The Rational Middle

Executive Producer Loren Steffy speaks with former Dallas journalist and two-time Peabody Award winner Byron Harris about his new podcast "When I Got Here".

Talia Inlender, Deputy Director of the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at UCLA, joins us to discuss their recent report on the Biden administration's dedicated asylum docket, and why it's rife …

With the traumatic deaths of 53 migrants in San Antonio weighing on our hearts and minds, we sat down to chat with Luz Garcini, Nonresident Scholar at Baker University's the Center for the United Sta…

Frances Kelley, Shreveport Coordinator for the Louisiana Advocates for Immigrants in Detention (LA-AID), tells us more about LA-AID, the services it provides, and the importance of taking a long view…

Frances Kelley, Shreveport Coordinator for the Louisiana Advocates for Immigrants in Detention (LA-AID), dissects the stunning problem of immigrant detention in the U.S., the lesser-known problem of …

As DACA reaches its first decade, we hear from Andrea Tecpoyotl, a young DACA activist, about what it's like to live with the program: its promise as well as its frustrations.

Valerie Lacarte, Senior Policy Analyst with the Migration Policy Institute's Human Services Initiative, takes us inside her research on trends in Black immigration to the U.S.—and the lessons it hold…

The team gets together to celebrate the new Rational Middle of Immigration video episodes, puzzle over Title 42, and consider the marvel that is DACA. Plus the perennial question of what it takes to …

Perla Trevizo, an award-wining journalist with the ProPublica/Texas Tribune Investigative Unit, takes us inside her reporting on the long history of Texas's border spending; outputs vs. outcomes when…

Sandra Sanchez, an award-winning journalist covering the Southern border at Border Report, speaks with Loren Steffy about her two-part deep dive into the ramifying effects of the Migrant Protection P…

Chief Andy Harvey, Chief of Police in Pharr, Texas, as well as its newly-appointed City Manager, joins Melissa Brannan to discuss some of the components of life in a border town: the blockade at the …

Athulya Rajakumar, a Documented Dreamer who recently testified before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship and Border Safety, takes us through the unique struggle of Document…

In Part Two of his exploration of immigration surveillance in the U.S., Asad L. Asad (Assistant Professor of Sociology at Stanford University), reflects on the unique effects of "everyday surveillanc…

Asad L. Asad, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Stanford University, takes us on a two-part exploration of immigration surveillance in the U.S.

Elizabeth Trovall, immigration reporter at the Houston Chronicle, takes us behind the scenes of her story on the Haitian migrant camp at Del Rio, and all the other stories that lay just out of sight.

Adam Estle, Vice President of Field & Constituencies at the National Immigration Forum, discusses his work with the Bibles, Badges and Business for Immigration Reform network, grasstops vs. grassroot…

Stephen Klineberg, Founding Director of the Kinder Institute for Urban Research at Rice University, takes us inside the Houston Area Survey—now in it's 40th year—and Houstonians evolving attitudes to…

Pamela Lizette Cruz, Research Analyst at the Baker Institute's Center for the United States and Mexico, gives us a deeper look into the Center's research on America's radical demographic shifts—and w…

Muzaffar Chishti, Senior Fellow at the Migration Policy Institute and Director of the MPI office at the NYU School of Law, looks back at Biden's first year in office and sees the glass half full—and …