Homeland Security in the Trump Era: On the Border by the Sea
Dr. Terence M. Garrett, Guest Editor | Professor of Political Science | The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley
Dr. Arthur J. Sementelli, Guest Editor |Professor and PhD Program Coordinator | School of Public Administration, Florida Atlantic University
Call for Manuscripts
We invite you to analyze, deconstruct, and interrogate all aspects of "borders" from Brownsville, Texas westward to San Diego, California, from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific, and across international barriers – such as they exist – into Mexico. In fall 2018, the Trump administration and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) sent federal troops to the southwest border, laying concertina wire and supporting DHS operations. Within the symposium framework, borders refer to physical, geographical, metaphorical, and/or philosophical spaces that tend to separate us or, alternatively, bring us closer together. The primary aim of the symposium is to engage in a discussion as to what constitutes the “homeland” security apparatus on the international border between Mexico and the USA, how it affects communities who dwell there, and the need for a discussion as to why the borders simultaneously separate and unite us.
This symposium seeks to build new theoretical groundings in ways that create inclusive communities, increase citizen/public collaboration, improve governance, boost administrative prowess, and enhance what we know and understand concerning the concept of border security. Topics for papers may include (but are not limited to):
• Migration and homeland security.
• The Rio Grande and other natural barriers on the border.
• Agencies and agents working along the border through the border security apparatus: detention centers, and the
courts.
• Homeland/border security depicted in art and music.
• Human rights and public law along the border prior to and after September 11, 2001.
• Citizen group participation: pro-migrant/refugee or anti-migrant/refugee.
• Border fences, walls, surveillance, personnel and other barriers: (in)effective allocation of public resources.
• Global comparisons: the uniqueness of the Mexico-USA border.
• The impact on the environment of border security.
• The Secure Fence Act (2006) and other government actions involving private property owners, wildlife refuges, and other nonprofit organization.
• Indigenous people affected by homeland security.
• Homeland/border security through time and administrations.
• Other topics related to the homeland security themes.
Submit your manuscripts online at http://www.publicvoices.us.
Download a PDF version of this file by clicking on the icon to the right.
The United States Democracy: The Eighth Wonder of the World?
A Historic Overview of Its Triumphs and Challenges to Its Existence
These sad ruins are all that remains of the once magnificent Temple of Artemis – one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. While democracy has never been an ideal form of government, it has undoubtedly been the best humanity has ever created. In modern times, the American Liberal Democracy has been the beacon of Freedom and Justice, Religious Tolerance and Inclusion, the standard of governance to strife for and emulate, the value to cherish above all other.
When Ronald Reagan declared that government was a problem, not a solution, he undermined citizens’ trust in government that has never been fully restored ever since. The polarizing discourse of the last presidential elections and the first weeks of the new Administration, however, revealed a more alarming trend. It is the democratic order itself, the very foundation of the U.S. democracy, that is under the President and his cabinet’s attack: by insisting on pervasive and wide-spread voter fraud without providing any substantiating evidence, by disparaging the Judicial branch, by putting the executive powers above the “checks and balances” purview of the other two equal and independent branches of government, by discrediting and witch-hunting the free media and thus effectively infringing on the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
Is the moral fiber of the American society resistant enough not to succumb to the bleak vision of America painted by Donald Trump, from which “the land of the free” emerges as the place of neglect and carnage, torn apart by gangs and crime and drowning in drugs and blood of the “bowling green massacres”? Are the Founding Fathers’ provisions strong enough to repel the antidemocratic, authoritarian, and even totalitarian rhetoric of the new president, or is the American democracy doomed to become the extinct Eighth Wonder of the World having succumbed to the alternative-facts reality of the new White House?
Submit your manuscripts online at http://www.publicvoices.us.
Download a PDF version of this file by clicking on the icon to the right.
Special Issue Call for Manuscripts
Special Issue Call for Manuscripts