This current state of crisis did not descend from nowhere. For as long as many of us can remember, the border has been depicted as a place out of control, overrun by criminality. In the narrative that has dominated the national consciousness, violence and disorder are endemic to the region and those who are drawn to it. When words like border or migrant are uttered, they carry this narrative with them, along with a sense of obscure menace to people and places far from the country’s frontier: loss of jobs, encroaching violence, the erosion of a familiar dominant culture. What we have long been
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