by Todd Miller
City Lights Books
2014, paperback
SKU: 9780872866317
Armed authorities watch from a military-grade surveillance tower as lines of people stream toward the security checkpoint, tickets in hand, anxious and excited to get through the gate. Few seem to notice or care that the US Border Patrol is monitoring the Super Bowl, as they have for years, one of the many ways that forces created to police the borders are now being used, in an increasingly militarized fashion, to survey and monitor the whole of American society.
In fast-paced prose, Todd Miller sounds an alarm as he chronicles the changing landscape.
Traveling the country--and beyond--to speak with the people most involved with and impacted by the Border Patrol, he combines these first-hand encounters with careful research to expose a vast and booming industry for high-end technology, weapons, surveillance, and prisons. While politicians and corporations reap substantial profits, the experiences of millions of men, women, and children point to staggering humanitarian consequences. Border Patrol Nation shows us in stark relief how the entire country has become a militarized border zone, with consequences that affect us all.
Todd Miller has worked on and written about US border issues for over fifteen years.
Reviews:
"Todd Miller's invaluable and gripping book, Border Patrol Nation: Dispatches from the Front Lines of Homeland Security is the story of how this country's borders are being transformed into up-armored, heavily militarized zones run by a border-industrial complex. It's an achievement and an eye opener."--Tom Engelhardt, "TomDispatch"
"What Jeremy Scahill was to Blackwater, Todd Miller is to the U.S. Border Patrol!"--Tom Miller, author, On the Border: Portraits of America's Southwestern Frontier
"Todd Miller has entered a secret world, and he has gone deep. . . . Powerful."--Luis Alberto Urrea, author of The Devil's Highway: A True Story
"Journalist Miller tells an alarming story of U.S. Border Patrol and Homeland Security's ever-widening reach into the lives of American citizens and legal immigrants as well as the undocumented. In addition to readers interested in immigration issues, those concerned about the NSA's privacy violations will likely be even more shocked by the actions of Homeland Security."--Publishers Weekly, Starred Review