America thinks it knows the story of the border. According to New York Times political reporter and author Jazmine Ulloa, it doesn't.

Jazmine joins Chuck Rocha and Mike Madrid to discuss her groundbreaking new book El Paso — part memoir, part history, part love story — and why the city at the heart of America's immigration debate has been misread, misrepresented, and misused for decades.

Jazmine was sitting in a movie theater when her phone wouldn't stop buzzing. The 2019 El Paso mass shooting, a racially motivated attack three minutes from where she went to high school, became the catalyst for a book years in the making. Through the stories of five families who crossed through El Paso dating back to the Mexican Revolution, Jazmine dismantles the myth of the "Hispanic invasion" and reveals a city that existed long before the United States did.

From the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo to family separations under the bridge, from Los Niños Héroes to the rise of the grand replacement theory, El Paso makes the case that this isn't a border crisis. It's a mirror.

Chuck and Mike also dig into the California Governor's race, breaking down the Eric Swalwell implosion, Xavier Becerra's surge among working-class Latino voters, and why with early ballots dropping in two weeks, the real election has already begun.

In This Episode:

How the 2019 El Paso shooting launched Jazmine's journey to write the book
Why El Paso, not Ellis Island, is the true lens for understanding American immigration
Nativism, xenophobia and the grand replacement theory: what history actually shows
Why working-class Latinos feel abandoned by both political parties
The California Governor's race: Becerra, Swalwell, Villaraigosa and early voting is right around the corner
Latino Vote Summit: June 23rd, Washington D.C.

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We highly recommend Jazmine's book: El Paso: Five Families and One Hundred Years of Blood, Migration, Race, and Memory.
Buy it on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/El-Paso-Families-Hundred-Migration/dp/0593471865
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Recorded April 22, 2026
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Referenced in the episode:

The New York Times - A Startlingly Vivid Portrait of El Paso, and of America: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/01/books/review/el-paso-jazmine-ulloa.html

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