years later under Clinton. His 1994 “Crime Bill” brought 100,000 new cops onto the nation’s streets and built 125,000 new prison cells, amped up federal surveillance capabilities, and further enlarged the definition of “aggravated felony.”The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 added still more bullet points to the “aggfel” category. But the coup de grace came later that year when Clinton signed into law the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act.Referred to as IRA-IRA, this legislation expanded the list of “aggravated felonies” yet again, as it simultaneously closed off pathways for relief for immigrants by stripping from federal courts the ability to hear civil rights cases on their behalf. Since then, even a misdemeanor can leave an immigrant subject to criminalization as well as mandatory detention and deportation, with little hope of appeal. Since then, there can be no second chances for noncitizens.Even now, 30 years later, the category of offenses considered to be “aggravated felonies” apply only to immigrants and may not be “aggravated” at all. They include civil transgressions that might warrant a wrist-slap, monetary fine, or community service for a US citizen, like me. What’s more, the application of IRA-IRA was made retroactive, meaning a hard-working 40-year-old father of three could be picked up, detained, and deported for, say, a marijuana possession charge dating back to his teens if ICE wanted to get rid of him badly enough.IRA-IRA centered imprisonment and punishment as core components of the US immigration system. It greased the engine of the now Goliath detention-to-deportation pipeline. It caused the US prison-industrial complex to swiftly metastasize into the largest immigration detention system in the world. And made it possible to create “hardened criminals” out of jaywalkers and shoplifters.Which comes down to this: the exaggerated “aggravated felon” category in US immigration law has led to much collateral damage over the years as many legal permanent residents, including veterans of US foreign wars, including my friend and story collaborator Robert Vivar, have been made to pay as much as three times for the same mistake or transgression: first under state or federal penal systems, depending on the jurisdiction of their so-called “crime.” Then under the immigration prison system for upon release they’re almost always transferred to the auspices of ICE. And finally, by suffering the greatest punishment of all: banishment – which for many means exile from the only home they’ve ever known.In place for going on 30 years, IRA-IRA has forced double and sometimes triple jeopardy upon immigrants, alone. It makes it possible for ICE and Homan to trump up criminal charges where there really should be none.Robert’s story is a prime example of how such stereotypes as “criminal alien” and “bad hombres” are right now being weaponized so that demagogues and profiteers can get away with playing politics with real lives.From Chapter 15 of Crossing the Line: Finding America in the Borderlands, entitled Collateral Damage, here’s Robert’s story…“I had developed a drug problem,” Robert tells me as we sit in his crowded office, half a block from Tijuana’s infamous Chaparral tent city. He was on the phone with Representative Mark Takano (D-CA) when I arrived. They were discussing the latest news in their effort to bring unjustly expelled veterans home under the Honoring the Oath Act (HR5151) and other bills. He flashed a warm, gap-toothed grin and waved me into a tattered chair that faced his wide metal desk topped with a black Dell computer. As I listened to him cite chapter and verse of the US Legal Code, sounding more like a member of the US Bar Association than co-director of the Unified Deported US Veterans Resource Center, I took in the railroad-style, one-room storefront.On the wall behind Robert hung a banner: Stop the Deportations of Military Veterans, it read. A water cooler stood next to a standing fan, which worked hard to push the sticky September air around the room. Know Your Rights brochures and manuals neatly littered every inch of a white, thigh-high bookshelf with an invitation, handwritten in blue and red magic marker, to feel free to take one. A stained Mr. Coffee machine stood in salute formation atop a four-drawer filing cabinet.A second desk tattooed with a bumper sticker announced the group with whom Robert shared the space: Veterans for Peace. Above it hung the five medallions of the US global security regime: the Army, Navy, Coast Guard, Air Force, and Marine Corps. Everywhere, framed pictures of veterans—some marked with a somber RIP—danced on the stuccoed walls alongside stars painted red, white, and blue. None hung quite straight. All faces pictured were Latinx.“When you consider the opioid crisis,” explained Robert, “there’s no such thing as recreational use.” He continued, “It’s a big lie. First, you’re getting together with friends, experimenting with drugs, once in a blue moon, because everyone else is. Or you’re using stimulants to stay awake through back-to-back job shifts. And before you know it, you’re a full-blown addict.”It didn’t help that Robert’s experimentation with methamphetamines coincided with an epidemic pushed onto the US public by Sackler family-owned Purdue Pharma. For the longest time, he was a “functional addict,” going to work as expected; showing up like a responsible husband and father for family and community events.“But you get to a point where addiction takes over every part of your life. And you start doing things that you never thought you could be capable of, things that can lead to legal trouble.”Robert agreed to boost some boxes of Sudafed in exchange for a fix. Subsequently taken off pharmacy shelves in 2006, the active ingredient in the otherwise benign decongestant, pseudoephedrine, was then being chemically modified to produce crystal meth.Robert got caught. He was arrested for shoplifting.“At first, it was a relief,” says Robert. He knew he had slipped into addiction and he wanted help. He pled guilty, on the advice of his public defender, believing he would do time, but in a rehabilitation facility. And that would have been true if, like me, Robert was a US citizen. But he had never naturalized. For him, being a legal permanent resident, or green card holder, had always been enough.He had no idea that a guilty plea would compromise his residence status; nor did his court-appointed attorney. She knew nothing of how the spate of immigration laws had been stacked against Robert. She failed to clock that the plea agreement she handed him to sign translated his shoplifting charge, through the lens of IRA-IRA, into one of “theft with the intent to manufacture.” This transformed him on paper from a shoplifter into a “drug trafficker,” and plunged him squarely into the now greatly expanded legal category of “aggravated felon.”Robert was branded a “criminal alien” and jailed until deportation. He tried to appeal, but IRA-IRA made it impossible for even a judge to take into consideration Robert’s life history, his professional achievements, and what he meant to his family, or that his offense was a misdemeanor for his citizen fellows. Once upon a time, a judge could have given Robert a second chance and sent him to rehab.Instead, he fell victim to the place where racialized laws and ineffective legal counsel meet. “I trusted the attorney. I believed that she’d worked in my best interest and that I would be sent to rehab. So I signed.”Robert could blame her, and maybe should. But he doesn’t. He understands now that this is precisely what the crime-trifecta laws were written to do.It wasn’t until he was returned to the detention center, however, lashed in five-point restraints, “because,” he says, “that’s how ICE transports everyone, even non-criminals: to court, to the doctor, to the border,” that Robert discovered he would not be getting the help he desired. He had to kick his addiction and clean up on his own—in prison.Stripped of his rights, he was also stripped of his green card, and his dignity.“I didn’t wish to give up my legal residence status just like that,” states Robert. So he set about learning everything he could about the law and appealed to overturn the lower court decision, pro se, on his own. Imprisonment was just too much to bear, however. No good to his family locked up and unable to provide, he grew depressed, despondent, demoralized. When his case stalled out within the ever-increasing backlog of the US immigration court system, now choked by IRA- IRA cases, Robert agreed to “voluntary deportation” to the now foreign country of his birth.“That’s the point of immigration criminalization,” Robert explains. “To wear you down to the point when you agree to ‘self-deport.’”Eight months after losing his case, Robert was shackled in five-point restraints again, bused to the San Ysidro port of entry, and escorted across the border into Tijuana. He was dumped there by ICE with nothing to his name but a US driver’s license and a criminal record for the aggravated felony of drug trafficking: a crime he did not commit.He spent three months pounding the pavement. “I couldn’t even get a job as a parking lot attendant, let alone with an airline or in a hotel. I had no connections. Even if I got an interview, I was found to be ‘overqualified.’”Traumatized at being separated from his loved ones and growing financially desperate, Robert risked everything: “I went back to the US undocumented.”Forced, now, to live in the shadows, Robert never touched drugs or alcohol again. “I could not afford to get caught a second time. So, I dedicated myself to a quiet life of working and taking care of my family.”He had to, for as an “aggfel,” Robert could no longer seek asylum or citizenship. He suffered a twenty-year ban on ever being able to return home, and had little hope of ever recovering his previous status as a legal permanent resident.Robert made a mistake. Lots of us do. And yet he became collateral damage in a war said to be about drugs, but which served him up as fodder to fuel the flames of a manufactured crisis stoked every day by the Tanton network propaganda machine: that the newcomer cannot be trusted and that the US border is spinning dangerously out of control.Now we have the reprehensibly named Laken Riley Act that states the quiet part of IIRIRA out loud: everyone will be made a criminal for such actions that you and I may commit all the time. When’s the last time you jay-walked? When’s the last time you drove with a busted tail light? When’s the last time you walked away from a shopping expedition with your young child sucking on a piece of candy you did not buy?Do any of these things make you a criminal? Of course not. Will you ever get incarcerated and deported for any of these things? No. You might get ticketed. You might have to pay a fine. You might have to apologize. But this is not criminal behavior.When Homan says, we’re only going after criminal offenders and gang members, he wants you to think of the man who took Laken Riley’s life. Now it was a heinous act of violence and I grieve for her and her family. But painting an estimated 11-12 million people with the same brush simply is not correct. Nor is it right. Homan is referencing our neighbors, family, friends, and colleagues: they could be our kids’ teachers, our radiologists, and valued members of our places of worship. They could be our legal counselors. They may be living and working and bringing up families and contributing to society without a fancy piece of paper, but that does not make them violent and it should not make them criminals.They certainly aren’t “aliens” or “collaterals” or “got aways”—just some of the linguistic abominations to trip off Homan’s twisted tongue.Homan, who let us not forget, is the “father” of Trump 1.0’s family separation policy.Millions of mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, aunties, uncles, grandparents, and children are under attack by a racist US administration that—like centuries of dehumanizers before them—has harnessed the age-old trope of “criminality” to whip up a moral panic that the folk walking among us with darker completed skin or the gift of a language other than English are people to be feared. To justify disappearing them at Guantanamo Bay—a military black site synonymous with torture. By all indications, this administration is waging an undeclared war: A war against immigrants. Which begs the question: who are the real criminals in this equation?Thanks for reading Tales of Humanity From the Borderlands! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.Turn your outrage into action! Click Here to Get Involved!NOTES:Austin’s Kocher Feb 3, 2025, Substack Newsletter: Will Trump's Immigration Enforcement Policies Target Dangerous Criminals? - A Close Look at the Data. ICE represents its enforcement surge as targeting dangerous criminals, but data tells a different story. Why non-criminals will make up the bulk of ICE arrests, detentions, and deportations.On the crime against humanity that is ICE detention, I recommend, as a start:Tom Dreisbach’s NPR investigation: Government's own experts found 'barbaric' and 'negligent' conditions in ICE detention.Shah, Silky. Unbuild Walls: Why Immigrant Justice Needs Abolition. Haymarket Books, May 2024.Sharpless, Rebecca A. Shackled: 92 Refugees Imprisoned on ICE Air. University of California Press, February 2024. Get full access to Tales of Humanity at sarahtowle.substack.com/subscribe

In less than 10 days, the full fury of Trump & Co 2.0’s agenda has been revealed. Among staff purges and funding freezes, the country’s top immigration enforcers, ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), in paramilitary-style actions reminiscent of Hitler’s Gestapo, have exposed that the US is now well beyond the first and second, even the third, stages outlined by Toni Morrison’s Ten Steps Towards Fascism. Indeed, after reading them over, I’d say we’ve reached the endgame. Ruth Ben-Ghiat, an expert on fascism and authoritarianism, reminds us that Trump & Co’s use of dehumanizing rhetoric, profane and crude discriminatory language toward immigrants, and fearmongering about the “enemy within poisoning the blood of the nation,” echo the language of mid-20th-century tyrants like Adolf Hitler and Francisco Franco as they rose to power.Today, the very people who brought us Family Separation and Remain in Mexico—just two of the myriad inhumane practices to forever stain the US national soul—now rule the US through terror. They are separating families again. They are determined to deport millions, build more prisons, and bring back Remain in Mexico.In these dark times, we must all be willing to stand up for the rights of our neighbors, colleagues, and friends. Because it appears our present Congressional representatives won’t. And if we don’t, when Trump’s Gestapo comes knocking at our door, there may be no one left to stand up for us.I hope you find inspiration in this and other episodes of From the Borderlands as well as from my book, Crossing the Line. Because "The move toward a final solution is not a jump. It takes one step, then another, then another.” — Toni Morrison, 1995The only way through this is together.XO SarahSarah is available to address your community or lead your book club…Thanks for reading Tales of Humanity From the Borderlands! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.PODCAST TRANSCRIPT:Hi. This is Sarah. Thanks for joining me for another episode of From the Borderlands.On November 5, 2024, 77 million US voters decided to return to the White House the very people who brought us family separation—Tom Homan, Stephen Miller, Donald Trump. They ripped apart 5,500 families. Over 1,000 are still not reunited—I’ve read potentially as many as 1400 children still have no contact with their biological parents—because Trump 1.0 didn’t intend to bring severed families back together again. And so they did not keep records.Then, on their first day, Trump 2.0 abolished the task force set up by the Biden administration to try to put families back together again—just one of many heinous and inhumane actions the heartless b******s took.In fact, Trump & Co are tearing families apart again already, because one of the “eight degrees of family separation” I uncovered while researching Crossing the Line is the separation that happens when ICE raids a place of business, a community soccer game, or a post-church fellowship gathering.Trump & Co have now been greenlighted to raid hospitals and schools.People are terrified. Because ICE raids are terrifying. Even the threat of an ICE raid rains terror upon the land. It is state-sanctioned domestic terrorism. And it is not right.Now, Homan says they are targeting only “bad guys.” Never fear. And we have no way of verifying that. The definition of “criminal” is in the eye of the beholder when you’re undocumented. And when the beholder is an anti-immigrant, racist cabal with access to all the law enforcement agencies in the land, everyone’s a criminal. Even children, like six-year-old Alison Jimena Valencia Madrid.When Alison’s cries, recorded from within the Ursula lock-up in McAllen, Texas, during Trump 1.0’s family separation debacle, were shot ‘round the world, our outrage sent us into the streets. Mass mobilizations—750 around the globe; 600 in the US alone—forced the now Convicted-Felon-in-Chief to end the practice by presidential Sharpie on June 20, 2018.But another abomination that also caused family separation continued to tick on—the practice of metering asylum: a take-a-ticket-and-wait-in-line sort of system. But in this case, the line was indefinite. It forced the world’s most vulnerable people to hang out in some of the most dangerous places on earth, just for the privilege of being able to request protection from persecution.Metering was easier to hide from the US public because its worst consequences—kidnapping, extortion, torture, rape—were kept out of sight and out of mind on the other side of the line. Both people and truth were locked in a liminal space.The Obama-Biden administration piloted metering when Haitians seeking asylum began to show up at the San Ysidro port of entry for the first time in 2015. But when it drew criminal gangs to prey upon the mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, grandparents and children trapped and waiting for an audience with border officials when their numbers came up, the practice was acknowledged as a humanitarian disaster. Obama-Biden did the right thing: they called it to a halt.Trump 1.0 didn’t care if metering harmed people. They knew it would harm people. They didn’t care that stuck in cartel-controlled northern Mexico and under threat, folks would be forced to try their luck with the river, the desert, or the wall—now standing 30 feet in places; a fall not easily survived. They wanted no more immigration. And they sought to end it by closing as many doors as possible.In the spring of 2018, they instituted the practice all across the 2000-mile US-Mexico line, creating a valve at the border that slowed northward migration. But it didn’t stop people from coming in hopes of finding safety. It just made life hellishly more dangerous for those who came.It was wrong. And people all across the line recognized this. They still do. They stepped up to see to the common good, committing extraordinary acts of daily kindness, as the richest nation in the world—a land supposedly of laws—abdicated any responsibility both for the conditions that cause human displacement and drive people northward, as well as the further horrors they deliberately inflicted upon them. Trump & Co exacerbated the already cruel situation with denial and rotten, detrimental policy after rotten, detrimental policy.From mid-summer 2018, groups in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley—like Team Brownsville, the Angry Tías & Abuelas, the Good Neighbor Settlement House, Catholic Charities, to name just a few—harnessed the goodwill of volunteers and donors to feed, shelter, and orient newcomers on both sides of the line. A role they continued to play as the US government and US Department of Homeland “Security” agencies failed to acknowledge the humanitarian crisis they caused.One year and one month after Family Separation supposedly ended, the bottlenecks at the International Bridges began to back up. The numbers of those requiring assistance began to mushroom for on July 19, 2019, Goliath stomped back into Brownsville, bigger and angrier than ever. That’s when Trump 1.0 erected the most impenetrable wall of all thus far: the Migrant “Protection” Protocols, or MPP, which didn’t protect anyone at all. It’s otherwise known as Remain in Mexico.Rolled out in San Diego on January 24th of that year, the “Remain in Mexico” program didn’t just slow the processing and eventual release into the US of those in need of protection. It barred folks from entering the US until their asylum claims were resolved. Which meant you’d be living in a tent meant for weekend camping in the murder capitals of the world for at least ten months, if you were one of the lucky one percent whose asylum review was successful.Customs and Border Protection closed the Hidalgo port of entry in McAllen, TX, pushing those fleeing harm to Matamoros, where the existing shelter system was already overwhelmed. The tent city that popped up under metering began to grow and grow and grow, adding another one hundred or more people each week. No one was getting into the US, but they couldn’t leave Matamoros because they’d been promised a day in court to plead their case before a judge. They were literally stuck.Tents crawled from the foot of the Gateway International Bridge, across the Matamoros Civic Plaza, and right up to the doorsteps of local businesses as well as governmental offices, including the headquarters of the Mexican agency tasked with immigration control: the Instituto Nacional de Migración (INM). When the plaza became full to bursting, tents worked their way up the embankment—or berm—of the floodplain that protects Matamoros from the Rio Bravo, as the Rio Grande is called in Mexico.And that was just one tent city along the two-thousand-mile border. The Remain in Mexico policy would eventually stop more or less seventy thousand moms and dads, and sisters and brothers, and grandparents and children in their tracks.Committed to the values expressed in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights—that everyone should enjoy the right to dignity and safety—borderlanders and visiting volunteers carried on doing all they could to make squalid conditions as livable as possible for those trapped in the Remain in Mexico web. Humanitarians kept the refugees from dipping into squalor, while also fighting for the inhumane program to be overturned.This is where I found them five years ago, in January 2020, harmed but hopeful of getting their day in court or the end of Trump 1.0, whichever came first.But waiting out evil was rough. And the usual international players were nowhere to be seen. That’s when a then-burgeoning international emergency medical team called Global Response Medicine, or GRM, saw a humanitarian crisis unfolding on the threshold of the world’s richest nation not unlike crises they had confronted in the war zones of the Middle East.Now, here’s the reason I’m telling you this story. Because right now, our elected officials in the Senate and House of Representatives are talking about bringing back the Remain in Mexico program. One of the worst ideas that has already been tried and was proven to result in the most disastrous outcomes for humankind is being bandied about by folks inside the Beltway as a “solution” once again.A “solution” to a crisis manufactured by Washington – as if you can will a reality away by pouring more fuel on it. But leaders who see some people as less than are capable of the dumbest and most despicable things.We’ve been here before.I hope after listening to this chapter excerpt from Crossing the Line, you’ll be compelled to do everything in your power to stop the Remain in Mexico program from ever staining the US national soul again…Chapter 7: From Mosul to MatamorosWhen the hell on earth that was that battle of Mosul finally drew to a close, the GRM team resolved to bring their model of “high-risk, low-resource medicine” to the world’s most dangerous conflict zones. They cast their gaze across the globe for other under-resourced flash-points: Yemen torn apart by civil war; Bangladesh overwhelmed by nine hundred thousand Rohingya chased out of Myanmar; the Mexican side of the US border.On seeing a video of the Matamoros refugee camp, Helen Perry says, “I just had to go witness it to believe it for myself.” After a solo reconnaissance mission in early September 2019, she put out a call for help, returning in October with six other volunteers. These included Blake Davis, a firefighter and paramedic from South Portland, Maine, and Sam Bishop, a special operations combat medic in the US Army’s 3rd Ranger Battalion.Sam, who was finishing his fifth year on active duty after tours in both Afghanistan and Iraq, had been contemplating medical school. In July, while still in the Middle East, he heard Helen speak on EMCrit, a podcast about emergency intensive care, trauma, and resuscitation. He reached out and agreed to help draft GRM’s trauma manuals as a way to start racking up volunteer hours for future med-school requirements.Then came Helen’s late September call for veteran military medics to join her on the Tex-Mex border over the long October holiday weekend. In what would turn out to be a happy accident, the trip happened to fall as Sam’s military service was concluding. So he went.“I didn’t get involved initially out of a passion for border issues,” states Sam. “I backed into that. Matamoros wasn’t even on my radar.” Armed only with backpacks filled with basic medications and blood pressure cuffs, Helen, Blake, Sam, and the others stepped off the Gateway International Bridge and into an ad hoc settlement of then roughly 750 tents. With an estimated three to four people living in each tent, they calculated a population of 2,500–3,000 people hoping to gain asylum in the US—up from about 200 just two months before, when MPP began in Brownsville.“The place was mobbed,” states Blake. “But the numbers were still too low to warrant intervention by the UN or Doctors Without Borders.”The UN must be invited by the country in which a refugee camp is located. But calling the UN institutions to the US-Mexico borderlands would be both a politically dangerous acknowledgment, by Mexico, that its northern neighbor had violated international law, and an admission that it was not up to the task of handling the fallout. As both the US and Mexican governments looked away from the mounting human crisis on their shared doorstep, the GRM advance team saw a gap they knew they could fill. The board was initially split. Some members felt their work belonged squarely in conflict zones where no other organization dared to go. But there, on the ground, Helen, Blake, and Sam were keenly aware that, while not a battlefield, Matamoros was no less perilous. Here, innocent people were caught in the crosshairs of a different kind of war—undeclared but no less political.They ducked into Garcia’s Restaurant, a local draw for residents on both sides of the border, to talk through whether the GRM model of care was justified. While there, the skies opened up, dropping two inches of rain in an hour.“When we came out,” recalls Blake, “the plaza was flooded. Everyone was soaked. There was this young mother with her newborn baby, two to three days old. They had neither tent nor sleeping bag. Another mother, holding her one-year-old close to keep her warm, was shaking and in tears. She looked absolutely traumatized, not knowing what to do.”That night, the temperature plunged to a near-freezing 33°F (0°C).“Back in our comfortable hotel,” continues Blake, “we couldn’t sleep, thinking about all the kids that might die of hypothermia overnight.” They concluded that the model developed in Iraq—to respond to immediate needs and refer bigger issues to local partners—was applicable where hostile powers gave up sobbing mothers and their infant children as fodder for the ravenous appetites of organized crime syndicates.“The next day we stopped at Walmart on our way to the bridge and spent $40 on a blue pop-up tent—the kind you pitch in your yard in the summertime—and a plastic set of mobile drawers,” says Helen. From the tent, they hung a sign: medico. People immediately began queueing up. Sam and Blake ran triage, while Helen and an ER doc from the University of Pennsylvania handled patients.“We saw ninety-seven people that first day. It was like an assembly line of care,” recalls Sam.Everyone was sick, but with mostly preventable issues: diarrhea, urinary tract infections, sore throats, and coughs; asthma, infections, allergies, and pink eye—in some cases so far progressed, kids were going blind; skin rashes from bathing in the fetid river. They saw side effects kicked up from people running out of meds for chronic illnesses like high blood pressure and diabetes. They witnessed evidence of a brutal journey rife with sexual assault, “lots of bruised genitals and STDs.” They took blood pressure readings and measured the middle-upper arm circumference of children for signs of malnourishment.They existed outside any formal health system. Yet no international NGOs had been asked to serve their population; no infrastructure had been established to meet their myriad needs. Many Mexican doctors flat out refused to treat Haitians and Africans, as well as members of the LGBTQIA+ community.“Migrants are at the bottom of the food chain in Mexico,” says Sam. He, Helen, and Blake saw the same yawning gap the GRM founders witnessed in war-torn Iraq, though this time on the edge of the world’s richest nation. They took a meeting with local officials of Mexico’s National Migration Institute to pitch their no-cost solution to a problem neither country could just will away. The officers did not officially say “Yes.” They did not wish to give anyone a reason to stay put. They did not wish to attract others from coming.But neither did anyone say “No,” for no one relished the idea—the potential political fallout—of people dying in their own front yard. So the GRM leadership set about re-creating the dual-mission model established from their improbable start in Iraq: to bring life-saving, low-resourced health care to conflict areas, while enhancing the capacity of local experts. They found their Matamoros partners, however, in unexpected places.“Deaconess Cindy funded the majority of medications we needed through her ministry,” states Sam, becoming crucial to maintaining asylum seekers’ basic health as well as GRM’s bottom line. And when she and her GRM collaborators shifted to buying what they could at the nearby Garcia’s pharmacy, the local economy benefited as well.The team gained a firm foothold in Matamoros thanks to the rare diplomatic talents, street savvy, and local knowledge of bilingual, bicultural, binational Pastor Abraham. He, like Deaconess Cindy, had been supporting the safety seekers since the earliest days of the encampment. Critically, he quietly aided the medical team in gaining access, affordably, to resources in cartel-controlled Matamoros.They found two doctors, two translators, and a pharmacist from the refugee community itself.These professionals included an ICU doc from Cuba, a professor of English and English-Spanish language translator and interpreter, also from Cuba, and a certified career pharmacologist from Nicaragua. They became instrumental members of the GRM team and gave truth to Trump’s first big lie, delivered from his gilded Manhattan escalator, that countries are only sending their worst. These folks, like their US counterparts—the individuals and organizations who stepped up to keep them alive—are among society’s best. They had all fled persecution; they all had iron-clad asylum cases. They are in the US now and at various stages of pursuing their claims. And after all Trump 1.0 made them suffer under Remain in Mexico, they are now under threat of ICE terror and deportation back to the harms they fled.Remain in Mexico was more than cruel. It offered only false hope. It was a mirage. A dirty trick. A slow, dehumanizing, demoralizing grind. A lie.So many unimaginable tortures suffered. So many childhoods robbed, bodies trafficked, futures stolen. All because we as a nation have failed for so long to ask the right question: Why are so many people on the run? And address our responsibility for pushing people into punishing harm.Instead, all we’ve asked for forty-some years is: How do we stop them? And lay cruelty upon cruelty. Case in point: the humanitarians in this story are now being criminalized. The January 6 insurrectionists, some of whom committed acts of dangerous violence, have been allowed to walk free while Team Brownsville is under investigation. Annunciation House in El Paso is also under investigation. Catholic Charities, too, has been placed under a microscope.We’re living in the upside-down, folks. Where terrorists get to walk free, while humanitarians are threatened with jail time; where terrorists are called cops and they call hard-working people just living their lives “criminals,” just because they lack a piece of paper.The only way through this is together. Rise up. Speak out. Resist! Begin by stopping Remain in Mexico.And if you’re looking for ways to get involved at the local level, or you have an initiative to recommend, click this link to access a developing network of state-by-state community-based organizations, rapid response teams, and resistance trainings.Thank you.Thanks for reading Tales of Humanity From the Borderlands! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Get full access to Tales of Humanity at sarahtowle.substack.com/subscribe

On November 6, 2024, the day after… I had the great honor of joining colleagues from El Paso’s Hope Border Institute and members of the New Jersey Immigrant Rights team of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) at the beautiful New Brunswick Performing Arts Center, to introduce the premiere of the latest film by Robert Bilheimer and Worldwide Documentaries: Running to Stand Still - Migrants Search for Hope in the Promised Land. Graciously hosted by the New Brunswick Development Corporation (DEVCO) in partnership with AFSC, Good Faith, and Retreat to Broadway, we knew in advance that convening an event on the day after the most consequential election in US history would be risky. But as the evening’s facilitator, Erin Dolan, stated in her opening remarks, we did not expect the razor’s edge race to yet be called. We were wrong. Indeed, by the time I checked into my New Brunswick hotel at 11 pm on November 5, it was clear the direction the election was going. My hotel receptionist, a self-styled “Afro-Latino New Jerseyan,” was alone and weeping. His family had all swung Red, he said. He was incredulous. His only explanation? They’d been taken in by the lies fed to them, and the enemy manufactured for them, incessantly day after day after day on Fox News. He had a live stream running surreptitiously on his phone. We watched together. We cried together. We witnessed American democracy descend into darkness together. In those early moments — before pundits and democratic party operatives would pick apart all that went wrong — all my new friend and I saw were the walls of deceit that had been erected for months on Fox and other extreme-right media channels, as well as in the deep recesses of the internet, like in gaming spaces and on podcasts where few dare to venture. The fearmongering and enemy-making had made their mark — exacerbated by the failure of voices from both the Center and Left to push back. The 2024 election put on high relief just how divided we have become. We are now 20 years into the age of Global Apartheid. It snuck up on most of us, especially those of us who believed in the durability of the 20th-century promise of human rights for all. There are now more than 80 physical walls around the world — and counting — raising deeper, taller, angrier, and more violent barriers between us all the time. But the walls that divide us are ideological, too. As more and more media sources get purloined and purified by Broligarchs all too willing to bend the knee to a man of questionable wealth and intellect, a bully on an illegitimate pulpit, the walls of deceit disrupt our ability to discuss and address the real issues we face today, as the nation — and the world — burn. Like the Wizard of Oz states when Elphaba realizes he’s an emperor with no clothes, “Back where I come from,” which we all know is MAGA-party faithful Kris Kobach’s Kansas, “everybody knows that the best way to bring folks together is to give them a real good enemy.”Today’s enemy is people on the move: “the world’s most vulnerable people,” in the UN’s terms. And the most hardened walls of all are the walls that encircle the hearts of those who would seek to harm folks seeking safety in the so-called promised land.In a subsequent post, I will discuss the role of walls historically: what purposes they’ve served and whether they’ve ever really worked. For now, I hope you like my speech from “The Day After” on the stage at the New Brunswick Performing Arts Center.Strap in, everyone. The next four years are going to be bumpy. And the only way through them is together.Wishing you a Happy Martin Luther King Jr Day.Keep your eyes on the prize,XO SarahThanks for reading Tales of Humanity From the Borderlands! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.Sarah Towle is an educator, researcher, and human rights defender; a choral soprano, charismatic speaker, and author of the award-winning book: Crossing the Line: Finding America in the Borderlands. She has taught English language literacy, cross-cultural communication, and the writing craft for three decades on four continents across the age span and in myriad class contexts, including under the trees in refugee settings. Sarah resides in an ephemeral borderlands, buffeted and buoyed by a diversity of languages, cultures, landscapes, and creeds. Her latest initiative, the Hope Knows No Borders Network, seeks to link up immigration rights advocates, attorneys, and organizations nationwide. DM Sarah if you’d like to take part. Get full access to Tales of Humanity at sarahtowle.substack.com/subscribe

PODCAST TRANSCRIPT:Hello. This is Sarah Towle, author of Crossing the Line. Thanks for joining me for another episode of From the Borderlands.~ ~ ~Five years ago this week, my journey of discovery of the many-headed hydra, that is the U.S. immigration system, began in Brownsville, Texas, with the act of bearing witness to the inhumanity of the Remain in Mexico program, otherwise known as the Migrant “Protection” Protocols, which didn't protect anyone at all.Family separation was the inciting incident that drove me to the border to see for myself the humanitarian crisis I then believed had been wrought by Trump & Co.I would quickly learn that though they had cranked the cruelty to 11, the cruelty of the immigration system was not theirs alone.My first day on the ground was spent in a refugee camp on the threshold of the world's richest nation. A camp of 3,000 mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, grandparents, and tiny babies that represented 70,000 people thrust into homelessness and danger by an unwelcoming U.S. president and nation.That first day of my journey of discovery was Epiphany Sunday, and it was an Epiphany of epiphanies, let me tell you. And though it was my intention to start this podcast there, at the start of my journey to bear witness, that eventually led me to write and publish a book, I find that I cannot.My best-laid plans have been taken over by global events.It is with a heavy and already weary heart and best wishes for all my friends and family in Los Angeles, for all the lives that have been impacted, and for all that has been lost to climate change — including truth — that I kick off this week with a question:Have U.S. Customs and Border Protection gone rogue?Trust me, there is a logic here. Let's start with the facts from this week, which are these:* With Joe Biden still in the White House* and more than 900 incarcerated individuals joining firefighters from Mexico and Canada to help their US counterparts battle an inferno,* Border Patrol agents chose to move on a different so-called “foe”: farmworkers.As fire ripped through the Pacific Palisades on the wings of hurricane-speed Santa Ana winds, devouring homes and histories in its wake, Border Patrol agents descended upon hard-working folks on their way to work in the vast agricultural holdings of Kern Country, just north of LA.A least 30 people were detained on Tuesday, January 7, one day after Congress certified the 2024 election — the same ceremonial transfer of power disrupted by the loser and his insurrectionist army four years before — and with two weeks still two weeks to go until the actual transfer of power. [NOTE: On January 13, reporter Melissa Montalvo of The Fresno Bee updated the number of arrests to 78.] No one was prepared — neither those who were targeted nor the local businesses that serve their needs and rely on their labor. It was panic and confusion, according to journalist Sergio Olmos, writing for Cal Matters.Agents driving unmarked SUVs raided a Bakersfield gas station popular with field workers who stop in for a warm breakfast on their way to the fields. The agents preyed upon day laborers waiting for rides outside the Home Depot. They stopped cars along Highway 99, profiling people, pulling them out of their cars, and demanding to see their papers. As the operation continued into Wednesday, multiple wildfires burned just two hour’s drive away. While flames engulfed Altadena, Border Patrol sowed a firestorm of fear amongst the population of essential workers who pick the produce that fills our grocery stores and graces our tables, foreshadowing what awaits communities all across the US — what we thought last week still awaited us — when Trump & Co 2.0 actually assume office and make good on their promise to deport folks living and working in the US en masse — which will come in a larger, more terrifying package that includes raids, mass detention, and family separation.The Bakersfield raids were unannounced, throwing doubt on the likelihood that the mission was green-lighted by President Biden and his outgoing Homeland Security Secretary Mayorkas. On social media, Gregory K. Bovino, the Border Patrol chief in El Centro, identified the sweeps by name: “Operation Return to Sender.” He stated similar operations are being planned for Fresno and Sacramento.Which is why I ask the question: Have Customs and Border Protection gone rogue?Both ICE and Customs and Border Protection have only ever endorsed a single candidate for president, and they did so three times: in 2016, 2020, and 2024. Each time, they chose Trump.Their members-only websites are chock-full of anti-immigrant propaganda churned out by so-called “think tanks,” such as the Heritage Foundation; the Federation for American Immigration Reform, whose acronym, FAIR, suggests the opposite of what it really is: a hate group; and the Center for Immigration Studies, whose animating principle has always been that “immigrants are criminals and perverts coming for your wives and your jobs and a burden on the U.S. economy,” and whose statisticians will torture any data set to make sure that belief appears true, particularly on Fox News.These groups have long been ground zero for stirring up moral panics through disinformation and fake news. They have been working for decades to make America white again. And according to my sources in El Paso, this is not the first time Homeland Security agencies have appeared to act under their own steam — not under the orders or even the knowledge, quite possibly, of the US president.Indeed, my friends saw Family Separation being trailed right before their eyes, though El Paso Sector top brass would gaslight their claims and deny what was clear and plain as the noses on their faces. My collaborators in El Paso saw family separation happening all the way back in 2016, while Obama was still sitting behind the Resolute Desk.That is the story we tell in Crossing the Line, Chapter 20: Barbarians at the Gate, which — like the story of Border Patrol’s reprehensible behavior in January 2025, while LA burned — also illustrates just how blind the United States has become to global and national priorities. These stories are a bellwether, a harbinger of what's to come. They should make us all demand answers now as to who really controls the agencies associated with the Department of Homeland Security; and to interrogate whether or not these agencies are really making us secure.And now, from Crossing the Line, Finding America in the Borderlands, Chapter 20, Barbarians at the Gate.“Toward the end of the Obama administration, we saw an increasingly harsh application of US immigration laws here in the El Paso borderlands, particularly by ICE, and particularly with respect to asylum seekers,” recalls Dylan Corbett, founding executive director of the El Paso–based Hope Border Institute (HOPE). Working across borders of geography, ethnicity, and race in an area of roughly one million people spanning three Catholic dioceses and two countries, HOPE builds bridges of solidarity between communities of faith, social justice, and politics. HOPE does “good theology in a practical way,” states Bishop Mark Seitz, leader of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, head of the El Paso Catholic Diocese, and an outspoken voice for US immigration reform.For Bishop Seitz, Dylan, and their allies, “practical” involved no small dose of “political” when a shift in ICE tactics rolled into town with a new agency boss in December 2015. His name was Corey Price. And as ICE field office director of the El Paso Sector, he brought with him a culture of legal and human rights abuses that spread like a cancer through ICE “detention centers” from West Texas through New Mexico—and one hundred miles northward.It wasn’t until late March 2016, however, when the El Paso community really felt the sting of change. That’s when the National Border Patrol Council, the 18,000-member labor union representing agents and support staff of the US Border Patrol, endorsed a presidential candidate for the first time.ThatcandidatewasDonaldTrump. And the symbiosis seemed to embolden not just the Border Patrol, but all law enforcement agencies associated with the Department of Homeland Security in the El Paso Sector, including ICE.Historically, Dylan explained to me, ICE has had broad discretionary powers to keep families together. Customs and Border Protection, too. This is essential in borderlands everywhere, where extended families live, work, worship, marry, give birth, and bury loved ones in regions that extend across two sides of a mapped line. But as spring 2016 rolled into summer, Border Protection and ICE appeared to pivot away from case-by-case humanitarian determinations. Without warning, the decisions of immigration judges were ignored and asylum candidates were being unexpectedly deported directly from their scheduled, in-person ICE check-ins. Those who’d requested asylum and been detained, what’s more, were bringing to their lawyers reports of troubling ICE behavior.Dylan was not alone in his alarm. Faith- and community-based organizations, advocates, and attorneys, even El Paso federal court judges, were witnessing an increase in due process violations; the arbitrary use of prolonged detention; and the near-blanket denial of humanitarian parole. But more sinister still, the Diocesan Migrant and Refugee Services came to suspect that kids sent into their care had been taken from their parents.Under federal contract and muzzled by strict nondisclosure agreements, however, they couldn’t talk about it.Private, low-cost, and pro bono attorneys, particularly at Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy and Catholic Charities of Southern New Mexico, were picking up clues from their adult clients in ICE detention centers that their children had been taken from them. Shelter providers such as El Paso’s Annunciation House were hearing similar stories.But it was so unthinkable, they didn’t know how to talk about it.“It was like a strong undertow that took everyone by surprise,” states Dylan.They decided to set up a new research body to document the patterns and look for trends. They called their forum the Borderland Immigration Council, and from September 2016 to January 2017, participating members conducted in-depth research on enforcement and detention policies and practices in the El Paso Sector. Attorneys recorded 120 interviews with clients detained under ICE. Researchers cataloged the emerging themes. It proved a critical and prescient move, for not only did it get area human and migrant rights stalwarts collaborating across traditional lines, states Dylan,“ but that’s also how family separation got on our radar.”The resulting study, Discretion to Deny: Family Separation, Prolonged Detention, and Deterrence of Asylum Seekers at the Hands of Immigration Authorities Along the US-Mexico Border, was issued in February 2017, concurrent with Trump’s inauguration. It documented, among other things, that the separation of families by Customs and Border Protection and ICE was becoming disturbingly routine. And that the practice had detrimental impacts on legitimate asylum claims, as well as the mental and physical health of separated adults and children.“So, everyone saw it, or thought they did,” continues Dylan. “But there was no memo, no indication that families were being separated as a matter of policy.”Then, out of the blue, Dylan received an off-the-record phone call from a federal magistrate. “He told me that more and more parents were coming into his courtroom distraught, asking what happened to their kids.” Because Border Patrol agents are always present in immigration court hearings, the judge would turn to them and ask. But he never got an answer. “The caller implored us to act.”Unable to get a meeting with local Homeland Security leadership, HOPE and the Borderland Council turned to Representative Beto O’Rourke, from their local Texas congressional district, for help. It took a while, but the Democrat’s office eventually convened a community meeting with the alphabet soup of federal law enforcement agencies on October 24, 2017. They gathered in a ballroom at the El Paso Community Foundation. ICE, CBP, and the Homeland Security Investigations teams all sent their local top brass. They were joined by the general counsel of El Paso’s immigration court, under the jurisdiction of the US Department of Justice.As for the Border Patrol, it sent only a couple of line agents.“Buried way down on the agenda was the issue of family separation. When I asked if it was happening,” says Dylan, “the heads of all the agency leaders shook, No. But the Border Patrol agents volunteered that, Yes, they were separating families.”They quickly qualified their actions, Dylan told me. “They said, but it’s only policy in the El Paso Sector and only with fathers traveling with children over ten.” So, it wasn’t just a few agents gone rogue in the midst of a leadership change, which was their best-case scenario. This was a feature of the pilot, not a bug, according to journalist Jonathan Blitzer. The “brain trust” behind Family Separation wished to ensure, at the very least, that the initial batch of children kidnapped by Uncle Sam would be able to identify themselves to authorities; state where they'd come from; and to whom they were meant to be going.“That moment, when family separation was acknowledged in public, the air got sucked out of the room,” states Camilo Perez-Bustillo. Previously the director of the Border Human Rights Documentation Project at New Mexico State University, Camilo had joined HOPE as director of advocacy and research just that month.“We suddenly knew that what we most feared, what the federal magistrate blew the whistle on, was true.”The next day, the assistant chief counsel for Customs and Border Protection, Lisa R. Donaldson, sent an email to all Borderland Immigration Council members, trying to walk back the officers’ statement. “But that looked to us like a semi-veiled confession, too,” says Dylan.The key part of the message read: “As a point of clarification: the Border Patrol does not have a blanket policy requiring the separation of family units. Any increase in separated family units is due primarily to the increase in prosecutions of immigration-related crimes.” (Emphasis in the original.)Just as with the Mounted Guard in 1904; the Border Patrol’s first headquarters in 1924; the border fumigation baths, 1914–1954; Operation Blockade, aka Hold the Line, aka Operation Gatekeeper from 1993—El Paso was again the launchpad for border policy experimentation.“Family separation was beta-tested here by local DHS leadership before being adopted in Washington as national policy,” says Dylan.The practice had begun while Obama-Biden were still in office, possibly without their awareness. By October 2017, however, it was happening with the full knowledge of and in coordination with the US Department of Justice. According to government reports and a Border Patrol whistleblower who worked on the project, Sessions was applying the arcane Emergency Quota Act of 1921 in the El Paso Sector to criminalize asylum-seeking parents traveling north with children. Yet, Trump’s second Homeland Security secretary, Kirstjen Nielsen, was denying that family separation was policy—just as her predecessor, General John Kelly, had done even after telling Wolf Blitzer on CNN in March of that year that Trump & Co were considering taking children away as a means to deter migration.Now the Borderland Council had confirmation that Trump & Co had lied.Word flew from community to Congress with the speed of a text message. Representative O’Rourke’s Washington office, however, brushed it off as a mistake, as something that could be fixed.“But this was no mistake,” states Dylan.“We had a double admission.”Local ICE stonewalled the Borderland Council. Even the agency’s community engagement officer, a Protestant minister named Bryan Van Dyke, refused to engage. Dylan remembers feeling threatened when Van Dyke told him, There’s a new sheriff in town. You better watch yourself.The El Paso migrant rights community had solid data, a double confession, and alarming new suspicions that parents were being deported without their children, too. Kids, moreover, were being disappeared into the black hole of the Resettlement Office as its shelters began to swell. But even as these abuses accelerated under Trump, the borderlanders struggled to get anyone beyond Texas to care.Writing for the Houston Chronicle, journalist Lomi Kreil first disclosed the Border Patrol agents’ screw-up on November 25, 2017. She went on to uncover additional instances of family separation, including that of a Congolese mother and her seven-year-old daughter at the San Ysidro port of entry. The mother, Ms. L, was held in California, while her daughter was sent to Chicago. Border Protection agents claimed they had doubts about Ms. L’s maternity, yet ICE waited a full four months to administer a DNA test.Lomi’s reporting sparked an American Civil Liberties Union class-action lawsuit: Ms. L v. ICE. Led by attorney Lee Gelernt, the suit would bring a legal end to family separation under District Court Judge Dana Sabraw the following June. But Lomi’s scoop could have—and should have—put an immediate stop to the heinous practice.“It’s as bad as anything I’ve seen in thirty years of doing this work,” Lee told me. “Little kids begging and screaming not to be taken from parents as they were being hauled off.”“Media outlets outside Texas simply weren’t interested,” says Dylan. Frustrated and incredulous, disappointed but undaunted, HOPE and the Borderland Council carried on documenting the horrors. Their next report, Sealing the Border, The Criminalization of Asylum Seekers in the Trump Era, presaged the official rollout of zero tolerance, which would become commonplace along the two- thousand-mile line in a matter of months. This time, their research revealed that 94 percent of asylum-seeking adults arriving in the El Paso Sector between July and November 2017 had been separated from their children. Yet, as of the January 2018 release of the Borderland Council’s second study, Trump & Co were still claiming that family separation wasn’t a thing.Jonathan White, then–deputy director of the Refugee Resettlement Office’s children’s programs, had been left out of the policy loop. When supposedly “unaccompanied” infants and toddlers began to arrive in unprecedented numbers on his proverbial doorstep, he surmised what was going on. White warned his new boss, Trump-appointee Scott Lloyd, that the practice would cause lifelong trauma for everyone involved. Lloyd told White: “There was no policy that would result in the separation of children.”Finally, Molly Hennessy-Fiske of the Los Angeles Times brought the story to national attention on February 3, 2018. Beating Jeff Sessions by six weeks, she warned us of what was soon to come: “According to public defenders and immigrant advocates, more and more immigrant families who come to the southern border seeking asylum are being charged in federal criminal courts from El Paso to Arizona. . . . Once a case becomes a criminal matter, parents and children are separated,” she wrote.The Tanton network’s Center for Immigration Studies pushed out the counter-narrative that parents making the dangerous trek with children were no better than human traffickers. Criminal charges were, therefore, warranted, they argued.In the El Paso Sector, the detention of people seeking asylum had become the rule, not the exception, despite objections from public defenders that prosecuting this population was not permitted under federal or international law. Parents were promised their children back if they renounced their asylum claims and “volunteered” for their own refoulement. This, too, was a lie, for as Trump’s Homeland Security operatives failed to keep records, they couldn’t reunite families even if they wanted to. Many asylum-seeking parents were returned to harm under false pretenses, without their kids.Criminalizing asylum was now the latest chapter in the thirty-plus-year “prevention through deterrence” playbook. The new policy, which Sessions announced on April 6, 2018, declared zero tolerance for all who dared to cross the border between ports of entry, even those seeking asylum. However, the accompanying practice of metering effectively closed ports of entry to this population. Made to wait in Mexico, families were sitting ducks for organized crime syndicates, driving them to entrust their lives to traffickers ready to cross them over the line for ever-increasing sums of money.It was the perfect government-sanctioned Catch-22, forcing folks wishing to immigrate “the right way” into the water, through the desert, or over the wall now as high as a three-story building in some places—a fall not easily survived.The world beyond El Paso was finally catching on that Trump & Co were ripping families apart. Scenes of barbarity made international headlines, shaking us to the core: A mother shackled by agents of the federal government for protesting when her suckling infant was pulled from her breast. A man dead from suicide on being denied information regarding the whereabouts of his wife and three-year-old son. A little girl in a red sweater, no taller than an officer’s knee, appealing to her captor with tears welled up in her eyes and streaming down her face.It was so hard to believe, let alone to feel. Then an insider—someone protesting their odious job—snatched an eight-minute recording from deep inside the Ursula hielera.The largest Border Patrol station in the US, Ursula is a sprawling 77,000-square-foot warehouse, retrofitted under the Obama-Biden administration to detain up to 1,500 people at a time. Outside, it looks like it could be part of the IDEA Los Encinos Secondary School complex on McAllen’s Ware Road, right next door. Until you spot the US and Border Patrol flags waving above the screened, razor wire–topped fencing requisite of all Border Industrial Complex fortifications.Inside, off-limits to all but guards and prisoners, are chain-link cages like those containing captive dogs at a pound. But in 2018, the cages contained kids.In one, a little girl, Alison Jimena Valencia Madrid, is heard begging a Border Protection officer to call her auntie. She has memorized the phone number. She is reciting it, through sobs, over and over and over. She is six.The recording, which at times sounds muffled, as if it was made from within the whistleblower’s pocket, was passed to Tía Jennifer, who shared it with journalist Ginger Thompson, who shared it with the world via ProPublica.In early June 2018, the Department of Homeland Security disclosed that 1,995 minors had been separated from 1,940 adults from April through May 31. As of June 26, that number was revised to 2,047 kids. But when Trump & Co finally owned that they’d been experimenting with separations in El Paso from July 2017, affecting another 281 families, the official tally of children kidnapped by Uncle Sam jumped to nearly 4,000. Then, reports emerged that the Department of Health and Human Services, the Resettlement Office’s parent agency, had previously lost track of another 1,475, which brought the number of children rendered “unaccompanied” by the family separation policy closer to 5,500.Faith leaders decried the practice as “deeply immoral.” Amnesty International said family separation was “tantamount to torture.” The American Academy of Pediatrics warned it would trigger “toxic stress” in the young, disrupting and potentially arresting brain development. Physicians for Human Rights predicted—and has since proven—that the mental, emotional, and physical toll of both family separation, as well as prolonged detention away from loved ones, will hamstring its victims for a lifetime.Returning to the Bakersfield raids of the second week of January 2025: None of the regular farm workers showed up at the raided gas station to buy breakfast on Wednesday morning. No one was waiting outside Home Depot. As word spread through farmworker communities that ICE and Border Patrol had begun corralling and detaining people in anticipation of Trump 2.0’s mass deportation campaign, folks now stay away from the fields. Their kids are no longer going to school. Operation Return to Sender will most certainly disrupt US food supply chains, leading to food shortages as produce rots in the fields. It will result in higher prices at the grocery store, not less. If the Bakersfield rollout is any indication, Trump’s Border Patrol is targeting essential workers not “bad hombres.” Through Operation Return to Sender, they will separate families and throw women and children into destitution. They will cause economic devastation.Mass deportations are Trump and Co's new wall, their new tool for executing family separation. And as in El Paso in 2016, it would appear that Homeland Security agents in California are already doing the bidding of the new administration.As with family separation under Trump 1.0, ICE and Border Patrol are already practicing. They are already getting prepared.The sooner we stand up to this madness the better. The only way through this is together. Mobilize!~ ~ ~Crossing the Line is now available in print, e-, and audiobook formats and can be found wherever you listen to or buy your books. Please always support Indies if you can.If you're a Substack subscriber, I'd love to hear from you in the comments.If you're an Apple or Spotify listener, please rate and review as it really does help others find the show.As for the next four years, there is no time for despair. Mobilize!We are all in this together. Remember: hope knows no borders. And cruelty is not okay.Thanks for reading Tales of Humanity From the Borderlands! This post is public so feel free to share it. Get full access to Tales of Humanity at sarahtowle.substack.com/subscribe

PODCAST TRANSCRIPT:Hi there. This is Sarah Towle, author of the award-winning book, Crossing the Line: Finding America in the Borderlands.It was family separation, kids in cages, and refugee camps on the threshold of the world's richest nation that incited me to go to the U.S. southern border to see for myself the inhumanity I then believed had been wrought by Trump 1.0. Once there, however, it didn't take me a hot minute to realize that the cruelty was not theirs alone. Indeed, they had been enabled by presidential administrations dating back decades on both sides of the political aisle to simply crank to 11 the dehumanizing cruelty and racism already baked into the U.S. immigration system.I sought a single resource that might explain to me how we arrived at this wretched place: where more than one in every 100 people on the planet today has been forcibly displaced from their homes. That's one in every 100 people of the global population now on the move and seeking safety, only to find themselves villainized by the wealthy, predominantly white world.When I couldn't find that resource, I decided to heed the call of my literary hero, Toni Morrison, who once said, “If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.”Crossing the Line: Finding America in the Borderlands is now published—launched for World Refugee Week 2024. And I hope you'll read it if you haven't already because I truly believe that if you knew, you'd be outraged too.Crossing the Line charts my journey from outrage to activism to abolition as I expose, layer by broken layer, the now global, multi-billion dollar deterrence to detention to deportation pipeline that I believe is failing everyone, save the demagogues and profiteers who benefit from it.Crossing the Line documents all that took place in the immigration space under Trump 1.0. It begins in a refugee camp just across the Rio Grande from Brownsville, Texas. And it ends on two horrific mass deportation flights, the likes of which the regime of Trump 2.0 is promising to make a daily fact of life.Crossing the Line is one of only three public-facing documents, that I'm aware of, to reveal what actually takes place on a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement expulsion mission precisely because they don't want us to know. Spoiler alert: the human rights violations committed by agents of the U.S. Federal government are legion and beyond the pale. They defy international commitments to human rights. Written into the post-World War II rules-based refugee protection regime, fundamental rights to safety and dignity now tossed aside and seemingly forgotten in the 21st-century shift to a security-first paradigm.Crossing the Line is now being called a clarion call to action, a primer text for the immigration issue, and a manual for mobilization as we hurdle pell-mell toward the world of Trump 2.0. It holds up to the light the voices and actions of roughly 100 ordinary people who express extraordinary acts of kindness despite the odds. Folks who represent myriad others worldwide who show us every day that there is a better way, that we can welcome newcomers with dignity, and that we'd be a much better people for it.They remind us that when deeper, taller, angrier, and more violent walls are the only answer…we're asking the wrong questions.They offer us strong shoulders on which to stand up a movement—a metaphorical choir singing louder and more courageously all the time that Hope Knows No Borders. And Cruelty Is Not Okay.As we approach Inauguration Day 2025, we cannot afford the luxury of despair. We must harness our collective outrage, as we did during Trump 1.0, but now in greater numbers and with more deliberate collaboration to tumble over, tunnel under, tear down, and otherwise stand up to the walls of misplaced anger and fear erected in order to divide us.We must organize.So yes, get pissed, but don't stop there. Harness that anger to get educated and then get going. May my book and this podcast be tools to support you in that effort because the borderlands are everywhere and the stakes have never been higher.In this first episode of From the Borderlands, formerly called Witness Radio, I'd like to begin with a shout-out of thanks to Leti Garza, an award-winning singer-songwriter, producer, and recording artist based in Austin, Texas, who reminded me just the other day that this holiday season marked a very important anniversary.It was known as Christmas at Tornillo, and it was a grassroots mobilization that began with one man on a lone vigil at the gates of a desert internment camp, for teens.Because here's the thing, when you separate families deliberately in order to be cruel for the cameras, an unintended consequence, perhaps, is that you're going to have a lot of children that need to be taken care of. And when Trump and Co did that six years ago in 2018, they had a whole lot of children left behind that they needed to house.So they stood up two internment camps: one on an Air Force Reserve base in Homestead, Florida; and the other in Tornillo, Texas, about 40 miles southeast of El Paso.In both places, children were caged. In many cases, for months at a time.Both facilities were eventually shut down thanks to popular protest, the likes of which we're going to have to see much more of in the years to come. Both of those stories are detailed in my book.Today, I want to focus on the Tornillo tale because it is thanks to a grassroots mobilization that culminated in the event called Christmas at Tornillo that resulted in children finally being let free as the calendar turned from 2018 to 2019, six years ago.It took a little longer at Homestead, but by this time, in 2019, there were no more teens incarcerated at the open-air jail in Tornillo, Texas, stood up by Trump & Co.And now with additional shout-outs to @Joshua Rubin, Camilo Perez-Bustillo, and all my dear friends at what would become Witness at the Border; to Rabbi Josh Whinston of Ann Arbor's Temple Beth Emeth; and to Diana Martinez, Ashley Heidebricht, all the good folks at Hope Border Institute, and so many others of the El Paso immigrant rights community, I give you from Crossing the Line, Finding America in the Borderlands…Chapter 22, 90 Days in the Desert…Wearing a wide-brimmed olive green Tilley camping hat and binoculars slung around his neck, Joshua was largely alone his first month and a half in Tornillo. “It was like my forty days in the desert,” he states.To help pass the time and coax up intelligence about the goings on inside the Tornillo teen prison, he’d chat up the delivery drivers and service contractors. The encampment’s lifeline, they brought in generators, tents, beds, and Port-a-Potties, as ICE brought in busloads of boys and girls, ages twelve through seventeen.“More kids went in than came out,” Joshua witnessed.They trucked in potable water, “at the rate of seventy thousand gallons a day,” and hauled equal amounts of gray and black water out again. “I learned the most from the guys who moved water from the hydrants into the camp tanks.”He’d ask them: Do you know what you’re supporting? If they didn’t, he’d tell them: It’s a jail. A jail for kids.When he wasn’t interrogating service and delivery men, he was walking the camp’s perimeter, sometimes more than once each day. The youth were brought into the yard in formation, “marched, single file, like soldiers, like prisoners,” continues Joshua. “Once there, they were allowed to be ‘at ease.’ But they remained under constant surveillance.”He tried to communicate with the teen “inmates” when they were outside—contact the guards roundly discouraged. One day he managed a short conversation.“I found out that a Salvadoran boy had been inside for three months. Another boy shouted, cuatro meses, four months, and another said, cinco, holding up five fingers.” That would put him on the inside since the opening of the camp—a clear violation of the Flores Settlement.“That was the last time I had anything close to a conversation with the Tornillo teens,” Joshua recalls. “A guard hurried over, and the boys shut down.” The next time Joshua walked along the soccer fields, the fence had been screened to block his view.Joshua joined Facebook, creating a page he called Witness Tornillo. There, he began to share his daily observations as the camp continued to expand. “If there were one thousand kids there when I arrived, there were at least three thousand in the end.”HOPE calculated that, all told, six thousand boys and girls passed through Tornillo’s patrolled gateway from June–December 2018, rivaling in size the largest federal penitentiary.The kids weren’t just “inmates.” Taking a page out of Harold Ezell’s book, they were also being used as bait. Trump & Co obligated all members of a potential sponsor’s household to be fingerprinted and undergo background checks—not just the sponsor him or herself per previous practice. Information would be provided to authorities to hunt down and deport undocumented relatives. When intelligence resulted in raids on private residences, at school bus stops, and in churches, etc., many households ceased to cooperate, like Jenny’s mom had back in 1985. This trapped kids inside even longer, slowing the vetting process such that time served at Tornillo was stretching to a new average of ninety days in the desert.By bearing witness, Joshua opened up space for others, near and far, to do the same. “In particular,” says Ashley, “the Jewish community. I had no idea how engaged they were, but they would give our organizing efforts both capacity and national attention.”Congregation Hakafa in Glencoe, Illinois, for example, felt a kindred connection to the migrant children. For decades, Hakafa members, including Lee and Nancy Goodman, had been involved with immigrant justice issues. Since 2016, they had helped to resettle newcomers to the US. So, when the horrors of family separation became public knowledge, the Hakafa membership, led by Rabbi Bruce Elder, resolved to take action.Though small, Ashley’s rallies had attracted a bit of media attention, “which made our efforts more visible. So, in a quick Google search,” she states, “Rabbi Bruce found me.”He sent Lee to El Paso as Hakafa’s emissary to scope out opportunities for action. Ashley acted as Lee’s ambassador. They visited the internment camp with Joshua.Meanwhile, Rabbis Josh Whinston and Miriam Terlinchamp from Ann Arbor, Michigan, and Cincinnati, Ohio, respectively, were separately underway with plans for a nationwide caravan, destination: Tornillo. That summer, Rabbi Josh had met a mother whose three children had been taken from her at the border.“Listening to her speak of such a harrowing experience sparked the beginning of my activism in this arena,”statesRabbiJosh.“As someone who believes deeply in Judaism’s justice texts, which espouse values that have been with us for thousands of years, whose passages I love to talk about and reflect on and quote, I had to ask myself: Was I willing to step up and take action in accordance with those principles?”The answer was, Yes. By the time he and Rabbi Miriam joined forces with Rabbi Bruce, they had secured the participation of several congregations. “We knew we weren’t going to be getting kids out. So we decided our trip was to be about coverage,” states Rabbi Josh.Faith In Action, a national network dedicated to dismantling systems of racial and hate-fueled injustice, agreed to set up rallies in the cities the caravan was to pass through—Indianapolis, St. Louis, Oklahoma City, and Dallas—en route to the Tornillo gates, where they planned an interfaith vigil for Thursday, November 15.Then, on the day of Judge Kathleen’s community protest and fundraiser, everyone’s commitment was tested.An anti-Semitic attack at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, violently cut eleven lives short on October 27, 2018. The connection the Jewish community felt to the migrant youth was never more stark. It paralleled the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt. It recalled the centuries-long diaspora history; forced to move from place to place; refused welcome when most in need, even the children. It brought to mind the concentration camps of the Holocaust, and the US’s shameful turning away of roughly nine hundred Jews aboard the MS St. Louis in 1939. It summoned up the bone-chilling chants of Jews will not replace us by tiki-torch-bearing white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia, the summer before.“Rather than let some guy with a gun stop us,” Rabbi Josh told me, “in many ways, the hate crime energized us.”Which is not to say he wasn’t scared. “I was nervous about attracting white supremacists, yes. They’d been given license by the Trump administration, and what we were about to do would be very public.”The caravaners were fine until they reached Texas. “Then, a Reform synagogue in El Paso began receiving threatening calls.” But rather than back off, that congregation joined the pilgrimage to Tornillo, too, as did Christians and Muslims, who joined the caravan over the course of their four-day interstate drive.An estimated two hundred people convened at the doorstep of the Tornillo internment camp on the morning of November 15 to send a message, states Rabbi Josh, that: “As one of the wealthiest countries in the world, it is our responsibility to welcome asylum seekers, rather than treating them as criminals.”“You can’t imagine the scene,” recalls Camilo. “Into this sea of yarmulkes and prayer shawls came the busloads of girls from Loretto Academy, all dressed in their red and gray school uniforms. They descended the buses like a flock of beautiful birds.”Also rolling into view during the rally were ICE buses—their blackened windows shut tight. “You couldn’t see kids,” Rabbi Josh remembers, “but you knew they were there.”When they disappeared behind the fortress of metal and barbed wire, states the Rabbi, “It shocked me just how easy it was to hide several thousand teenagers. You could be outside the gates and have no idea what was going on inside.”Thanks to the mounting activism, Father Rafael Garcia, from South El Paso’s Sacred Heart Parish, gained entrance to the tent city to celebrate Sunday Mass. He was followed inside by monitors for the Flores Settlement Agreement, including Stanford University child psychologist and trauma specialist Ryan Matlow, as well as Camilo. Their assessment was unequivocal: “The kids of Tornillo were by all indications suffering.” They painted a picture of psychological distress due to the indefinite confinement. They noted little to no psychosocial support.Meanwhile, Trump touted Tornillo as a model, with talk about creating another child prison inside El Paso-based Fort Bliss. Equal in size to the state of Delaware, the Army base’s impenetrability sparked additional public outrage.Tornillo had become a national flashpoint. The Washington Post updated the number of children and teens then in the custody of the federal government to roughly 14,600. Not since the Japanese internment have so many young non-offenders been imprisoned. Yet, Congress allocated another $367.9 million in the last quarter of 2018 to keep Tornillo operational.Then, CNN and the Associated Press disclosed that, among the more than 2,100 Tornillo employees, none had undergone rigorous FBI background checks. This was in violation of Health and Human Services’ and the Resettlement Office’s own guidelines.Exhausted but undaunted, El Paso activists and their allies picked up their protest, heading into the holiday season with a plan. Ashley secured the participation of US Representative-Elect Veronica Escobar (D-TX) for a rally on December 15. Representative Judy Chu (D-CA) and Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR) agreed to come, too. Three days later, they introduced their Shut Down Child Prison Camps Act.Diana began to organize the first in a series of events that would come to be called Christmas at Tornillo. The Carbon Trace crew teased the outside world with images from their coming documentary, Witness at Tornillo, alongside invitations to attend.As Joshua continued speaking through Facebook, his following grew and grew. Word began to spread.Actress and activist Alyssa Milano came to interview Joshua outside the detention site. Their conversation reached tens of thousands over Twitter.More people came, showing up from far and wide. They arrived in camper vans. They slept in cars. They pitched tents.The caroling began on Sunday, December 23, and continued into January.Tom Cartwright, a retired financial executive, came with a massive professional sound system, which sent participant speeches and songs soaring right over the encampment walls.“When the kids were outside and waving to us, we knew they could hear our music and messages,” recalls Tom.Camilo remembers seeing soccer balls fly back over the fortification in response—“the perfect symbol of resistance.” In “Ode to the Soccer Ball Sailing Over a Barbed Wire Fence,” 2021 National Book Award winner for Floaters, Martín Espada, transformed the bid for freedom into poetry.During Christmas at Tornillo, Beto O’Rourke, again at the gates, promised that the encampment would be shut down. Sure enough, the Tornillo teen prison operator, BCFS Health and Human Services—the second-highest grossing kid-jailer that year after Southwest Key—gave in to the mounting negative press attention. Its director, Kevin Dinnin, announced that the camp would be emptied and broken down by the end of January 2019.This forced Trump & Co to rescind the background check requirement for all members of a sponsor’s household. Suddenly, twenty-five hundred young people were released to loved ones, proving that the unnecessary and prolonged incarceration at Tornillo had always been at the discretion of the administration. It was cruelty for cruelty’s sake. Another attempt to deter the inevitable, for human migration is a fact of life. Especially when forced to run for your life.“I feel so grateful and appreciative of anyone who did anything,” states Ashley. “From every phone call made and dollar donated to every song sung and letter written, it’s a testament to what humankind can achieve when we work together for a common cause, regardless of belief systems or methodologies. If any one component had been missing,” she believes, “it would not have been a success.”Joshua’s vigil at Tornillo was over. He returned home to Melissa for New Year’s Eve, as promised. A new pair of witnesses, now forever committed, took over to see the Tornillo internment camp all but erased.“Once the last of the children were gone,” remembers Karla Barber, “our role was to watch and document the dismantling of the place to verify that is was taken down.”“All fencing, tents, toilets, generators, mobile kitchen, soccer goals, everything, were packed up and carted away,” says Julie Swift. “They literally scraped the ground clean. Like there were never children there. They even swept the sand to remove any traces that the camp ever existed.”Thanks for listening! And stay tuned for more Tales of Humanity from the Borderlands, where I'll be providing commentary on current events, interviews with immigration advocates and experts, as well as folks caught under the system's cruel, cruel knee, and more excerpts from Crossing the Line that push back against the dangerous narrative of Trump World's disinformation machine and offer a narrative from the real world, one that puts people at the center of the immigration discussion.Crossing the Line is now available in print, e-, and audiobook formats, and can be found wherever you listen to or buy your books. Please always support Indies if you can.If you're a Substack subscriber, I'd love to hear from you in the comments.If you're an Apple or Spotify listener, please rate and review as it really does help others find the show.As for the next four years… There is no time for despair. Mobilize. We are all in this together. Remember: Hope Knows No Borders. And Cruelty Is Not Okay.Thanks for reading Tales of Humanity From the Borderlands! This post is public so feel free to share it. Get full access to Tales of Humanity at sarahtowle.substack.com/subscribe

It starts with a dream that becomes a dot. A red dot, representing a GPS coordinate on a map transformed into a hole, not too deep, cut into the earth with a pickaxe and shovel, then filled with moistened gravel and quick-dry cement into which Tucson, Arizona-based artist, Alvaro Enciso, plants a simple cross of rough 2x3inch pine strips painted a vibrant color and secured at the midpoint with a red dot made from metal trash he’s harvested from the floor of the vast Sonoran.Since the October 1, 1994 launch of Operation Gatekeeper, the Sonoran desert, one of the hottest places on Earth in the summertime, has destroyed the lives and stolen the dreams of an estimated 10,000 souls. Forcing upon them a death most cruel, the US government remains steadfast in its nearly 30-year bet that the agony of some will deter others from coming. It hasn't. So what started as a dream “to reveal to the world the US government’s responsibility for turning the Sonoran Desert into a graveyard” has resulted in Alvaro transforming the desert into a cemetery, an art installation, and a memorial to the needless suffering of the unknown.To date, he has marked the red dots of 1,200 (and counting) of the 10,000 (and counting) fallen. It's a work of monumental art, exposing government-sanctioned inhumanity. Art without sentimentality. Art without end. Art intended to lift up the lost while informing the living. It's a symbolic expression of who we should not be as a country. Alvaro's Desert Monument to the Dead screams quietly at us to rethink the policy of “Prevention Through Deterrence,” our First, Second, and possibly Third Solution.Find Alvaro's tale alongside other stories of how art keeps good alive in the worst of times in the now available collection from She Writes Press: Art in the Time of Unbearable Crisis, in which women writers reveal that in tumultuous times such as these, we need poets more than we need politicians. Click here to support us on Patreon! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Get full access to Tales of Humanity at sarahtowle.substack.com/subscribe

We begin the second season of Witness Radio with a mind-blowing treat. Witness Radio Executive Producer Camilo Perez-Bustillo and I join Nandita Sharma and Reece Jones to explore the question: From the war in Ukraine to the U.S.-Mexico border and beyond: Who gets welcome? Who gets to move?We conclude with ideas about how to create a more inclusive world, one better able to confront such challenges as climate change, global pandemics, capitalist greed run amok, and the hardened, racialized borders throughout the world that have given rise to violent exclusionary tactics.Our conversation first aired as a webinar hosted by Witness at the Border on March 31, 2022. So, some of the numbers cited have since changed. But we felt the discussion was too important not to republish in audio format. We hope you agree. Meet the speakers:Activist scholar Dr. Nandita Sharma is a professor of sociology at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Her research addresses human migration, migrant labor, nation-state power, ideologies of racism, sexism, and nationalism, processes of identification and self-understanding, and social movements for justice. Nandita is the author of Home Economics: Nationalism and the Making of ‘Migrant Workers’ in Canada and Home Rule: National Sovereignty and the Separation of Natives and Migrants.Dr. Reece Jones is a professor of geography and environment at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. He is a 2021 Guggenheim Fellow and the author of White Borders, Violent Borders, and Border Walls. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the journal Geopolitics and co-editor of the Routledge Geopolitics Book Series. His next book, Nobody is Protected: How the Border Patrol Became the Most Dangerous Police Force in the United States, is available for preorder from Counterpoint Press.Camilo Perez Bustillo is the current chair professor of human rights at National Taiwan University's College of Law. He is also a fellow at both the Institute for the Geography of Peace, Ciudad Juarez in Mexico and El Paso, Texas, and Norway's University of Bergen Global Research Program on Inequality; co-chair of the National Lawyers Guild Task Force on the Americas; co-founder of the International Tribunal of Conscience of Peoples in Movement; and lead author of Human Rights, Hegemony and Utopia in Latin America.Sarah Towle is a London-based author, educator, and human rights defender, sharing her journey from outrage to activism one Witness Radio episode and story at a time in her forthcoming book, The First Solution: Tales of Humanity from the Borderlands. Click here to support us on Patreon! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Get full access to Tales of Humanity at sarahtowle.substack.com/subscribe

How hard is it to welcome immigrants with dignity in the US? To bring order, fairness, and humanity to an immigration system built on foundations of white supremacy and racial exclusion?Very hard. Especially when immigration is a voting issue for only one party. The use of Title 42 is the perfect example. An obscure public health order, it was brought out of obscurity two years ago this month by Trump & Co, ostensibly to stop Covid-19 at the US Southern border but really to stop people, most egregiously those seeking protection. Now the reason for the expulsion of more than 1 million people fleeing climate devastation, endemic violence, political repression, and crippling poverty, Title 42 was Trump’s crime against humanity.Until it became Biden’s. Despite the two-year outcry from progressives and immigration advocates, the Biden administration has yet to rescind the policy that is responsible for expelling more Haitian asylum seekers in one year than during the previous three presidencies combined. But Title 42 was never meant to be permanent, and with the virus now under control, it’s time for the policy that has cost so much money and so much suffering to go!In this one-year anniversary podcast, Witness Radio Host Sarah Towle recasts Ep 1, Title 42: The Invisible Wall, with the 2021 winner of Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award, Guerline Jozef, and RFKHR President, Kerry Kennedy, to expose the anti-Blackness baked into US immigration system, soup to nuts, but epitomized by an oddball public health provision that was misappropriated by one administration to end the right of asylum in the US; and tolerated by the next administration for no other reason than political optics.Join us as we unpack the evils lurking behind Title 42 -- for the second time --to explain why everyone should demand President Biden and DHS Secretary Mayorkas to rescind it...Now!For more information:The Invisible Wall: Title 42 and its Impact on Haitian MigrantsHaitian Bridge Alliance, UndocuBlack Network, Quixote CenterBlack Immigrants MatterJack Herrera with Guerline Jozef, The NationThe Time for a Paradigmatic Shift in How Americans View Immigrants and Immigration is NowSarah Towle, Southern Border Communities CoalitionSeven Myths We Must Unlearn To Reclaim Our HumanitySarah Towle, Medium, The Daily KosTHIS IS WHY WE WITNESS! Click here to support us on Patreon! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Get full access to Tales of Humanity at sarahtowle.substack.com/subscribe

The past two years have brought the world changes never imagined: a global pandemic; the lockdowns and the losses; the border closures and the politics of avoiding illness, even death.But throughout it all, there is one thing that hasn’t skipped a beat: the US Deportation Machine. This episode's featured guest is Thomas Cartwright, a member of the leadership team of Witness at the Border. Tom dedicated his time during the past 24 months of the global pandemic to collecting, compiling, and communicating data that the US government would prefer you did not know.When Trump strong-armed the US Centers for Disease Control into hacking Title 42 of the US public health code to close the southern border to migration, thereby ending Witness's long-term vigil to end Trump & Co's Migrant "Protection" Protocols, aka Remain in Mexico policy, Tom's witness did not stop.Rather, he took it digital. Sadly and inexplicably, he discovered that little changed under Biden.On this US Black History Month 2022 installment of Witness Radio, Tom gives us a Tale of Two Presidencies in numbers that reveal the scope of the expulsions of Haitians under Biden as well as the scale of the deportation flights to Africa under his predecessor, proving that, indeed, immigration is a Black issue.Additional reading:ICE Air Monthly Flight-Report, Thomas Cartwright, Witness at the BorderHow Can You Throw Us Back? Asylum Seekers Abused in the US and Deported to Harm in Cameroon, Human Rights WatchAmazon Co-owns Deportation Airline Implicated in Alleged Torture of Immigrants, Sam Biddle, The InterceptBiden has deported nearly as many Haitians in his first year as the last three presidents – combined, Tom Ricker, Quixote Center Click here to support us on Patreon! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Get full access to Tales of Humanity at sarahtowle.substack.com/subscribe

Witness Radio's Sarah Towle and Camilo Perez-Bustillo kick off a second season with reflection on the Biden administration's one-year record on border and immigration, framed through the civil rights legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.They start with the question, What would Dr. King have said about one of the greatest human rights crimes in recent US history: family separation?A civil rights lawyer and human rights scholar, Camilo was at ground-zero in El Paso, Texas when the practice of separating migrating families was piloted by the Trump administration before being rolled out across the borderlands, as policy, in April 2018. The burden of responsibility for the crimes then committed now falls to the Biden administration, which faces a Sophie’s choice:Acknowledge the irreparable damage done to these families by the US government and negotiate a legal remedy -- at the risk of sparking the further ire of Trump World and the GOP prior to US mid-term elections?Or shield the US government from a settlement and, in effect, defend government-sanctioned torture in the form of separating families.On January 5th, the Biden Administration staked its claim to a position. Tap that play button to find out where it landed.Click Here for Episode TranscriptBut before you go, we have a huge favor to ask... Help us to get more listeners: Please rate and review Witness Radio wherever you get your podcasts.Thank you in advance!Sarah & CamiloAdditional Reading:Biden Administration Makes Cruel Decision to Fight California Families Separated at the Border in CourtJustice Department Halts Settlement Talks With Migrant FamiliesSeparation of Families on the U.S.-Mexican Border as a Form of Torture“You Will Never See Your Child Again”: The Persistent Psychological Effects of Family SeparationSEALING THE BORDER: The Criminalization of Asylum Seekers in the Trump Era, Hope Border Institute Annual Report, December 2018Ms. L. v. U.S. Immigration and Customs EnforcementAmicus Brief by Stanford University psychologists and others documenting all the evidence that proves family separation is experienced by its victims as torture Click here to support us on Patreon! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Get full access to Tales of Humanity at sarahtowle.substack.com/subscribe

The Grand Finale of Witness Radio's Inaugural SeasonA cruel, anti-asylum Trump-era policy is back under a president who promised a more humane border: the Migrant "Protection" Protocols, which never protected anyone at all.Biden maintains that his Remain in Mexico program, or MPP 2.0, will be a gentler, “lite” version of his predecessor’s policy.But can Inhumane be less Inhumane?That is the question Sarah Towle, Host and Director of Witness Radio, asks  Charlene D’Cruz, Lawyers for Good GovernmentAaron Reichlin-Melnick, American Immigration Council, and Yael Schacher, Refugees Internationalin this Grand Finale episode of Witness Radio's inaugural season. Together, they unpack the Remain in Mexico program, its impact on human lives, and the convoluted litigation President Biden claims is forcing him to stand it back up again, even as his administration expands it. We hope it sends you into 2022 with a bit of hope and just enough outrage.Additional Information:On Externalization: Why the Belarus Migrant Crisis is Different, VoxRemain in Mexico 2.0: Civil Society Left Holding the Bag, by Joy OlsonBiden Reinstates the ‘Remain in Mexico’ Program: What You Need to Know, by Aaron Reichlin-MelnickThe Secretive Prisons That Keep Migrants Out of Europe, by Ian UrbinaMigrant "Protection" Protocols Survivor Stories: Gabriel, Perla, Natasha, Enrique, Series by Sarah TowleBuilding Better, Not Backward: Learning from the Past to Design Sound Border Asylum Policy, by Yael Schacher Click here to support us on Patreon! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Get full access to Tales of Humanity at sarahtowle.substack.com/subscribe

In December 2018, Heads of State and Government met in Marrakech, Morocco under the auspices of the United Nations to adopt the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly, and Regular Migration, placing migration and refugee matters squarely on the international agenda. Camilo Perez-Bustillo, the Executive Producer of Witness Radio, was there. In remembrance of both International Human Rights Day (Dec 10) and International Migrants Day (Dec 18), he sat down with Sarah Towle, Witness Radio Host & Director, to discuss the tragic migrant deaths in Chiapas, Mexico, the unresolved humanitarian crisis on the Poland-Belarus border, the secret detention centers in Northern Africa funded by the EU, and the resumption of the US Remain in Mexico program.What connects these obvious human rights abominations? Securitization, which frames migrants as threats to national security, and externalization, which invites nations of the global north, under the guise of "global migration governance," to extend their borders beyond the boundaries asylum-seekers are hoping to cross.Sarah and Camilo wonder: Though The Global Compact on Migration promotes "safe, orderly, and regular migration," has it resulted in international crimes against humanity and potential "migrant genocide" instead?correction, Dec 17, 2021: the number of dead in the Chiapas tragedy has now risen to 57Additional reading:The Global Compact for Safe, Orderly, and Regular MigrationThe Impact of Externalization of Migration Controls on the Rights of Asylum Seekers and Other Migrants, By Bill Frelick, Ian M. Kysel, and Jennifer PodkulMexico, Honduras, Guatemala deploy troops to lower migration, By Alexandra Jaffe"Enemy Mentality": Mexico Cracks Down on Migrants and Asylum-Seekers at its Southern Border, By Sandra CuffeThe Secretive Prisons That Keep Migrants Out of Europe, By Ian Urbina10 DECEMBER 2021, Daily Press Briefing by the Office of the Spokesperson for the UN Secretary-General Click here to support us on Patreon! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Get full access to Tales of Humanity at sarahtowle.substack.com/subscribe

In a month that history will remember for the US welcoming Afghan refugees fleeing political chaos, violence, and persecution while expelling Haitians fleeing all these things and more, we perhaps lost sight of the nearly 13,000 children still being held captive by the US Department of Health and Human Services. Hidden from view by US government contractors in retro-fitted big box stores and "shelters" -- aka kid's jails -- many of these were separated from their families at the US border as an unintended consequence of first Trump's, now Biden's, invisible border wall: Title 42. There is one man, however, for whom those young souls are always top of mind: Larry Cox. He lost his child to US Customs and Border Protection officials while attempting to bring her to safety in 2011. That odyssey, recounted and read by Witness Radio Host & Director, Sarah Towle, reveals that the US was separating families long before 2018 -- and still is. It also sheds light on the less-discussed side of family separation: the indelible mark of trauma left on the parents of children and youth kidnapped by Uncle Sam. It's a cautionary tale. One that needs to be told. We thank Larry for entrusting us to tell it. Click here to support us on Patreon! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Get full access to Tales of Humanity at sarahtowle.substack.com/subscribe

Violence and repression have been a national plague in Colombia for more than half a century.The latest turn in the vicious cycle came this summer when a post-pandemic tax hike aimed at the middle class and poor drove Colombians of all stripes into the streets. A peaceful demonstration, resembling a street party, erupted nationwide. The southwest city of Cali, population 2.2 million -- 60% of whom are Afro-Colombian, joined by an untold number of indigenous people driven off their land in the past decade -- became its epicenter.Here, where racism and brutal police repression have long taken a toll, what started as a protest against the tax reform turned into a vocal critique of President Ivan Duque’s mismanagement and corruption. He responded to peaceful protests, largely by youth, with military-style aggression.The United Nations, European Union, Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International all decried the excessive use of force by police on unarmed civilians demanding their basic human right to survival.In this episode of Witness Radio, Executive Producer Camilo Perez-Bustillo talks with Manuel Rozental, Colombian physician, former Deputy Minister of Health, founder of Pueblos en Camino, and activist with more than 40 years of involvement in grassroots political organizing with youth, Indigenous communities, and urban and rural social movements, to discuss the protests and their link to climate change, environmental justice, and the defense of mother earth.For additional information:Colombia protests enter week three as violence escalatesThe Pandemic Strikes: Responding to Colombia’s Mass ProtestsColombia used 'excessive force' against protesters, says human rights reportColombia government sends $3.9 bln tax reform to congress amid renewed protestsAmnesty condemns Colombia police brutality after scores of protesters killed Click here to support us on Patreon! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Get full access to Tales of Humanity at sarahtowle.substack.com/subscribe

On the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the 1951 Refugee Convention, Margaret Seiler of Witness at the Border sits down with Amali Tower, Founder and Executive Director of Climate Refugees, a research and advocacy organization that calls for the protection of those displaced by climate change.The latest driver of forced migration, climate change has had devastating effects throughout the Global South. Years of drought followed by back-to-back category-4 hurricanes, for example, have made the Central American region increasingly uninhabitable. Amali stresses the urgency: Not only is climate change an existential force that knows no borders and impacts most those who've contributed least to its cause, but the "traditional" protections afforded to refugees (aka asylum seekers) by the 1951 framework fall outside its current bounds. Though at the time considered a great advance for social justice and international human rights law, the 1951 Refugee Convention is now ill-equipped to deal with the greatest crisis of our time, Amali says.Alongside crippling poverty, corruption, and conflict, climate change is implicated in the forced displacement of an unprecedented 273 million of the world's most vulnerable people. The tasks facing the international community are clear, particularly governments in the Global North: Stop denying climate change, and start rethinking how the 1951 Refugee Convention can be updated to respond to a world on fire.Central American Climate Migration is a Human Security Crisis By Amali TowerCLIMATE DISPLACEMENT IN THE NEWSFRONTLINES: ACTIONS ON CLIMATE DISPLACEMENTWITNESS RADIO: EPISODE 3 -- Aviva Chomsky on the REAL Root Causes of Migration Click here to support us on Patreon! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Get full access to Tales of Humanity at sarahtowle.substack.com/subscribe

Everyone’s talking about “root causes of migration” these days.We’re hearing a lot about poverty, corruption, violence. But we’re not hearing much about what’s behind that poverty, corruption, violence, or the climate-related disasters and failing economies that force people to pull up stakes and flee. Why?We’re also hearing a lot about bringing “Security and Prosperity” to the Central American region. But does this herald a new policy direction, or is it simply a euphemism for more of the same?In this sit-down with Professor Aviva Chomsky, we explore these questions and more. Her brilliant new book, Central America's Forgotten History: Revolution, Violence, and the Roots of Migration, takes us all the way back to the founding of the United States to explain the complex relationship the US has long had with its southern neighbors and how we got to the place we find ourselves in today.Professor Chomsky’s book is a Must-Read for anyone wishing to understand why migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers continue to arrive at US borders despite decades of US immigration strategies that prioritize deterrence over the human right to dignity.~~~Special thanks to Witness Radio Executive Producer, Professor Camilo Perez-Bustillo, our Patreon Patrons, without whom we could not create this show, and to our listeners, for joining us to consider the real root causes of migration to the United States — the ones lurking behind poverty, corruption, and violence, and which contribute to today’s climate-related disasters and failing economies south of the US border.I’m Sarah Towle, Host and Director of Witness Radio, where we aim to discuss all the issues plaguing the US immigration system today. This is Why we Witness.Subscribe, Rate, and Review Witness Radio on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you find your podcasts. And, please, consider becoming a Patron of Witness Radio, if you haven’t already. It’s easy to do. Just go to patreon.com/witnessradio and sign up.We’ll see you here, there, and everywhere.Witness Radio is produced by Livia Brock. Click here to support us on Patreon! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Get full access to Tales of Humanity at sarahtowle.substack.com/subscribe

No Place for Kids. Let Our Children Go! It was April 30th, 2021, Mexico’s Children’s Day — El Dia de las Niñas y Niños, which happened to coincide with the 100th day of the Biden administration. Witness at the Border, together with over 80 national and international sponsors, and in collaboration with local partners — the Border Network for Human Rights, the Coalition to End Child Detention, and the Hope Border Institute — convened at the Paso del Norte Bridge in the borderlands of El Paso, Texas. From there, we walked six miles to the gates of Fort Bliss, the largest military base in the United States, which as of this recording was holding nearly 5000 migrant youth.Participants rallied to hear speakers shed light on the injustices committed by detaining children, particularly children in trauma , and particularly during a deadly pandemic — an issue that we believe should be on the minds of all Americans.This episode of Witness Radio is an effort to recreate that important day and to spread the word, from the borderlands and beyond, about what is being done to children in all our names.Join us as we bear witness in the defense of human dignity and the human rights of migrant children and their families. Speakers in order of appearance:Rabbi Josh Whinston Temple Beth EmethJoshua Rubin Witness at the Border Veronica Frescas Border Network for Human RightsMarisa Limon Garza Hope Border InstituteSusana Herrera-Villa Border Network for Human RightsDr. Amy Cohen Every. Last. OneKarina Breceda San Juan Apostol Shelter Adriana Cadena Border Network for Human RightsAnd me, Sarah Towle, Host & Director of Witness RadioRelated Resources:New York Times For Migrant Children in Federal Care, a ‘Sense of Desperation’ CBS News Migrant children describe poor conditions at makeshift U.S. shelters in interviews with attorneys BBC News Children tell of neglect, filth and fear in US asylum camps El Paso Matters Critics raise concerns over expanding Fort Bliss megasite for migrant children Witness Radio Episode 1: Title 42 -- The Invisible Border Wall Like this Podcast? Support us on Patreon! Click here to support us on Patreon! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Get full access to Tales of Humanity at sarahtowle.substack.com/subscribe

With Guerline Josef of Haitian Bridge AllianceIf you've never heard of Title 42, I'm not surprised. It's a super obscure part of the United States public health code. In this inaugural episode of Witness Radio, we unpack the evils lurking behind Title and explain why everyone should demand President Biden and DHS Secretary Mayorkas to rescind it...Now!On the night I joined Guerline Jozef, Thomas Cartwright, Camilo Perez-Bustillo, and Joshua Rubin to discuss the tragic unintended consequences of Title 42, the Biden administration had already realized 23 deportation flights to Haiti, dropping thousands of the world's most vulnerable asylum seekers into a country literally on fire. Today, as we near Biden's first 100 days, deportation flights to Haiti now number 29 -- the lion's share taking place during Black History Month.Meanwhile, the numbers of so-called unaccompanied youth crossing the border have skyrocketed. Why? Title 42.Trump's real wall -- an invisible wall with Stephen Miller's fingerprints all over it -- Title 42 traps families in desperate need of humanitarian assistance and safety from persecution in some of the most dangerous places on earth. Unable to penetrate this invisible wall, too many parents make the heart-wrenching decision to send their kids across to "safety" alone. In Rubin's words, "It is a disaster. It is a tragedy. It is immoral. It is horrible."Still not sure what Title 42 is? Listen to this podcast. Then circle back here for more information:The Invisible Wall: Title 42 and its Impact on Haitian MigrantsHaitian Bridge Alliance, UndocuBlack Network, Quixote CenterBlack Immigrants MatterJack Herrera with Guerline Jozef, The NationThe Time for a Paradigmatic Shift in How Americans View Immigrants and Immigration is NowSarah Towle, Southern Border Communities CoalitionSeven Myths We Must Unlearn To Reclaim Our Humanity Sarah Towle, Medium, The Daily KosTHIS IS WHY WE WITNESS!Like this podcast? Support us on PATREON! Click here to support us on Patreon! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Get full access to Tales of Humanity at sarahtowle.substack.com/subscribe

Meet the mighty band from Witness at the Border. Find out what it means to Witness and to be a Witness. Learn how witnessing is different (and not so different) from activism, and how YOU can become a Witness at the Border today!In order of appearance:Joshua RubinCamilo Perez-BustilloJulie SwiftKarla BarberLee GoodmanThomas CartwrightMargaret Seilerand Witness Radio host & creator, Sarah Towle. Click here to support us on Patreon! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Get full access to Tales of Humanity at sarahtowle.substack.com/subscribe