Sand and Blood

A deeply reported investigation of the undeclared war the US is waging at its border with Mexico, detailing how and why it began, and the mounting costs, from lives lost to money wasted.
The war on the US-Mexico border has turned the southern states into conflict zones, spawned a network of immigrant detention centers, and unleashed an army of ICE agents into every town and city in America.
As award-winning journalist John Carlos Frey reveals in this groundbreaking book, this war has been escalating for decades. Politicians, defense contractors, and lobbyists laid the groundwork for it in the 1980s and 1990s. After 9/11, while Americans' attention was trained on the Middle East and the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the War on Terror was ramping up on our own soil. It has been propelled by defense contractors seeking profits in a new theater; congress people who rely on racist fear-mongering about jobs lost to immigrants to turn out voters; and governors along the...