Legalization, politics and detention trade-offs

Todd critiques past 'comprehensive' proposals that paired legalization with more border funding and detention expansions.

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Episode notes

Todd Miller, a journalist and author specializing in the militarization of the U.S. border, argues that the current expansion of CBP and ICE is a bipartisan trend spanning decades, rather than a phenomenon exclusive to any single administration. He describes a growing “border industrial complex” where private companies profit from surveillance technologies like robotic dogs, AI towers, and biometric databases. These advanced tools and “extra-constitutional powers” are increasingly moving from the borderlands into the interior of the United States, impacting major cities and American citizens. He warns of a transitioning police state where digital walls and mass detention facilities are becoming normalized global standards.

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About Todd Miller

Todd Miller has researched and written about border issues for more than two decades, the last 10 as an independent journalist and writer. He is a longtime resident of Tucson, Arizona, but also spent many years living and working in Oaxaca, Mexico, and grew up in the Buffalo/Niagara Falls region (yes, a long-suffering Bills fan), staring across the U.S. border into Canada. His work has appeared in The New York Times, TomDispatch, The Nation, The San Francisco Chronicle, In These Times, Guernica, and Al Jazeera English, among others. Todd has authored four books: Build Bridges, Not Walls: A Journey to a World without Borders (City Lights, 2021); Empire of Borders: The Expansion of the U.S. Border around the World (Verso, 2019); Border Patrol Nation: Dispatches from the Front Lines of Homeland Security (City Lights, 2014); and Storming the Wall: Climate Change, Migration and Homeland Security (City Lights, 2017), which was awarded the 2018 Izzy Award for Excellence in Independent Journalism. He’s a contributing editor on border issues for NACLA Report on the Americas. He’s also a Scorpio, which at least partially explains the logo.

*Podcast intro music used with permission is from the song “The Queens Jig” by the fantastic “Musicke & Mirth” from their album “Music for Two Lyra Viols”: http://musicke-mirth.de/en/recordings.html (available on iTunes or Amazon)

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Todd Miller: CBP, DHS, & ICE Border Militarization Creating Police State

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Legalization, politics and detention trade-offs

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