Plans to kill a cane plant called carrizo along the border with a herbicide called imazapyr (sp?) have been halted. This post comes from a site called RedOrbit, a science site for all kinds of people that looks pretty interesting.
On the negative side, very negative, you can read a series of articles at the blog Border Lines, an outstanding site sponsored by the Transborder Project of the Center for International Policy, addressing the absolutely hideous nature of current treatment of undocumented workers in the US. The conditions in standard prisons for people who have committed jailable offenses are terrible enough. And the fact that the US has five percent of the world's population and 25% of the worlds prisoners should tell you something.
But for undocumented workers, it's a whole different level of horrible. Somewhere below the mainstream radar, but not below the radar of immigrant-haters who celebrate it, a system has been created which resembles incarceration of the Japanese in the US during World War II and the ghettoization of Jews before the war started. It is a shameful system of scapegoating thousands and thousands of people which appears to violate the most basic rights. Joe Arpaio is the most visible symbol, but not the only persecutor. And these crimes against humanity have become money makers for private prison contractors such as, with its publicity-saavy webpage, Corrections Corporation of America (a more critical look here) (actually there are a ton of critical articles) and GEO Group. (Here is a pretty revealing article about the GEO group.
You can read the articles at Border Lines here, here , here , here, here, here, and here for a very good overview of what's going on.
Essentially all undocumented immigrants and many documented ones at well have been, by the creation of the Criminal Alien Program, redefined as criminal aliens and subject to arrest.
Can you imagine how many immigrants start with fear at unexpected knocks at their doors?
We cannot claim to be a democracy unless we bring these practices into the sunlight and eliminate them.