A Mexican-American lawyer exposes corruption in the US asylum procedure and despotism in the Mexican governmentFrom a storefront law office in the US border city of El Paso, Texas, one man set out to tear down the great wall of indifference raised between the US and Mexico. Carlos Spector has filed hundreds of political asylum cases on behalf of human rights defenders, journalists, and political dissidents. Though his legal activism has only inched the process forward—98 percent of refugees from Mexico are still denied asylum—his myriad legal cases and the resultant media fallout has increasingly put US immigration policy, the corrupt state of Mexico, and the political basis of immigration, asylum, and deportation decisions on the spot. We Built the Wall is an immersive, engrossing look at the new front in the immigration wars. It follows the gripping stories of people like Saúl Reyes, forced to flee his home after a drug cartel murdered several members of his family, and Delmy Calderón, a forty-two-year-old woman leading an eight-woman hunger strike in an El Paso detention center. Truax tracks the heart-wrenching trials of refugees like Yamil, the husband and father who chose a prison cell over deportation to Mexico, and Rocío Hernández, a nineteen-year-old who spent nearly her entire life in Texas and is now forced to live in a city where narcotraffickers operate with absolute impunity.
Author
Eileen Truax is an awarded journalist with over 20 years of experience in Mexico and the United States. Born in Mexico City, she moved to Los Angeles in 2004. She has covered immigration, politics and US-Mexico issues for different media both in Mexico and the US, such as La Opinión, Hoy Los Ángeles, Reforma and El Universal newspapers, and Proceso, Gatopardo and Newsweek en Español magazines, among others. Her first book is “Dreamers, la lucha de una generación por su sueño americano” (Spanish, Oceáno, 2013), "Dreamers, an immigrant generation's fight for their American Dream" (English, Beacon Press, 2015). The book shed light on the situation faced by those young undocumented immigrants brought to the US by their parents when they were very young, and the daily struggle of this generation for their own American Dream. Her first novel, "Fecha de Caducidad" (Spanish, Alfaguara, 2015), is a love triangle story co-authored with Beatriz Rivas and Armando-Vega Gil. Eileen is also co-author of "72 Migrantes" (Almadía, 2011) and "Tú y yo coincidimos en la noche terrible" (Nuestra Aparente Rendición, 2012), and she's part of Cuadernos. Colectivo de Cronistas Iberoamericanos. Currently, Eileen is working on her second non-fiction book about the exiled victims of violence from Mexico looking for asylum in the US. *** Eileen Truax es periodista con más de veinte años de experiencia en México y Estados Unidos. Nació en la Ciudad de México y vive en Los Ángeles desde 2004, en donde ha cubierto los temas de inmigración, política y relación México-Estados Unidos para diversos medios en ambos países, como los diarios La Opinión, Hoy Los Ángeles, Reforma y El Universal, y las revistas Proceso, Gatopardo y Newsweek en Español, entre otras. Su primer libro es “Dreamers, la lucha de una generación por su sueño americano” (Español, Oceáno, 2013; "Dreamers, an immigrant generation's fight for their American Dream", Inglés, Beacon Press, 2015). Este libro arroja luz sobre la situación que enfrentan los jóvenes inmigrantes indocumentados que fueron llevados a Estados Unidos por sus padres cuando eran pequeños, y la lucha diaria de esta generación por lograr su propio sueño americano. Su primera novela, "Fecha de Caducidad" (Alfaguara, 2015), es la historia de un triángulo amoroso escrita en coautoría con Beatriz Rivas y Armando-Vega Gil. Eileen también ha sido coautora de "72 Migrantes" (Almadía, 2011) y "Tú y yo coincidimos en la noche terrible" (Nuestra Aparente Rendición, 2012), y es integrante de Cuadernos. Colectivo de Cronistas Iberoamericanos. Actualmente Eileen trabaja en su segundo libro de no ficción, una historia sobre mexicanos exiliados por la violencia en su país buscando asilo en Estados Unidos.
