Border & Immigration

Latinos comprise about 40% of the population in Texas, and their votes could be critical to races up and down the ballot. Campaigns are rediscovering the fact that there is no solid “Latino” bloc. Public Radio reporters across Texas are listening to these voters discuss the issues they care about and give their thoughts on where the nation should be heading. This is the third in a series of five stories about Latino voters in the 2020 Election.

Many asylum seekers stuck in Mexico under the Migrant Protection Protocols are closely following the November election, hoping a new administration will end the policy.

Even before COVID-19, advocates argued the Migrant Protection Protocols left people vulnerable to violence. Now, with the pandemic closing immigration courts indefinitely, some desperate asylum seekers are considering sending their children across the border...alone.

Life in an unfamiliar country was already challenging for asylum seekers before the pandemic. Now, COVID hasn’t just pushed back their court dates — it’s also made supporting themselves almost impossible.

A court filing says many of the parents are presumed to no longer be in the United States. Efforts to locate them have been hampered by the coronavirus pandemic, according to the filing.

A Nicaraguan family tried to seek asylum in the United States. When they arrived at the border, they were instead sent to Mexico to wait out their case and are facing challenges they didn't expect.

One centers on the use of military funds to pay for building part of a border wall. The other revolves around the "Remain in Mexico" policy that makes asylum-seekers stay out of the U.S.

Opponents of President Donald Trump’s border wall received a victory from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals last week. The federal court deemed some funding for the wall projects unlawful and blocked their construction, but advocates say their fight isn’t over.

The privately built border wall in Texas teeters on the banks of the Rio Grande with serious erosion problems. The contractor was awarded more than $2 billion in official wall contracts.

Advocates want detainees to be released and are demanding federal officials investigate allegations from eight men who say they were physically abused and threatened while previously detained at Adams County Correctional Facility in Natchez, Mississippi.

The City of Laredo has been pushing for an alternative to a wall in the downtown area, but many residents still worry they’ll lose access to the river and parks nearby. And the Trump administration has only ramped up their efforts ahead of the election. It has awarded a little over $1 billion in four contracts for border wall construction, including two more announced at the end of September.

Texas is among the states that have accepted the most refugees within their borders since 2002. But those numbers have dropped under the Trump administration.