SPAN3403

This course takes place off campus, through an organization called "Border Links" that is located in Tucson and works with migrants. Students will experience firsthand many issues that directly affect the migrant journey and meet with many immigrants to hear their personal stories. In addition to learning the history of the situation on the border, students will take a tour of the border wall, visit neighboring communities that work with immigrants, do a legal immigration simulation, walk the migrant trails in the Sonoran Desert and leave water there with Humane Borders, go to a Operation Streamline Deportation Court hearing, visit migrants seeking political asylum in Florence Detention Center, talk with a leader in Southside Workers Center, meet with an author focusing on Border Patrol, and more.

Themes explored in this course include the connection between the roots of emigration and the global economy of violence in Central America; human rights on the border; and issues immigrants face in the US such as immigrants living in the US with or without legal documents, detention and deportation and the work they are doing to make a more just immigration system. Students will gather information during their stay and create a presentation to be shown to people in Minnesota upon returning from the border.

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