What's really happening at the US-Mexico border -- and how we can do better

Salvadoran journalist Oscar Martinez spent two years traveling and documenting the treacherous route taken by a quarter million Central American migrants per year — tens of thousands of whom are kidnapped along the way. This book, which includes stunning photos, illustrates the unimaginable hardships endured by Central Americans in search of safety and the American dream. Anyone who reads this book will understand why forcing Central American refugees to wait in Mexico is a deadly farce.

The Devil’s Highway is an unforgiving stretch of desert at the border where thousands of migrants have died trying to cross into the US. This book documents the true story of 26 men who ventured into the desert in May of 2001, 14 of whom died during the journey. Through these individual portraits, Urrea teaches us about the myriad motivations of the migrants, smugglers, border patrol agents, vigilantes and policy makers. Through them, Urrea describes how both the US and Mexican legal systems create deadly conditions that punish and kill migrants desperate enough to sacrifice everything for a chance at a better life.

A first-person account of the author's refugee journey, which began when she was forced to flee Iran with her family when she was a child. The perspective of displaced children is of utmost importance when tens of thousands of refugees waiting at the US southern border are minors. The effects on children of being unmoored from one's roots, of watching one's parents seemingly stripped of their power and of the inevitable tedium of travel with no fixed destination are profound. Anyone who hopes to volunteer helping refugees on the border should question why they are compelled to do so and what they expect from the refugees they will encounter. Would-be volunteers should read this to understand the author's perspective on gratitude and question how they would experience the world if suddenly forced to rely solely on charity.

The rapid buildup of the "immigration industrial complex" after 9/11 was inextricably tied to mass incarceration, white supremacy and the criminalization of non-citizens. Fernandes provides a sweeping view of how the US immigration legal system exacerbates the exploitation of immigrant laborers from the global south and how a lack of due process for non-citizens serve to brutally exclude both bona fide refugees and immigrants with deep roots in our country.

The author estimates that at least a quarter of those deported from the US in recent years are the parents of US citizens. Some will never see their children or other family members again. This book focuses on deportees who were brought to the US as young children and deported after being convicted of a crime. Understanding the effects of the "Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act" of 1996 is essential to understanding how mass incarceration drives mass deportation and why the expulsion of so-called "criminal aliens" isn't necessarily sound public policy. This book also urges the reader to reconsider what it means to be American.