This World Below

The current President of the United States said this weekend that "we may have to close up our country" because "we can't allow people to pour into our country the way they're doing. You just take a look at that mess that's on television right now; it is a total catastrophe." Unless you're part of the President's unshakeable base and celebrated Loyalty Day last week instead of May Day, you know he's disconnected from reality, operates from "alternative facts," and prefers television, especially Fox News, to reading.  So he doesn't seem to understand that, according to the Pew Research Center , from 2009-2014, more Mexicans left the U.S. than entered; recessions and anti-immigration legislation like Arizona's 2010 House Bill 1070 and Alabama's 2011 House Bill 56 tend to do that. His racist and xenophobic campaign rhetoric and actual election win also served as a deterrent for immigrants and even t ourists to come to the...

After a few days in Laredo, I asked Sidney, "How many people in the shelter do you think suffer from mental illness?" He answered immediately: 80-90%. I originally thought my book project would be framed around our country's lack of properly treating and taking care of those with mental illnesses because I assumed Sidney was somewhere on the low end of the autism spectrum disorder scale, but he's never been diagnosed, and I'm no doctor. Sometime last year, he did undergo a county psychiatric examination, and they concluded the obvious: he doesn't suffer from schizophrenia or any other psychosis. Ironically, they gave him a month of free rent in the Hotel Bender, an extremely run-down building filled with what he called "all sorts of low people." The Hotel Bender. As we moved through the town, sat in plazas, and ate in the shelters, Sidney pointed out local homeless characters and their nicknames, claiming some have severe mental illnesses ...