US Immigration laws

Debate: ‘Colonialism Is Conquest of Land, Labour Exploitation, Oppression – All at Once.’

In a reply to to Mahmood Mamdani’s response to her review of his book, Sharma says the world is not comprised of discrete, disconnected territories but of people brought together through the shared space of empire(s).

In my review of Mahmood Mamdani’s new book, Neither Settler nor Native – The Making and Unmaking of Permanent Minorities, I questioned two dichotomies used to frame his analysis of the colonial process in the United States. These were, first, the distinction between colonialism and racism and, relatedly, the distinction between the expropriation of land and the exploitation of people’s labour. I wondered what is lost when we try to separate out these practices.

Neither Settler nor Native – The Making and Unmaking of Permanent Minorities by Mahmood Mamdani.

In particular, I did not think that we could account for the transatlantic slave trade if such dichotomies were maintained. Thus, I asked: ‘Can anyone whose labour is made exploitable, not always already be expropriated from the land?’ ‘Enslaved Africans were expropriated from land too,’ I argued, adding, that, ‘they were forcibly taken from their societies and put to work as enslaved labour by the same colonial state.’

Professor Mamdani replied to my review with a question of his own, asking: ‘Were enslaved Africans also expropriated from the land ‘by the same colonial state’?’ His answer was that, ‘On the face of it, this seems a tall claim, untenable in light of the historical research so far’. Let me clarify my argument, for I think it was misconstrued by Mamdani. My point was that the same imperial-state – the British Empire – was responsible for both the colonisation of what became its Thirteen Colonies as well as for a large portion of the transatlantic slave trade. Indeed, it was the most dominant force in the ‘evil trade’ between 1640 and 1807, when it was formally abolished. Both the expropriation of the land of those who came be categorised as ‘Indians’ (the ‘natives’ of the Thirteen Colonies) and the exploitation of the labour of enslaved people categorised as ‘Negroes’ were critical to the success of the British colonial project.

This is not because, as Mamdani argues, that, ‘after an early phase that focused on expropriating the labour of Indians, the US took a conscious decision to displace Indian with African labour’ (my emphasis). This is a teleological argument, one which reimagines a long and unpredictable history as having been predetermined. We cannot read the enslavement of Black people and the exploitation of their labour as simply part of some long-hatched plan premised on the settler colonial ‘logic of elimination’ of the Indians, as historian Patrick Wolfe argues.

In contrast to such arguments, historian Andrés Reséndez has shown that the massive loss of life of Indians across the Americas was largely a result of the harsh conditions of forced labour they endured. With their immune systems fatally weakened, they were made susceptible to diseases that were new to them. To corroborate his argument, Reséndez points out that ‘one year before Europeans began reporting smallpox [in 1509, 17 years after Christopher Columbus’s landing], Española’s Indian population had dwindled to 5% or less of what it had been in 1492’ (my emphasis). The enormous loss of life was the outcome of numerous factors, none of which were part of a preplanned ‘logic’.

Once brought together under the force of ‘blood and fire’ (as Karl Marx put it), both those people racialised as Indians and as ‘Negroes’ were classified by the British imperial-state as aliens and not as subjects of the British Crown. People in both groupings were enslaved (the proportion of enslaved Black people was far greater, however). Both were formally freed from slavery in the late 19th century. Both were excluded from the group of rights-bearing persons in the Thirteen Colonies. Both groups were infantilised and legally considered as dependents. With the independence of the US in the late 18th century from the British Empire, neither Indians nor Black people (free or enslaved) were legally regarded as US citizens.

These facts make it impossible to support the claim made by Mamdani that in the United States there are two groups of people: native Indians governed by customary law and all others governed by civil law. From the tenuous establishment of the first British colony in 1607 until the constitutional amendments of the immediate post-civil war era of the late 19th century – the Slave Codes (the first of which was enacted by the British colony of South Carolina in 1691) ensured that Black people were legally set apart from those racialised as White.

Also read: When India Proposed a Casteist Solution to South Africa’s Racist Problem

Paying attention to US immigration laws further upsets the idea that all non-Indians were governed (albeit not equally) by civil law. Following quickly on the heels of the formal emancipation of enslaved Black people in 1865 and their incorporation into US citizenship in 1868, the US enacted its first immigration law in 1875. From its independence 100 years earlier to the 1875 Page Act, entry to the US followed the imperial model of mobility controls and placed no significant restrictions on people coming in.

The Page Act constructed two new categories of people whose entry to the US was specifically barred: ‘Chinese coolies’ and ‘prostitutes’ (aimed specifically at restricting the entry of women from China). State governed mobility into the US was, from that point on, racialised.

Yet, it was still not until the 1924 US Immigration Act that the entry of people from Europe was restricted and regulated (incidentally, also the same year that Indians were made US citizens). This new immigration law did not affect all Europeans equally. Like its predecessors, the 1924 law was racist: largely concerned with restricting the entry of Southern and Eastern Europeans, along with all Jewish people regardless of where they were moving from.

Significantly, people categorised as migrants are, like Indians, governed through the plenary power doctrine. Such powers insulate the US government from constitutional challenges by migrants, who, today, are the only group legally categorised as ‘aliens’. The result was that, like ‘Indian tribes’, migrants remain under the control of Congress. Indeed, migrants are governed by a different set of laws – US citizenship and immigration laws – than are any US citizens. I will return to this issue later.

American Indian labourers, in 1906. Photo: US Reclamation Service, Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

Of course, the fact that the binary of customary/civil law does not hold in the United States doesn’t fully address the issue of whether all these people can be considered to be colonised. Mamdani expressly disagrees with such a formulation. In response to my review, he asks, ‘what is the difference, historically and politically, between natives and immigrants, particularly forced immigrants (slaves, indentured servants)’? and ‘why draw a distinction between [these] two oppressed groups’? His answer is that we must draw a distinction between natives and migrants, because ‘colonisation is the conquest of land. Control over labour may or may not follow’. ‘Blacks’, he argues, ‘have been a source of labour and Indians a source of land, resulting in different governance regimes’. Black people are forced to endure White supremacy while Indians face colonialism. Thus, he argues, ‘racial oppression and colonisation are not the same thing, and neither are the solutions they call for’.

Is colonialism, however, only the conquest of land? Imperial states take control over as much land as they can in an effort to expand imperial territories and establish the sort of social relations necessary for the accumulation of wealth and power. After all, turning land into territory, as geographer Robert Sack usefully notes, is a ‘strategy for influence or controls’. Capture of territory allows imperial states to control people. In particular, colonial projects require people whose labour be exploited. Land and labour, together, are the necessary components for any colonial project.

Also read: Bringing Down Statues Doesn’t Erase History, It Makes Us See It More Clearly

Christopher Columbus knew this when he recognised that “the Indians of Española [on which he made land in 1492) were and are the greatest wealth of the island, because they are the ones who dig, and harvest, and collect the bread and other supplies, and gather the gold from the mines, and do all the work of men and beasts alike” (quoted in Reséndez 2016, 28).

Thus, rather than continuing to see people categorised as Indians, Blacks, and migrants as separate groupings, each with their own incommensurable experiences, I believe it is more historically accurate – and politically transformative – to understand that they came into being within a single field of imperial power. People in these groups continue to co-exist together in a single field of power I call the Postcolonial New World Order, a world of nation-states and ever-expanding capitalist social relations.

In this regard, we must also take into account Whiteness. In the initial period of colonising what is now the United States, the idea that workers from Europe were White would have been nonsensical. Indeed, as historians Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker discuss in their 2012 book, The Many Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic, all workers, including those from Europe, understood that ‘the “white people” were, in code or cant, the rich, the people with money, not simply the ones with a particular phenotype of skin color’. It was in the late 17th century when workers from Europe were decisively elevated above all others by colonial laws that invented the ‘White race’.

This broadening of the racialised definition of Whiteness was a critical aspect of containing solidarity amongst the subjugated. It was also crucial to the rulers’ strategy of ‘divide and conquer’, both within any particular colony as well as across the broader field of empire. The power of states – and of capital – grew in direct proportion to the consolidation of a White identity. Arguably, the success of strategies used to Whiten workers was an early moment in the imperial turn to biopower. Convincing (most) White workers that they were inherently superior to all others – and must be given preferential treatment, or else – was a key part of the process of making White settler colonies.

I am, of course, not saying anything that Mamdani has not already stated throughout his large and important body of work. Indeed, my own thinking of these matters owes a great debt to his. In his work on Uganda, Rwanda, Darfur and elsewhere, he brilliantly analyses just how much advantage imperial rulers gained by making distinctions between colonised people – and how these continue in today’s nation-states. Divided from one another through the law and its identitarian affects, people’s ability to resist ruling relations was – and remains – profoundly weakened. Again, as Mamdani has shown, the differentiation between native and migrant (and native and settler) have been particularly useful.

However, it is important to add that it is crucial that we not continue to see the world through an autochthonous lens (‘autochthons’ or ‘the indigenous’ being those who are regarded as the people of a place and, as such, the only ones with the legitimate right to govern). The world is not actually comprised of discrete, disconnected territories, each belonging to those people whom states define as its natives. People categorised as natives and non-natives are not wholly discrete people whose concerns are incommensurate. Rather, since at least 1492, all of us have been brought together through the shared space of empire(s). In this sense, colonialism is not only the conquest of land, it is not only the exploitation of labour, it is not only the denigration and oppression of the colonized: it is all these things all at once.

Also read: Kashmir Is the Test Bed for a New Model of Internal Colonialism

Imperial space was comprised of multiple colonies as well as multiple trading routes capturing and moving the workers necessary for the accumulation of wealth and power. In its early stages, it was forged by what historian Marcus Rediker calls the “four violences”: the expropriation of the commons both in Europe and in the Americas; African slavery and the middle passage; exploitation and the institution of wage labour; and the repression organised through prisons and the criminal justice system. Feminist philosopher Silvia Federici adds to our understanding of these shared experiences by showing that the persecution of women and the containment of their liberty were crucial elements in the globalising capitalist project of imperialism.

Thinking about colonialism as a set of practices carried out within an imperial space that encompassed many people across vast areas of the globe, is not about ‘seeking to expand and virtualise the notion of the native’, as Mamdani claims I wish to do. Neither is it to turn colonialism into ‘a metaphor which can incorporate all other forms of dispossession’. I understand colonialism to be about the expropriation of land, its transformation into sovereign/state territory, the exploitation of labour, and the denigration of the colonised. These are violent acts that most people in the world have experienced.

Colonialism expanded and accelerated after the formation of various European empires from the late 15th century onward, and particularly after the formation of the British Empire, which was the first to globalise capitalist ruling relations. However, as many scholars are showing us, these practices took place prior to the formation of European empires and, continue to be practiced in the so-called national liberation states.

Answering ‘the hard question of historical injustice’, as I believe both Mamdani and I wish to do, can be done – is better done, I would argue – by reorienting ourselves with a view afforded to us by the world that we’ve inherited, a world borne of – and still wrought by – violent strife and deep inequality but a single, shared world, nonetheless. The project of decolonisation – the project of freedom writ large – is and always has been, by necessity, a shared one.

Nandita Sharma is professor of sociology, University of Hawaii at Manoa and author of Home Rule: National Sovereignty and the Separation of Natives and Migrants (Duke University Press, 2020).

Indian Americans, on the Matter of Black Lives

It is high time for the community to repay its debt to the Civil Rights Movement and to show solidarity with the continuing struggle of Black America for equality.

I was sprawled face down on the snowbound sidewalk in downtown Detroit, nursing my bruised elbow. I had just been ejected from a building where I had gone apartment hunting. It was the winter of 1969 and I was in a neighbourhood that still bore the ugly scars of the 1967 riots.

My trespass? I had been enquiring about the ‘For Rent’ sign outside. Instead of answering me, the building manager had instructed his wife on the far side of the room to “tell that guy we don’t have any.”

Something had stirred in my stomach and I had blurted out something like, “Sir, I was speaking to you. Could you please answer me directly?”

Thereupon, the burly, red-faced manager had jumped out of his perch to lift me by the scruff of my neck and throw me onto the sidewalk, with an added “Get out of here, you Black Ass!”

As I lay on the snow, my immediate thought was not about Gandhi’s epiphany on a South African railway platform after being ejected from a First Class compartment. It certainly wasn’t to rush to the nearest police precinct to file an assault complaint. Rather, my only thought was about whether I might have better luck in the next building!

As I narrate this incident to my family and friends over the years, two things come into sharper focus, with a sense of shame: One, I had not connected what had happened to me on that winter day to the indignities that African Americans must face every day of their lives. And two, the fact that I was able to casually shake off the snow and get on with my quest must have had a lot to do with the near certainty from my privileged background that as soon as I had graduated, I would be transported to an altogether different world.

Just an hour later, I was back to my Desi comradery, which were often casually dotted with racial slurs against Blacks. We were all barely waiting for our assured white collar jobs and to move to whiter neighbourhoods in any part of America.

Sadly, we seemed to have little or no appreciation for the fact that none of us would have been in this country but for the Civil Rights Movement that had preceded our arrival.

Also read: Why We, as Hindu Americans, Are Opposed to Modi’s Undeclared Emergency

Today, as we witness protests against police brutality all across America and the rioting, nothing seems to have changed from that winter of 1969. On the contrary, the promise of coming equality that was in the air in those days, as we crowded to listen to people like Mohammed Ali, has been replaced with a worsening air of despair and backward mobility for large sections of Black America.

The civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, in 1965. Photo: Peter Pettus/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA

In stark contrast, Indian Americans, often held up as a model minority, has made it big in almost every sector of our economy. But, unfortunately, the community has shown little interest in building alliances with our African American brothers and sisters, to whom we owe a great deal.

Scot Nakagawa talks about the nature of that debt in his landmark 2013 essay, wherein he challenges the myth of a model minority and makes the case that Asians would not have been able to rise to success without the help of government programs and political reforms.

Did Asians just lift themselves up and out of poverty and exclusion by our boot straps, or do we owe a debt to the black Civil Rights struggle? Most Asian Americans of my generation…know the answer. Here are three among many debts Asian Americans owe to the Civil Rights Movement:

Ending bans on interracial marriage: Specifically, Loving v. Virginia, a case brought in 1967 by a white man and a black woman, ended the ban on all interracial marriages in the US. These marriages might never have been possible if not for the Civil Rights Movement.
Voting Rights Protection: Chinese Americans were made voting citizens in 1943, largely as a result of international pressure on the US from foreign allies during WWII. Asian Indians followed in 1946, and other Asian Americans in 1952, all before the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. However, the 1965 Act provided critically important protections to Asian American voters.

The Immigration and Nationality Act: The Act ended racist immigration bans that once excluded Latin Americans, Asians, and Africans. At the height of the Civil Rights Movement, the racist bans were viewed as an embarrassing contradiction to the Johnson administration’s civil rights agenda and thus the Act was signed into law by President Johnson at the foot of the Statue of Liberty in 1965. The immigration histories of the majority of Asian Americans living in the US begin after that date.

Almost everything that Scot Nakagawa talks about in the context of “Asian Americans” applies equally to Indian Americans.

As White nationalism continues to make unprecedented inroads in America, perhaps this is a good time to remind ourselves of how much we too owe the Civil Rights Movement and to ask ourselves where we might stand as a community in an openly racist America.

Also read: An Epic Story Never Seen Before Is Unfolding in the US

On the flip side, Indian Americans of my generation do remember and are proud of the debt that the Civil Rights Movement owes to India’s non-violent struggle against colonialism. Kanishk Tharoor elaborates on this and on Rev. Martin Luther King’s admiration for Gandhi:

When Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his iconic “I Have a Dream” speech…he was flanked by men wearing the distinctive boat-shaped “Gandhi caps.” Those paper hats were indicative of a larger truth: the campaign against segregation and Jim Crow was always embedded in a larger global battle against white supremacy.

In 1959, King and his wife travelled to India…“They praised our experiment with nonviolent resistance technique at Montgomery,” he wrote. “They seem to look upon it as an outstanding example of the possibilities of its use in Western civilization.”

He astutely drew a parallel between the workings of race in America with the persistence of caste in India, and praised the Indian government and constitution for legislating against caste discrimination.

It is great tragedy that today the very country to which the Civil Rights Movement owed its non-violent methods seems to be turning its back on Gandhi. In an eerie parallel to white nationalism, Hindutva nationalism is making unprecedented inroads in Indian society. As a result, Muslims and other minorities are under serious threat of becoming second-class citizens. At the same time, caste discrimination, especially against Dalits, continues unabated from the time of MLK’s observation in 1959.

Clearly, Indian Americans are at an important cross-road today.

On the one hand, we must recognise that Trump and his white nationalist supporters can never be our true friends, regardless of the India-friendly rhetoric emanating from the White House.

On the other hand, we must also recognise that Modi and his Hindutva nationalist supporters can never be our true friends, as their project of turning India into a majoritarian state is destined to lead the India that we love into dark times from which it may never fully recover.

It is high time that Indian Americans acknowledge the huge debt we owe to the Civil Rights Movement and to show solidarity with the continuing struggle of Black America for equality. And it is also high time for us to recognise that we can’t support civil rights in America and at the same time support a regime in India that is violating the fundamental rights of a large section if its own citizens.

Raju Rajagopal is co-founder of Hindus for Human Rights (.org) a US-based advocacy organisation dedicated to defending pluralism and democracy in India, US, and beyond.

Central American Women Fleeing Violence Experience More Trauma After Seeking Asylum

Many detained women say they have been abused while being held by US immigration authorities in inhumane conditions.

The number of Central American women who make difficult, often harrowing, journeys to the US to flee domestic and gang violence is rising.

I’m a social science researcher and a social worker who has interviewed hundreds of women after they were detained by immigration authorities for my research about the relationship between violence against women and migration. I find that most female asylum seekers experience trauma, abuse and violence before they cross the US border seeking asylum.

What these women go through while detained by Customs and Border Protection or Immigration and Customs Enforcement can take an additional physical, social and emotional toll.

What they’re escaping

Most Central American asylum-seekers come from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. These three countries are among the most dangerous places in the world to be female, with some of the world’s highest murder rates, including for women and girls. There are few repercussions for the perpetrators.

As they make their way north, these women are often subjected to sexual violence or held hostage. They may also fall victim to human trafficking – which could entail being made to cook and clean for other migrants or forced into prostitution – on their journeys.

Amid rising levels of violence, the number of Guatemalans, Salvadorans and Hondurans who have sought asylum here has increased almost eight-fold between 2012 and 2017 to about 107,000 according to the Department of Homeland Security.

The government does not disclose how many women are apprehended. But there are clear signs that the number of female migrants is growing. The roughly 189,000 people who arrived with their families, rather than on their own as adults or minors, whom US immigration officials stopped along the border with Mexico during the six months ending in March 2019 were mostly mothers and their children. In contrast, only 75,622 people arrived with their relatives in all of 2017.

ICE is detaining more than 50,000 immigrants at any given time. Most detainees are men, although the percentage of women and girls, and specifically asylum-seeking women and girls, is rising.

Detaining asylum-seekers

The right to seek asylum in the US due to persecution or fear of persecution back home stems from the 1951 Refugee Convention and US immigration laws. The Trump administration has responded by detaining more asylum-seekers, a policy it casts as a deterrence strategy.

Once apprehended, women may remain detained for months. In some cases they are detained indefinitely as they pursue their claims. New guidance from Attorney General William Barr could lead to more long-term detention for asylum seekers.

In June 2018, former Attorney General Sessions announced that people fleeing domestic violence or gang violence would no longer be eligible for asylum in the US. A federal judge struck down that policy change six months later.

Also Read: The Long Struggle of Pakistani Immigrants Who Want to Start a New Life

According to many studies by scholars like psychologists Katy Robjant and Kalina Brabeck, locking immigrants up can damage their mental health by increasing risks of depression, post-traumatic stress and anxiety. The effects can last years and even a lifetime. For parents, the damage extends beyond detention and may harm children of the detained.

Because detention relies on control, coercion and containment, it inherently makes frightened people more fearful, disrupts sleep and restricts access to medical, legal and social services.

Experiencing more trauma

During the past two years, together with psychologists Gabriela Hurtado and Josephine Serrata, I sought to understand and document what immigrant women who have experienced violence and abuse need while they are detained and once they are released.

Many detained women say they have been abused while being held by US immigration authorities in what appear to be inhumane conditions marked by incidents of sexual harassment and sexual assault.

The Department of Homeland Security itself has documented dangers that include the provision of food that isn’t safe to eat, like mouldy bread and rotten meat, and delayed medical care.

There are signs of threats and intimidation as well. A woman I’ll call Adelia told my research team that when she asked an immigration official how much money she would have to pay to be released, she was told “stop asking me, or I’ll raise the amount.”

Investigative media outlets, immigrant rights advocates and researchers have documented that ICE detainees often face threats, insults, humiliation and stress brought on by constantly changing rules and expectations.

ICE itself has disclosed that 28 women had miscarriages while in detention during the 2017 and 2018 fiscal years.

I have heard directly and through media reports that these immigration detention centres sometimes isolate detained women, either in response to perceived mental health issues or as punishment, leaving them unable to interact with one another, their own children or the volunteer lawyers who are trying to help them.

These practices echo and exacerbate survivors’ experiences with past abuse and violence. That is, detention settings may resemble control tactics used by abusers, traffickers or other perpetrators, compounding previous trauma.

A previously detained woman I’ll call Lourdes described what she experienced as dehumanizing. “You feel like an animal, as if you aren’t worth anything,” she explained.

One problem is how these facilities are set up.

Sandra, another former detainee, spent more than a month in the Karnes County Residential Centre in Karnes City, Texas. Having heard it would be shelter for families, she and her daughter were surprised by the barbed wire and razor wire surrounding the facility.

“At the entrance, there were nice glass doors that said, ‘Karnes Residential,’ but that was just a facade,” Sandra said. “It is a jail, a jail for families, families like mine that don’t have anyone in the US, who come just to stay alive and because they want to see their children alive and well, for things to be better in the future.”

Lasting repercussions

We found that the problems don’t end once women are released from detention.

Rather, survivors face considerable immediate and long-term needs and risks. Right after being released from detention, they may simply be left at a bus station with little or no money, supplies or information about reuniting with relatives. This leaves communities across the country scrambling to fill gaps.

Many of these women, understandably, need help finding medical care, counseling, jobs, lawyers and social services. The rough start they get off to increases their risks of becoming homeless and having trouble making ends meet. It also reduces their ability to pay back the thousands of dollars they borrow to escape violence and to cover their bonds – money the authorities collect upon a detainee’s release that is similar to bail in criminal cases.

What might work better?

Federal agencies such the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, as well as advocacy organizations such as National Centre on Domestic Violence, Trauma & Mental Health and Casa de Esperanza, propose approaches that aid healing.

They oppose the current detainment practices that seclude, isolate and restrict the ability of survivors of sexual violence to move around freely and to make their own decisions.

Immigrant rights advocates and mental health professionals argue that asylum-seekers should not be held in detention centres. Community-based alternatives would cost less and be more humane. They also advocate for training staff to work with people who have experienced trauma as the victims of violence and coercion.

Laurie C. Heffron, assistant professor of Social Work, St. Edward’s University.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

US Border Deaths on the Rise

Heat-related deaths, the main cause of migrant fatalities on the US southwest border, rose to 48, up from 31 over the same period in 2017.

Taos (New Mexico, US): The number of migrants dying from extreme heat on the US-Mexico border rose 55 % in the past nine months after an increase in unaccompanied children and families trying to enter US illegally, the US government said on Monday.

Heat-related deaths, the main cause of migrant fatalities on the US southwest border, rose to 48, up from 31 over the same period in 2017, said US Border Patrol spokesman Salvador Zamora.

The death toll is expected to rise in the summer months as vulnerable, unacclimatised immigrants attempt to cross harsh environments, putting border fatalities on track for a year-on-year increase in 2018, Zamora said.

The Border Patrol recorded a 12 % year-on-year rise in immigrant arrests in the eight months to May 31, Zamora said.

“We are geared up to surpass last year’s heat-related deaths and the summer is just beginning,” he said in a telephone interview. “The demographics of the illegal aliens we are apprehending, the family units, the unaccompanied children, they’re a lot more vulnerable.”

Humanitarian groups such as San Diego-based Border Angels say the main cause of rising deaths is tighter border security and law enforcement, such as the recent imposition of a “zero tolerance” policy for illegal border crossers. That has prompted migrants to make long treks through hostile terrain via remote crossing points.

“We’ve seen people crossing in more dangerous areas, so even though there’s less people crossing, there are more people dying,” said Enrique Morones, founder of the group whose volunteers leave water for migrants.

A memorial is seen in the desert near Falfurrias, Texas April 2, 2013. Credit: Reuters/Eric Thayer

From Central America now

Until four years ago, the vast majority of migrants arrested at the border were Mexicans. With improved economic conditions in Mexico, their number has fallen, as have overall arrests on the border, which dropped to 303,916 in 2017, down 26 % from 2016, according to Border Patrol data.

Immigrants from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador now top the list of people arrested at the southern border as gun and gang-related violence drives an exodus from those countries, according to US government data.

As the number of arrests on the border has fallen, the UN International Organisation for Migration has recorded a rise in migrant deaths for the past four years, with the total reaching 415 in 2017.

Immigrants, including children, from sub-tropical and mountainous areas are arriving at the border poorly nourished, unacclimatised to arid conditions and susceptible to heat exhaustion, Zamora said.

Families apprehended at the border increased five-fold since 2013, while the number of unaccompanied children detained in 2017 was almost double that in 2010, according to Border Patrol data.

James Cordero of Border Angels has seen a rise in the past few months in migrant families trekking through the California mountains he covers, based on articles like diapers, shoes and “Little Mermaid” backpacks left behind.

“You really know someone is leaving a bad situation if they’re willing to risk their lives and their children’s’ lives for a chance to live,” said Cordero, 36, a water drop leader.

Morones suspects Border Patrol agents of destroying the water supplies left by his group. One such act was caught on video in Arizona by another humanitarian group called No More Deaths.

Border Patrol spokesman Zamora said actions shown in the No More Deaths video were “unacceptable” and in no way representative of the agency‘s values. The agency conducts its own humanitarian rescues, which rose slightly to 748 people in the eight months through May, he said.

(Reuters)

Airline Volaris Offers Free Flights for Children Separated by Trump Policy

The Mexican airline said it would work with authorities in US, Mexico and Central America to offer free flights on its pre-existing routes to reunite children with their parents.

Mexico City: Mexican airline Volaris said on Friday it was offering free flights to reunite families separated by the “zero tolerance” immigration policy of US President Donald Trump.

“It hurts us to see these children without their parents and it is our vocation to reunite them,” Volaris said in a statement.

The airline said it would work with authorities in US, Mexico and Central America to offer free flights on its pre-existing routes to reunite children with their parents. According to its website, Volaris flies to over 65 locations across Mexico, US, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Costa Rica.

After facing an uproar at home and abroad, Trump bowed to intense pressure on Wednesday and signed an order ending the separation of children from their families while parents were prosecuted for crossing the border illegally.

This week, four major US airlines asked the federal government not to use their flights to transport migrant children away from their parents.

Some of the over 2,300 children separated from their parents since mid-April have been flown to states far from the border area between Mexico and US, where their parents are being charged in immigration courts, according to media reports.

There have been some cases of immigrants being deported without their children. On Thursday, El Salvador demanded a seven-year old boy be returned to his father who was deported back to the Central American country this week.

(Reuters)

Parted at US Border by Family Separation Policy, Migrants Seek Their Children

Even though President Trump has recalled his family separation policy, it remains unclear how and when the separated families will be united and where they would be held while the parents face criminal charges.

San Francisco/Washington: Lilian Merida-Galicia and her seven-year-old daughter were apprehended after crossing the US-Mexico border in Arizona and separated by US officials in mid-May.

Since then, the 23-year-old Guatemalan has been trying to learn her daughter’s whereabouts, according to her attorney, Michael Avenatti. At one point she sent a note to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

“Please could you send me a phone number so that I can communicate with my daughter?” read the note, which was written in Spanish and seen by Reuters.

An ICE officer replied in a note in English: “I do not have this information.”

Merida-Galicia, who is being held in California, is just one of many incarcerated immigrant mothers whose attorneys tell similar stories about chaotic situations in which the mothers don’t know where their children have been taken or how to contact them. The mothers themselves could not be contacted because access to detained immigrants is difficult.

Although President Donald Trump abruptly reversed course on Wednesday following a wave of outrage at home and overseas and abandoned his policy of separating children from parents who are apprehended for illegally crossing the US-Mexico border, the fate of the more than 2,300 children already separated from their parents while Trump‘s policy was still in force is unknown.

Avenatti, who has made headlines representing porn star Stormy Daniels in an unrelated lawsuit against Trump, said Merida-Galicia is among more than 60 immigrant parents he represents and 80 percent of them do not know where their children are.

The federal government and Congress scrambled on Friday to address the many unanswered questions raised by the hastily drafted executive order Trump issued on Wednesday.

Attorney Luis Cortes Romero in Kent, Washington, said he represents a Salvadoran woman who was separated in early May from her 11-year-old daughter with Down syndrome after the two crossed the US-Mexico border in Texas. The woman is being held in Washington state and has decided she doesn’t want to pursue asylum so that she can be deported and reunited with her daughter, he said.

“She said she never wants to come back, and that this experience has been so traumatizing,” Cortes Romero said.

Trump suggested on Friday that some of the wrenching tales that have emerged from the borderwere fabricated by Democrats.

“We cannot allow our Country to be overrun by illegal immigrants as the Democrats tell their phoney stories of sadness and grief, hoping it will help them in the elections,” he tweeted.

A woman holds an urn containing her son’s remains as US President Donald Trump holds an “Angel Families” meeting with victims of illegal immigration at the White House in Washington, US, June 22, 2018. Credit: Reuters/Kevin Lamarque

Congress stumbles

Trump urged Republican lawmakers on Friday to drop their efforts to pass comprehensive immigration legislation until after the November congressional elections, flip-flopping on his appeal earlier in the week for Congress to act soon.

Trump has gone back and forth on ways to solve the country’s immigration problems, which he blames on Democrats.

“Elect more Republicans in November and we will pass the finest, fairest and most comprehensive Immigration Bills anywhere in the world,” Trump said on Twitter.

“Republicans should stop wasting their time on Immigration until after we elect more Senators and Congressmen/women in November. Dems are just playing games, have no intention of doing anything to solves this decades old problem. We can pass great legislation after the Red Wave!” he said.

All 435 House seats and a third of the 100-member Senate will be up for grabs in November. Democrats are hoping that discontent among voters with Trump’s policies, including on immigration, will help the party make gains in Congress and flip control to Democrats in at least one chamber.

The House of Representative on Thursday rejected a bill backed by conservatives that would have halted the practice of splitting up families and addressed other immigration issues. The House postponed until next week a vote on a more moderate bill after it failed to attract enough support for passage. But Trump‘s latest tweets could doom that effort.

“Game over,” said Representative Mark Sanford, a Republican critic of Trump who came under withering attack from the president before losing his primary race this month.

“Without the president having legislators’ backs, there’s no way they’re going to take the risks that would be inherent in a major reform bill,” Sanford told CNN.

Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Republican who represents a majority Hispanic district in Florida and is not running for re-election, said Trump’s tweets amounted to “schizoid policymaking.”

Undocumented immigrant families are released from detention at a bus depot in McAllen, Texas, US, June 22, 2018. Credit: Reuters/Loren Elliott

Reunification unclear

Even though the president has now ordered that families be kept together in detention during immigration proceedings, it remained unclear how and when those children already separated would be reunited with their parents, and where families would be held while the parents face criminal charges.

The US Navy is drafting plans to house up to 25,000 immigrants on its bases and other facilities, at an estimated cost to taxpayers of about $233 million over six months, a US official said on Friday.

But the Navy has not so far been asked to provide accommodation for migrants who have entered US illegally, and the official, who asked not to be named, stressed that the draft memo, which looks at setting up housing on Navy airfields in Alabama, was for planning purposes only.

The Department of Homeland Security on Friday filed a notice saying it may need up to 15,000 more beds to handle immigrant families. That would be a sharp increase from the 2,500 beds available for families in the last fiscal year.

Shares in private prison operators CoreCivic Inc and Geo Group rose on Friday as investors bet on increasing demand for their services after US authorities asked about available capacity for the detention of immigrant families.

It was also unclear if the government would keep prosecuting cases against people caught crossing the border illegally. It was the administration’s policy of zero tolerance – announced in April – that led to blanket prosecutions, including of adults traveling with children.

(Reuters)

US House Passes Stopgap Spending Bill to Avert Shutdown

In a further sign of the Republican-controlled Congress’ inability to get its most basic work done, the House passed and sent to the Senate a temporary spending bill to extend most agency funding until March 23.

Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) speaks during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, US, February 6, 2018. Credit: Reuters/Joshua Roberts

Washington: The US House of Representatives on Tuesday approved another stopgap bill to keep the federal government from shutting down, hours after President Donald Trump said he would “love” to see a shutdown if immigration legislation were not included.

In a further sign of the Republican-controlled Congress’ inability to get its most basic work done, the House in a 245-182 vote passed and sent to the Senate a temporary spending bill to extend most agency funding until March 23.

It was the fifth such stopgap of the federal fiscal year, which began October 1. Stopgaps are needed when Congress fails to approve a full budget on time by that date. Congress has managed to pass its spending bills on time in only four of the past 40 years, according to congressional researchers.

The Senate was expected to take up the House bill on Wednesday and likely change it, requiring it to go back to the House for further action, with a Thursday deadline looming to get a finished bill to Trump for his signature.

As a result of the time crunch, Democrats cancelled a retreat to Maryland’s Eastern Shore that they had planned for Wednesday to Friday and said they would talk strategy in the US Capitol instead.

The House bill does not contain changes to US immigration law, which were a key point of contention in a partisan standoff that led to a three-day partial shutdown last month.

Senate Democrats were expected to balk at the House‘s bill‘s inclusion of an increase in Pentagon funding through September 30, the end of the current fiscal year, but exclusion of any increase in non-defence spending.

Republicans and Democrats said they were making progress, however, on a budget deal that would set new, higher spending limits for defence and non-defence programmes.

Last month’s shutdown came after lawmakers failed to reach agreement on contentious budget and immigration issues.

“I’d love to see a shutdown if we don’t get this stuff taken care of,” Trump said at the White House.

The White House later clarified that it did not expect the budget deal to include specifics on immigration.

McConnell optimistic

A broad budget deal could end the brinkmanship over spending that roils Washington so regularly that financial markets barely flinch anymore at the threat of a government shutdown.

“I’m optimistic that very soon we’ll be able to reach an agreement,” Republican Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell told reporters on Capitol Hill.

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said an agreement being forged would increase funding for domestic programs like drug treatment and broadband infrastructure that Democrats want, as well as a military spending increase sought by Republicans.

“We’re making real progress,” he told reporters.

January’s shutdown came after Democrats insisted any spending bill include protections for young immigrants known as “Dreamers” brought to the country illegally as children. Democrats are not taking that approach this time around. “Nobody wants another one [shutdown] but him,” Schumer said of Trump.

Trump’s fellow Republicans, who control both chambers of Congress, are eager to keep spendingand immigration separate.

“We don’t need a government shutdown on this,” Republican representative Barbara Comstock told Trump at the White House.

Congress faces another deadline on a separate front. The US could have trouble paying its bills within weeks if lawmakers do not raise the federal debt ceiling, another fiscal issue fraught with political peril.

The third-ranking House Republican, representative Steve Scalise, said negotiations over the debt ceiling were being coupled with the Senate budget talks.

Immigration issue

Lawmakers have been struggling to reach a deal on an immigration bill, despite broad public support for helping the Dreamers, hundreds of thousands of young Latinos who were allowed to study and work without fear of deportation under a program set up by former Democratic President Barack Obama.

Trump last year ordered those protections removed by March 5, although a federal court has blocked his administration from ending the programme.

Lawmakers are trying to agree on legislation that would protect Dreamers and boost border security. Schumer said the Senate could take up the issue next week.

Trump has said any immigration deal must include changes to programs for legal immigration that would assess applicants on their skills, rather than their countries of origin or ties to US residents. Democrats oppose that idea.

(Reuters)

US Tightens Immigration, Over 200,000 Salvadorans to be Ousted in 2019

The US will end the Salvadorans’ temporary protected status (TPS) on September 9, 2019, giving them 18 months to leave or seek lawful residency, and for El Salvador to prepare for their return.

Salvadoran immigrants Rosa Romero, Mirna Portillo and Aminta Romero prepare to exit after a news conference at the New York Immigration Coalition following US President Donald Trump’s announcement to end the Temporary Protection Status for Salvadoran immigrants in Manhattan, New York City, US, January 8, 2018. Credit: Reuters/Andrew Kelly

Washington: Some 200,000 Salvadoran immigrants allowed to live and work in the US since 2001 will lose their right to remain in the country in 2019, officials said on Monday, marking the Trump administration’s latest move to tighten immigration enforcement.

The US will end the Salvadorans‘ temporary protected status (TPS) on September 9, 2019, giving them 18 months to leave or seek lawful residency, and for El Salvador to prepare for their return, administration officials said. The status was granted in the wake of two devastating 2001 earthquakes in El Salvador that left hundreds of thousands in the country homeless.

The decision to end TPS for Salvadorans is part of the administration’s broader push to tighten immigration laws and expel those living in the US illegally. The move was heavily criticised by immigrant advocates who said it ignored violence in El Salvador and gave the Salvadorans few options but to leave the US or remain illegally.

The Trump administration has faced a series of deadlines over the past year to decide whether to end the protected status of immigrants in the US whose home countries have been affected by disasters.

Salvadorans are by far the largest group under TPS, a program administration officials said is supposed to provide a temporary haven for victims, not a permanent right to remain in the US.

Critics have complained TPS has allowed participants to repeatedly extend their stays in six-month to 18-month increments.

Patricia Hernandez, 53, arrived in the US in 2000 and applied for TPS after the 2001 earthquakes. She has lived in North Carolina for 18 years and runs a subcontracting construction business with her Honduran husband. The couple have two US-born teenage sons.

“This is a real blow for everyone,” said Hernandez by telephone. “Most of us pay taxes, we’re not living off the government, we’re not criminals.”

The family will move to Honduras with their children and the couple do not intend to return north, she said, though they worry about violence and political instability in Central America.

Trump administration’s changes to the TPS program mean that over the next two years approximately 250,000 people who previously had permission to live and work in the US will be subject to deportation if they remain.

Haitians and Nicaraguans will lose their protected status in 2019 and Hondurans, the second largest group in the program, could lose their rights later this year.

“The past practice of allowing foreign nationals to remain in the US long after an initial emergency in their home countries has ended has undermined the integrity of the program and essentially made the ‘temporary’ protected status a front operation for backdoor permanent immigration,” said Roy Beck, president of NumbersUSA, which favours less immigration overall.

Salvadoran immigrants prepare to exit after a media conference at the New York Immigration Coalition following US President Donald Trump’s announcement to end the Temporary Protection Status for Salvadoran immigrants in Manhattan, New York City, US, January 8, 2018. Credit: Reuters/Andrew Kelly

Violence in El Salvador

Advocates of the program say long-term resident Salvadorans and their children should not be sent back to El Salvador, a country struggling with a weak economy and gang violence that has given it one of the world’s highest murder rates.

“Our (US) government is complicit in breaking up families – nearly 275,000 US-born children have a parent who is a TPS holder – and further destabilising our neighbouring countries,” said Oscar Chacon, executive director of Alianza Americas, an immigrant advocacy group.

There are approximately 1.35 million Salvadorans of any status living in the US, according to US Census Bureau data analysed by the Migration Policy Institute, a non-partisan think tank.

A senior administration official briefing reporters on the decision said it was based on the status of El Salvador’s recovery from the 2001 earthquakes. The country has received millions of dollars in aid and rebuilt schools, homes and hospitals, the official said.

In the past two years, the US has repatriated 39,000 Salvadorans, showing the ability of El Salvador to absorb an influx, the official said.

The government of El Salvador said on Monday that it was glad the administration decided to at least leave the program in place until September 2019.

“El Salvador’s Foreign Ministry lobbied heavily for the interests of our fellow citizens,” the government said in a statement, adding that it would continue to search for alternatives and seek action by the US Congress to protect the migrants.

The US Chamber of Commerce had urged the government to extend TPS protections for Salvadorans, Haitians and Hondurans, saying “the loss of employment authorisation for these populations would adversely impact several key industries,” including “construction, food processing, hospitality, and home healthcare services.”

Congressional Democrats on Monday expressed support for finding a permanent solution to help Salvadorans in the US. But that will be politically difficult at a time when there are rival immigration priorities, including providing permanent protection for “Dreamers” – undocumented immigrants brought to the US as children.

That effort has been weighed down by demands from conservatives in Congress to couple any such move with new efforts to clamp down on illegal immigration, especially from Mexico and Central America.

(Reuters)