From Solitaire to Solidarity | COLUMBIA JOURNAL
The day after Edward Abbey died, in the spring of 1989, his friends and family wrapped his body in a sleeping bag, packed it in dry ice, and loaded it into the bed of a blue Chevy pickup. They drove west out of Tucson, then south toward Mexico, cruising along the blacktop, then crunching dirt and rock as they chased the late-afternoon sun deep into the heart of the Sonoran Desert. There, amid the flat, alluvial basins and the ragged, looming ranges of the Cabeza Prieta Wildlife Refuge, somewhere just north of the borderline, in the brittlebush and creosote and ocotillo and saguaro stands, they committed Abbey’s body to the earth. They chiseled his epitaph into a slab of varnished basalt: “EDWARD PAUL ABBEY / 1927-1989 / ‘NO COMMENT.’” …
As Europe Welcomes Ukrainian Refugees, It Leaves Other Migrants Caught “Between two deaths” | THE INTERCEPT
The EU’s commendable displays of sympathy and hospitality toward Ukraine’s mostly white, mostly Christian refugees stand in violent contrast to its policies of deterrence, detention, and state-sanctioned death targeting African and Middle Eastern asylum-seekers by the millions. “We are wondering,” Ahmad al-Hariri, who fled the war in Syria 10 years ago and has been trying to reach Europe ever since, told Reuters, “why were Ukrainians welcome in all countries while we, Syrian refugees, are still in tents and remain under the snow, facing death, and no one is looking to us?” The contrast, to put it crudely, is as clear as black and white: Even within Ukraine’s refugee population, African exchange students and other nonwhite residents have faced racist violence and segregation as they attempt to leave the country, with many reporting being blocked from crossing borders while their white peers are welcomed with open arms. …
The Trials of Scott Warren | THE BAFFLER
Scott Warren is just one of thousands of residents and humanitarian volunteers responding to the needs of migrants and refugees in the O’odham lands of the Sonoran desert. By targeting him and other borderland aid workers, the United States has demonstrated the lengths it will go to destroy the lives of migrants and forestall the radical possibilities prefigured in acts of care and solidarity. The Trump administration has sought to intimidate residents and establish a legal precedent that would criminalize humanitarian care—a precedent that would classify hospitality as harboring, search and rescue as smuggling, and aid as aiding and abetting. …
You Shall Also Love the Stranger | GUERNICA
Upon hearing that his friend Walter Benjamin had committed suicide rather than face deportation into the hands of the Nazis, Bertolt Brecht composed a short elegiac poem, “On the Suicide of the Refugee W.B.” “Empires collapse,” he wrote. “Gang leaders / are strutting about like statesmen. The nations of man / No longer visible under all those armaments.” … Today, another fascism is rising from the ashes of a past that never fully died: a new stage of neoliberal power, presaged by the tragedy of Pinochet and consummated in the deranged and farcical specter of Trump or Bolsonaro—an era of capitalist violence and dispossession perhaps even more savage than the last. …
The Border Patrol Is Leaving Migrants to Die | High Country News
In southern Arizona’s vast deserts, distances are often deceiving. A person can walk for days and not see any sign of civilization, save for the web of foot trails worn deep into the dirt, haunted by the debris of those who crossed before: rusted tuna cans, sun-weathered backpacks, empty water bottles, human skeletons. Over decades, the U.S. government has disfigured this spectacular terrain with the technology of war, using walls and highway checkpoints to funnel migrants deeper into the wilderness, far from help. Thousands attempt the dangerous and difficult crossing each year. …
Biden’s Immigration Bill Will Do Little to End Death and Suffering in the Borderlands | El Faro English
Sadly, but not surprisingly, Biden’s new immigration bill — the U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021 — as well as his executive actions thus far, do nothing to significantly and directly address the massive loss of life in the U.S. borderlands, and offer little in the way of indirect solutions. In lock-step with the tried and tired political tradition of “comprehensive immigration reform” — the idea of marrying together stricter border and immigration enforcement with slow, winding paths to legalization — Biden’s bill is actually aimed at precisely the opposite: escalating death-as-deterrence border enforcement under the guise of “smart border controls” and the spurious “humanitarian” initiatives of Border Patrol. …
Disappeared: How U.S. Border Enforcement Agencies are Fueling a Missing Persons Crisis (Coauthor) | No More Deaths
There is a search and rescue crisis in the borderlands. Every year, hundreds of thousands of people seek to enter the United States by way of the southern border. Some are fleeing U.S. sanctioned violence, severe poverty as a result of U.S. foreign policy and intervention, or the disastrous and escalating effects of global climate change. Others are seeking to rejoin their families and communities after being deported from the places they call home. As a diversity of geopolitical forces compel people to leave their countries of origin, increasingly insurmountable restrictions to legal entry mean that for many, the only option is to enter the United States without authorization, crossing rivers or trekking miles through deserts. For years, US Border Patrol policy has deliberately pushed people crossing the border without official permission into remote and dangerous areas. Border Patrol’s “Prevention Through Deterrence” strategy has concentrated enforcement in relatively safe urban areas, with the stated intention of diverting migration into what the agency itself describes as “more hostile terrain.” …
Max Granger 