The Border Patrol agent who shot Marimar Martinez and joked about putting seven bullet holes in her in text messages is a 23-year-veteran of Border Patrol. Before Maine, Charles Exum was stationed at Alamogordo, New Mexico, where he won a nationwide police shooting contest.

Abolish borders. Increasingly my book is about how we are focusing on discrete agencies & discrete violences - ICE, CBP, DHS - but what we need to be doing is rethinking the entirety of the system that ever imagined human beings as threats.

Here's an opportunity to support the other journalist arrested today; Georgia Fort, who will have far fewer resources available to her than Don Lemon.

Rufo bringing back that vintage, early 20th century eugenic racism that made minute distinctions among “white stock.” Everything old is new again.

I wrote about the racism, violence, and impunity of the Border Patrol in my book Nobody is Protected: How the Border Patrol Became the Most Dangerous Police Force in the United States if you want to learn more www.counterpointpress.com/books/nobody...

Borders also keep you in

Got in 95% of what I wanted which was more than I would have expected

Thanks for explaining, and great piece otherwise! Not at all surprising from the NY War Crimes, of course. Dem party and liberal institution are terrified by the growing popularity of abolish ICE and are scrambling to control the narrative and put the breaks on the popular momentum for abolition.

Until the very last minute the final line was 'So yes abolish ICE but also abolish the Border Patrol.' But I agreed to the change, so pressured isn't quite right

Georgia Fort's is chilling, and it's being overshadowed by the equally chilling arrest of Don Lemon. A GoFundMe is being set up for Fort. In the meantime, you can support her work directly – without paying massive fundraising platform fees – through her website: www.georgiafort.com/support

Border Patrol applicants train at a New Mexico academy for six intense months. CBP agents have killed more than 70 people since 2010. (ICE is a completely different agency. The way Hicks conflates the two should help readers evaluate whether he’s minimally qualified to make policy recommendations.)

What is “an immigration problem”

16-year-old José Rodríguez was walking down a street in Mexico in 2012 when U.S. Border Patrol agent Lonnie Swartz shot at him 16 times. Rodríguez’s body was riddled with ten bullets, eight in his back. Swartz, who claimed the child threw rocks across the border wall, was acquitted of murder.

NEW: Meet the private-equity firm -- and its billionaire immigrant CEO -- making millions off some of ICE's cruelest deportation flights. After a five-month investigation, my story for @motherjones.com: www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

I agree, so why end this otherwise spot-on piece by parroting the emerging liberal line that Border Patrol should "go back to the border?" Did NYT editors pressure you to add that in? Also, as you know, there are "American cities" at the border, too.

Smart phone cameras are being used to track protesters and observers. Mandatory body cams would amount to dollars for contractors and a wearable surveillance camera for each and every agent.

DHS has purchased land and a 418,400 square-foot warehouse for an ICE detention center in Surprise, Arizona near Phoenix www.azcentral.com/story/news/l...

DHS has purchased land and a 418,400 square-foot warehouse for an ICE detention center in Surprise, Arizona near Phoenix www.azcentral.com/story/news/l...

Smart phone cameras are being used to track protesters and observers. Mandatory body cams would amount to dollars for contractors and a wearable surveillance camera for each and every agent.

Tucker Carlson: "Saudi Arabia [...] is kind of a weirdly free place.” Hillary Clinton: "The example that the kingdom is setting for the right kind of development [...] that is a very strong model for other parts of the world" Quotes from a real estate conference in Riyadh

Video shows ICE leaving behind an infant and broken glass after arresting a man with no criminal history. “There was a car seat in the back... There were broken glass shards all over it... There was just this tiny peanut of a baby. He was crying.” My latest: www.pressherald.com/2026/01/28/i...

"The violence, racial profiling and disregard for the Constitution that has burst into public view in Minneapolis is not new or unusual for the Border Patrol.... If you are uncomfortable with what the Border Patrol is doing in Minneapolis, you are uncomfortable with the Border Patrol, full stop."

It always, always goes back to the history of policing.

"From 1994 to 2012, the Border Patrol grew from 4,000 to 21,000 agents, with yearly budget increases, each bringing more capabilities and allowing the agency to expand to more locations, regardless of the president’s politics."

“As historian Greg Grandin writes, the Border Patrol has been a ‘cult of brutality’ since 1924, when it was created.”

When it comes to the Border Patrol, Border Chronicle cofounder, Todd Miller, literally wrote the book. "Border Patrol Nation" back in 2014. He predicted much of this. And his piece today highlights what the media and others are missing now. It's a must read🦂

"We are exempted from the Fourth Amendment" — CBP official, 2018. For decades, Border Patrol operated with impunity in the borderlands. Now they're 300 miles inland in Minneapolis & Chicago. The whole country has become the border. #Immigration #BorderMilitarization Read full story🦂🔗:

I wrote for the New York Times about how state violence that was hidden in the borderlands has burst into view in Minneapolis. The solution cannot be simply to send it back there www.nytimes.com/2026/01/29/o...

Trump's immigration raids bring decades of Border Patrol violence from the borderlands into U.S. cities. Todd Miller for @democracynow.org: "the border is the entire country." With $33.5B in ICE/CBP budgets, this expanding crackdown comes with built-in impunity. Full interview🔗:

ICE ramping up activity in Tucson, Pima County attorney says www.azcentral.com/story/news/p...

1/27/2026 - Minneapolis ICE just attempted an illegal entry into the ECUADORIAN CONSULATE to abduct someone They did not have a warrant

Spain approves decree to regularise half a million undocumented migrants www.theguardian.com/world/2026/j...

Arivaca has less than 700 residents but Border Patrol absolutely swarms it, including checkpoints. Last month, Border Patrol raided the No More Deaths humanitarian camp, which is private property, in this area. They crossed into camp then forcibly busted open trailers and took several migrants.

I think what a lot of folks miss is how profitable deportation is for the corporations involved & the politicians they're backing. Holding people, physically removing them, is cost for the taxpayer & profit into the pockets of the worst people you can imagine.

If you want to learn about the viciously racist history of Border Patrol, I recommend Kelly Lytle Hernandez's "Migra!" It's really fascinating because Hernandez looks at the class and race implications of border patrol and who joined. www.ucpress.edu/books/migra/...

Minneapolis has seen a stunning 1,646% spike in calls from families who can't pay rent because they're afraid to leave their homes to work. This is state violence manufacturing housing precarity in real time. People should not be facing eviction when their city is under occupation.

County cops on the southern border work, train & take $ from DHS. Pima County has worked w/illegal Critical Incident Teams since 1990s. Pima County AZ has never judged a Border Patrol shooting to be a bad shoot. Never. apnews.com/article/ariz...

Here’s the tech powering ICE and CBP’s deportation crackdown techcrunch.com/2026/01/26/h...

“San Clemente has become the first Orange County city to allow U.S. Customs and Border Protection to install a surveillance system to monitor the coast.” abc7.com/post/san-cle...

Video from this morning shows ICE agents deploying tear gas outside a Minneapolis preschool as parents shout, “This is a preschool! There’s kids here!”

Jim Crow works: groupthreat.com/p/americas-d...

“Unconstrained resources have thus enabled the growth of the far-right enforcement regime; reckoning with its budgetary and institutional foundations will be necessary to stop it.” www.phenomenalworld.org/analysis/enf...

"Instead of thinking about what (or where) a border is, ask: what does a border do?" Listen to my interview with Eleanor Goldfield, where I explain how we can use big ideas from political geography to make sense of the state of immigration enforcement. austinkocher.substack.com/p/instead-of...

Dems are preparing to demand that CBP "stay at the border" as one of their demands to avoid a government shutdown. Based on a multi-year FOIA campaign undertaken in collaboration with the ACLU of Michigan, here is what this means in practice: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Bovino getting booted from Minneapolis is a win worth celebrating, but know when you tell Border Patrol to "go back to the border," this is what they're going back to do:

Tucson: take note

“CBP stays at the border” means Border Patrol kills ‘at the border’ bsky.app/profile/maxg...

Unión del Barrio, a longstanding revolutionary immigrants’ rights group who has been on the frontline of protecting communities from ICE in Los Angeles, released a statement on the execution of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. It’s worth reading in full: