Border & Immigration

Updated at 5:07 p.m. ET

President Trump's emergency declaration will potentially free up over $6 billion to build hundreds more miles of barriers along the Southern border. One of the places prioritized for construction is the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, where the majority of illegal crossings now occur. Residents there have strong views about the barrier, both pro and con.

Thousands of migrant children continue to arrive at the Southern border every month, without their parents, to ask for asylum. The government sends many of them to an emergency intake shelter in South Florida. That facility has come under intense scrutiny because it's the only child shelter for immigrants that's run by a for-profit corporation and the only one that isn't overseen by state regulators.

With Meghna Chakrabarti

President Trump rallies for his Wall in El Paso, Texas. We’ll hear the nuanced view a city inextricably linked to the southern border.

Guests

Julián Aguilar, immigration and border security reporter for the Texas Tribune. (@nachoaguilar)

Before sunrise and illuminated by lantern light, the faithful gathered to pray, as they have many times before, at La Lomita chapel in Mission, Texas.

The chapel is made of simple white adobe, and Roy Rogers' song "Blue Shadows On The Trail" plays from a battery-operated radio in the chilly pre-dawn gloom as Rev. Roy Snipes makes his way down the aisle to preside over the Mass.

At least six immigrant detainees on a hunger strike have been force-fed through nasal tubes by immigration authorities, while nine other asylum-seekers are starving themselves, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement confirmed on Thursday.

Eleven of the detainees refusing food, some for more than a month, are in custody at the El Paso Processing Center. Four others are in ICE detentions centers across the country: one each in Miami, Phoenix, San Diego and San Francisco.