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.

In essence, Jimmy Aldaoud was what lawyers call low-hanging fruit. The 41-year-old Detroit suburb resident had more than 20 convictions, the most notable for assault and stealing power tools from a garage in 2012. Family and friends say doctors believed he was bipolar with schizoaffective disorder, plus he was a diabetic. 

Rush-to-judgment pundits left and right are opining about the two shootings this weekend. Nothing they or anyone else says will bring back to life the 31 who died. Words won’t repair the spirit of those who loved them or heal the bodies of the many who were injured. But for the rest of us, before the blame game goes into extra innings—let’s take a deep breath. 

Leo Tolstoy opened Anna Karenina with this now-famous line: “Happy families are all alike. Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” That’s true about eras in American history as well.  

Members of a secret Facebook group for current and former Border Patrol agents made racist, sexually explicit, and callous comments about migrants and Hispanic members of Congress, according to a report published by ProPublica on Monday. Close to 9,500 current and former Border Patrol members were members of the group, the news site noted.