A comparative media analysis of the representation of the U.S.–Mexico border Border tunnels at the U.S.–Mexico border are ubiquitous in news, movies, and television, yet, because they remain hidden and inaccessible, the public can encounter them only through media. Analyzing the technologies, institutional politics, narrative tropes, and aesthetic decisions that go into showing border tunnels across multiple forms of media, Juan Llamas-Rodriguez argues that we cannot properly address border issues without attending to—and fully understanding—the fraught relationship between their representation and reality. Llamas-Rodriguez reveals that every media text about border tunnels, whether meant for entertainment, cable news, video games, or speculative design, implicitly takes a position on the politics of the border. The examples laid out in Border Tunnels will teach readers how to look differently at the border as it is commonly presented in various forms of media, from ABC’s Nightline and CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360º to reality TV, propaganda videos, and even digital effects in Hollywood action films. Llamas-Rodriguez examines how creative decisions in the production, promotion, and distribution of these media texts either emphasize or downplay issues such as border security, racial dynamics of migration, and sustainability of the borderlands. Focusing on tunnels to show how media representations can influence all kinds of audiences—even those physically near the border—Border Tunnels helps us make sense of this pressing social issue, ultimately advancing understanding of the U.S.–Mexico border in all of its complexity and precariousness.

Drawing on two summers spent with the kids who live in drainage tunnels connecting Nogales, Sonora and Nogales, Arizona, the authors present a verbal and pictoral portrait of the displaced and sometimes heroic young people whose stories add a human dimension to the world of the U.S.-Mexico border.

Underground warfare, a tactic of yesteryear, has re-emerged as a global and rapidly diffusing threat. This book is the first of its kind to examine tunnel warfare in a systematic and comprehensive way, addressing the legal issues while keeping in mind operational and strategic challenges. Like many other aspects of contemporary warfare, the renewed use of the subterranean in armed conflict presents a challenge for democracies wishing to abide by the law. To Dr. Richemond-Barak, this challenge has not only been under-explored, it is also largely underestimated by the community of states, security experts, and public opinion. She analyzes traditional concepts of the laws of war as they relate to tunnels and underground operations, contemplating questions such as whether tunnels constitute legitimate targets, the assessment of proportionality in anti-tunnel operations, and the availability of advanced warning in this complex terrain. She also identifies issues that are unique to underground warfare, including those that arise when cross-border tunnels burrow under a state's own civilian infrastructure.

In her Brookings Essay, The Wall, Brookings Senior Fellow Vanda Felbab-Brown explains the true costs of building a barrier along the U.S.-Mexico border, including (but not limited to) the estimated $12 to $21.6 billion price tag of construction. Felbab-Brown explains the importance of the United States' relationship with Mexico, on which the U.S. relies for cooperation on security, environmental, agricultural, water-sharing, trade, and drug smuggling issues. The author uses her extensive on-the-ground experience in Mexico to illustrate the environmental and community disruption that the construction of a wall would cause, while arguing that the barrier would do nothing to stop illicit flows into the United States. She recalls personal interviews she has had with people living in border areas, including a woman whose family relies on remittances from the U.S., a teenager trying to get out of a local gang, and others.

Borders are changing in response to terrorism and immigration. This book shows why this matters, especially for sovereignty, individual liberty, and citizenship.

A thrilling Cold War narrative of superpower showdowns, media suppression, and two escape tunnels beneath the Berlin Wall. In the summer of 1962, the year after the rise of the Berlin Wall, a group of young West Germans risked prison, Stasi torture, and even death to liberate friends, lovers, and strangers in East Berlin by digging tunnels under the Wall. Then two U.S. television networks heard about the secret projects and raced to be first to document them from the inside. NBC and CBS funded two separate tunnels in return for the right to film the escapes, planning spectacular prime-time specials. President John F. Kennedy, however, was wary of anything that might spark a confrontation with the Soviets, having said, “A wall is better than a war,” and even confessing to Secretary of State Dean Rusk, “We don’t care about East Berlin.” JFK approved unprecedented maneuvers to quash both documentaries, testing the limits of a free press in an era of escalating nuclear tensions. As Greg Mitchell’s riveting narrative unfolds, we meet extraordinary characters: the legendary cyclist who became East Germany’s top target for arrest; the Stasi informer who betrays the “CBS tunnel”; the American student who aided the escapes; an engineer who would later help build the tunnel under the English channel; and the young East Berliner who fled with her baby, then married one of the tunnelers. The Tunnels captures the chilling reach of the Stasi secret police as U.S. networks prepared to “pay for play” but were willing to cave to official pressure, the White House was eager to suppress historic coverage, and ordinary people in dire circumstances became subversive. The Tunnels is breaking history, a propulsive read whose themes still reverberate.

Underground warfare, a tactic of yesteryear, has re-emerged as a global and rapidly diffusing threat. This book is the first of its kind to examine tunnel warfare in a systematic and comprehensive way, addressing the legal issues while keeping in mind operational and strategic challenges. Like many other aspects of contemporary warfare, the renewed use of the subterranean in armed conflict presents a challenge for democracies wishing to abide by the law. To Dr. Richemond-Barak, this challenge has not only been under-explored, it is also largely underestimated by the community of states, security experts, and public opinion. She analyzes traditional concepts of the laws of war as they relate to tunnels and underground operations, contemplating questions such as whether tunnels constitute legitimate targets, the assessment of proportionality in anti-tunnel operations, and the availability of advanced warning in this complex terrain. She also identifies issues that are unique to underground warfare, including those that arise when cross-border tunnels burrow under a state's own civilian infrastructure.