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Amazon tops a list of companies to ditch in support of immigrants’ human rights
Throughout the last year, the Amazon corporation has given American consumers plenty of reasons to question whether we should be using its products and services. The news is filled with horrible stories about Amazon’s treatment of their workers. The company has an astronomical carbon footprint. The billionaire CEO has so much superfluous income he was […]
Remain in Mexico protocols force thousands of asylum-seekers to endure violence, a report shows
The Biden administration is facing heavy criticism for restarting a U.S. government program under court order that resulted in over 6,000 reports of violent assault, including kidnapping, rape, murder, and torture, from migrants with pending asylum cases in the United States. That number comes from an August report by the Washington-based organization Human Rights First. […]
The land border with Mexico is open again, but people still can’t really seek asylum
Nov. 8 was a big day for love in the U.S. borderlands. For the first time since March of 2020, the U.S. land border opened to non-essential travel. This meant that fully vaccinated foreign travelers could enter the United States and, for many people who rely on tourist visas to see their loved ones who […]
Dollar-a-day wage schemes in immigrant detention sound a lot like slavery
Across the United States, communities are reckoning with the appropriate rate of minimum wage for people at the local, state and federal levels. There is a sincere debate about whether a $15 minimum wage is actually sufficient for people trying to survive in the current economy. Yet around the country, immigrant detainees are often paid […]
The hypocrisy in how refugees are treated by the US government
After horrific photos emerged of men falling from airplanes and babies in great peril at the Kabul Airport weeks ago, I noticed a dramatic uptick in my various news feeds of the phrase “moral obligation.” Across all mediums, I heard the righteous call for the United States and nations around the globe to remember promises […]
The neglect-for-profit scheme of corporate detention
A colleague and I drove through the desert east of Estancia to the Torrance County Detention Facility a couple of weeks ago. We were going there to speak with half a dozen Nicaraguan asylum-seekers. After witnessing the sheer remoteness of the facility and the chaos and the desperation of the people detained inside, we agreed […]
Human rights abuses at the border didn’t stop when Trump lost the presidency
The U.S. border has been closed to nearly all people seeking asylum for 18 months. And though outrage about conditions at the border was loud and fervent as the 2020 presidential election approached, it’s all but disappeared since then. Here’s how it happened: In March of 2020, as the pandemic intensified, the Department of Health […]