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Julian Castro‘Treated like animals’: Julián Castro condemns Biden over humanitarian crisis at US borderDemocrat says denying rights of Haitian people to claim asylum contradicts Biden’s promises to reverse ‘Trump’s cruelty’ Ed Pilkington in New York@ More
OpinionUS politicsMen on horses chasing Black asylum seekers? Sadly, America has seen it beforeMoustafa BayoumiThe Biden administration has condemned abuses at the border – while maintaining the policies underlying these abuses. That’s beyond cynical Thu 23 Sep 2021 06.22 EDTLast modified on Thu 23 Sep 2021 06.23 EDTYou’ve probably seen a photograph haunting the internet this week: a white-presenting man on horseback – uniformed, armed and sneering – is grabbing a shoeless Black man by the neck of his T-shirt. The Black man’s face bears an unmistakable look of horror. He struggles to remain upright while clinging dearly to some bags of food in his hands. Between the men, a long rein from the horse’s bridle arches menacingly in the air like a whip. The photograph was taken just a few days ago in Texas, but the tableau looks like something out of antebellum America.The image is profoundly upsetting, not just for what it portrays but for the history it evokes. What’s happening at the border right now puts two of our founding national myths – that we’re a land of liberty and a nation of immigrants – under scrutiny. To put it plainly, we don’t fare well under inspection.First, the current situation. This now iconic photo by photojournalist Paul Ratje was taken at a makeshift camp that has sprung up at the US-Mexico border at Del Rio, Texas. Over the past week or two, thousands of people, mostly Haitian, have crossed from the Mexican side of the Rio Grande to the US seeking asylum. It’s important to note that they didn’t come illegally; it is perfectly legal to arrive at a border point of entry and request asylum. But conditions in the camp, according to reports, have become fetid and nearly unlivable, forcing asylum seekers to trek back and forth across the river to buy food and supplies from the Mexican side.Then the men on horses showed up.In video broadcast by Al Jazeera, mounted border patrol agents can clearly be seen threatening, insulting and even lashing at the asylum seekers with their horses’ reins, growling at them to stay in Mexico. The images, which sparked justifiable outrage, quickly spread – as did rightwing defenses of the agents. Fox News, for example, was quick to point out that border patrol agents are not issued whips with their gear. But you don’t have to believe in alchemy to see that when a horse’s rein is used as whip, it becomes a whip.The Biden administration has ended use of the phrase ‘illegal alien’. It’s about time | Moustafa BayoumiRead moreChains, whips, horses, bloodhounds, branding irons: these were some of the tools used during New World slavery to preserve white hegemony. Most Americans know this, and I hold on to the hope that no one wants to return to such brutality. Every part of that miserable system was degrading. It was degrading to the enslaved, most obviously, and even, I would argue, to slaveholders, who surely lost more of their humanity each day that that monstrous system survived.In fact, New World slavery wasn’t just degrading. It was collective lunacy, often involving animals. Slaveholders and slave catchers – yes, that was a real profession – trained dogs to attack Black people, and then deliberately interpreted the attacks as proof that even dogs recognized Black inferiority.And those slave catchers? After Mexico formally abolished slavery in 1829, American slave catchers would routinely cross into Mexico – without authorization, it must be said – in search of runaway slaves from the US. In 1858, the Texas legislature even passed a law offering anyone returning an enslaved person “who may have escaped beyond the limits of the slave territory of the United States” a third of “the value of such slave”, with the government treasury paying the money. A noticeable uptick of kidnappings of people of African descent in Mexico followed. Needless to say, Mexico was not pleased.So history easily illustrates the US’s border hypocrisy. Yet the larger point is that every national border has always been a place that offers those who pass through one of two options: sanctuary or terror. The images emerging from Del Rio, explicitly recalling the collective shame of our past, are clearly pointing in the wrong direction. This might explain why the White House, which has executive authority over the border patrol, rushed to condemn the pictures.Asked about the footage, the White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, responded, “I don’t think anyone seeing that footage would think it was acceptable or appropriate.” Vice-President Kamala Harris said, “Human beings should never be treated that way.” The Department of Homeland Security has promised an investigation with “appropriate disciplinary actions”.But is this just image control? At the same time that it condemns the actions of its own law enforcement agency, the Biden administration has refused media access to the camp at Del Rio, invoked a Trump-era order (the rarely used public health law known as Title 42) to expel asylum seekers without review, and forcibly deported hundreds of Haitians in Texas – many of whom left the country more than a decade ago, after its 2010 earthquake – back to a country that is not only reeling from a massive earthquake last August but also from a political earthquake, the assassination of its president, last July.Without review, it’s impossible to know who is facing real threats of persecution when returned to Haiti. The United Nations human rights spokesperson, Marta Hurtado, said that the UN “is seriously concerned by the fact that it appears there have not been any individual assessments of the cases”. Why does the Biden administration not share her concern?One has to wonder if the same policies expelling Haitians from the US today would be in effect if those arriving at the border were Europeans or even Cubans. If history is any guide – for decades, the US privileged Cubans over Haitians and other Caribbean peoples in immigration matters – the answer is no.It’s one thing for the Biden administration to condemn abuses conducted by its own government that recall the worst parts of our national history. But it’s quite another to do so while maintaining the policies that enable those abuses. That’s not just cynical. It’s despicable.
Moustafa Bayoumi is the author of How Does It Feel to Be a Problem?: Being Young and Arab in America
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US immigrationParents of 337 children separated at border under Trump still not foundActivists and Biden officials have helped reunite 861 children with their parents but 337 remain in limbo Maya YangThu 12 Aug 2021 12.06 EDTLast modified on Thu 12 Aug 2021 15.03 EDTUS officials still cannot find the parents of 337 children separated at the Mexico-border by the Trump administration.According to a new court filing released on Wednesday by the justice department and the American Civil Liberties Union, attorneys, activists and Biden officials have helped reunite 861 children with their parents but 337 remain in limbo.In February, the Biden administration launched the Family Reunification Task Force as part of its efforts to undo the Trump administration’s controversial “zero-tolerance” policy that called for the criminal prosecution of adults crossing the border. The policy resulted in thousands of families being separated and received severe backlash from human rights organizations and immigration advocacy groups. Forty-five separated children have been reunited with their families since the creation of FRTF.According to the filing, the 337 children fall into three groups. The first group consists of 250 children whose parents are believed to have been removed from the US after being separated from their children. The second group consists of approximately 75 children whose parents are believed to be in the US. The last group includes 12 children for whom the government has not provided a phone number for the parent, child, sponsor or attorney.In addition to attempts to reach parents, sponsors and attorneys by telephone, the taskforce has also engaged in on-the-ground searches for the parents, which have been largely focused in the countries of origin of the parents who were removed from the US after their separation from their children.Despite the government’s efforts to overhaul Trump’s “zero-tolerance” policy, Biden has warned migrants not to enter the US. In an interview with ABC in March, Biden said his message to migrants was: “Don’t come over. Don’t leave your town or city or community.”According to Customs and Border Protection, the number of migrants that reached the southern border in July was more than 200,000, a figure that had not been seen in 20 years.Among the 200,000 migrants was a “record” 19,000 unaccompanied minors, according to David Shahoulian, assistant secretary for border and immigration policy.TopicsUS immigrationTrump administrationBiden administrationUS politicsnewsReuse this content More
BooksReign of Terror review: from 9/11 to Trump by way of Snowden and IraqSpencer Ackerman, once of the Guardian, displays a masterful command of the facts but sometimes lets his prejudice show Lloyd GreenSun 8 Aug 2021 02.00 EDTLast modified on Sun 8 Aug 2021 02.01 EDTThis 11 September will be the 20th anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and the crash of Flight 93. Two wars have left 6,700 Americans dead and more than 53,000 wounded. After the Trump presidency, America roils in a cold civil war. In Afghanistan, the Taliban is on the move again. Saddam Hussein is dead and gone but Iraq remains “not free”.‘A madman with millions of followers’: what the new Trump books tell usRead moreIn other words, the war on terror has produced little for the US to brag about. In an April Pew poll, two-thirds of respondents rated international terror as a “big” problem, albeit one that trailed healthcare, Covid, unemployment and 10 more.Against this bleak backdrop, Spencer Ackerman delivers his first book under the subtitle “How the 9/11 Era Destabilized America and Produced Trump”. It is part-chronicle, part-polemic. The author’s anger is understandable, to a point.Ackerman displays a masterful command of facts. No surprise. In 2014, he was part of the Guardian team that won a Pulitzer for reporting on Edward Snowden’s leaks about the National Security Agency.Ackerman stuck with the topic. A contributing editor at the Daily Beast, he has also been its senior national security writer. Ackerman is fluent in discussing the so-called security state, and how it is a creature of both political parties.In the face of Snowden’s revelations, congressional leaders came out for the status quo. According to Harry Reid, then the Democratic Senate majority leader, senators who complained about being left in the dark about the NSA had only themselves to blame. All other Americans were to sit down and shut up.Nancy Pelosi, then House minority leader and a persistent critic of the Patriot Act, a chief vehicle for surveillance powers, declined to criticize Barack Obama or high-tech intrusion in general. Instead, she called for Snowden’s prosecution. He made Russia his home.Ackerman notes that the American Civil Liberties Union and Rand Paul, Kentucky’s junior senator, were notable exceptions to the rule. At the time, Paul remarked: “When you collect it from a billion phone calls a day, even if you say you’re going to keep the name private, the possibility for abuse is enormous.”Ackerman also shines a light on how the far right played an outsized role in domestic terrorism before and after 9/11, reminding us of Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City bombing, teasing out McVeigh’s ties to other white nationalists.The attack on the US Capitol on 6 January this year is one more chapter in the story. Trump falsely claimed Antifa, leftwing radicals, were the real culprits. The roster of those under indictment reveals a very different story.In congressional testimony in April, Merrick Garland, the attorney general, and Alejandro Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, described “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists” as the greatest domestic threat. Garland also singled out “those who advocate for the superiority of the white race”.Chad Wolf, Trump’s acting homeland security chief, made a similar point last fall. Of course, his boss wasn’t listening.Ackerman delves meticulously into the blowback resulting from the war on terror. Unfortunately, he downplays how the grudges and enmities of the old country have been magnified by key social forces, immigration chief among them.Joe Biden, then vice-president, condemned the Boston Marathon bombers as “knock-off jihadists”. But Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev had received asylum. The immigrant population stands near a record high and the US fertility rate is in retrograde. On the right, that is a combustible combination. When Tucker Carlson is in Hungary, singing the praises of Viktor Orbán, the past is never too far away.In his effort to draw as straight a line as possible between the war on terror and the rise of Trump, Ackerman can overplay his hand. Racism, nativism and disdain for the other were not the sole drivers of Trump’s win, much as Islamophobia was not the sole cause of the Iraq war, a conflict Ackerman acknowledges he initially supported.Trump’s victory was also about an uneven economic recovery and, when it came to America’s wars, who did the fighting and dying. Overwhelmingly, it wasn’t the offspring of coastal elites. In 2016, there was a notable correlation between battlefield casualties and support for Trump.According to Douglas L Kriner of Boston University and Francis X Shen of the University of Minnesota, “Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan could very well have been winners for [Hillary] Clinton if their war casualties were lower.” Residents of red states are more than 20% more likely to join the military. Denizens of blue America punch way above their weight when it comes to going to college.Ackerman, a graduate of New York’s hyper-meritocratic Bronx High School of Science, bares his own class prejudices much in the way Clinton did at a notorious Wall Street fundraiser. Hillary dunked on the “Deplorables”. Ackerman goes after those he sees as socially undesirable.In his telling, Trump is “an amalgam of no less than four of the worst kinds of New Yorkers”. According to his taxonomy, those are “outer-borough whites”, wealth vampires, dignity-free media strivers and landlords.I Alone Can Fix It: Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker on their Trump bestsellerRead moreThis year, many of those “outer-borough whites” voted for a Black candidate, Eric Adams, in the Democratic mayoral primary. Adams, Brooklyn’s borough president, is a former police captain.The real estate industry is a critical part of the city economy. Strivers have been here since the Dutch came onshore. As for “wealth vampires” – come on, really?The city’s economy reels. Murder is way up. Law and order matters. Ackerman’s disdain is misdirected.Nationally, the security state is not going to just disappear. But not all is gloom and doom. In a break with Obama and Trump, the Biden White House has pledged to no longer go gunning for reporters over leaks.The US is leaving Afghanistan. Unlike Trump, Biden was not dissuaded. And last Wednesday, the Senate foreign relations committee voted to end the 1991 and 2002 authorizations of use of military force in Iraq. Even the leviathan can budge.TopicsBooksSeptember 11 2001Donald TrumpTrump administrationUS politicsRepublicansDemocratsreviewsReuse this content More
US immigrationUS migrant detentions soar despite Biden’s campaign promisePresident vowed end to ‘prolonged’ detention but number of detainees has more than doubled since end of February P More
US immigrationUS justice department to appeal Daca court decision, says BidenTexas federal judge’s ruling prevents government from approving new applications but doesn’t affect current recipients Victoria BekiempisSat 17 Jul 2021 11.25 EDTLast modified on Sat 17 Jul 2021 11.44 EDTJoe Biden has said the US Department of Justice intends on appealing a new court decision that effectively halts an Obama-era program aimed at protecting young immigrants from deportation.Texas federal judge Andrew Hanen on Friday deemed illegal the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca) program. This program prevents the deportation of immigrants who were brought to the US unlawfully as children, known as “Dreamers”.Texas borderlands too often a photo op for politicians pushing stereotypesRead moreThis ruling bars the government from approving any new applications – in other words, suspending Daca. For now, Daca is preserved for the more than 616,000 people enrolled in the program until other courts weigh in. Hanen’s decision is also in favor of the eight other conservative states suing to thwart Daca.“Yesterday’s federal court ruling is deeply disappointing. While the court’s order does not now affect current Daca recipients, this decision nonetheless relegates hundreds of thousands of young immigrants to an uncertain future,” the president’s statement said.“The Department of Justice intends to appeal this decision in order to preserve and fortify Daca. And, as the court recognized, the Department of Homeland Security plans to issue a proposed rule concerning Daca in the near future.”Daca has come under fire from conservatives since its creation in 2012. Texas in 2018 requested to halt the program through a preliminary injunction.While Hanen denied this request, his ruling then appears to have presaged. Hanen stated that he believed Daca, as instituted, was probably unconstitutional without Congress’s approval.Hanen also decided in 2015 that Barack Obama could not broaden Daca protections or implement a program that protected Dreamers’ parents.In September 2017, the Trump administration announced that it planned to end Daca, throwing recipients into turmoil. Following extensive legal battles, the US supreme court blocked Donald Trump’s efforts.Biden has pushed for Daca to become permanent, and vowed on the campaign trail that he would make the program permanent. While the US House green-lit legislation in March that created a path toward citizenship for Dreamers, the measure has languished in the Senate.“In 2012, the Obama-Biden administration created the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca) policy, which has allowed hundreds of thousands of young immigrants to remain in the United States, to live, study and work in our communities. Nine years later, Congress has not acted to provide a path to citizenship for Dreamers,” Biden’s statement also said.“But only Congress can ensure a permanent solution by granting a path to citizenship for Dreamers that will provide the certainty and stability that these young people need and deserve. I have repeatedly called on Congress to pass the American Dream and Promise Act, and I now renew that call with the greatest urgency.“It is my fervent hope that through reconciliation or other means, Congress will finally provide security to all Dreamers, who have lived too long in fear,” Biden said.The Associated Press contributed to this reportTopicsUS immigrationUS politicsTexasJoe BidenLaw (US)newsReuse this content More
Cartas de la fronteraTexasTexas borderlands too often a photo op for politicians pushing stereotypesUbiquitous political border tours fixate on immigration, missing the complex character and needs of the region Carlos SanchezThu 8 Jul 2021 14.54 EDTLast modified on Thu 8 Jul 2021 15.14 EDTEdward Marquez, the father of my classmate when I was growing up, became a border community hero in 1994 when, as a state district judge from El Paso, he initiated a rare legal maneuver that resonated along the Texas-Mexico border. Fed up with a long history of disparate funding and state services to border communities from the state capital in Austin, he convened a court of criminal inquiry – a weapon in the legal arsenal that is available when a judge has evidence that a prosecutor fell short of pursuing a criminal case and justice was not being served.Welcome to the US southern border: same country, different planetRead moreIn this instance, it was evidence of historical neglect for Texas border communities. The unprecedented court of inquiry highlighted funding disparities to border communities such as a $43 per capita allotment to El Paso in state highway funds compared with as much as $220 per capita for other Texas cities. State leaders were subpoenaed to testify about the funding disparities, always with the threat that Judge Marquez had the power to indict them if he found compelling evidence that they had violated the rights of border residents under the state’s equal protection clause.Ultimately, an embarrassed Democratic administration, led by the then governor, Ann Richards, ensured additional funding went to border cities like El Paso and the legacy of Judge Marquez was cemented in history.The political reality that the judge brought to national attention nearly three decades ago, however, continues to plague border communities and has created an uncomfortable political paradox: the communities need the attention of state and national policymakers to highlight massive problems with poverty, health issues and educational attainment. But whenever this region draws international attention, that attention has little to do with these social issues and everything to do with the heated debate over immigration.Unfortunately, this paradox is as old as the border itself and feeds into negative stereotypes about the safety of this region, while acting as an economic drag. In 2016, McAllen, in south Texas, was selected by an amateur sports federation as a two-year venue for a statewide competition that typically attracts thousands of young athletes . Texas cities yearn to host the event because as many as 20,000 or more parents and kids show up to watch and compete – all the while ringing up hefty hotel and food bills that contribute to the local economy.But before the Games of Texas, as it’s called, began that year, south Texas got word that parents in different parts of the state were concerned about border violence. While Mexican drug cartels were often listed as the main source of concern, another immigration surge was well under way. Word got around that some parents were even talking about organizing spinoff games in north Texas to avoid having to expose their families to the treachery of the south Texas borderlands.Community leaders launched a counter-offensive, writing columns for newspapers in other parts of the state and vowing to show off the region’s family spirit. Parents who braved the trip to south Texas left that first year impressed with the local hospitality, and any widespread concern about the dangers of the region seemed to disappear the next year.Virtually every year, the Democratic border congressman Henry Cuellar issues a press statement following the annual release of the FBI Uniform Crime Report to demonstrate the safety of border communities relative to other cities across Texas and the nation.But too often, elected officials seeking a quick photo opportunity politicize the border rather than address the needs of its communities. The local joke is that if you’re a Republican a border tour requires a ride up the Rio Grande on a state-owned, armored plated gunboat (federal vessels are much less ominous looking and rarely make the photo-op cut). But if you’re a Democrat, the border tour entails a must-see-and-be-seen visit to a local facility that provides humanitarian services to migrants.When the then speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, visited the border in 2017, federal authorities approached landowners along the Rio Grande to ask them to keep the media off their property, trying unsuccessfully to make private a huge swath of international boundary.Sometimes it’s best to view these border tours with a sense of levity. One go-to place to visit is the county-owned Anzalduas park, a birdwatching paradise on the banks of the Rio Grande, which provides a magnificent vista overlooking Mexico. When President Trump visited in January 2019, US Customs and Border Protection attended with all its glorious, mechanized immigrant-fighting vehicles on display.But it is the Texas Republican senator John Cornyn (to his credit, a frequent border community visitor) who will live in infamy after he visited the park to decry the dangers of immigration in front of media cameras. His timing was slightly off; as he spoke, journalists witnessed the launching from the Mexican shore of a double-decker party boat touring the beautiful river, accompanied by festive music.Trump’s most recent visit to the border, in June, shows how misleading such tours can be. The newly elected mayor of McAllen was the only local elected official who toured the wall with Trump and the Texas governor, Greg Abbott. Little beyond the wall and the dangers of the migrants were mentioned.For business and political leaders along the border, these visits offer little by way of solution and serve only to further inflame passions about immigration. In a rare moment when a large group of US senators allowed a local elected official to speak about the community, the official urged the members of Congress to overhaul existing immigration laws because the current system is broken.“We can’t do that until we stop these immigrants from crossing,” one senator told the local official. And soon that particular border tour ended – after the senators met with the media and posed for a few photos near the river.Carlos Sanchez is director of public affairs for Hidalgo county, Texas. He was a journalist for 37 years and has worked at the Washington Post and Texas Monthly magazine, as well as eight other newsroomsTopicsTexasCartas de la fronteraUS politicsUS immigrationfeaturesReuse this content More
