"History is repeating itself in the so-called Land of the Free. The decades-long buildup to this tragic outcome is the foundational plotline of my book."
SNEAK PEEK! Author Foreword, Crossing the Line, 2nd edition, coming soon!
Sneak Peek: Author Foreword, Crossing the Line, 2nd ed.
The idea for Crossing the Line came over me in a rush. It was early 2020. I was in the US borderlands, bearing witness to the human costs of a presidential administration that wore immigration cruelty like a badge of honor. I thought to document this history. I sought to sound an alarm. I hoped that by celebrating grassroots warriors of welcome, the work would become a handbook for a more humane world when the nation, finally, turned the page on Trumpism.
But on November 5, 2024, the narrative became darker still, and the machinery of misery I aimed to expose metastasized. The banal, everyday brutality you will discover in these pages was as much crystal ball–gazing as historical chronicle, foretelling the depths of inhumanity to which another Trump term would so swiftly descend.
On day one, they went after the rights of the most vulnerable among us, making my book’s original working title, The First Solution, perhaps now more apt. It was all too fitting, therefore, that when my publisher suggested we update Crossing the Line, with an author foreword and a revised epilogue reflecting on the second Trump regime’s first 100 days, I was in Berlin.
“Let us be reminded that before there is a final solution,
there must be a first solution, a second one, even a third.
The move toward a final solution is not a jump.
It takes one step, then another, then another.”
—Toni Morrison, 1995
The German capital was the hub of European fascism under Hitler. From Berlin, plans for the Final Solution were hatched and the first, second, and third solutions, etc., were directed—muzzling the media, purging the courts, undermining democratic norms and laws, consolidating power, and building an infrastructure of prison camps, transportation networks, and an enforcement apparatus to systemically hunt, corral, deport, and incarcerate all those targeted with dehumanization—until an estimated 11 to 12 million people were disappeared off the face of this Earth.
In Berlin, every cobblestone has a story to tell; every memorial reminds us of the tragic fruit that blooms from fascist ideology. The German Resistance Memorial Center, housed in a complex used by the Nazi equivalent of the US Department of Homeland Security, introduces us to those who, like protagonists in Crossing the Line, were criminalized for their humanity.
“Democracy Must Be Remembered,” proclaims the banner at the gates of what was once the headquarters of Hitler’s secret police. The Topography of Terror museum, now standing on that site, traces the rise of the Third Reich. The stories of Hitler’s henchmen—Goebbels, Goering, Himmler, Frank—mirror those of Trump’s malign inner circle—Miller, Homan, Bondi, Noem.
Berlin demands that we recall the worst of humanity’s worst impulses. Yet in today’s US, citizens, elected officials, and the morbidly rich alike have blindingly, hauntingly forgotten what happens when a regime bans books, halts the teaching of history, and creates an alternate-reality indoctrination apparatus to support its own evil ends. On how fascism starts, Bertrand Russell tells us, “First they fascinate the fools. Then, they muzzle the intelligent.”
The plunge into lawlessness and corruption of Trump’s MAGA-party regime recalls the plunge into lawlessness and corruption that Germany experienced less than one hundred years ago. History is repeating itself in the so-called Land of the Free. The decades-long buildup to this tragic outcome is the foundational plotline of my book.
I hoped Crossing the Line would help convince enough people to choose democracy in 2024. But that was not to be. And in just 100 days, Trumpism unbound destroyed the legal right to seek asylum in the US; left the already beleaguered immigration system in tatters; terminated the much-lauded Refugee Admissions Program; rolled back such governmental promises as Temporary Protected Status and humanitarian parole; activated arcane wartime powers in response to a made-for-TV “invasion”; tapped previously off-limits personal data sources to create a digital surveillance network; and unleashed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) goons, with the aid of an alphabet soup of policing entities employing Gestapo-like tactics, to abduct and disappear our colleagues, community members, family, and friends into gulags both inside the US and out, then flouted court orders to bring these people back.
Trump & Co harnessed immigration to drive our democracy into crisis.
Crossing the Line is more than an exposé. It is an exhortation to stand up against the evil that Trump’s fascism represents. It is also an invitation to join the choir, if you haven’t already, singing ever louder in glorious harmony, This is not the people we wish to be!
On November 5, 2024, my handbook transformed, in one reader’s words, into a manual for the movement for just migration. As evidenced by the roughly 100 tales of resistance and resilience spotlighted in these pages, we are better than the result of the last election. If we all choose to emulate my story collaborators—each of us doing our small part, every day, to thwart the cruel machinery of the Border Industrial Complex and the “security” agencies and institutions it has turned against us—then we can become the many tiny grains of sand that jam the gears and keep them from turning until these dark days are finally behind us.
It will be a long, traumatic journey to throw off the criminal actors who, like autocrats since time immemorial, are consolidating the levers of power to unleash the worst of humanity’s worst impulses once again. But we must believe that we can, and that we will. And that when we do, we will be ready to build a more humane world from the ashes.
Stay strong, my friends. The only way through this is . . . together.
In solidarity and justice,
Sarah
May 2025