Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here

Exhaustive and exhausting overview of the US/Mexican border crisis, which has been building since the early 1980s. Good mix of micro/macro, i.e., the policy decisions that led to the shitshow and the individuals whose lives have been irreparably harmed as a consequence. Blitzer offers no easy solutions, which is sadly appropriate, since the coming administration would have ignored his recommendations anyway.

P.S. Fuck Stephen Miller.

A really comprehensive history of migration and US policy on immigration spanning the 70s to 2023. While I vaguely knew that US interventionist policy in Central America contributed to the migration crisis, I had no idea of the details or scale. It was sometimes hard for me to keep straight the developments and policy in the US side of things, but largely because US administrations kept backtrackingand reinstating and changing processes, making it impossible to follow. This book has both a policy element and a very human element.

This is less a "solutions" book and more of a "wow, we fucked up SO big in so many ways" book. Infuriating. Difficult to read. And really well done.