In March, I went on a three-hour ride-along with a U.S. Border Patrol agent around the San Diego–Tijuana border.

The Cedar-Riverside neighborhood in downtown Minneapolis is nicknamed “Little Mogadishu” because of its Somali American population. On Somali Street, a mall rests inside a wide, blue bungalow. There, different vendors in stalls sell traditional clothes, food items, and duvets. 

A few feet away, a two-story brick building houses the Masjid Darul-Quba mosque and a cultural center. Opposite the mall, several mothers stroll with their children in a small park. Signs for Somali restaurants and other small businesses dot more streets.

My first-ever visit to a jail-like setting took place during an October 2015 trip to Thailand, where I met with Christian Pakistani refugees.

There, at an immigration detention center in Bangkok, I met Arbab. At the time, he was 21, with soft brown eyes and an innocent smile. His dark, curly bangs and beard covered his face because he couldn’t cut them while in detention. He’d been stuck in a cell for more than six months, with no contact with his family and no money to pay bail. 

In February 2018, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) quietly changed its mission statement, removing a description of the United States as “a nation of immigrants.” The change reflected a shift in our government’s philosophy regarding immigration from one of welcoming strangers to that of border protection.

It’s a warm morning in early autumn at the Michigan-Ontario border. U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Officers Ken Hammond and Greg Calhoun stand in a closed lane at the Port Huron primary inspection booths in their dark blue uniforms. It’s overcast, but both men wear sunglasses. Behind them, cars, RVs, and semitrucks split into their assigned lanes as they approach the booths from the Blue Water Bridge. The bridge, which connects the United States and Canada over the St.

The new documentary One Child Nation explores the effects of China’s infamous “one-child policy” from 1980 to 2015. In the film, co-director Nanfu Wang returns to her home village to reflect on growing up while the policy was in place, though ignorant of its implications. Only when she herself became pregnant, as an adult living in the United States, did her thoughts turn to the bitter harvest of the one-child years in her home country. While interviewing an elderly midwife, she asks how many babies the woman delivered. “I really don’t know how many I delivered.

Carlos Benjamin Dubon-Moro says that when someone shot his brother multiple times, he had no idea if those bullets were meant for him or if it was a random act of violence. The 27-year-old Guatemalan father of three said he had been receiving threats after campaigning for a political candidate before the shooting. That’s the problem in Guatemala, he told me: You just never know—and you better get out before you find out.