https://socialistaction.org/2018/12/03/tensions-rise-at-the-u-s-mexico-border-as-migrant-caravans-arrive/
Tensions rise as migrant caravans arrive at the U.S.-Mexico border
/ 21 hours ago
Dec. 2018 Caravan food (Marty)
Food donations are distributed to caravan migrants at a camp in Tijuana.
(Photo: Marty Goodman / Socialist Action)
By LISA LUINENBURG
On Nov. 11, the first group of Central American refugees reached the
city of Tijuana on the U.S.-Mexico border. The group, made up of about
80 LGBTQI people, had broken off from the main caravan group due to
harassment they had experienced from other migrants in the main caravan
group. “We were discriminated against, even in the caravan,” said Erick
Dubon, 23, from San Pedro Sula, Honduras, who has been traveling with
his boyfriend, Pedro Nehemias, 22, as reported in the Washington Post.
“People wouldn’t let us into trucks, they made us get in the back of the
line for showers, they would call us ugly names.”
Although the LGBTQI migrants are particularly vulnerable to harassment,
anti-immigrant protests have broken out on the Mexican side of the
border as more groups of migrants have started to arrive in Tijuana.
Sources such as The Guardian and the Mexican newspaper El Universal have
reported over the last few weeks on the small, but vitriolic
anti-immigrant movement in Tijuana.
As the refugees began to arrive, some protesters threw rocks and hurled
insults at a group of migrants sleeping on the beach. At another recent
protest, 400 anti-immigrant demonstrators outnumbered the 50 people who
marched with open arms to welcome the migrants. The protests seem to be
divided along class lines, with those from wealthier districts making up
the majority of the xenophobic upsurge, both in the streets and online.
A similar dynamic has been taking place in the U.S. For example, in
places like Chicago, sections of the Mexican community are demonstrating
against, not with, the migrant caravans, demonstrating the negative
impact the anti-immigrant rhetoric spouted by Trump and the mainstream
media sources have had on public opinion.
Nevertheless, organizing efforts in solidarity with the migrants are
taking place in cities across the U.S. In Minneapolis, hundreds of
people demonstrated in frigid weather on Nov. 30 to express solidarity
with the caravans. Other groups are working on sending supplies and aid
to migrants now arriving. Three semi trucks filled with supplies left
Chicago at the end of November, en route to the border area.
By the end of the month, the number of migrants streaming into Tijuana
reached around 6000. But they had add their names to a list of 3000
people in Tijuana who were already waiting to apply for asylum in the
United States. Despite the hopes of many Central American migrants who
are fleeing extreme violence and poverty in their own countries to build
a better life in the U.S., applying for asylum is a very difficult and
lengthy process.
As reported by The New Yorker, migrants themselves have now taken over
the process of managing the lengthy list of people waiting for their
turn to apply for asylum. The reason for this is that the Department of
Homeland Security limits the number of people who can apply for asylum
in the U.S. on any given day, usually allowing in between 30-90 people.
As entry to the United States has been increasingly restricted by the
Trump administration over the last year, getting on the ledger is now
the only way asylum seekers can legally cross into San Diego.
Although President Trump’s recent attempts to block asylum claims were
quickly struck down by a federal judge, things have only gotten worse
along the border. According to the Washington Post, “U.S. immigration
statistics show roughly 80 percent of Central Americans pass a
perfunctory ‘credible fear’ interview after reaching the United States,
but fewer than 10 percent are ultimately granted asylum by a judge. The
backlog of cases in U.S. immigration courts has ballooned past 750,000,
giving many asylum seekers who do not qualify a chance to remain in the
country for several years while waiting to see a judge. … Last month,
the number of people taken into U.S. custody along the Mexican border or
who attempted to enter without authorization topped 60,000, the highest
of Trump’s presidency.”
To make matters worse, the Washington Post also recently reported on a
deal struck between the Trump administration and Mexico’s brand-new
populist President, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who ascended to the
presidency on Dec. 1. Called “Remain in Mexico,” the plan will require
asylum seekers to stay in Mexico while waiting for their asylum claims
to be processed in the U.S. “The medium- and long-term solution is that
people don’t migrate,” said Olga Sánchez Cordero, Mexico’s incoming
interior minister. “Mexico has open arms and everything, but imagine one
caravan after another after another. That would also be a problem for us.”
The new deal will break with the long-standing practice of “catch and
release” and has many human rights groups worried that migrants will be
forced to cross the border at more dangerous points, or to stay in
unsafe areas on the Mexican side of the border, many of which are
controlled by drug cartels.
Frustrations boiled over on Nov. 25, as dozens of migrants, including
women and children, rushed the U.S. border in an attempt to break
through. U.S. Border Patrol agents quickly retaliated with tear gas. In
recent video posted online, an activist with the group Pueblos Sin
Fronteras personally recounted pulling a five-year-old girl out of a
cloud of stinging tear gas.
After the incident, El Universal reported that the Mexican government
announced it would immediately deport any Central American migrants who
participated in what it called “a violent attempt” to illegally break
through to the United States through the entry point known as El
Chaparral. They also announced that they would reinforce the border by
sending additional Federal Police agents to the area.
Dec. 2018 Caravan children (Marty)
Migrant children at the border are entertained by a singer on Dec. 1
while solidarity volunteers from the U.S. look on. (Marty Goodman /
Socialist Action)
Many have expressed shock and outrage that the U.S. government would
dare to use such military tactics against a group that included women
and children, but in reality this incident was just the latest in a
gradual build up of militarization along the U.S.-Mexico border. The
border was first created in 1848 following the U.S.-Mexico war, when the
land Trump wants to protect as the “border zone” was stolen from Mexico
by the United States. However, border enforcement in its current form
didn’t begin until the 1990s.
Just as NAFTA was beginning to make headlines in 1993, the U.S. Border
Patrol was developing plans to effectively seal the urban ports of El
Paso-Cuidad Juarez and San Diego-Tijuana (through Operations Hold the
Line and Gatekeeper, respectively). The resulting sections of border
walls and increases in the number of Border Patrol agents in these and
other urban areas had the devastating effect of pushing migration into
the most dangerous sections of the U.S.-Mexico border. The consequences
have been tragic: since 1994, around 10,000 undocumented immigrants have
lost their lives attempting to cross into the United States (as
estimated by the group Border Angels).
The Trump administration has only escalated the militarization process
along in the border since taking office early in 2016. Trump ran his
presidential campaign on xenophobic rhetoric labeling Mexican immigrants
as “rapists” and “murderers,” and a promise to build a wall along the
entire U.S.-Mexico border at a cost of billions of dollars (which he
claimed he would force Mexico to pay for). In late October, Trump
deployed almost 6000 active-duty U.S. Army troops to the border area to
join about 2000 National Guard troops already stationed there. While
U.S. military personnel are rarely deployed inside the U.S., Trump was
following in the footsteps of Presidents George W. Bush and Barak Obama,
who also sent the National Guard to the border. The troops have spent
most of the past month stringing concertina wire along the border in a
bid to prevent migrants from physically crossing into the U.S.
On Nov. 30, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security formally asked the
Pentagon to extend the military deployment through the end of January.
Trump’s xenophobic and inflammatory rhetoric have also fueled the
efforts of right-wing vigilantes such as the Minute Men to patrol the
border.
And in fact, it was the U.S. military that created many of the political
and economic crises in Central American countries that the most recent
wave of migrants is fleeing from. The U.S. invaded Honduras (and other
Central American countries) numerous times, dividing Central America
into a jumble of Banana Republics, dominated by the United Fruit
Company. The widely despised Nicaraguan Contras were launched from
Honduras in the 1980s under the Reagan administration.
A string of U.S.-backed military coups, corporate plundering, and
economic neoliberal policies (such as Honduras’s entry into CAFTA, the
Central American Free Trade Agreement), has undermined democracy in the
region and crated vacuums of power which have allowed the rise of drug
cartels and paramilitary alliances.
Honduras is now considered one of the deadliest countries in the world.
All of this culminated in the U.S.-orchestrated overthrow of
democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya in 2009, striking him
down for attempting even the mildest of reforms. The coup was carried
out by the Honduran military under the direction of then-Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton and the U.S. Congress. Meanwhile, with a destroyed
left leaving a criminal oligarchy running the country, peasants and the
working class have been faced with the decision of fight or flight.
Other Central American countries, such as Guatemala and El Salvador,
which many of the migrants in the current caravans call home, share
similar histories of U.S. imperialist invasion.
Once the refugees fleeing poverty and violence in Central America
actually arrive in the U.S., they are forced into the U.S. detention
system, a growing system that profits from the imprisonment of
immigrants, even children. According to the group Detention Watch, as
the U.S. prison system expanded in the 1980s and 1990s, thousands of
refugees arriving from Cuba and Haiti were swept into U.S. detention
centers. Detention Watch states on their website, “In 1996, the U.S.
enacted legislation that dramatically expanded the use of detention. The
Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) and the Illegal
Immigrant Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) expanded
mandatory detention. The 1996 laws also rendered any non-U.S. citizen,
including legal permanent residents, vulnerable to detention and
deportation.”
Under Obama and now Trump, the implementation of a detention bed quota
and the expansion of deportation programs such as 287(g) and Secure
Communities has caused the average daily population of detained
immigrants to skyrocket from approximately 5,000 per day in 1994 to over
39,000 in 2017,. The U.S. government now captures and detains up to
400,000 immigrants a year at a cost of $2.6 billion.
Over 73% of immigrants are held in private detention facilities run by
for-profit corporations like The GEO Group, Inc. and CoreCivic (formerly
known as Corrections Corporation of America), that receive $134 per day
from the government for adult detention and $319 per day for family
detention (statistics from detentionwatchnetwork.org).
According to a recent article in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the U.S.
government is putting the health and safety of about 2300 migrant
children being held in a remote desert detention camp in Tornillo,
Texas, at risk by waiving the requirement for FBI fingerprint background
checks for caregivers working with the children. The children, ages
13-17, are mostly from Central America and have recently arrived in the
U.S. seeking to reunite with family members here. Many of the children
are being held for months in the detention center while waiting for
their host families to pass an extremely rigorous screening process.
This only adds to the trauma that many of the children have already
experienced in their home countries and on their journey to the U.S.
“The few times they let me call my mom I would tell her that one day I
would be free, but really I felt like I would be there for the rest of
my life,” a 17-year-old from Honduras who was held at Tornillo earlier
this year told AP. “I feel so bad for the kids who are still there. What
if they have to spend Christmas there? They need a hug, and nobody is
allowed to hug there.” And yet, despite the high mental health needs of
the children in the camp, BCFS, the non-profit agency running the camp,
only staffs one mental health therapist for every 50 children (the
federal policy mandates one mental health provider for every 12 children).
As reported in the Star Tribune, “For each night that a child spends at
Tornillo, taxpayers spend up to $1,200 to pay to direct care workers,
cooks, cleaners, teachers and emergency services worker, according to
information staff at two congressional offices said they were provided
on a recent visit. That’s well above the $775 officials have disclosed,
close to five times more than a typical youth migrant shelter costs.”
The high costs at the Tornillo detention camp reflect the fact that
everything—water, sewage, food, staff, and detainees—must be trucked in
and out of the remote site.
Meanwhile, the 6000 caravan refugees currently residing in camps at that
U.S.-Mexico border in Tijuana must also endure squalid conditions as
they wait their turn in the ever-growing line of migrants hoping to
apply for refugee status in the U.S. As facilities in Tijuana have been
overwhelmed by the growing influx of migrants, many have been staying in
tents at the Benito Juarez Stadium. According to Socialist Action
members currently participating in aid efforts at the border, cops have
been going tent to tent in the camp telling families they must move to a
more isolated location about 40 miles away. In an effort to clear out
the camp, police have been blocking new food donations coming into
Benito Juarez, while denying people the ability to leave the camp to get
food. They have also removed electric lights and bathrooms from the
current camp site.
Many of the refugees have been reluctant to move to the new camp at
Barretal, although about 3000 migrants (about half of the group) have
already transferred there. Although the government says that the recent
rains have made Benito Juarez unsanitary, the migrants have pointed out
that Barretal is also totally soggy from rain and that Benito Juarez at
least has a large paved area that dries quickly, while Barretal is all
turf. More importantly, Barretal is a 40-minute drive from the border,
in an isolated area with no access to shops and supplies.
A group of about 15 hunger strikers at the border are demanding faster,
more efficient, and more respectful handling of asylum claims at the
border. To put everything into perspective, while the caravan refugees
currently in Mexico number about 10,000, even at 50,000 refugees (the
historic U.S. limit with the Refugee Act), these immigrants would only
represent perhaps 5% of the nearly 500,000 immigrants that come into the
U.S. each year. Many of these 500,000 represent acceptable imperialist
“Brain Drain” practices, luring the brightest and most educated from
countries of origin that need them far more. At the same time, U.S.
corporations and wealthy business owners like Trump profit from the
cheap labor of undocumented immigrants in the U.S., one of the most
super-exploited layers of the working class.
But all is not lost. While the forces of U.S. imperialism amass along
the border with Mexico, an explosion of organizing efforts have taken
off not just along the border but across the United States. Groups like
Cosecha, which issued a call for 15,000 people to come to the
U.S.-Mexico border in support of the immigrants, are currently
organizing volunteers to offer support in whatever way they can,
including donations of food and clothing and legal counsel. Faith-based
organizations and other groups have also been sending aid and solidarity
to the border, such as the three semi trucks recently organized by a
prominent priest in Chicago, to the border region.
Local actions and organizing efforts have also taken place in solidarity
with the caravan refugees. Many of these groups, such as Minnesota
Caravan Solidarity, have projected a message of welcome to the migrants
approaching the U.S. “Immigrants are welcome here!” shouted protesters
at a recent rally in downtown Minneapolis. The crisis at the U.S.-Mexico
border has provided activists with an important opening to organize new
united-front type coalitions to come together in an immigrant rights
movement that has been largely fractured and lacking in a national
leadership for many years.
Many of the groups organizing around these issues have been split around
the seemingly counterposed ideas of organizing direct aid for the
migrants versus organizing local and national mass actions. While
Socialist Action does not deny the need for direct support to the
migrants now living in increasingly desperate and squalid conditions on
the Mexican side of the border, we also recognize that it is critical
for us to organize mass actions to highlight the role of U.S.
imperialism in the current crises in Central America and to defend
immigrants and refugees against the attacks of the U.S. government aimed
at controlling the immigrant-fueled U.S. economy and keeping immigrants
too afraid to fight back.
We should look back to mass movements such as the Chicano Movement of
the 1960s for inspiration. Despite widespread police brutality against
it, the movement fought for a broad range of demands, from restoration
of land grants, to farm workers’ rights, to enhanced education, to
voting and political rights and reclamation of Mexican-American cultural
history.
In recent years, although the immigrant rights movement has largely
lacked a national cohesiveness, we have also seen massive protests
erupting around critical issues. Examples include mass protests in 2006,
when millions of people spilled into the streets to protest the
reactionary Sensenbrenner bill, or the recent protests of hundreds of
thousands around the U.S. against the Trump administration’s heinous
separation of migrants from their children at the border.
Although many of these protests have lacked a national cohesiveness and
sustainability, they demonstrate the power of the immigrant rights
movement to challenge the reactionary U.S. government when its most
vulnerable members are under threat. Many migrants from Mexico and
Central America have backgrounds of labor organizing in their own
countries. They have lived with the consequences of U.S. imperialist
military and economic intervention.
We know from history that the ruling class will not give up its power
without a fight, and the Democrats and Republicans have equally
supported and enhanced the racist immigration system that currently
operates in the United States. Neither party offers a solution to the
crisis currently occurring at the border.
The migrant caravans offer a new opportunity to organize mass movements
among the U.S. working class, unifying broad layers of working people,
immigrants, refugees, and labor, faith-based and community organizations
in solidarity with our sisters and brothers from Central America. This
is the only way we will be able to end the economic and political crisis
pushing people to migrate to the U.S. and the system that exploits them
when they arrive here. Solidarity with the Migrant Caravans! Open the
Borders! ¡Ningun Ser Humano es Ilegal!
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December 3, 2018 in Books, Immigration.
Related posts
Solidarity with the migrant caravan!
The rise of right-wing violence in Trump’s America
The caravan that defies borders
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