Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
How a Mexican-American lawyer in El Paso, Texas has led a campaign to expose America's corrupt asylum process For decades, the American political asylum process has been used to punish enemies and reward friends of the US government. Refugees from Cuba can walk through an open door. People fleeing Eastern Europe have been judged very differently than those trying to escape persecution in "friendly" but deeply violent states like Mexico, El Salvador, Colombia and Honduras.
From a storefront law office in the US border city of El Paso, Texas, one man set out to challenge that system. Carlos Specter has filed hundreds of political asylum cases on behalf of human rights defenders, journalists, and political dissidents, and though his legal activism has only inched the process forward--98% of refugees from Mexico are still denied asylum--his myriad legal cases and the media fallout from them has increasingly put US immigration policy, the corrupt state of Mexico, and the political basis of immigration, asylum, and deportation decisions--on the spot.
We Built the Wall is an immersive, engrossing story of a new front in the immigration wars.
Synopsis
A Mexican-American lawyer exposes corruption in the US asylum procedure and despotism in the Mexican governmentFrom a storefront law office in the US border city of El Paso, Texas, one man set out to tear down the great wall of indifference raised between the US and Mexico. Carlos Spector has filed hundreds of political asylum cases on behalf of human rights defenders, journalists, and political dissidents. Though his legal activism has only inched the process forward--98 percent of refugees from Mexico are still denied asylum--his myriad legal cases and the resultant media fallout has increasingly put US immigration policy, the corrupt state of Mexico, and the political basis of immigration, asylum, and deportation decisions on the spot.
We Built the Wall is an immersive, engrossing look at the new front in the immigration wars. It follows the gripping stories of people like Sa l Reyes, forced to flee his home after a drug cartel murdered several members of his family, and Delmy Calder n, a forty-two-year-old woman leading an eight-woman hunger strike in an El Paso detention center. Truax tracks the heart-wrenching trials of refugees like Yamil, the husband and father who chose a prison cell over deportation to Mexico, and Roc o Hern ndez, a nineteen-year-old who spent nearly her entire life in Texas and is now forced to live in a city where narcotraffickers operate with absolute impunity.