WHY WE DON'T NEED TRUMP'S 'GREAT GREAT WALL'
By Arizona Daily
The "beautiful wall" Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump envisions would be 35 to 40 feet tall and 1,000 miles long, covering roughly half of the U.S.-Mexico border. Along the rest, natural barriers like rivers and mountains would continue to divide the two countries.
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New Border Patrol chief faces uphill battle to reform agency
By Andrew Becker
As the first outsider appointed to run the Border Patrol in its 92-year history, former FBI official Mark Morgan starts his new job this week as chief with a target on his back.
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Border Bodies: The grim mysteries of Southern California
CALEXICO, Calif. – The man lay face down in the desert, less than a mile north of the Mexican border. He had been crawling, dragging himself through the dirt, when he died.
A border patrol agent had been tracking a group of undocumented immigrants through the area when he stumbled upon the decomposing body. It had been lying there maybe a month, during which time temperatures had topped 108.
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15 Things Your City Can Do Right Now to End Police Brutality
By Zak Cheney Rice
Martin Luther King Jr. said it best in 1966: "[The] law cannot make a man love me, but it can restrain him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important also."
Two years later, he was shot and killed in Memphis. But his dream that the United States legal system might eventually overcome its racial biases and serve its non-white citizens equally lives on.
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“No touching” through the border’s iron bars
By David Bacon
It took two days on the bus for Catalina Cespedes and her husband Teodolo Torres to get from their hometown in Puebla - Santa Monica Cohetzala - to Tijuana. On a bright Sunday in May they went to the beach at Playas de Tijuana. There the wall separating Mexico from the United States plunges down a steep hillside and levels off at the Parque de Amistad, or Friendship Park, before crossing the sand and heading out into the Pacific surf.
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Love and Money: How a Border Patrol agent crossed paths with a smuggler and went to prison
By Nicole Cobler
It started when a lemon hit Raquel Esquivel on the head.
Looking around the HEB in Del Rio, she spotted two old friends from high school - Diego Esquivel and Ramon Patuel - goofing around in the produce aisle.
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Government Reverses Policy on Using Border Agents as Translators
Written by Joshua Breisblatt
In December 2012, then acting Commissioner of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) David Aguilar had announced a policy restricting his agencies’ officers and agents from acting as interpreters for state or local law enforcement agencies—which had become a common practice along the northern and southern borders. However, just last month, current CBP Commissioner, Gil Kerlikowske reversed course and authorized CBP Agents to again act as interpreters for state and local police despite significant civil rights concerns associated with that practice.
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Arizona ACLU wants Border Patrol probe of civil rights incidents
By Curt Prendergast
Marlo Paipa was driving home to Tucson with two friends after visiting the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge when their trip took a twisted turn.
Border Patrol agents pulled them over in Three Points and placed them in handcuffs without explanation, the ACLU of Arizona said in a June 28 letter to the Office of Professional Responsibility at U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the parent agency of the Border Patrol.
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US Customs wants to collect social media account names at the border
By Russell Brandom
Your Twitter handle may soon be part of the US visa process. Yesterday, US Customs and Border Protection entered a new proposal into the federal register, suggesting a new field in which persons entering the country can declare their various social media accounts and screen names. The information wouldn’t be mandatory, but the proposed field would still provide customs officials with an unprecedented window into the online life of travelers. The process already includes fingerprinting, an in-person interview, and numerous database checks.
Read the full story here.
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Meet El Peso Hero, a Latino Superhero Fighting Injustice on the U.S.-Mexico Border
By Eric Ortiz
“El Peso Hero” is not your typical comic book. Created in 2011 by Hector Rodriguez—an elementary school teacher in Dallas and the founder of Rio Bravo Comics—the series focuses on life on both sides of the United States-Mexico border.
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