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Border Life: The 'Cowboy Priest' takes a stand to protect chapel from wall

Mar 18, 2019
Roy Snipes and the local Catholic diocese are fighting new sections of border wall to protect a tiny, white chapel known as La Lomita.
Father Roy Snipes, known locally as the Cowboy Priest, after celebrating mass on Feb. 1. He says a wall would infringe on freedom of religion at La Lomita because planned border barriers would put the chapel just south of a border wall and require a gate for people to access it.
Filipa Rodrigues/Marketplace

Border life: A unique housing market in McAllen

Mar 14, 2019
Editor’s note: Marketplace’s Andy Uhler spent a week reporting about doing business on the Texas-Mexico border during a time of intense debate over U.S. immigration policy and the push by President Donald Trump to build a border wall. Below is the seventh entry from his reporter’s notebook. You can read the other entries here.  In some ways, […]
A two-story home for sale in McAllen, Texas on Feb. 1 2019. The median home value in McAllen is about $140,000.
Andy Uhler/Marketplace

Border life: An apartment in Mexico, a job in the U.S.

Feb 25, 2019
From Tijuana to Matamoros, people work in the U.S. for higher wages but live in Mexico for cheaper rent.
 It’s hard to know exactly how many people live in Mexico and work in the U.S. but thousands of people cross in both directions every day in Laredo, Texas.
Filipa Rodrigues/Marketplace

Border eco-tourism hit by Trump's emergency declaration

Feb 18, 2019
Ecology-based organizations at the border are scrambling after Trump’s emergency declaration over border security last week The National Butterfly Center had filed a restraining order to try to stave off any advances of a border wall, an order that’s essentially been lifted. Eco-tourism along the border is a multi-billion-dollar business. The border region surrounding Mission, […]
Kevin Dietsch-Pool/Getty Images)

Border life: They're fighting a wall that would divide their land

Feb 4, 2019
Fred Cavazos and Rey Anzaldua say a planned expansion of a South Texas wall would hurt their livelihood and is disruptive to their family history.
Rey Anzaldua, 73, sits in his cousin Fred’s dining room on Thursday, Jan. 31 2019, mulling over documents the federal government has sent the family seeking permission to build a wall on their land. He says the family will never sign over the rights and the government will have to take the land through eminent domain if a wall is going to be built on their property.
Filipa Rodrigues/Marketplace

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Border life: The outlet mall in Laredo

Jan 29, 2019
Here on the Texas-Mexico border, most people don’t think about the boundary as much more than an inconvenient passport check.
People driving across the border from Nuevo Laredo, Mexico are greeted by a massive outlet mall, Outlet Shoppes at Laredo in Laredo, Texas, that sells everything from sneakers and T-shirts to kitchenware and iPhones, shown here on Monday, Jan. 28, 2019.
Filipa Rodrigues for Marketplace