The US asylum rule “Remain in Mexico” requires asylum seekers to wait in Mexico instead of the U.S. while their claims are resolved. This policy is subject to debate in court as the Biden administration terminated it, and Texas and Missouri sued demanding it to be reinstated.
While its permanence is in doubt, the drama of hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers mostly from Haiti, Honduras, Cuba, El Salvador and Venezuela grows, and the US government is coping with an unprecedented number of US officials encounters with migrants crossing the border with Mexico (1.7 million so far this year).
The following TED videos provide a vivid image of this humanitarian drama and contribute to understanding its complexity.
In this powerful, personal talk, author and academic Juan Enriquez shares stories from inside the immigration crisis at the US-Mexico border, bringing this often-abstract debate back down to earth — and showing what you can do every day to create a sense of belonging for immigrants. “This isn’t about kids and borders,” he says. “It’s about us. This is about who we are, who we the people are, as a nation and as individuals.”
This talk was presented at an official TED conference, and was featured by its editors on the home page.
At the US-Mexico border, policies of prolonged detention and family separation have made seeking asylum in the United States difficult and dangerous. In this raw and heartfelt talk, immigration attorney Erika Pinheiro offers a glimpse into her daily work on both sides of the border and shares some of the stories behind the statistics — including her own story of being detained and separated from her son. It’s a clear-eyed call to remember the humanity that’s impacted by policy — and a warning: “History shows us that the first population to be vilified and stripped of their rights is rarely the last,” she says.
This talk was presented at an official TED conference, and was featured by its editors on the home page.
For the past 20 years, photographer and TED Fellow Jon Lowenstein has documented the migrant journey from Latin America to the United States, one of the largest transnational migrations in world history. Sharing photos from his decade-long project “Shadow Lives USA,” Lowenstein takes us into the inner worlds of the families escaping poverty and violence in Central America — and pieces together the complex reasons people leave their homes in search of a better life.
This talk was presented at an official TED conference, and was featured by its editors on the home page.
“Building a 30-foot-high concrete structure from sea to shining sea is the most expensive and least effective way to do border security,” says Congressman Will Hurd, a Republican from Texas whose district encompasses two times zones and shares an 820-mile border with Mexico. Speaking from Washington, DC in a video interview with former state attorney general Anne Milgram, Hurd discusses the US government’s border policy and its controversial detention and child separation practices — and lays out steps toward a better future at the border. (Recorded at the TED World Theater in New York on September 10, 2019)
How did the US immigration debate get to be so divisive? In this informative talk, historian and writer Paul A. Kramer shows how an “insider vs. outsider” framing has come to dominate the way people in the US talk about immigration — and suggests a set of new questions that could reshape the conversation around whose life, rights and thriving matters.
This talk was presented at an official TED conference, and was featured by its editors on the home page.