border patrol

Kristin Kumpf 12-26-2022
Faded silhouetted illustrations of people against a gray backdrop, who are walking with children and bags in hand.

LenLis / iStock

I KNEW ALMOST immediately it was bad news.

“Maria was separated at the border from her auntie,” my friend said in a phone call. “We don’t know where she is. Her auntie was sent back to Mexico and we think is being held by a drug cartel. They separated them under Title 42.”

I felt sick. Four-year-old Maria (not her real name) and her aunt were fleeing violent circumstances. They arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border to exercise their legal right — protected by both international and U.S. law — to request asylum, as other members of Maria’s family had done prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.

In March 2020, everything changed. The Trump administration, through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), invoked a rarely used subsection of public health code called Title 42 to close U.S. borders to asylum seekers and unaccompanied children under the guise of preventing the spread of COVID-19. It made that decision against the advice of many public health experts, including some within the CDC, who agreed there was no public health rationale for a ban on asylum seekers as a group. Though the border remained open to truckers, temporary workers, students, and others, border agents turned back asylum seekers to Mexico or their home country.

From left: Meagan O'Toole-Pitts, Ashley Cortez, Oliver Cortez, and his father, Mark Cortez, attempt to drop off diapers and toys for detained children at the immigration detention center in Clint.  Photo courtesy of Armando Martinez Photography via The Texas Tribune

A Border Patrol official told a state lawmaker that the agency doesn't accept donations for facilities where children are reportedly being held in substandard conditions.

Andrew Hay, Reuters 12-18-2018

A picture of Jakelin is seen during a protest to demand justice for her, in El Paso, Texas, Dec. 16, 2018. REUTERS/Jose Luis Gonzalez/File Photo

U.S. Border Patrol agents who detained a 7-year-old Guatemalan migrant girl who later died in federal custody will not speak with U.S. lawmakers investigating her death, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said on Monday, citing their union membership.

Benjamin Perry 11-27-2018

U.S. CBP Response Team officers are seen through wire at the San Ysidro Port of Entry after the land border crossing was temporarily closed in Tijuana, Mexico Nov. 19, 2018. REUTERS/Adrees Latif

On Sunday, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents launched tear gas at parents and children seeking asylum. Far from an isolated incident, this is just the latest outrage in ongoing military escalation.

Asylum seekers traveling from Central America en route to the United States cross the Tijuana river to reach the border fence between Mexico and the United States in Tijuana, Mexico, Nov. 25, 2018. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon

When children scream from tear gas where they’ve been told to wait,
when signs tell families, “Don’t pass!” outside our nation’s gate—
O Lord who welcomed children and loves each little one,
we cry, “Where is compassion?” We pray, “What have we done?”

Carina Julig 11-20-2018

AT THE BORDER between San Diego and Tijuana, Mexico, people come together once a week for communion across the dividing line. El Faro: The Border Church/ La Iglesia Fronteriza is held every Sunday on both sides of the border. For some families, it is their only opportunity to see loved ones who have been separated from them by immigration status.

The service is at Friendship Park, or “El Parque de la Amistad,” the piece of land that lies between the mesh border fence and the larger border wall that keeps the United States separate from Mexico. Usually, the outer wall is closed, cordoning off any opportunities for people on opposite sides of the border to connect. But for four hours each weekend it opens. For most people, the border is a place of division. But for Pastor John Fanestil, the borderland, or “la fronteriza,” is “a place of encounter.”

Fanestil, who preaches at First United Methodist Church of San Diego, has been running El Faro: The Border Church for almost a decade. He meets me at the trailhead of Border Field State Park, the 1,000-plus-acre San Diego nature preserve that borders the sprawling metropolis of Tijuana. In the summer months, you can drive all the way down to the border, but the trail floods when it rains and is often closed to vehicles in the winter. Today, it’s shut because of a sewage spill from Tijuana, so we hike down.

Fanestil was raised in La Jolla, an upscale neighborhood in San Diego, but says that his first real introduction to Spanish culture was in Costa Rica, where he did a year of seminary. His first appointment after ordination was in the inland border town of Calexico, Calif., which is adjacent to its Mexican sister city, Mexicali. He fell in love with the border culture, and after serving congregations in Los Angeles and Orange Country, he was placed in San Diego in 2004.

Kimberly Winston 3-17-2017

Image via RNS/Rev. Justo Gonzalez II

The Trump administration’s hard-line stance on undocumented immigrants is polarizing: People have responded with either “throw the bums out” or “have a heart.” But the question of whether faith communities can legally offer the undocumented physical sanctuary — sheltering them in churches, synagogues, and mosques to keep them from immigration authorities — is not so cut and dry. 

the Web Editors 2-21-2017

New policies also allow for easier immediate deportation by expanding the expedited removal process. This specific part of the policy allows U.S Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement to deport people at a faster rate from anywhere in the country. DHS has also ordered 10,000 new immigration and customs agents, plus the revival of a program that qualifies local police officers to assist in deportation. 

Verity Jones 7-28-2014
Generosity with loaves and fishes. Image courtesy Antonio Gravante/shutterstock.

Generosity with loaves and fishes. Image courtesy Antonio Gravante/shutterstock.com.

What might happen if we were to look at the two goods of protection and hospitality not as competing goods in a world of scarcity, but as complimentary goods in a world of abundance? I think we might come up with new solutions that no one has yet imagined.

In June, reporters for The Washington Post described deplorable detention conditions of the border patrol station in McAllen, Texas.

“The sick are separated by flimsy strips of yellow police tape from the crying babies and expectant mothers. They subsist on bologna sandwiches and tacos, with portable toilets and no showers, and their wait can last for days," they wrote. 

Soon after, President Obama declared a “humanitarian crisis” at the Mexico-U.S. border, citing a massive increase of undocumented children from Central America crossing the border. Without enough resources to house and care for the tens of thousands of children while they wait for an immigration hearing, the border patrol has been overwhelmed.

When Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson visited the station in May, he asked one young girl, “Where’s your mother?”

“I don’t have a mother,” she replied tearfully.

QR Blog Editor 7-15-2014
Chain link fence. Image courtesy Bobkeenan Photography / shutterstock.com.

Chain link fence. Image courtesy Bobkeenan Photography / shutterstock.com.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jose Antonio Vargas, detained earlier today by border patrol at McAllen-Miller International Airport in Texas after having visited the border town‘s shelter for unaccompanied Central American refugees,  has been released, reports say.

His trip included participating in a vigil to honor the children who have embarked on a dangerous journey to the U.S. to save their lives.

Vargas wanted to shed light on the crisis occurring at the border and highlight the need to address the issue in a humanitarian way.

“I’m the most privileged undocumented immigrant in the country," Vargas said to the Dallas Morning News on Sunday. 

"And with that privilege comes responsibility—the responsibility of tying my specific story to the story of 11 million undocumented people like me and using every skill and resource I have to tell stories and insist that we talk about this issue humanely and fairly.” 

Read the full story here.

QR Blog Editor 6-20-2013

In an attempt to attract conservative voters, undecided senators, and Republicans, talks of doubling border patrol security is in the works. Increasing border patrol security from 21,000 agents, to 42,000 agents, members of the Gang of Eight and Republicans, Bob Corker of Tennessee and John Hoeven of North Dakota have come together and created a package plan to entice conservative’s support for the passing of the immigration bill. Politico reports:

Strengthening border security had long been the major impediment to attracting conservative votes, and a compromise that resolves the issue would significantly improve chances for passage of the overall bill.

Read more here.

 

Maryada Vallet 3-07-2013
Photo by by Raúl Alcaraz Ochoa

Obstruction of Justice, taken by cell phone by Raúl Alcaraz Ochoa while under the Border Patrol vehicle

On a beautiful Sunday afternoon just a few weeks ago, a friend of mine courageously crawled under a Border Patrol truck. And he wasn't changing the oil. Raúl Alcaraz Ochoa was riding his bike to work when he came upon a scene that is all too common in southern Arizona, where racial profiling by the Tucson Police Department is permitted through the notorious legislation SB1070 and Border Patrol roam our streets. Multiple police cars and Border Patrol trucks were surrounding a vehicle apparently pulled over for traffic violation. When Raúl arrived, he saw five children crying for their father and a pregnant woman sitting terrified in the vehicle. Handcuffed and being transferred to Border Patrol custody was a Latino man named René.

Raúl had to think and act quickly, and he crawled under the Border Patrol truck. He began sending texts that spread quickly throughout a community protection network designed to alert community members and advocates about raids, abuse, and racial profiling by immigration and law enforcement. Media and supporters responded within minutes, just as Raúl was pepper sprayed, Tazed, and pulled out from under the vehicle. Both men spent the night in custody, and public demands were widespread for their release. While Raúl was released the next day, top officials of Border Patrol and the Department of Homeland Security ignored pleas for René to rejoin his family, and he was promptly deported to Mexico.

Maryada Vallet 10-25-2012
Candles near site of shooting, Murphy Woodhouse

Candles near site of shooting, Murphy Woodhouse

Candles burn near the bloodstained concrete sidewalk where a youth was tragically killed when more than a dozen bullets shot across the wall into the Mexican bordertown. I've walked that sidewalk running parallel to the border wall and Calle Internacional in Nogales, Sonora possibly hundreds of times. It is with this intimate awareness of the context that I describe how recent deaths in the name of homeland security are an affront to all families of the borderlands. 

Four deaths in six weeks across the border region, one common offender

On the evening of Oct. 10 U.S. Border Patrol agents shot and killed 16-year old José Antonio Elena Rodriguez. The shots were fired through the paneled border wall in Nogales hitting José Antonio in the back seven-to-eight times. The agents allege the boy was involved in rock throwing. For more detailed description of the circumstances, see this article.

About a week earlier, Border Patrol agent Nicolas Ivie, 30, was killed in Naco, another Arizona border town just east of Nogales, when a fellow U.S. agent searching for smugglers mistakenly opened fire. Agent Ivie has a wife and two young daughters who live in southern Arizona, and the family is publicly fundraising to survive without him.

 

Beau Underwood 5-29-2012
Passport photo, Jennie Book / Shutterstock.com

Passport photo, Jennie Book / Shutterstock.com

The debate over immigration policy and border security often focuses on the border shared by the United States and Mexico. However, The New York Times recently offered a revealing and troublesome picture of efforts by the U.S. Border Patrol along the dividing line between the US and Canada.

According to the report, the border agents “hover outside the warehouse where Mexican immigrants sell the salal they pick in the temperate rain forest. Sometimes they confront people whose primary offense, many argue, is skin tone.” 

Maryada Vallet 2-09-2011
The shooting in Tucson, Arizona has spurred numerous 'calls for civility' in the heated political tension of Arizona and beyond.
Debra Dean Murphy 5-03-2010

There's a scene in the film Food, Inc. that reveals the hypocrisy at the heart of U.S.

Jill Holslin 3-11-2010

My friend Dan and I walked along Avenida Internacional, the four-lane highway that runs along the border between Tijuana and San Diego, on our way to get a view of the DHS border fence construction from the Tijuana side.

John Carlos Frey 2-05-2010

I was born in Tijuana, Mexico, and grew up in San Diego, California, only a few hundred yards from the actual borderline. As a kid, there were always border patrols around but I never felt like my birthplace offered any threat. A few years ago, though, I noticed a massive escalation of security infrastructure along the U.S.-Mexico border. I couldn't figure out what had changed.