Libraries Media Center

Abandoned : the betrayal of America's immigrants

This film illustrates the most recent wave of anti-immigrant sentiment in the US. Through a close look at the personal impact of new immigration laws, this film depicts the severity of current detention and deportation policies. Lives are changed forever, as legal residents find themselves being torn away from their American families and sent to countries they barely know. For political asylum seekers, dreams are put on hold, as they are kept for years in county jails that profit from their incarceration.

America's Immigration Debate

This special episode of the Global cities series examines the pro and con views of the American immigration debate, using footage from the series. Studies the isolation of ethnic communities, the shifting of racial definitions, and America's lack of an infrastructure to support immigrant integration.

Al Otro Lado

A drama that talks about the bonds between children and absent parents, telling three related stories about a Cuban boy who lives in poverty with his mother and longs to visit his father in the US, a Moroccan girl attempting to locate her father, and a Mexican boy disobeying his parents to go and visit a mysterious lagoon.

The Border Crossed Us

Examines the story of the Tohono O'odham, a group of aboriginal Americans who reside in Southwestern US and Northwestern Mexico, and who have for time immemorial crossed the border freely, focusing on the way that current immigration and naturalization policy is putting their way of life at risk.

Border War

This film chronicles the lives of five individuals who have been affected by the rise in illegal immigration between the US and Mexican border, focusing on the dangers and concerns of illegal human and drug trafficking, for both sides of the issue, and compelling viewers to think about this problem on a wholly different scale.

Crossing Arizona

Because of heightened security along the Texas and New Mexico borders, illegal immigrants have taken to crossing the treacherous and deadly Arizona desert. This film tells the story of the those directly affected by the crisis, including farmers, ranchers, humanitarian groups, political activists, and more recently the Minutemen.

Day Without a Mexican

California awakens one day to discover that one third of its population has vanished. A peculiar pink fog surrounds the state and communication outside its boundaries has completely shut down. As the day progresses, it becomes apparent that the sole characteristic linking the missing 14 million people is their Hispanic heritage.

De Nadie

Follow one man as he leaves behind everything he has in Central America to seek freedom from poverty in the United States. With little sense of direction and only his family's memories as company, he faces the dangers in Mexico on his way to the US, an infrequently explored topic within the immigration debate.

Gatekeeper

A racist, bitter U.S. Border Patrol Agent, moonlighting with a vigilante group, goes undercover posing as a Mexican migrant worker in an effort to expose an illegal alien smuggling operation. When the plan blows up, he is trapped with the aliens, in a web of desperation and tyranny that forces him to confront his secret past.

El Inmigrante

Examines the Mexican and American border crisis through the story of Eusebio de Haro, a young Mexican migrant who was shot and killed during one of his journeys north. Includes interviews with the de Haro family, the community of Brackettville, Texas--where Eusebio was shot, members of vigilante border militias in Arizona, the horseback border patrol in El Paso, and migrants en route to an uncertain future in the US.

Letters from the Other Side

Interweaves video letters carried across the U.S.-Mexico border by the film's director with the personal stories and struggles of four women left behind in post-NAFTA Mexico. The video letters provides a way for these women to communicate with both loved ones and strangers on the other side of the border.

Miles from the Border

Manuela and Ben Aparicio, sister and brother, brought by their parents in search of a better future, arrived in the United States from a rural village in Mexico to an ethnically divided community in California. Twenty years later, they share their stories of dislocation and their determination to succeed despite the odds.

The Other Side

Examines the devastating impact of Mexican-United States migration. The families and communities left behind are disabled, and their languages and cultures are being destroyed. This program looks at villagers who strive to ensure that their children will no longer have to migrate to have a better life

Performing the Border

A video essay by the artist Ursula Biemann. Examines socioeconomic problems of the Mexican-American border region, focusing on hardships faced by women in newly urbanized areas.