The Trump administration is painting Border Czar Tom Homan as a less extreme and more professional alternative to the leadership of the recently removed Border Patrol head, Greg Bovino, and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.
But his record tells a much different story.
And he returns to El Centro to...continue leading the institutionalized terror campaign against border crossers and residents...
And, then, this story about how the Supreme Court refused to hold the agents accountable: tucson.com/news/arizona...
And this story about how a different Border Patrol agent shot and killed a 15 year old named Sergio Adrian Hernandez, also across the wall: www.southernborder.org/sergio_adria...
Then, there is this story of how a Border Patrol agent named Lonnie Schwartz shot across the U.S. Mexico border wall into Mexico, and killed a 16 year old boy named Jose Antonio Rodriguez, while he was a few blocks from his home in Nogales, Sonora: www.kinoborderinitiative.org/we-lament-10...
And these, from 2024, by @florenceproject.bsky.social and @immdef.bsky.social, also on child abuse by the Border Patrol: firrp.org/florence-pro...
Along with this additional report by the ACLU of San Diego and Imperial Counties: www.aclu.org/press-releas...
This link is a whole compilation of reports and government documents on the Border Patrol's abuse of children, specifically: www.aclu-sdic.org/government-d...
Then there is this website documenting Border Patrol-involved deaths from 2010 until May, 2025, compiled by the Southern Border Communities Coalition: www.southernborder.org/deaths_by_bo...
Along with other documentation by @nomoredeaths.bsky.social ranging from 2008-2016: nomoredeaths.org/abuse-docume...
You might start here, with video from @nomoredeaths.bsky.social and the Coalicion de Derechos Humanos based on their decades of work documenting the Border Patrol’s intentionally deadly enforcement tactics: www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7A9...
But there is also a rich and disturbing collection of reports by organizers, regular citizens, lawyers, and journalists.
This list is by no means comprehensive, just a sampling. For current borderlands context by amazing journalists @mdelbosque.bsky.social and @memomiller.bsky.social who have been embedded in this work for years, I highly recommend @theborderchronicle.bsky.social.
To all of the folks out on the streets, documenting and standing up in this moment, I am so grateful and inspired. But I also want to lift up some of the work, especially that of documentation, that has come before, because there is a legacy here.
They've been honed by official training, by policy, by a culture of law enforcement where cruelty is the point, and by a wholesale failure of accountability for abuse. The Border Patrol thrives on terror.
The scale of the terror in Minneapolis right now might be unprecedented. But I don't think it minimizes that horror or this moment to note that the *tactics* are not new. They’ve been honed in the darkness of detention centers, in the desert, along the river, for years.
It is a hurt for all of the folks, adults and children alike, who we have known and witnessed being terrorized by the #BorderPatrol for so long, and with so little attention, even as it feels like we shouted from the rooftops about it.
I know I’m not the only person who has lived and worked in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands whose heart is hurting for Alex Pretti, for Renee Good, for their loved ones and families, but for whom that hurt is a familiar one.
I was 20, basically a kid myself. Most of the kids were indigenous. The @florenceproject.bsky.social, where I interned, filed complaints with DHS’ oversight office, the Office of Civil Rights & Civil Liberties. As far as I know, they didn’t go anywhere.
Most of the kids were deported, eventually.
I’ve been thinking all day of the summer of 2009, which I spent talking to kids, mostly teens, about their experiences begin arrested by the Border Patrol. One, rammed into by an agent’s motorcycle. Another, smashed in the head until he bled.
For all that Mahmoud Khalil's case is an unprecedented use of an almost-never used law to justify his deportation proceeding, his actual arrest was pretty business as usual for ICE. Shout out to @immigrantjustice.bsky.social for their *years* of litigation challenging ICE's shady arrest practices <3
If you want to know what this administration will do, no need to look to European authoritarians.
We had our own in the South in the 50s and 60s, and Trump is following their playbook.
open.substack.com/pub/sherrily...
What better bluesky inauguration than to compliment this excellent piece of reporting from @maxrn.bsky.social for @hellgatenyc.com? Gang databases bad, moral panics to justify hateful and hurtful legislation also bad, Alien Enemies Act super scary...
