“Tuesday’s Topical Currents looks at the issue of U.S. Border Patrol and Homeland Security’s ever-widening reach into the lives of American citizens and legal immigrants as well as the undocumented.”
http://wlrn.org/post/border-patrol-nation-dispatches-front-lines-homeland-security
“Author Todd Miller discusses how defense contractors look to cash in on President Obama’s expected $2 billion proposal in additional funding for border security”
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=12071
When we stop the car, David Garcia opens the door, steps out, and walks straight to the metal border gate that officially separates the United States and Mexico. Garcia, an elder of almost sixty, has long graying hair that reaches to his shoulders. Without a word, the former Tohono O’odham tribal councilman opens the gate. He does this as if it were his automatic impulse. There is nobody on the other side waiting to come in, nor are we planning to cross into Mexico ourselves. Garcia opens it simply as if the barrier didn’t belong, as if it were artificial and imposed, something to breach, something to open, something to resist.
http://nacla.org/news/2014/6/9/unfinished-business-indian-country
The emergence of a ubiquitous surveillance state may be symbolized by the National Security Agency (NSA), but according to journalist Todd Miller those in the United States should also be looking to the nation’s borders. It is there that a creeping militarization threatens – in the name of protecting the country – to encroach upon the civil liberties of everybody in the US.
Todd Miller speaks with Truthout about his new book, Border Patrol Nation: Dispatches from the Front Lines of Homeland Security and about how the public is unaware that this country’s borders are being transformed into heavily militarized zones, north and south.
You’ve been reporting about the border for several years now, what made you decide to focus on border patrol and what surprised you the most in your findings?
One of the first acts of journalism that I did was photograph a crew from the U.S. Army corps of engineers when they were building the wall between Douglas and Agua Prieta in the late 1990s. That was when Border Patrol was concentrating agents and technology, and building walls in the urban areas along the 2,000 mile U.S. Mexico border. Then in 2001 I was working for a binational organization in Tucson, Arizona and Nogales, Sonora when 9/11 hit. With this, I witnessed first hand the advent of the homeland security era of the Border Patrol. The results of this have been nothing less than startling.
http://fronteralist.org/2014/06/07/q-a-with-author-todd-miller/
Hour 2: In recent years, the U.S. Border Patrol has expanded its reach into everything from surveillance to security at the Super Bowl. We’ll talk about the organization’s increased presence in our everyday lives with Todd Miller, author of Border Patrol Nation: Dispatches from the Front Lines of Homeland Security (City Lights Publishers).
Did you know that Customs and Border Protection is now the largest law enforcement agency in the US, spurring a huge border-industrial complex? Find out more about border protection by checking out this edition of APA!
Please, click on the link to go to the interview. We have a nice discussion about Border Patrol Nation.
http://kboo.fm/content/borderpatrolnationdispatchesfromthefrontlinesofhomel
The interview begins like this.. “Fear is big business, and managing that fear along our nation’s 5,000 border miles is a booming industry.”
See the entire interview, by Joanne Zuhl, here:
