From the Borderlands

Where were you on No Kings Day 3, dear subscribers? Let me know in the comments below.

I was in the Twin Cities, hosted by the amazing St. Joan of Arc Catholic Community, and its Welcome the Stranger ministry, which put together a busy week of service, public speaking, networking, and story capturing for me. It was the perfect conclusion of another exhausting — but extremely fulfilling — leg on my now 20-month speaking tour following the launch of Crossing the Line: Finding America in the Borderlands (and the reason you haven’t heard from me in a while).

It was also my birthday! And I was honored to celebrate in the company of 200,000+ Minnesotans, in person and in spirit, including members of my own extended family. You are all heroes to me.

Surrounded by the peaceful vibes of ordinary folks moved to extraordinary kindness in resistance to the demented whims of a warmongering man-child and would-be king, we were serenaded by Bruce Springsteen, Maggie Rogers, and Joan Baez…

We rocked to the Brass Solidarity band. Founded in 2021, in response to the murder of George Floyd, Brass Solidarity’s every tune expresses that Black Lives Matter…

And we were roused to participation by Singing Resistance, a grassroots movement born of the violent federal occupation of Minneapolis that harnesses collective song-making as a form of nonviolent protest against ICE, injustice, and rising fear.

During the pre-event gathering, Singing Resistance could be heard in the distance, performing the song I gifted to the movement for this auspicious day:

From the steps of the gold-domed Minnesota state capitol in St.Paul, we enjoyed inspirational speeches by Indivisible’s co-founders, Ezra Levin and Leah Greenberg; state and congressional lawmakers, including Senator Bernie Sanders (D-VT); local grassroots leaders, many of whom I met and trained with during my time in the area; the incomparable Jane Fonda; and steadfast Robert DeNiro, who beamed in from the No Kings Day 3 rally in New York City — all of it deftly moderated by Lizz Winstead.

Chilly temps and strong winds made for a nippy day, but the sun shone bright, with nary a cloud in sight, and the crowd exuded only warmth and solidarity. I saw no evidence of counter-protest by members of the MAGA cult. There was not even a hint, not a whiff, of the “left-wing violence” that the Trump regime’s propaganda machine tries to inculcate its supporters to believe is a thing.

It isn’t.

The only violence is MAGA violence, ICE violence, Border Patrol violence, Trump / Miller / Homan / Noem / Hegseth / Rubio / Vought / etc. violence. And their cruelty is not okay!

They are the Worst of the Worst. Not us.

We are peaceful. We are non-violent. Minnesota proved that. Plus…

We make protest signs great again!

Estimates to date state that we were more than 8 million in the streets for No Kings Day 3. And for every person who showed up to march and sing and chant and dream, there were three who could not make it due to work commitments or health concerns.

That’s 24 million — more than the magical 3.5% of the population needed to throw off the yoke of rising authoritarianism. So, we cannot stop resisting now!

Trump’s popularity has hit rock bottom. His base is crumbling. His madness spiraling. When pushed into a corner, he goes on the attack. And we already know what one of his next victims is: the upcoming 2026 midterm elections. He and his minions know they cannot win without cheating. So we must ensure that they cannot.

But this week we celebrate. Wins are good. We continue to reimagine the world we wish to live in. And next week, we get back to the work of saving our democracy.

To aid the effort, I’ll be back in your inbox soon with stories from the Minnesota and Arizona resistance communities.

Stay strong, my friends. The only way through this is…Together!

✊🏻 Sarah

Where were you on No Kings Day 3? Let me know in the comments below. And please tap the ❤️ and “restack” emojis to get this post circulating. THANK YOU!

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“Bella Ciao“ is best remembered as an anti-Nazi and anti-fascist Italian folk song dedicated to the partisans of the Italian resistance, who fought against the occupying troops of Nazi Germany and the collaborationist fascist forces during the liberation of Italy during WWII. The exact origins of the song are not known, but female workers of the Northern Italy paddy fields set lyrics to the tune in the late 19th century to protest their harsh working conditions.

A hymn of resistance against Nazism, fascism, injustice, and oppression, versions of “Bella Ciao” have continued to be sung worldwide since WWII. This inspired me to create new lyrics to the tune, representing the 21st-century US context under Trumpism.

It is my gift to you, as well as to Indivisible and The 50501 Movement leadership and chapters nationwide for No Kings Day, March 28, 2026. I invite you to learn it, sing it, share it, and bring it to the streets wherever you happen to be that day.

I will be marching in Minneapolis. Please contact me if that’s where you’ll be, too.

Let’s sing ICE OUT! together…

ICE OUT!A Resistance Anthem for the 21st Century USA

Tempo: 88 BPMKey: A minorTime Signature: 4/4

VERSE IAmWe feel their presenceWe see them stalkingOh Bella Ciao, Bella Ciao, Am7Bella Ciao, Ciao, Ciao

CHORUS I DmThey will not stop us AmFrom our protesting E7 AmWe raise our voice as one in song.

VERSE IIThey want our silence,For us to fear them,To look away, go away,Bella Ciao, Ciao, Ciao.

CHORUS IIThey hide their faces.They leave dark traces.But we won’t let them steal our power.

VERSE IIIFor we the people,We keep it peacefulReject their tyrannyThen as Now, Now, Now.

CHORUS IIIWe’ll have no kings here.We hold our rights dearTo live in liberty and freedom

VERSE IVThey will not stop usFrom our protesting.We raise our voices as one in song: ICE OUT!

CHORUS IVThey want our silence,For us to fear them.But we’re all Minnesota now — ICE OUT!

REPRISE IWe’ll have no kings here.We hold our rights dear.And we won’t let them steal our power

REPRISE IIThey want our silence.For us to fear them.But we’re all Minnesota now!

Lyrics by Sarah Towle © 2026Recording produced by Ben Meyers with vocals by Sarah Towle.

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Resistance Strategy #1: Remain Focused.

There’s nothing like a “war” abroad to divert public attention from the atrocities taking place right now in our own backyards. The Trump kakistocracy* is now waging a bombing campaign against Iran on behalf of International Criminal Court defendant, Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu, whose arrest warrant was issued on 21 November 2024 for starving and directly attacking civilians as a method of warfare; for the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts. Soon, it will be Trump, Hegseth, and Rubio’s turn.

In the meantime, while everyone’s eyes are trained on Trump & Co’s illegal actions in the Middle East, the build-up of the ICE detention-to-deportation Gulag continues unabated. New concentration camps are coming to a distribution warehouse near you — even as Congress debates whether the ICE Gestapo should wear masks.

These are concentration camps, paid for by us, the US taxpayer, thanks to a $45 billion allocation from the MAGA Murder Mandate (aka, the Biggest, Ugliest Bill), which is destined to go down in the history books as the payment system for Trump & Co’s genocide against the stateless.

Kakistocracy: v. derived from Greek for “worst rule,” or “rule by idiots,” a government not by the people for the people, but by the least qualified, most unscrupulous, sycophantic bullies for the billionaire (and now trillionaire) class. Rule by the Worst of the Worst.

Resistance Strategy #2: Don’t Look Away.

As I reported on February 21, 2026, ICE’s parent agency, the Department of Homeland “Security” (DHS), has earmarked $38 Billion to buy 24 empty shipping depots to scale up its for-profit prison Gulag to 92,000 beds or more by the end of FY 2026. These warehouses will each cost roughly $100 million to purchase, then another $150 million to retrofit with toileting facilities, dorms, mess halls, plumbing, electrical wiring, sally ports, and double “no-man’s-land” styled fortifications, as well as coils and coils of razor wire.

They are not a pretty sight. And until now, DHS has kept its Gulag well away from public view, in the deserts of Texas, Arizona, and California, and the rural countryside of Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi.

Now, the build-up of Trump & Co’s human trafficking network, fashioned on Amazon’s shipping model, is happening right in front of our faces, in empty warehouses located near population centers and large flight hubs. Case in point: the concentration camp currently underway near Williamsport, Maryland, equidistant from the Dulles and Baltimore-Washington International Airports. Plans show that it will imprison 1,500 people on any given day, and cycle thousands through each year.

But to expel people, ICE must fill its Gulag first. And according to Project Salt Box, the goon-squad is about to move on Baltimore, which only fuels my already boiling anger because that is my OG hometown.

Resistance Strategy #3: Get In the Way!

Like the former civil servant in Hagerstown, Maryland, who was DOGEd and is now filling her days by filing petitions against the regime for violating the National Environmental Policy Act, thus slowing down development of the Williamsport Concentration Camp, it is time to get hyperlocal and get in the way!

And who better to teach us how than the original Rio Grande Valley resisters, whose work to mitigate the worst of humanity’s impulses under the first Trump regime, I spotlight in my book, Crossing the Line: Finding America in the Borderlands.

We held a hybrid reunion on January 26, 2026, to check in with one another, offer mutual comfort, and prepare hearts and hands for another year of standing up to injustice and jamming the machinery of misery.

In this podcast, you will learn how to join the frontlines while remaining resilient, with strategies of resistance that include:

* Resistance Strategy #4: Think Hyperlocally.

* Resistance Strategy #5: Know Your Rights and Your Allies.

* Resistance Strategy #6: Know When and to Whom to Pass the Baton.

CLICK THE PLAY BUTTON ABOVE TO HEAR FROM THE OG RGV RESISTERS THEMSELVES ☝🏼☝🏼☝🏼.

There is incredible talent in all of our states, localities, communities, neighborhoods, and blocks. So, get to know your local allies. Find out what is needed and join, or put together, teams to meet those needs, from experts in water management to folks with a driver’s license willing to ferry the kids of impacted families to school.

Most importantly…

Resistance Strategy #7: Get Mad and Get Going.

Write this message on your bathroom mirror, as Mark McDonald has:

“Hope is presence, instead of paralysis; action instead of despair; and saying I will not let cruelty be the loudest voice.”

Never forget that we are the hope. And the Cruelty is NOT Okay.

Stay strong, everyone. The only way through this is…Together, ✊🏼✊🏼✊🏼 Sarah

Featured Voices from Crossing the Line:

* Cindy Candia, Joyce Hamilton, Jennifer Harbury & Madeleine Sandefur: Angry Tías & Abuelas of the Rio Grande Valley

* Kathy Harrington & Andrea Rudnik: Madrinas de Justicia and former members of Team Brownsville

* Cindy Andrade Johnson, Deaconess, United Methodist Women in Faith and La Posada Providencia Board Member

* Jodi Godwin, Esq.

* Helen Perry & Mark McDonald, formerly of Global Response Medicine

* Gaby Zavala, Asylum Seeker Network of Support, and former Director of Resource Center Matamoros

Additional Contributors:

* Karen Sturnick, Green Valley Samaritans

* Maree McHugh, Silver City, New Mexico

* Rev. Ali Lopez-Valcarcel, United Church of Christ, Rio Grande Valley

* Pastor Mark Redwine, RGV

* Esmeralda Lozano, City Commissioner, La Feria, TX

[Full list of Strategies of Resistance to follow.]

SAVE THE DATE: March 8, 2026The next meetup of the Hope Knows No Borders Network

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Finally, everyone sees it, and everyone is talking about it, whether to decry it or to justify it. But it is not hiding in plain sight any longer…

I speak of the lawless impunity of the entire, rotten Department of Homeland so-called “Security” apparatus and its paramilitary Gestapo forces posing as law-enforcement agencies: ICE and CBP, Customs and Border Protection, which includes the Border Patrol — an early 20th-century rebranding of the pre-Civil War era Slave Patrols and the Ku Klux Klan.

I speak of the racism and deliberate cruelty that were baked into the US immigration system from its earliest incarnation and allowed to take root and fester even before 9/11 gave legislators an excuse to shift the Cold War-era iron-triangle funding obsession that brought us the Military-Industrial Complex armageddon machine to building up the now global Border Industrial Complex, instead.

Today, the Border Industrial Complex encircles the globe like a second equator, cleaving the wealthy, predominantly white world from the less-wealthy, less-white one, creating a global apartheid where borders are becoming deeper, taller, angrier, more militarized, and more violent all the time. Built on the theory that if we make crossing borders as painful and perilous and as dangerous and potentially deadly as possible, the Border Industrial Complex is inherently cruel. And for the last 40-plus years, US Border Industrial Complex adherents have chosen to crank the cruelty, year upon year, rather than seek humane responses to the fact that it is our forever wars, the environment-destroying practices of our transnational extraction corporations, and the climate change fallout from our fossil-fuel addictions that cause the very human displacement and migration the Border Industrial Complex aims to thwart.

Unable to stop the largest human migration in recorded history, the world’s wealthiest nations have spent the last 40-plus years determined to lock up and expel it instead, keeping it out of our sight and therefore out of our minds. I chart the evolution of this detention-to-deportation pipeline in my book, Crossing the Line: Finding America in the Borderlands. And nowhere is the cruelty of deterrence applied more ruthlessly and more visciously than within its opaque and now rapidly expanding concentration camp-styled prisons and the transportation network of charter airlines, buses, and armored jails on wheels that connect them, especially in Trump’s USA.

Human rights abuses have gone unchecked inside this abomination of modern enslavement since well before he and his evil minions invaded US groupthink and the White House the first time. But under Trump’s white supremacist cabal, the steadily deteriorating conditions resulting from institutionalized cruelty and misery forced upon folks who’ve largely committed no crime have been unmasked.

Today, February 18, 2026, we mark the seventh recorded death of an imprisoned immigrant just this year, and it could be the eighth as the fate of ICE’s youngest prisoner, 2-month-old Juan Nicolás, remains unknown. It is nearly the 40th death since the Trump regime’s second inauguration. And while I mourn for each life lost, and for every person whose human rights to freedom, safety, and a dignified life have been denied them by this wretched system, it is imperative that we unmask the crimes against humanity committed in our name and with our money by our detention-to- deportation pipeline so that we might abolish it — the sooner the better.

The atrocities taking place inside the 200+ US detention gulag are hard to uncover. The atrocities taking place under Trump & Co’s mass deportation campaign, however, are even harder to perceive and document.

On ICE Air’s Boxcars in the Sky, evidence of Department of Homeland “Security” impunity is whisked away with the individuals its agency operators shackle and return to harm. Indeed, it was purely by accident that I managed to track down and interview nearly five-dozen passengers refouled during Trump & Co’s first mass deportation campaign — the one few people knew about; the one they attempted as practice for the genocide unfolding in our name and with our money.

From Crossing the Line: Finding America in the Borderlands, Chapter 32, “Locked In,” this is what mass deportation looks, feels, sounds, and smells like. And with stakes like these, nobody wins.

Please listen and share. Click the playbutton above ☝🏼☝🏼☝🏼because we all need to know what happens on an ICE Air mass deportation flight, on an in-air Abu Ghraib, on today’s boxcars, though in the sky.

Trump and his evil minions have weaponized immigration to drive democracy into crisis. They have harnessed that weapon to drive the US toward genocide against the stateless. Though they have corrupted the US Department of Homeland so-called “Security” apparatus to unleash the worst of humanity’s worst impulses again, we must understand that the cruelty of the system did not begin with them. We must, therefore, never go back to a previous era in immigration policies and practices, for that will only bring us back to this wretched place again. The only answer is abolition. But first, we must unseat Trump, Miller, Bondi, Noem, Homan, Bovino, Vought, et al., then build a more humane system and world from their ashes.

Stay strong, everyone. The only way through this is…Together.

✊🏼 Sarah

PS: Mark your calendars! I’ll be LIVE on Substack this Saturday, February 21, with a new feature: This Week in Immigration. Notification to follow…

PPS: If you haven’t called your Members of Congress yet, do so today. Tell them, no more money for Trump & Co’s Gestapo:

NOT ONE MORE DOLLAR FOR ICE. NOT ONE MORE DOLLAR FOR CBP.

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EMERGENCY FACT SHEET

* PASTOR STEVEN TENDO, Applicant for Political Asylum

* Originally from Uganda

* Date of birth: November 24, 1984

* A-number: 201-520-012

* Kidnapped by ICE, Wednesday, February 4, 2026, Burlington, VT

* Imprisoned at Stafford County Detention Center, Dover, NH

SUMMARY:

Steven Tendo is a respected Pastor from Uganda who suffered grave political persecution and repeated torture at the hands of government officials of his birth nation. In 2018, he presented himself legally at the United States Port of Entry in Brownsville, Texas, to request political asylum. As set forth below, he then suffered more than two years in an ICE detention facility without adequate medical care, resulting in grave harm to his health. (For details, listen to the audio of Crossing the Line, Chapter 29, Locked Up.)

Steven was released in 2021 and moved to Vermont, where he resumed his work as a pastor. Despite substantial errors by the Immigration Judge, his initial petition for asylum was denied, and his appeal was unsuccessful. In November 2025, he filed a Motion to Reopen, now pending before the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA), based on the grim changes of circumstances in Uganda and his own continuing activism. He has attended all required hearings and appearances since his release. He was nevertheless apprehended by ICE at his place of work and detained on February 4, 2026.

Returning Pastor Steven to Uganda shocks the conscience and violates the Convention Against Torture. We ask that Pastor Steven Tendo not be deported until the BIA has ruled upon his Motion to Reopen. We also ask that he be released from detention to guarantee his medical well-being.

BACKGROUND:

Pastor Stephen Tendo was born to a powerful family in Uganda and raised with the belief that he must serve his people. He received an excellent education and became a pastor, founding the very popular Eternal Life Organization International Ministries church. Steven organized community support projects, providing food, health services, and educational assistance to the needy. As the government repression and corruption grew in his homeland, he began a human rights campaign as well, assisting political prisoners and leading a voting rights effort.

His work intersected with reform efforts by presidential candidate Bobi Wine, who has also been subjected to extreme persecution by Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni. Museveni has ruled the country with an increasingly iron fist for 40 years.

The first time Museveni’s goons apprehended Pastor Steven, they tortured him, severing two of his fingers. He was arrested, beaten, and tortured as many as twelve more times. He was also repeatedly subjected to false charges of fraud, but was acquitted by the Ugandan courts of each and every claim. After attacks on him and his relatives intensified, he was forced to flee Uganda in 2018.

Upon arrival in the United States, Pastor Tendo was promptly detained at ICE’s notoriously brutal Port Isabel Detention Center (PIDC) in Los Fresnos, Texas. Like so many single African men, he was denied bail despite being a lifelong sufferer of diabetes, having no criminal record, and enjoying many offers of support. His medications and glucometer were immediately taken away, and he went without adequate checks or treatment throughout his two years incarcerated at PIDC. This led to dangerously high blood sugar levels and blindness in one eye from diabetic related cataracts. He also became extremely dizzy and ill and began to suffer from very high blood pressure and repeated and painful boils across his body. Even when COVID broke out and swiftly spread to the detention facility, he was denied release despite his medical vulnerability. At this point, there was a strong outcry from the human rights community, and Amnesty International initiated a campaign for his release. On August 18, 2020, some 44 members of Congress signed a letter to the Director of DHS protesting his mistreatment and continued confinement.

In 2020, ICE sought to deport Pastor Tendo regardless of his pending appeal to the Fifth Circuit of the denial of asylum. Although former ICE Director Pham agreed in September 2020 to stay the removal of Pastor Steven until such an appellate ruling, efforts were made to deport him in the middle of the night nonetheless.

He was finally released from detention in 2021 and was able to move to Vermont. With the help of friends and supporters there, he began to heal and resumed work as a chaplain. He attended nursing classes, becoming a Licensed Nursing Assistant, and was working toward a Registered Nurse qualification when abducted by ICE. He has also worked with local youth to help them combat substance abuse and addiction. He is a genuinely fine human being and should be celebrated as an asset to any nation. He enjoys a network of very close community ties in Burlington. Yet, he has not forgotten his homeland. He remains outspoken about the situation in Uganda, and recently gave testimony to attorneys working on a case before the International Criminal Court.

We are gravely concerned that, given the current turbulent political situation in the US, Pastor Steven Tendo could be whisked back to Uganda with little or no notice if he remains detained by ICE. A Ugandan official has made it clear that if this happens, he will be seized as he leaves the plane and killed. He will never arrive at customs.

CALL TO ACTION:

* Please contact your members of Congress today. The Congressional Switchboard operator, (202) 224-3121, will connect you to your Senate and House Representatives.

* Tell them that Pastor Steven Tendo is at great risk of torture and extrajudicial execution if he is returned to Uganda. This is a violation of his human rights and an international crime known as refoulement.

* Tell them he is also at great risk of medical harm and improper processing while in ICE detention. And that we urgently seek their assistance to demand his release.

FOR ADDITIONAL BACKGROUND INFORMATION:

Listen to Steven and my story collaboration. Click the play button above ☝🏼☝🏼☝🏼.

FOR ADDITIONAL LEGAL INFORMATION:

Contact: Brett Stokes, Center for Justice Reform Clinic, Vermont Law and Graduate School, 802-831-1104; Chrispher Worth, Center for Justice Reform Clinic, Vermont Law and Graduate School, 802-831-1104; Elizabeth Velez, Orr & Reno, 603-223-9171; Christina Thomas, Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton,404-815-6531; Fatma Marouf, Texas A&M Legal Clinic, 817-212-4123

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Dear Subscribers, I’m writing this to you as I watch Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show. “We are all America,” reads the football he carries throughout a performance that pulses with the best of the country and culture I grew up in, the place my heart will always call home. His final statement — naming all the countries that comprise America, from Argentina to Canada, as he dances back and forth across the Levi’s Stadium 50th yard line, accompanied by flagbearers from each nation — resonated deeply with me. This is precisely why I never refer to the United States as “America.” Even my book’s subtitle defies expectation, for it uses America not refer to a place, but to express a double-entendre: It is code for the mentality that allows this linguistic legacy of Manifest Destiny, of the era of enslavement and genocide and stolen lands, to still linger unconsciously in our speech; it is also a celebration of the rich diversity encountered in borderlands, where Americans from throughout the Western hemisphere meet and mingle in creative exchange.

Referring to one country by the name of two continents, an isthmus, and numerous island nations perpetuates the US’s original white supremacy project, helping to keep it alive in the age of Trumpism. I urge you to call the place by its rightfulname: the United States of America, easily shortened to the USA, the US, or the States.

Words matter because they form thought, which is apropos of this week’s podcast episode about the power of art and activism, like Bad Bunny’s, to tear down the walls that oppress and divide us…

On December 7, 2025, I hosted a virtual book launch for two new must-read books poised to bring a potent, first-hand view of the walling-off of the US Southwest borderlands to audiences nationwide:

Borderlings, a book of poetry and pictures by nature advocate Russ McSpadden, juxtaposes the extraordinary natural beauty and unique biodiversity of the US borderlands against the ecological devastation being caused by Trump & Co’s boondoggle and ecocidal border wall. Bearing witness from the front lines of border militarization in Southern Arizona, Russ pays homage to the resilience and interdependence of human and wildlife habitats, while revealing how walls serve only to fracture, divide, and destroy. ORDER BORDERLINGS HERE.

Yo’Oko Roars, an art and storybook for children and youth by Kate Scott (author) and Virginia Maria Romero (illustrator), joins Borderlings as well as Crossing the Line in sounding the alarm that the act of erecting “an immense metal fence that makes no sense” cuts nations and cultures off from on another, making it impossible for people and wildlife to find their ways “home” again. Walls create loss, longing, exile, danger, and endangerment. The story of young Iris putting her body in front of the “monsters of metal” illustrates how we should be addressing our collective problems: by building bridges, privileging friendships, and acting in solidarity through mutual aid so that we may all roar again. ORDER YO’OKO ROARS HERE.

So, why the delay in getting this important podcast episode to you? Mauerkrankheit.

The book launch event coincided with one of my sisters, her daughter, son-in-law, and three grandchildren passing through London, where I currently live with my daughter, husband, and our dear canine companion, Gryffindog. They were traveling in celebration of my sister’s birthday, just as we were about to ring in my daughter’s milestone 30th year of life. Living abroad as we do, it’s a rare treat for us to get quality time with close relatives. We were thrilled, therefore, to extend an invitation to host them. We were looking forward to introducing them to our London, to breaking bread with them, to clinking glasses of bubbly at our home or pints of craft brew at our local Pub, and to showering our two birthday girls in song.

But they refused to see us, erecting an emotional wall.

They ghosted us, adding a secondary communications wall that left us in a state of unknowing for weeks.

When they did reach out, they did so by proxy and through text messaging, hiding behind a technological wall and fracturing our family ties even further with a lie: The children had a bucket list of “touristy things” they wanted to do in London, evidently (FYI: The kids are 4, 6, and 8 🤷🏼‍♀️).

None of these fences made any bloody sense. We are not above “touristy things.” And besides, who wouldn’t want to party with this guy?

A wall of dishonesty wove, like concertina wire, into the double fortification of emotional and communications walls erected using a technology wall, leaving a “no-man’s land” of cold silence and conjecture between us. We could only conclude that they are Trump supporters. And knowing that we are most definitely not, choose to hold up the political wall he has weaponized to tear families, literally and (in our case) figuratively, apart.

My heart exploded into a billion tiny pieces. I fell into a deep, dark malaise, which I’ve come to understand is a kind of Wall Disease, aka Mauerkrankheit:

A psychological condition first identified in Cold War Berlin, which had particularly devastating effects on the residents of the walled-off Eastern Zone of the city, and is characterized by a combination of depression, rage, anxiety, and apathy caused by the oppressive presence of divisive and deadly fortifications.

Then, coarse salt was rubbed into open wounds, with Trump & Co’s December putsch as their paramilitary goons marched into Minnesota’s Twin Cities, from which the Towle family hails.

With “Operation Metro Surge,” the 2025-26 holiday season was turned upside-down by the very ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) walls of impunity we experienced in the summer of 2020, now on steroids. These were the walls of masked agents bearing armaments, rather than judicial warrants, that I warned in Crossing the Line could become an oppressive social reality if Trump & Co were allowed to invade the White House once more.

The walls of militarized Department of Homeland “Security” (DHS) agents occupy Minneapolis to this day. Their walls of clubs and harassment tactics and tear gas canisters and rubber bullets and flash bangs and automatic weapons and belief in their immunity from legal accountability (they are not) have resulted in the execution-style deaths of two US citizens, Renée Nicole Good and Alex Pretti (may they rest in peace), as well as the kidnapping, incarceration, and expulsion of thousands of decent people just living their lives.

The Reign of Terror unleashed by a “mad” (in the British sense) wanna-be king has rained economic devastation on the lives, futures, and businesses of Twin Cities inhabitants, who are still reeling from the unexpected erection of physical, militaristic, and extrajudicial walls.

“The b******s are everywhere, patrolling in their SUVs with the blacked out windows, even in my very white neighborhood,” states one of my Minneapolis-based family members.

“I live blocks away from the murders by DHS, and have been very involved in protests, observing and providing community support,” reports another who, untilthe rise in Trump fascism, had never been touched by ICE or Border Patrol impunity before.

They are new to protesting, which illustrates yet another result of Wall Disease, the very thing that drove everyday Berliners to grab pick axes and tear the Cold War monstrosity down with their bare hands: activism fueled by anger at oppression that seeks to divide us and take away our right to roar…

History shows us that in the face of state-led violence, some will succumb — like my sister, her daughter, and son-in-law, potentially (I can’t be sure, since they won’t talk to us) — choosing to turn away from the truth, much like the “good Germans” who allowed the Holocaust to happen. They will take others along with them, as my sister and her progeny did, when they walled off their…

Hello subscribers, I’m writing to you from my first vacation in six years, since I started writing Crossing the Line in January 2020. As much as I’d like to remain unplugged, the news continues to move too fast. And in times like these, it’s impossible not speak out. I hope you learn something from this latest episode of From the Borderlands to fuel your efforts in support of the resistance. I’m wishing you strength. The only way through this is… Together. ✊🏼 Sarah

Like anyone who has studied the cruel practices of US immigration authorities, I’ve not been terribly surprised by the outrageous and arbitrary violence perpetrated by the goons patrolling the streets of Minneapolis — and other major US cities. Which is why I was puzzled by this recent the recent New York Times piece, written by some of the more trustworthy immigration reporters, too, that ICE and the Border Patrol suddenly, somehow, seem to have gone rogue; that before Noem, Homan, and Bovino (and of course Steven Miller), there were more law-enforcement heroes among the ranks who cherished the rule of law and were only interested in public safety.

What a load of hooey.

The Times account seems to request that we feel sympathy for the officers who look and act, and are armed just like a paramilitary army: Public disapproval and their mean bosses have hurt their morale. Boo hoo.

Democrats, who we should have been able to trust to stand in the way of bequeathing ICE and CBP a budget to rival the largest global militaries, are now apologizing for their latest vote, just last week, to give Trump’s Gestapo forces even MORE money. Republicans, who bent over one after another to cast a yea vote in support of Trump’s MAGA Murder Mandate (aka the Big Ugly Bill), have finally blinked, disturbed by the violence that has beset the streets of Minneapolis. But that evil genie will not soon be wrestled back into its bottle.

Here are the facts few elected officials seem willing to face or admit and have been unwilling to face or admit for several decades: The violence and the cruelty are baked into the DNA of the CBP’s Border Patrol and ICE. The roots of the Border Patrol can be traced all the way back to the slave patrols. They were the KKK and Texas Rangers, rebranded in 1924 as the Border Patrol. The Department of Homeland Security was built on those rotten foundations. ICE endorsed Trump for president all the way back in 2016, a historic first, proving they were infiltrated by white supremacists even then. And no amount of so-called “fair and balanced” reporting from any legacy media outlet is going to change that. Nor is grandstanding such as NY Representative Tom Suozzi’s, that “I failed to view the DHS funding vote as a referendum on the illegal and immoral conduct of ICE in Minneapolis.”

Suozzi should read my book, Crossing the Line: Finding America in the Borderlands. I sent him a copy. I sent a copy to many MOCs that continue to stand on the wrong side of history by funding it.

In Chapter 16, The Border Hardens, I shine a light on the 2010 murder of Anastasio Hernandez Rojas. Seventeen agents of ICE, CBP, and Border Patrol tortured him to death in broad daylight. The execution was captured on a passerby’s camera. All 17 agents were identified and named. None of the 17, nor their bosses, were ever held accountible.

Anastasio left a widow, five kids, a large extended and loving family, and a community that adored him. The only difference between Anastasio and Alex Pretti or Renee Good was that he was undocumented, which is why you may never heard of his death. But they were all murdered. They were all murdered by the same forces and the same hapless mentality that had blinded our leadership for too long.

ICE and the Border Patrol cannot be reformed. The rot is too great.

May Alex, Renee, and Anastasio not have died in vain. May this be the moment when we realize how much the post-9/11 security-first paradigm has compromised all our values and tear this horrorshow — the reason we have a fascist in the White House today — all the way down to its racist foundations.

Enough is enough! ¡Basta!

☝🏼 Scroll back up☝🏼 to the top of this post ☝🏼 to listen to the full podcast episode:

Slave, Border & ICE Patrols “Shoot First and Ask Questions Later”

Featuring Chapter 16 of Crossing the Line, The Border Hardens,

with shout outs to Todd Miller, Jenn Budd, Juan Gonzalez of Democracy Now!, and The Border Chronicle.

Tales of Humanity is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Hey, everyone. Sarah here. Thanks for joining me for another episode of From the Borderlands ☝🏼☝🏼☝🏼.

Podcast Transcript:

Six years ago this week, I landed in Brownsville, Texas, to see for myself the inhumanity I then believed had been wrought by Trump, his acolytes, and puppeteers, folks like Stephen Miller, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, and acting director of ICE, Thomas Homan (to name just a few). The Family Separation crisis brought on by their zero-tolerance for border crossers, even those seeking safety, had been replaced by policies such as metering and the Migrant “Protection” Protocols (AKA the Remain in Mexico policy), which trapped the “world’s most vulnerable people,” borrowing the UN’s terms, in some of the most dangerous places on earth… and didn’t offer them any protection at all.

Whether tearing families apart or turning them back to become fodder for organized crime, cruelty was their point.

I went to bear witness. I went to learn and to serve. It turned out to be an Epiphany of epiphanies as I realized that the militarization of the US southern border and the systemic cruelty it spawned did not start with them: Trump & Co.

Rather, they had been bequeathed a deterrence to detention to deportation pipeline characterized by the cruel and quiet enslavement of the many for the financial benefit of the few. This for-profit machinery of imprisonment and expulsion, what’s more, suffered no transparency or accountability, and human and civil rights abuses within it were rife.

It was a system of misery that had grown up all around me — all around all of us — hiding in plain sight in the so-called Land of the Free. A bipartisan project, kick-started by the Reagan administration but allowed to expand by politicians on both sides of the aisle, including Democrats such as Clinton, Obama, and Biden.

That my service coincided with an Epiphany celebration in the Matamoros, Mexico refugee camp of roughly 3,000 mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, aunties, uncles, grandparents, children, and tiny babies — an encampment, just one of many, created by US government policy — brought home this realization a well: that US administrations and citizens alike had largely betrayed the most enduring teachings of the Bible, the Torah, and the Quran,

to welcome the stranger and treat foreigners as you would “the native among you,” for by doing so, “you might show hospitality to angels,” or, indeed, to the son of God himself.

Instead, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, son of an avowed Alabama segregationist and a lifelong church-goer, invoked Romans 13 to defend their cruelty toward newcomers, stating that God created governments to maintain social order and that we would be wise to obey Trump & Co’s authority. It was the same scripture used to justify the enslavement and routine daily torture of Black people in his ancestral prison labor camps, aka plantations.

He insinuated that Trump & Co’s governance was divine and that if we allowed kindness and compassion to stand in their way, there would be hell to pay — fire and brimstone all the way, for showing empathy.

It was the stuff of Christian Nationalism, an ideology that “talks religion, but walks fascism,” which we’d seen unleashed under the banner of Unite the Right in Charlottesville, VA, in 2017. What I saw on the border during Epiphany 2020 was a potential standing paramilitary army posing as a border “protection” and “security” apparatus that could be harnessed and turned against us at any time: a Gestapo-like force infiltrated by white supremacists in the democratic USA that operated a for-profit gulag of then over 200 prisons that targeted Brown and Black people with deprivation and abuse.

I saw a modern ethnic cleansing, or dare I say, a new kind of genocide.

I decided to write a book for those like me who, if they only knew, would be outraged too. I entitled it The First Solution: Tales of Humanity from the Borderlands, a hat-tip to my literary mentor, Toni Morrison, who wrote in 1995:

“Let us be reminded that before there is a final solution,there must be a first solution, a second one, even a third.The move toward a final solution is not a jump.It takes one step, then another, then another.”

But my publisher, editor, and first readers agreed: the title would be too triggering for some; and too obtuse for others, particularly those too young to remember the Holocaust under German fascism; or those denied the opportunity to learn about it in schools taken over by Christian Nationalists intent on (literally) white-washing history. My editorial team changed the title to Crossing the Line: Finding America in the Borderlands, in which “America” does not connote a place, but is code for White Supremacy.

During the feast of Epiphany one year later, on January 6, 2021, the same proto-fascist so-called Christians attempted to keep a would-be dictator in the White House through a violent insurrection that he fomented.

And during the Epiphany feast of 2026, the same crackers who produced a made-for-Fox-TV “invasion” to whip up a moral panic among an indoctrinated electorate — folks programmed to look the other way as their white supremacist leadership carries out an ethnic cleansing of our Brown and Black neighbors while wielding an upside-down bible — these same crackers invaded a sovereign nation with which the US was not at war, and kidnapped that country’s president. With our money and in our name, they killed innocent people in the buildup, as well as in their wake, in an act of aggression that clearly defies international law.

Then they launched a new White House website that rewrites the history we all witnessed with our own eyes on January 6, 2021.

Another of my literary heroes, George Orwell, wrote decades ago:

“... terrible things follow when leaders can create their own facts.”

Trump & Co say their illegal act of aggression against Venezuela was intended to stop Nicolas Maduro from trafficking fentanyl to the US. But fentanyl isn’t produced in Venezuela, nor is fentanyl mentioned in the charging documents against Maduro and his wife. Cocaine is. But Trump & Co just let a known cocaine trafficker out of a life sentence in US federal prison, former president Juan Orlando Hernandez of Honduras. So cocaine trafficking can’t be the reason for their illegal invasion of Venezuela either.

Could it be about oil, as Trump himself indicated? That would be on point.

Could it be about distracting us from the regime’s intransigence to produce the Epstein files, which surely link their leader to a global sex trafficking ring from which he benefited? Most assuredly.

Could it be about Putin’s hard-on for territorial expansion? The Danes, Canadians, and Cubans certainly think so, as do those who’ve been sounding the alarm for years that Trump is a Russian asset, a plaything of Putin.

Could it be that Trump is a mob boss eager to enrich himself on the global drug trade as the head of the most powerful cartel angling to usurp all other cartels?

Only time will tell.

What is evident, today, is that Trump & Co have unleashed a war to seize our freedoms for the benefit of billionaires — and now a trillionaire — worldwide.

They are the Worst of the Worst. And they are in the White House. And they do not wish to leave. Not. Ever.

Crossing the Line was meant to be a historical chronicle. On November 3, 2020, we thought Trump & Co’s crimes and impunity were finally behind us. But on November 5, 2024, the book became a bellwether of what was to come in 2025, prompting my publisher and editor to agree: We are in the throes of a paradigmatic global shift, in which people seeking safety and dignity per their legal right under the post-WWII new world order are enslaved and disappeared, courtesy of the US taxpayer.

On October 7, 2025, a second edition of Crossing the Line hit bookstore shelves. In the new Author Foreword, I offer some thoughts on how we, the people, can and must resist. Because these dark days will end, they always do. And we …

Seventy-seven years ago, on December 10, 1948, the newly established United Nations General Assembly unveiled the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). A response to the human carnage wrought by two world wars in 22 years and the genocide of 11 million people, including six million Jews, by Hitler’s fascist regime, the UDHR ushered in a paradigmatic global shift: Henceforth, the dignity and worth of all members of the human family were to be recognized equally and respected internationally, as well as within the borders of nations large and small.

The UDHR was a declaration of principles, comprising 30 articles, built upon the foundational notion that we are all “born free and equal in dignity and rights,” without distinction of any kind, including “race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.” It announced that regardless “of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs,” we share the right to freedom from slavery, torture, degrading punishment, arbitrary arrest, exile, and “arbitrary interference with . . . privacy, family, home or correspondence, [and] attacks upon . . . honour and reputation.”

The UDHR proclaimed our rights to movement, both within a country as well as outside of it; to safety, wherever we are in the world; and to seek asylum in another land if safety is denied us in our homeland. It gave us all equal rights to fairness and due process under the law, as well as “the right to a standard of living adequate for . . . health and well-being . . ., including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services.”

Alongside the establishment of the United Nations General Assembly, the UDHR marked the advent of a new world order, “in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want.” If the human community had been able to stop the early-20th-century rise of fascism when the warmongers were still relatively weak, went the thinking of the nine-person commission tasked with drafting the document, the catastrophe of global conflict and the Holocaust could have been avoided. Therefore, centering humanity’s univerally shared values, “the highest aspiration of the common people,” would provide the new foundation on which to achieve “freedom, justice and peace in the world.”

From December 10, 1948, the UDHR became the agreement governing global law. It gave rise to the International Court of Justice as well as the refugee protection regime, which followed in 1951 with the Refugee Convention, because “disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind.”

The UDHR became pivotal to the post-WWII rules-based order, which disavowed the prevailing paradigm of “might makes right” in the hope of putting to an end the rule of the powerful by brute force or imperial domination.

But then came 9/11, and the world order shifted again. This time toward a “national security” paradigm which, as I discovered in researching Crossing the Line, does not sit comfortably alongside the fundamental rights of human beings as prescribed by the UDHR.

The 21st-century National Security State gave swift rise to the Border Industrial Complex, which now encircles the earth like a second equator, cleaving the wealthy, predominantly white world from the less wealthy, less white one, creating a global apartheid. Borders have always been tools of in-group/out-group exclusion, and therefore inherently racist. They have always been used by nation states to decide who’s allowed through the gate, and who isn’t. But today, the rights of nations have trumped the rights of human beings to the extent that the movement of folks in search of safety is increasingly thwarted, their fundamental right to asylum and due process under the law more and more often denied.

What’s more, our fundamental human rights to dignity and freedom from arbitrary arrest and interference in the privacy of home and family, freedom from enslavement, torture, degrading punishment, and exile are being abused and violated in what heretofore has been the world’s most evolved democracy: the United States of America.

Since 9/11 and the creation of the US Department of Homeland “Security,” an immigration gulag of more than 200 prison camps that incarcerate people seeking safety and a dignified life has evolved, hiding in plain sight all around us. Eighty percent of these camps are run by profiteers, who prioritize their bottom line over the rights of the humans they jail through brute force — and they are making billions.

Within an increasingly hostile anti-immigrant political climate, stoked by the white supremacist Trump regime, sycophants such as Florida Governor Ron DeSantis have been given free rein to criminalize, round up, coral, and detain newcomers to the US and people seeking safety in concentration camp-like settings. A recently released report by Amnesty International, entitled “Torture and Enforced Disappearances in the Sunshine State” reveals mistreatment, in some cases amounting to torture, occurring at the Krome and Everglades (aka “Alligator Alcatraz”) Concentration Camps.

It’s harrowing reading — real Deer Hunter stuff. But those subjected to cruel and degrading treatment are not prisoners of war. And the report is just one case study, focusing on two out of more than 200 facilities of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) gulag.

According to my research for Crossing the Line, Florida isn’t alone: From sea to shining sea, people who’ve committed no crime are suffering abuses reminiscent of Hitler’s Germany, pre-UDHR. The tortures documented in this latest Amnesty report are common practice under the ICE paramilitary apparatus that knows no transparency and suffers zero accountability. Which begs the question:

Can the 20th-century promise of universal human rights survive the 21st-century global obsession with national security, especially as fascism walks the earth once more?

In this episode of From the Borderlands, dedicated to Amnesty International with profound thanks, I discuss just this question with Ute Ritz-Deutch, host of the Human Rights and Social Justice Program on WRFI Community Radio, Ithaca, NY.

Click the play button above to hear our conversation!

Are you enjoying Tales of Humanity?I’d be so grateful if you heart and restack this post before you go. Thank you!

Tales of Humanity is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Hello Subscribers! I’m writing from New Hampshire today. I’m now 12 days and four events into the speaking tour, marking the second edition release of Crossing the Line. And my schedule is about to amp up, with events nearly every day from now until Halloween. I aim to keep posting as much as I can, because I’m learning so much and meeting so many people and have so much to share! But bear with me if communications become spotty, as most of my “free” time for the next month or so will be spent driving.

Today’s podcast was drawn from the September 28 webinar of the Hope Knows No Borders Network, with Borderlands Coordinator for the Sierra Club, Erick Meza, and Russ McSpadden, Southwest Conservation Advocate at the Center for Biodiversity.

They inform us that, even as I type these words, a place of outrageous and awe-inspiring biodiversity is being cleaved asunder by the outrageous disregard for the natural world on the part of a president and crony contractors who care only about lining their pockets — not for the future of the planet nor of the people, animals, and environmental integrity of the US borderlands and American continent.

”It’s almost like border communities do not deserve the same kind of protection that the rest of the country does,” states Erick Meza. Which is racism. Plain and simple.

Racism and greed are driving some of the richest biospheres of the Americas into extinction all because the US Department of Homeland “Security” has too much power, thanks to the 109th Congress of the United States.

We’ve all been so focused — and rightly so — on the cruelty and lawlessness of the ICE Gestapo and the simultaneous destruction of the US government and judiciary; the government shut down, and the widespread loss of livelihoods. In the chaos, we may have forgotten Trump & Co’s first campaign promise — to Build the Wall — and taken our eyes off their continuing threats to the natural world.

Tragically, Border wall building continues, and for only one purpose: to enrich Donald Trump’s campaign donors, which is otherwise known as “crony capitalism.”

Steel bollards are going up in the beautiful and formerly pristine San Raphael Valley of Arizona as the desert water table is being drained and artesian water systems destroyed, all to mix cement and keep heavy machinery owned by North Dakota-based Fisher Sand & Gravel free of dust and debris. The company was only able to pocket 334 million of our tax dollars to build the wall after Kristi Noem waived dozens of environmental laws, including the Endangered Species Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, the Clean Air Act, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, and the Safe Drinking Water Act, to make it happen.

The process, which cut the public out of decision-making, Erick states, flouted expected norms of accountability. Russ refers to the stretch of oak woodlands, grassland savannah, and mountainous “stepping stone” slopes Fisher Sand & Gravel workers are now bulldozing as “the most important wildlife corridor left in Arizona connected to Mexico.”

The region is home to ocelots, javelina, pronghorn, and porcupines; bears, lions, and hundreds of species of bees; flying pollinators, such as bats, birds, and butterflies; and the majestic endangered northern jaguar, which conservationists like Russ have spent decades trying to save from extinction. It is an area uniquely untouched by humans, including those seeking safety and a life free from harm.

The ugly and unnecessary monolithic steel barrier — painted black on the president’s orders so that it might burn human hands — is the “nail in the coffin” for biodiversity in the region, says Erick.

Though erected, they say, to thwart human migration, we know from the first Trump regime that existing stretches of border wall have blocked animal routes, compromising habitats and threatening species. Construction disturbs wildlife, halts genetic interchange, depletes irreplaceable groundwater aquifers, disrupts the integrity of borderland communities, tramples cultural protections, and shreds environment-saving legislative precedent, as it robs budgets for schools and rural hospitals.

It’s an unregulated experiment en route to causing a catastrophic continental crisis.

Please don’t look away! Listen …

Everyone must know about all the ways that this government is chipping away not only at our rights, but also those of our four-legged, flying, and finned friends, while they pick our pockets at the same time. Everyone must know the beautiful humanity that exists alongside the destruction.

It may be happening at the border. But it is affecting everyone. Because, as Russ and Erick explain in this podcast episode, immigration justice intersects with planetary justice, which impacts human life and wildlife alike: border justice = environmental justice = migration justice.

Rally for the Valley: Multicultural Border Happening November 15!

Join Russ, Erick, and other borderlands conservationists to save the San Raphael Valley. Learn more about why we must stop this madness before it’s too late … and how. It may well include abolishing the Department of Homeland “Security,” which isn’t keeping anyone secure at all.

The next meet-up of the Hope Knows No Border Workshop will feature Sarah addressing the Community Church of Boston on how immigration was transformed into a weapon to drive US democracy into crisis: October 26, 11:00 am - 1:30 pm ET.

Tales of Humanity is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.