By the time Todd Miller spots him, Juan Carlos has been wandering alone in a remote border region for days. Parched, hungry and disoriented, he approaches and asks for a ride. Miller's instinct is to oblige, but he hesitates: Furthering someone's unauthorized entrance into the U.S. is a federal crime.
Todd Miller has been reporting from international border zones for over twenty-five years. In Build Bridges, Not Walls, he invites readers to join him on a journey that begins with the most basic of questions: What happens to our collective humanity when the impulse to help one another is criminalized?
A series of encounters—with climate refugees, members of indigenous communities, border authorities, scholars, visionaries, and the shape-shifting imagination of his four-year-old son—provokes reflections on the ways in which nation-states create the very problems that drive immigration, and how the abolition of borders could make the world a more sustainable, habitable place for all.
Is it possible to create a borderless world? How could it emerge, and how might it be better equipped to solve the global emergencies threatening our collective survival? Build Bridges, Not Walls is an inspiring, impassioned call to envision—and work toward—a bold new reality.
