#border issues

The discovery of a breeding, northern Sonora ocelot population just south of the border is a good sign for binational wildlife conservation — and a reminder of the planned border wall’s potential to block wildlife migration, say researchers who worked on a new study of the ocelots.

EDINBURG, Texas — Jose Garcia’s whole life has played out in the borderlands, both sides of the divide between the United States and Mexico, a line on a map that carries so much political and emotional meaning.

It is a 21-year-old life dominated right now by baseball and it reaches its most critical point next week. The Major League Baseball draft beckons, meaning Garcia faces a tortuous wait that will determine whether he pursues a professional career in Mexico, the land of his birth, or the U.S., where the potential for riches in MLB is exponentially greater.

Garcia does not allow his mind to delve too deeply into politics, but his journey has been intertwined with so many of the hot-button issues that dominated last year’s election and continue to spark debate.

“There's always issues with the border but I don't let that affect me,” said Garcia, a powerfully built outfielder and part-time catcher who hopes to land in the mid to late rounds. “I always want success in life so I don't let those things bother me.

All this is just the beginning. These strangers seeking help are the harbinger of the coming global tide of climate refugees. Heat. Crop failure. Weather. Floods. The magic act of the New Republican Party has magic phrases like Bad Hombres, like The Wall, like illegals. MS13 cadres of ten-month old children. They are meant to distract you. They feed your fear, your rage, your guilt. All of them work. They con you into believing you have done some moral act by feeling. What the magicians don’t want is action. Can you smell that smell? It is the scent of our world burning. These children we have spit on are human kindling.

What would you do if strangers were paid $750 a day to hold your child in a secret warehouse where she is comforted by concrete and steel, as if she were a baby monkey in a bio research lab? You would not write Tweets. You would tear it down.

Ultimately, the taint is upon you and me. We are responsible. We own this. Kindness is not weakness. Cruelty is not strength. We have gone instantly from the land of “helicopter parents” to the land that chases parents with helicopters. Pharaoh tried brutality once before. Didn’t work. This phenomenon is a Biblical exodus in the fevered world, and we Samaritans are free to decide how our children will forever judge us.