AS JOE BIDEN took the oath of office last month, Guatemalan security forces at the Honduran border thwarted thousands of U.S.-bound migrants. While decadeslong American imperialism has facilitated displacement throughout the region, the U.S. is increasingly outsourcing its deadly immigration policy. This week on Intercepted: The Biden administration announced it will begin to process the 25,000 asylum-seekers stuck in squalid border town camps as part of Donald Trump’s so-called Migrant Protection Protocols, a program commonly referred to as “Remain in Mexico.” But immigration advocates fear Biden will not reverse the bipartisan trend of his predecessors to further militarize the southern border and expand the reaches of immigration enforcement — policies that have led to more migrant deaths and detention in recent decades. Despite Biden’s executive actions to reverse the Muslim ban, initiate migrant family reunification, and fortify the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, his administration has indicated that it will continue to support Mexican and Guatemalan armed enforcement of their borders on behalf of the U.S.
IN LOUISIANA AND Texas, immigrants seeking asylum are facing dire conditions in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention centers hit by this week’s extreme cold. At the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas, advocates say parents and children have been living with overflowing toilets, thirst, poor hygiene, and heat that fades in and out. Twenty miles away, at the South Texas ICE Processing Center in Pearsall, advocates say detainees who complained about the cold faced retaliation. At the Pine Prairie ICE Processing Center in Louisiana, a detainee interviewed by The Intercept reports that the segregation unit, akin to solitary confinement, has no heat.
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“If they’re hearing complaints like, ‘Oh it’s cold in here,’ they’ll be like, ‘It could be worse,’ and turn on fans.”
Detainees’ complaints to ICE agents about the temperature have been met with retaliation, Ochoa Lopez told Allain. “The officers are turning on fans to make it colder,” Allain said. “If they’re hearing complaints like, ‘Oh it’s cold in here,’ they’ll be like, ‘It could be worse,’ and turn on fans.” Ochoa Lopez told her that agents have thrown blankets into the garbage after detainees complained.
Left on their own in the PNW, immigrant youth fight ICE together
They may have different backgrounds, but they’re sticking with each other to form a ‘super familia’ and help others like them.
Unaccompanied youth such as José, who is originally from El Salvador and now lives in the Pacific Northwest, are often housed in youth detention centers scattered across the country and run by the U.S. Health and Human Services Department’s Office of Refugee Resettlement. But if no family or sponsor has been found by the time these youth turn 18, ICE transfers them to an adult facility.
Read more here.
WA immigration advocates want to do more than erase the Trump years
While accurate, the headlines do not always acknowledge both the hope and frustration immigration advocates feel with the new administration. To be sure, President Joe Biden has signed a flurry of executive orders that do have an immediate impact on certain aspects of immigration law. But immigrants say they experienced such draconian policies the past four years that they have a hard time getting excited about simply returning to what might amount to a pre-Trump status quo.
Essential Farmworkers Deserve Pesticide Protections
COVID-19 has pulled back the veil on the strikingly poor workplace conditions of these essential workers, built by decades of insufficient farmworker health and safety policy, poor immigration policy, and limited health care access. As a consequence, at least 86,900 food workers have tested positive for COVID-19 – but with uneven data collection, exacerbated by businesses’ lack of transparency over workplace outbreaks and workers’ avoidance of testing due to fear of losing income, the figures we have are likely an underestimate.
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