Binational Migration Institute

04/11/2017

On Saturday, April 15th, a Run /Walk will take place starting at 7:30 am for registration at the University of Arizona Mall. Funds raised will support the Consuelo I Aguilar Scholarship Fund, administered by the UA Department of Mexican American Studies (MAS). Registration will open up at 7:30 am ...

03/08/2017

The Tucson Festival of Books is just around the corner! Stop by and join MAS faculty, Anna Ochoa O'Leary and Raquel Rubio- Goldsmith, as they discuss immigration policy and migrant deaths in the borderlands.

09/18/2015

http://www.truth-out.org/speakout/item/32846-finding-sacagawea-in-el-salvador

In El Salvador, dollar coins, including the Presidential one dollar coins are even more common than the bill.

04/04/2015

Despite billions of tax-payer dollars spent by the government on border security and immigration enforcement each year, the effectiveness of such an onerous expense has been long questioned.

03/31/2015

With all the talk from the president about an immigration system that reflects American values, it is hard not to think of the big dark eyes of a ten year old boy that one of us visited this March and who is currently held along with his mother in an immigration detention facility in Karnes City, Te…

03/23/2015

It can be informative, sometimes sobering, to catch a glimpse of ourselves as others see us.That’s certainly the case with the current Economist’s persuasively clear-eyed and overwhelmingly positive 16-page appraisal of America

06/26/2013

Apropos to the video we posted a few days ago (props to Murphy Woodhouse) exposing the hypocrisies of Obama's speech in Berlin denouncing Berlin Wall while very similar wall-building and intolerance takes place at the U.S.-Mexico border: Senator John McCain just praised the new immigration reform bill because it effectively creates "...the most militarized border after the Berlin Wall. That's why I think this amendment was very important." ~Sen. John McCain

At least he's being honest about what this bill will really do.

http://www.opposingviews.com/i/politics/immigration/mccain-compares-future-us-mexico-border-berlin-wall-video

On Tuesday, Sen. John McCain lauded a new amendment to the immigration reform bill, noting that it would create a patrolled United States-Mexico border not unlike the Berlin Wall.

06/26/2013

BORSTAR - a branch of Border Patrol in charge of medical aid and migrant medical rescue - talks to Tucson's local news about their work. The agent interviewed relates that the organization's term for migrants they rescue, specifically those who are dehydrated and at the point of death (that's what the story is about after all, BP's migrant rescue track record), is "quitters." That's what BORSTAR calls these individuals, not just a term the interviewee uses. The agent goes on to refer to the life saving humanitarian aid provisions provided by organizations like No More Deaths and Samaritans - things like food and water - as "false hope." http://www.kvoa.com/news/borstar-keeping-busy-during-triple-digit-heat/ #.UcnzIAfo4g4.email

TUCSON-Part of the Senate's border surge proposal would be to double patrol agents at the border.

06/24/2013

The video is of Obama's Berlin speech, juxtaposed with images and info from the U.S.-Mexico showing the irony of Obama's words that "no wall can stand against the yearning of justice, the yearnings for freedom, the yearnings for peace the burn in the human heart...I believe that peace with justice extends from the example we set here at home..." https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=hU7JuRCh32s =226

Images of border militarization over Obama's recent speech at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. Produced by Laura Carlsen and Murphy Woodhouse of the Americas ...

06/24/2013

It's heartening to see that the latest BMI Report (available online here: http://bmi.arizona.edu/sites/default/files/border_deaths_final_web.pdf) has continued to generate news attention. http://truth-out.org/news/item/17153-report-stronger-border-led-to-more-migrant-deaths

06/22/2013

Robin Reineke, a member of the BMI research team, co-founded the Missing Migrant Project, featured this month on the University of Arizona website. Robin has done an immense amount of work to associate the unidentified migrant dead with their names and identities, allowing them to be reunited with their families, and thus, giving closure to the people who had been searching for their loved ones.

“I am honored to do this work. The unidentified are here in Tucson. I feel an obligation to them. Knowing this is happening an hour or two hours’ drive from your home is unsettling. It is happening right here, right now. I wish more people felt disturbed by this crisis of humanity.” ~Robin Reineke

It’s known as the “corridor of death” – that parched stretch of desert in Southern Arizona where migrants from Central and Latin America attempt to cross in freezing winters and searing summers. Since 2001 more than 2,000 bodies of illegal border crossers have been found and brought to the Pima Coun...

06/21/2013

Data collected by the Missing Migrant Project, co-founded by BMI's Robin Reineke, is being crosschecked to identify the bodies of undocumented migrants that have recently been exhumed from anonymous graves in Brooks County, Texas... At this point, 63 bodies were exhumed, "some... buried in plain wooden coffins; others were thrown unceremoniously into the dirt in body bags."

http://www.indystar.com/article/BG/20130621/LIFE02/306210030/UIndy-professor-students-help-identify-bodies-migrants-trying-enter-U-S-from-Mexico

Krist Latham, a University of Indianapolis professor, and four graduate students are part of a team trying to identify the remains of people who died trying to enter the United States illegally from Mexico.