Eugenio del Bosque Gómez photo for The Texas Observer. Caption: “Eloisa Tamez has to pass through a gate to access her property south of the wall.”

Goldman persuasively argues that a 2006 government massacre, under the rule of then-Governor Enrique Peña Nieto, is emblematic of how Mexico is governed right now.

If any of Trump’s wall gets built, it will be in Hidalgo County, Texas, and the Rio Grande Valley near the Gulf of Mexico. It’s not a popular idea there. Del Bosque talks to many local officials and citizens.

“Anybody who has touched the Leahy Law has an opinion about it, but it’s hard to find anybody fully satisfied by the way it is interpreted or implemented,” writes a former State Department official who carried out this important but hard-to-implement set of human rights conditions on foreign military aid.

Phippen disputes the notion that Central American gang members are coming over the border as “unaccompanied children.” Instead, vulnerable kids are ending up in U.S. neighborhoods with serious gang problems.

In the absence of a Senate-confirmed Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, the Florida hardliner with great access to the White House is running much of U.S. policy toward Latin America right now.