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La Frontera: A new exhibit while in line at the San Ysidro Port of Entry

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By Stefan Falke

I have chosen an appropriate location for my newest photography exhibition titled LA FRONTERA: Artists along the US Mexican Border the San Ysidro Port of Entry.

I display eighteen large-scale images from my ongoing project. You can find the photographs along the left hand fence that leads to border control on the Mexican side in Tijuana.

In this photography project, I focus on artists who live and work along the U.S.-Mexico border, documenting their individual stories and their arts’ positive influence on their communities. To date I have photographed over 200 artists on both sides and along the entire length of the border, from Tijuana to Matamoros, from Brownsville to San Diego.   [Read more…]

CBP Uses Border To Pressure People Into Becoming Informants

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The government has been using the border as a dragnet to pressure people into becoming informants

By Hugh Handeyside, Staff Attorney / ACLU National Security Project

Recently leaked documents published by The Intercept show that the FBI and Customs and Border Protection have been using CBP’s authority to search travelers at the border — along with the troves of information collected as a result — to troll for potential sources and pressure people into becoming informants. We’ve gone through the documents, and they heighten our concerns that these agencies are exceeding their authority, targeting minority communities and vulnerable people, and trying to evade accountability for doing so.

These documents also highlight a broader problem with the government’s official guidance on the use of race by federal law enforcement agencies. That guidance purports to ban racial profiling, but it includes exemptions for border screening and national security — exemptions that the leaked documents demonstrate are dangerous and unwise.   [Read more…]

Mon Dieu! C’est ‘Manifest Destinitis’ at San Diego Rep

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Molière is smiling. The multi-talented actor and playwright, Herbert Siguenza, has breathed new life into his play, The Imaginary Invalid. Manifest Destinitis is set two centuries later in 19th century “old or Alta California”. This high energy play is also brimming with clever and scathing 21st century social commentary on the upcoming election, Trump and his ‘wall’, and the present day health care system.

Siguenza is becoming a San Diego treasure in the theater world with his plays, Steal Heaven, An Evening with Pablo Picasso, El Henry (a favorite of mine), and now Manifest Destinitis.   [Read more…]

Deported Veteran Hector Barajas Might Return To U.S.

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Hector now lives in Tijuana while he awaits citizenship papers. In the meantime, he fills his time as director and founder of the Deported Veterans Support House, a shelter located in Otay, Mexico. He created the shelter in 2012 and currently six people live there, including one female who is not a veteran, but is staying at what he called ‘the bunker.’

“We try to do what we can. We try to help each other out. We live by the motto leave no man behind,” Hector says. “We have veterans deported from 24 different countries, from the Vietnam War to Iraq and Afghanistan. They served honorably, but after their service they got into some kind of trouble with the law. It could be a $300 check to something like a discharge of a firearm, like myself. I did three years in prison. I had my legal residence. I was not undocumented.”

One of the issues Hector is working on is to allow deported veterans to still get their medical benefits. Just because they are deported, doesn’t mean they lose their health care. However, since they can’t come across into the United States, they can’t be physically present for their appointments. Hector is working to get the VA to outsource those programs. That way, all these men who fought in Iraq and Vietnam and have PTSD can, at the very least, receive treatment.   [Read more…]

Will Gov. Brown Do the Right Thing for Farmworkers?

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After two years and more than five thousand proposed laws, resolutions, and constitutional amendments, the current version of the California Legislature wrapped up its session in frenzied fashion. Wednesday, August 31st saw more than one hundred bills up for consideration. Now it’s up to the Governor to say yea or nay on legislation affecting all aspects of life in California.

Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez (D-80), who successfully shepherded 19 of 20 bills through the legislature this year, is leaving nothing up to chance with her hard-fought victory on AB 1066, gradually phasing in standards for farmerworker overtime.

She’s started a petition drive for voters to let the Governor know they want this bill signed.   [Read more…]

League of Women Voters Tour San Diego Border Crossings

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By Beryl Flom

The League of Women Voters of San Diego recently took a tour with Customs and Border Patrol. The August 2 tour was arranged by the League’s Immigration and Deportation Committee as an opportunity to educate members about various border and immigration issues.

Those issues include the wait time crossing the border, regulations by the U.S. which can slow down a smooth transition between the two countries and the court backlog for people without documentation seeking asylum. Another issue that concerns us is the deportation of non-citizen veterans who have served our country and then commit some minor legal infraction and are deported without consideration of their readjustment back to civilian life.   [Read more…]

Otay Water District Proposes Pipeline from Rosarito Desalination Plant into U.S.

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Serge Dedina says, “…before any U.S. government agency or any U.S. water agency gets a permit to suck desal water from the most polluted coast in North America and sell it back to U.S. consumers, they need to prioritize cleaning up this coastline.”

In Mexico, when sewage is collected, much of it is sent to a place called San Antonio de Las Buenos or Punto Banderas just 6 miles South of the Border.

WildCoast and Surfrider estimate that the sewage being discharged in the ocean each day “could be anywhere from 30 to 50 million gallons a day depending. No one’s really counting. We think it’s grown exponentially because of the increase in development that’s, in theory it’s a primary plant, but they don’t actually treat the sewage, they just put it through some ponds and then dump it in the ocean right on the beach,” Dedina says.   [Read more…]

Homicide Rate In Mexico Increases

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By David Gagne / InSight Crime

The number of homicides in May reached levels unseen during the administration of Mexico President Enrique Peña Nieto, and the fact that they are more widespread makes the trend increasingly difficult for authorities to reverse.

Mexico’s Executive Secretary of the National System of Public Security (Secretariado Ejecutivo del Sistema Nacional de Seguridad Pública – SNSP) announced there were 1,746 homicides nationwide during the month of May, reported Milenio. The previous high for murders under Peña Nieto was 1,726 in December 2012, the same month he was sworn in as president.

The last time homicides were this high was in September 2012, when former President Felipe Calderon was still in office, reported El País.   [Read more…]

Tens of Thousands March in Mexico City in Support of Striking Oaxaca Teachers

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By Lauren McCauley / Common Dreams

“You are not alone,” was the message tens of thousands of supporters sent to striking teachers in Oaxaca during a massive demonstration in Mexico City on Sunday.

Protesters marched against the government’s violent response to the teacher strikes and other dissension, as well as Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto’s neoliberal policies that spurred the educator protests and emboldened a wider backlash against his regime of privatization and repression—fueling many calls for his resignation.   [Read more…]

Crossing the Line: A Marriage Across Borders

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This immigration love story does it the ‘right way’

By Sharon Kha

“It’s not that we don’t want Mexicans to come to America,” the woman in the coffee shop said. “It’s just that we want them to do it the right way.”

The right way? And what would that be? Should we advise them to do exactly as we did?

When we were the ones on the other side of the fence wanting to settle in this new country, we cheated the people who were living there at the time — the Indians. We herded them into reservations and broke every treaty we made with them. When all else failed, we gave them disease-infected blankets that killed them off.
  [Read more…]

A Chicano Response to Donald Trump

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“Pa Pendejo No Se Estudia!”

By Herman Baca

One has to ask if we number 60 million (17% of the total population), why do we act like we are only 7 million? Politically, the only historical solution I see to end the above is: our peoples own political self-determination. Then and only then will we be able to build the infrastructure to have organized people/money to build the social, economic and political power necessary to deal with the historical issues/problems that afflict our people.

So what can Chicanos/Mexicanos/Latinos do to STOP TRUMP?

Mexico Assumes Role of Turning Migrant Children Back

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Steven Dudley

Human Rights Watch has chronicled violent drivers of the continuing child migration crisis, as well as how the US government has stealthily outsourced to Mexico the job of returning these kids to their often perilous homes.

The report titled “Closed Doors: Mexico’s Failure to Protect Central American Refugee and Migrant Children” (pdf) was based on 61 interviews with “refugees, asylum seekers, or migrants” between the ages of 11 and 17; more than 100 adults from the so-called Northern Triangle countries of Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala; as well as 65 interviews with officials and workers with governmental and non-governmental organizations who work on these issues.   [Read more…]

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