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"Traveling from New York City to Buffalo on Amtrak’s Lake Shore Limited last month, I wondered what I would say if Border Patrol agents showed up on the train at Syracuse or Rochester and asked, “Are you a U.S. citizen?”
My plan was to politely decline to answer, and see what happened next."
NINA BERNSTEIN in the New York Times, Aug. 30, 2010.
"Some American-born passengers welcome the patrol. “It makes me feel safe,” volunteered Katie Miller, 34, who was riding Amtrak to New York from Ohio. “I don’t mind being monitored.”
To others, it evokes travel through the old Communist bloc. “I was actually woken up with a flashlight in my face,” recalled Mike Santomauro, 27, a law student who encountered the patrol in April, at 2 a.m. on a train in Rochester.
Across the aisle, he said, six agents grilled a student with a computer who had only an electronic version of his immigration documents. Through the window, Mr. Santomauro said, he could see three black passengers, standing with arms raised beside a Border Patrol van.
“As a citizen I’m offended,” he said. But he added, “To say I didn’t want to answer didn’t seem a viable option.”"
NINA BERNSTEIN in the New York Times, Aug. 30, 2010.
A 4-part multi-media package reported by ELIZABETH BAIER for Minnesota Public Radio.
Part 1: The strike the changed Austin
Part 2: Newcomers settle in Austin
Part 3. Fear and nostalgia in a changing community
Broadcast editor: Kate Smith
Web editor: Jennifer Ehrlich
Photographer: Jeffrey Thompson
Web producers: Nathaniel Minor, Elliot deBruyn, Than Tibbetts
Audio Archivists: Sylvia Mohn and Jenel Farrell
"We're kind of looking at a record-breaking year this year," Peters said."
NICOLE SANTA CRUZ in the Los Angeles Times, Aug. 24, 2010.
"A large majority of the residents of Texas cities on the U.S.-Mexico border feel relatively safe despite harsh rhetoric from lawmakers and a consistent media portrayal of their communities as war zones, according to a poll released today."
JULIAN AGUILAR in the Texas Tribune, Aug. 10, 2010.
"The Obama administration has granted asylum to a Mexican woman who was sexually abused and severely battered by her common-law husband. The decision, in a closely watched case, clarifies the exacting standard that domestic abuse victims must meet to win asylum."
JULIA PRESTON in the New York Times.
"The Obama administration, while deporting a record number of immigrants convicted of crimes, is sparing one group of illegal immigrants from expulsion: students who came to the United States without papers when they were children."
JULIA PRESTON in the New York Times.
"They could write chapters in history books about people like Joe Sing, a Chinese immigrant who blazed trails in Austin around the dawn of the 20th century, and his lay-down-the-law wife, Francisca, who helped him. Sing eclipsed one barrier after another poverty, a strange land and language, discriminatory laws to succeed as a businessman, husband and father.
But Sing apparently also was a modest man, and his gritty story went with him to his grave in 1927. There it probably would have stayed had his descendants not discovered a box 80 years after his death."
JUAN CASTILLO in the Austin American-Statesman.
"When Linda Walker drives north on Highway 118 from her West Texas home in Terlingua toward Alpine, she spots the U.S. Border Patrol checkpoint ahead and thinks to herself, "Do I have time today?" Does she have time, she asks, to get “belligerent” with the agents, in their now ubiquitous green fatigues, who will inevitably ask about her citizenship?"
ALEXA GARCIA-DITTA in the Texas Tribune.
"It's bath time for 19-month-old Lucas Guerra, who splashes in delight as his mother, Amy, washes him in their West Chicago home while his father looks on from Monterrey, Mexico.
"Can you lift the screen a little bit?" Carlos Guerra asks, his voice coming from the laptop computer that Amy Guerra has placed on top of a plastic bathroom hamper.
The laptop is adjusted and Carlos' view changes from the lip of the bathtub to the smiling toddler he's seen in person only twice since the boy was born. "That's good, thank you," Carlos says.
The Guerras arrangement — a father watching his child grow up through choppy digital bytes provided by a computer — is an increasingly common reality for thousands of families separated by U.S. immigration laws, prompting the creation of several online support groups."
ANTONIO OLIVO in the Chicago Tribune.