Setting up buoys in a section of the Rio Grande is more likely to result in migrants seeking pathways elsewhere, rather than deterring migration altogether.
Keeping landscapes connected can help protect wild animals and plants. In the US Southwest, border wall construction is closing off corridors that jaguars and other at-risk species use.
Millions of miles of fences crisscross the Earth’s surface. They divide ecosystems and affect wild species in ways that often are harmful, but are virtually unstudied.
Declaring an issue is a national emergency lets presidents act quickly and with few constraints. But once they get this kind of power, it’s hard to take it back – and it can produce bad policies.
Border wall construction through Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in Arizona is encroaching on a site where people from many cultures have interacted for thousands of years.
The conviction of Mexican drug kingpin Joaquín Guzmán Loera, who evaded justice in Mexico, is a win for US officials. But it’s a pyrrhic victory in the war on drugs.
The U.S-Mexico border runs through Native American territories. A wall would further divide these communities, separating children from schools, farmers from water and families from each other.
Trump is not the first US president to talk about border security, but he is the only one to make it an “urgent national crisis”. Here is a handy deconstruction of President Trump’s rhetorical strategy.
After 1.3 million migrants from the Middle East and Africa came to Europe in 2015, many countries built fences or closed their ports. That has pushed migrants to take riskier routes into the EU.
With its tales of bloody violence, corruption, international trade and entrepreneurial innovation, Guzmán’s trial offers a telenovela-style explainer on Mexican cartels and their American clients.
We asked experts on ethics, constitutional law and European political history to analyze Trump’s Oval Office address. Here’s what they heard in his speech about ‘crisis’ at the US-Mexico border.
From south of the border, Trump seems to be using DACA as a diplomatic weapon in his ongoing power struggle with the Mexican government. That just hurts 800,000 people and helps President Peña Nieto.
Instead of building a wall on the US-Mexico border, a landscape architect calls for restoring the Rio Grande and turning its course into an international park – an idea first proposed in the 1930s.