I was in Texas a few years back, and had a Sunday to kill. Took to my Instagram feed — like all the kids do — to see what was happening in the world. It turned out a friend of mine, Heather Benjamin, was at the Round Top…

Crossing Borders is my second book. Not sure I have a third in me. Frankly, still surprised I had a first. But writing is a curious process. You gather a massive amount of information. Hope it might tell some kind of story that makes some kind of point. And hope…

Route 29 stretches from Pensacola, Florida, to the suburbs of Baltimore, Maryland. In Virginia, where parts of it are named the Lee Highway (for General Robert E. Lee), it travels alongside rolling hayfields, farmhouses, and vineyards; the Blue Ridge Mountains of the Shenandoah National Park looming in the background. Namesakes…

That morning was like almost any other morning. Sure. After four years of Trump, there was a new Congress. And a new president was on the way. These felt new and good. Very good. But I also knew Trump was holding a big rally near the White House that day…

(For more things borders and migration, subscribe to my newsletter, Crossing Borders.) Let’s talk about the news. More specifically, about how the news shapes perception. Even more specifically, how immigration news shapes our understanding of immigration. What to be inspired by. What to be afraid of. So much so that…

In the face of so many “worsts,” we need a new consensus. On November 24, in “the worst migrant tragedy in the English Channel in years,” over two dozen migrants died while trying to cross from France to Britain. Across the Middle East, based on rumors, migrants pay approximately $2,500…

One hundred and seventeen days after elevating to the papacy, Pope Francis took his first official trip outside the Vatican to visit the tiny Italian island of Lampedusa. An island closer to Tunisia than Sicily. An island that, since 1998, has been a transit point for migrants from North Africa…

Outsourcing immigration enforcement allows extremism to thrive, leaving us with complicated solutions. From initially blocking asylum seekers to then extending humanitarian relief to ultimately hardening and militarizing borders, the European Union’s 2015 response to the Syrian refugee crisis was dizzying for policy experts, much less the migrants who sought…

If you like this post, please sign-up for my weekly newsletter, Crossing Borders, here. Borders are meant to create order. But, around the world, authoritarians are using borders to create chaos. In the November issue of The Atlantic, Anne Applebaum looks at how authoritarians are working together — across borders…