Melissa del Bosque

“A public defender’s lonely fight against family separation.”

How several agents from a small outpost in Arizona, including recently retired chief Carla Provost, climbed to the top of the Border Patrol, then one by one retired, leaving corruption, misconduct and a toxic culture in their wake.

The story of former Immigration and Customs Enforcement lawyer Laura Peña — who went to work defending the migrants she used to prosecute — and a family separation case she recently fought in which false “evidence” had been used to detain her client.

ICE is bad, but as that agency gets the bulk of critics’ ire, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency legally operates within 100 miles of the border, where it needs neither warrents nor explanations to search and detain American citizens. Civil liberties are in danger. How did this happen?

How the manager of a million-dollar horse breeding facility became an informant on one of Mexico’s most feared cartels: Los Zetas.

“Key to the operation in the United States was Jose Treviño, a U.S. citizen with a clean record who had never wanted anything to do with his family’s illicit dealings, until Miguel gave him $25,000 to buy Tempting Dash. ‘You can pick your friends but you can’t pick your family,’ Jose often said.

“The FBI wanted Graham to keep working with Jose Treviño and see where it led. He reluctantly agreed to cooperate. Within months, the young horse agent with a Texas A&M ring and an Aggie bumper sticker on his truck was given a Nextel cell phone with a wiretap. The FBI would be listening to every phone conversation Graham had with his new business associates. Unwittingly, Graham, heir to a Texas horse-racing empire, had become an informant on one of the world’s most lethal crime syndicates.”