Bryan Christopher: Stopping the Deportation Machine | Bloomsbury Academic; September 18During his first year as adviser to the Riverside High School newspaper, Bryan Christopher oversaw perhaps the biggest story the publication had ever covered: the arrest and months-long detention of a Honduran student, Wildin Acosta, who faced deportation to the country he’d fled at 16 to escape gang violence. While some of Christopher’s journalism students documented the ordeal, others joined a groundswell of community activism that has been widely credited with securing Acosta’s release and 2016 return to Durham. Stopping the Deportation Machine, his first book, interweaves Acosta’s story with that of the four students who crusaded to bring their classmate home. You’re also aware of the extent to which you were involved—or not involved—in the advocacy effort around preventing his deportation. There’s a tension throughout the book around what would constitute crossing the line into advocacy for you as a teacher.