By Gayatri Patnaik

One of my sharpest memories as a girl was when an immigration officer came to our house in rural Finzel, Maryland when I was about nine years old. He showed up at our house unannounced and I still remember the stunned look on my mother’s face when she answered the door. I didn’t realize until much later how high the stakes were or how very close we had come to being deported. While I can’t share specifics, I can say that one of the things the officer asked for was the phone number of people my mother knew who could attest to her character. And I remember sitting there in our kitchen hearing the one-sided conversation as he called friends or acquaintances or colleagues of my mother’s, one after another. When he left, I walked with him to the door and he shook my mother’s hand and told her she was a remarkable woman and that if she didn’t hear from him in the next six months, she wouldn’t have to worry about her citizenship status further. Read more →

By Margaret Regan Photo credit: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Department of Homeland Security) Dilley, a small Texas city eighty-three miles north of the Mexican border, greets visitors with a cheerful sign. “Welcome to Dilley, Texas,” it reads. “A Slice... Read more →

In an excerpt from 'The Death of Josseline: Immigration Stories from the Arizona Borderlands', Margaret Regan shows us the sometimes tragic and all-too-real dangers that unaccompanied minors must increasingly endure. Read more →

Margaret Regan, author of The Death of Josseline: Immigration Stories from the Arizona-Mexico Borderlands, will once again appear at the Tucson Festival of Books. Her appearance at the 2010 festival was broadcast on BookTV; you can watch it on YouTube.... Read more →

Read more about Margaret Regan's compelling book that addresses the human cost of U.S. immigration policy. Read more →

In a new afterword for her book The Death of Josseline: Immigration Stories from the Arizona-Mexico Borderlands, Margaret Regan talks about SB 1070 and the real human crisis facing Arizona. Read more →

Margaret Regan describes the harsh realities of Independence Day on the Arizona-Mexico borderlands. Read more →

See what media our authors have been getting this week. Read more →

Beacon authors are collecting laurels and starting important conversations. Read more →

Defending Immigrant Rights from Arizona to Manhattan. Read more →

Current Beacon contests and links to good reading. Read more →

Deaths in the harsh environment of the Arizona desert are all too common. Margaret Regan talks about a recent death and how our immigration policies put lives at risk. Read more →

Margaret Regan talks about the deaths of immigrants crossing the border into Arizona with Arizona Public Media. Read more →