Crossing the Line Celebrates Its First Book Birthday with Accolades, Demanding a Virtual Party (Invitation Inside), and News...

...the book will soon re-launch in a 2nd Edition complete with new Author Foreword and an updated Epilogue framed around the regime’s first 100 days.

Let’s start with a peek behind the curtain…

Unstated in the roller-coaster of the worst of the worst news these past four months — and counting — is that Crossing the Line has been under attack since early March. There’s not much I can share publicly about the wholly fallacious accusation of defamation that was never going to hold up in a court of law. Suffice it to say, my publisher felt forced to halt distribution, while I faced an unexpected choice:

• Let the book die, and just when the world needs it most, or

• Go for broke, literally, and retain a defamation defense team to resist, refuse, reclaim, and fight back.

I chose the latter. And on the first anniversary of Crossing the Line: Finding America in the Borderlands I’m thrilled to share that the book will soon be back where it should be: available to readers who, if they only knew, would be outraged, too, about the cruel US immigration system, now replicated worldwide, that was built by administrations on both sides of the political aisle, only to be weaponized by a demagogue and a madman. (And, no, they are not the same person.)

Since early March, as my legal counsel prepared our defense, I continued to make speeches against the Trump/Miller regime’s efforts to disappear one million people this year. I have published articles, produced podcasts, been interviewed by others, started a Book Club & Webinar series, and I have marched — first as part of the 900+ Hands Off rallies on April 5th; then as part of the 1300+ No Kings Day demonstrations on June 14th — though here in London, where there is a king, we called it No Clowns Day (a riff off No Crowns Day).

For more than three months, I was not able to promote Crossing the Line because your attempts to buy it would result in the following message from the distributor, Simon & Schuster: “Out of Stock, Indefinitely.”

The book was even pulled off my publisher’s website — as was I, for that matter — because we’re living in scary times, and while we’d all like to believe that we’d stand up for justice and fairness in moments of uncertainty, fear is real.

Unexpected and thus far unannounced accolades…

But Crossing the Line continued to distinguish itself as a book worthy of this historic time and moment, even with me and my publisher forced to keep our hands off the back-end marketing and promotion engine:

On April 5, 2025, Crossing the Line took First Prize for the coveted International Nellie Bly Book Award for Journalist Non-Fiction.

On May 22, the 2025 RFK Human Rights Book Award was announced, with Crossing the Line featured alongside such incredible authors as Raymond Arsenault, Jonathan Blitzer, Steven Brill, Jonathan Kozol, and Wright Thompson, among others. Blitzer took the prize for Everyone Who is Gone is Here: The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis — an inspired choice. But being a finalist among the greats with a debut book was its own honor.

I’m still pinching myself!

Fast-forward to today’s Book Birthday…

Perhaps it was the unexpected recognition for a book now being called a “manual for the movement for JUST migration” and “the perfect primer to the immigration issue” that caused my publishing team to renew their commitment to Crossing the Line.

Maybe the accolades led to bookstore orders that could not be fulfilled.

Or could it be that everyone, everywhere — buoyed by the No Kings Day outcry and the wanna-be dictator’s dud of a military parade — recognizes that the resistance against the horrors foretold in my book is finally growing?

Courage is contagious, after all.

Whatever the reason, I’m pleased to announce — drum roll please — that Crossing the Line: Finding America in the Borderlands will soon be available for public consumption again in all formats! And the book’s essential point has never been more true: ICE is a rogue institution and should be abolished alongside its twin paramilitary apparatus, Customs and Border Protection. Both are opaque agencies now reigning terror upon the lands. They have been turned into palace guards for a demagogue and a madman, as I predicted they would be in Chapters 9 and 16 of Crossing the Line.

This Sunday, June 22, 2:30-4:00 pm ET, We celebrate!

We will mark not just the first anniversary and the forthcoming 2nd edition of Crossing the Line. We will also be launching, together, the long-awaited memoir by mi hermana de alma, Dora Rodriguez.

Dora: A Daughter of Unforgiving Terrain hits bookshelves on July 5, 2025.

You won’t want to miss the Book Talk & Launch Party facilitated by Dora’s book doctor, co-author, and champion, Abbey Carpenter.

Come One! Come All! Please share this invitation widely. Let’s make this a book party to remember! Click the image to register:

Stay strong, my friends. Stay connected. The only way through this is… together!

Sarah