Protect our health care workers — halt border wall construction

As a public health professional working to prevent illness in our U.S.-Mexico border communities, I am shocked that the non-essential construction of Trump’s border wall continues despite national, state and local emergency declarations. My organization, the Southeast Arizona Area Health Education Center, (SEAHEC) is tasked with helping develop a prepared...

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Kino Border Initiative

Sister Engracia Robles and Lupita Flores were sharing coffee one afternoon several years ago discussing the recent increase in homeless migrant families appearing on the streets of Nogales, Sonora.  The children appeared so thin and pale, “their lips were white with thirst and hunger,” they noted with dismay, unlike the...

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Testimony of Dr. Gary Paul Nabhan, for the House Committee on Appropriations and its Subcommittee on Homeland Security

My name is Gary Paul Nabhan and I am an Ecumenical Franciscan Brother who has lived and worked on the U.S./Mexico border as a seasonal park ranger, farmer, conservational biologist and facilitator of interfaith and intertribal gatherings since 1978. I live now live in Patagonia, Arizona 18 miles from the...

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I Used to Run ICE. We Need to Release the Nonviolent Detainees.

With more than 37,000 detainees closely confined in facilities across the country, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention centers are extremely susceptible to outbreaks of infectious diseases. The design of these facilities requires inmates to remain in close contact with one another—the opposite of the social distancing now recommended for...

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Indigenous group reaffirms importance of Quitobaquito Springs amid border wall construction

Members of the Tohono O'odham Nation reaffirmed the modern relevancy of a sacred site in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument impacted by border wall construction. A group of Tohono O'odham, Hia C-ed O'odham, Pascua Yaqui and their non-Indigenous allies gathered, Sunday, March 8, beside the pond fed by Quitobaquito Springs...

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