Sand and Blood

The unofficial war on the US-Mexico border has turned the southern states into conflict zones, spawned a network of immigrant detention centres, 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 conflict has been escalating for decades. Politicians, defence 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, a War on Terror was ramping up on our own soil.

It has been propelled by defence contractors seeking profits in a new theatre; congresspeople who rely on racist fear-mongering about immigrants to turn out voters; and governors along the southern border who use the threat of terrorism to increase their budgets. Tens of thousands have been casualties of it: economic migrants, refugees, and families who are seeking jobs, opportunity, and freedom, or are fleeing various forms of violence; as well as undocumented people who have lived in the US for years and are now living in fear or are locked in shockingly abusive detention centres.

Taking readers to the border patrol outposts, unmarked graves, detention centres, and city streets where these battles are being waged, Sand and Blood is a frightening, essential story about a war we ignore at our peril.