McALLEN, Texas (Border Report) — When author Sarah Towle made her first trip to Texas’ Rio Grande Valley in early 2020, she didn’t know that multiple visits would follow, and eventually she’d write a book about immigration on the border.
Towle’s new book, “Crossing the Line — Finding America in the Borderlands,” came out this summer, and she just wrapped up a national tour.
On Monday, she spoke with Border Report from her adopted home in London and explained how the book came about.
“When I arrived in January 2020, I had carved out several weeks for this journey that I was just doing on my on my own. I had no intention of writing a book at that time. But I got stuck in Matamoros, because the needs were that great. And I was also really inspired,” she said.
The asylum-seekers she met in the dangerous northern Mexican border town of Matamoros, as well as the tireless and fearless volunteers from many different non-governmental organizations that help them, inspired her to write the book, she said.
The 365-pages are interlaced with rich history of the region — on both sides of the border, as well as easy-to-understand 101-primers on ever evolving and complex immigration policies and changing political landscapes.
Towle doesn’t mince words in her condemnation for immigration polices implemented by the Trump administration — like the Migrant Protection Protocols program (also known as “Remain in Mexico”), family separation and zero tolerance, which she says put undue burdens and hardships on those coming to the border for asylum.
“I was really ashamed of myself as well as my nation when family separation was exposed in 2018 by the Trump administration, because I should have known better. I felt like I should have known better. And it took me a while to get to the borderlands,” she said.
She volunteered on the ground with NGOs like Team Brownsville and Angry Tias and Abuelas. And she details their origin stories in ways that only someone who has spent many hours traversing the border with the volunteers can.
Towle recalls conversations with volunteers and aid workers who emptied their personal bank accounts to help feed a sudden wave of immigrants that began crossing the border into South Texas in their pursuit of the American dream.
Upwards of 5,000 migrants lived in a makeshift camp near the Gateway International Bridge in Matamoros, Mexico, beginning in the summer of 2019. (Sandra Sanchez/Border Report File Photos)
She conveys the stories of the asylum-seekers in an effort to garner why thousands have traveled thousands of miles north where their futures are uncertain, and where many have been turned back to dangerous Mexican border towns.
“I was also really inspired, not just by the incredible fortitude, and hope of people trapped in cartel-controlled northern Mexico,” she said “But by the incredible grassroots efforts that rose up, to respond to their needs and to and to effectively keep them alive.”
The idea for a book was seeded, when one volunteer told her: “‘We can’t get our voices heard beyond the 100 mile checkpoint,'” she said. “That was the first time I understood that the United States is encircled in this 100 mile policing zone. I did not know that before. I did not know that there were 200-plus prisons that incarcerate as many as 41,500 peace-seeking people a day with our tax dollars. … And in that visit, I realized this, the inhumanity, was not right.”
Towle is now back in London but says she plans to return to Texas in upcoming months and she says the Texas-Mexico border is always on her mind.
In particular, she says she is following Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s quest to launch an investigation into Team Brownsville, and Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley, and Annunciation House in El Paso, to determine if there are human trafficking violations.
Catholic Charities RGV runs the Humanitarian Respite Center in McAllen, Texas, which assists asylum-seekers after they’ve been released by the Department of Homeland Security. (Sandra Sanchez/Border Report File Photo)
Last week, Paxton lost in a Hidalgo County court where a state judge ruled the attorney general does not have the authority to depose the leader of Catholic Charities RGV.
Earlier this month, a judge in El Paso threw out his case against Annunciation House.
Now his agency wants to depose leaders of Team Brownsville in another court in Austin.
“It’s just devastating that that that they would go after Team Brownsville, too. But I think it’s all part of a much bigger effort to misdirect the U.S. public, as we hurdle pell mell toward another presidential campaign,” she said.
The nonprofit Team Brownsville helps to run the Welcome Center, which assists migrants in Brownsville, Texas, after they are released by the Department of Homeland Security. (Sandra Sanchez/Border Report File Photo)
She also is critical of the Biden administration’s temporary executive order, put in place last month, that limits asylum claims only to those with CBP One app appointments, and who cross at legal ports of entry.
“Our asylum law states, basically, the way it works is that as soon as somebody sets foot on U.S. soil, they have the legal right to request asylum from persecution. And our government has the legal obligation to respond to that request and see it through,” she said.
Towle, 60, is a retired educator and author of children’s books. She has lived on several continents and in many countries but maintains her United States citizenship.
She says the Southwest border is constantly evolving and she intends to stay up to date on what’s going on and to never again lose site on the region.
“This is not okay. Whether we are incarcerating people in for-profit prisons 100 miles north of the line, or kicking out people who are just needing better — who are escaping horrible endemic problems in cartel-controlled territories where they are extorted to this degree. We are not living up to our values as a nation,” she said.
Sandra Sanchez can be reached at SSanchez@BorderReport.com.
