Category: Uncategorized (Page 9 of 15)

In the New York Times article critiquing the U.S. immigration system, a redundant and hypocritical portrayal of the system is suggested.  “As Blitzer illustrates, the American immigration system is a victim of its dysfunction. The growing backlog in asylum applications encourages more people to use it to stay in the country; draconian laws and border controls increase the population of “trapped” undocumented immigrants;” The idea of immigrants having to apply to asylum to trap themselves in the U.S. and extend the amount of time they can stay in the states is something that the U.S. isn’t happy about, yet forces it to happen as a byproduct of their system’s dysfunction.

The article also elaborates on the need to make things more dangerous for migrants and the rationale behind making crossing the border more dangerous to keep unauthorized immigrants in check. “It stands to reason that the more desperate the people migrating, the harsher the deterrence must be inflicted. In practice, this boils down to increasing the danger they face crossing the border illegally, the likelihood of detention if caught, and the difficulty of living their lives afterward without being deported.” This quote makes it incredibly clear that more significant dangers on the border will only make things more complex and worse for unauthorized immigrants and could potentially infringe upon human rights and pose unethical actions. Specifically, this quote and explanation made me immediately think about the piece I had completed on the Guantanamo Bay situation and the concerns regarding the human rights of those detained. I believe a consistent problem that arises with immigration is the idea of juggling between being authoritative and also understanding that immigrants are humans with hopes, goals, and dreams. One of the conversations I had at the migrant center this Friday also revolved around ideas about sympathy and how sympathy is such a huge issue when it comes to immigration and immigrants.

The Atlantic article was astounding to me. Hearing about how drug routes have evolved over time and are now being used by people was especially compelling given that it stressed just how difficult events are getting. This part of the article also stresses how much these migrants are willing to endure and go through for what they seek in the States. I found it interesting that these routes are only being patrolled in traditional ways, especially given that their origin was drug-related. “By making migration harder, we can limit the number of people who attempt it.” This quote in the article prompts a severe point that recognizes that although people are under this assumption, it is more complex than we think. Instead, it just prompts an ethical question of whether it is right to make things harder and, as a result, only encourage death.

In the New Yorker article, some concerns I hadn’t even considered along areas where migrants came in came to my attention. Specifically, the article outlines how an increased need for doctors and support emerges given that so many migrants are coming in injured. “Emergency-room doctors struggle to treat new arrivals.” Although it may be obvious, I didn’t initially think about how an influx of people could impact systems other than the initial asylum-seeking system. The cascade and ripple effect make it appear that more officials and professionals are needed in these areas to sustain the levels of people entering medical hospitals. This thought also can be connected to the idea that more immigrants are probably coming in injured, given they’ve had to take more dangerous routes to make it to the border.

Everyone is going is Here by Johnathan Blitzer also had a significant amount of content that I felt as though overlapped well with other themes apparent in the other articles we read. The book’s introduction was solid, especially one of the last lines reading, “Eventually, they would become numbers on government spreadsheets and talking points at election time.” This quote essentially wrapped up immigration in the election in a nutshell. For so many of the migrants, their humanity is stripped away, and they are made faceless. To talk about the issue in such a rash way, they often need to become just a statistic. This reminded me of another conversation I had at the migrant center where we were discussing just that- the need for Migrants to become faceless for them to be treated inhumanely and forget that at their core, they too are humans that have dreams, goals, and aspirations. One consistent theme that appears to be present in the introduction and all of these readings is how impossible it is for the systems currently in place to keep up with demand. Specifically, the introduction outlines this high demand by explaining, “On average, it took about twenty-four months to resolve an asylum claim. In the meantime, more asylum seekers arrived.” This outlines a prominent issue in immigration, something that is only going to be perpetuated and become worse. The follow-up strategy and plan outlined in the introduction claiming that “One of the core premises of U.S. immigration policy…. is deterrence: turn away enough people, and others will stop trying to come” just seems silly. For so many, this is all that they have and the only sign of hope for a better life or a future with some sense of prosperity. Hence, nothing will stop them from coming or at least attempting. I wonder why this policy or way of thinking is still active when asylum applications are only increasing.

The language describing the Southern Border crisis in the United States presents it as one inextricably tied to the preservation of American democracy; meanwhile for the migrants themselves it has become a sullied label of their personal journey that’s marked with overcoming intense hardship—from their path to the U.S. to their preexisting troubles in their home countries.

Jonathan Blitzer in his novel Everyone Who Has Gone Here describes immigration as the pressing issue to the shaping of how we govern as a nation, stating that immigration is a “democracy issue” that may fuel the rise of populist authoritarianism. However, for such a pervasive topic in recent political history, he reveals that the last major immigration reform happened in 1990. In the New York Times book review of Blitzer’s novel, it summarizes his work as illustrating “the American immigration system as a victim of its own dysfunction.”

As for the description of immigrants, Blitzer says that migrants’ immigration status had become a “defining, immutable fact of who they now were.” Further, migrants and how they were labelled became a xenophobic mechanism in the immigration dialogue that painted them in a way to deter the average American resident. Michael Bennet, a Democratic senator from Colorado, described this strategy as portraying immigrants as “shadowy, isis-controlled, Ebola-carrying people disguised as Central American children flooding across the border” and being “effective” in deterring politicians from further progressing immigration reform and increased legalization efforts.

We notice through the retelling of migrants’ narratives how they function as chess pieces serving the convenience of the U.S. immigration system, in how government authorities choose to move people around to various locations as well as the ease at which they are thrown out of the country deported. See, for example, the decision of California cops and immigration authorities collaborating to “clean out” city and state jails because “it was much easier to deport someone than it was to convict him of a crime.”

The decision around doing what best serves the interests of the immigrants and what they can provide to America whilst assuaging the interests of Americans manifests in what is described as a “moral imperative” in the New Yorker piece. Most pervasive on the Democratic side of the immigration debate, and the Biden administration’s tackling of asylum, is the struggle around towing the line between controlling the influx of migrants at the border and the ethical/moral boundary that government officials were or weren’t willing to tow. Trump’s separation of migrant families at the border served as the most glaring example of this morally shaky effort, one that proved to work in deterring migrants at the border to some capacity, but more so became cemented as a sensationalist representation of aggressive and ethically ambiguous border policy.

The article on the Darien Gap presents a harshly realistic perspective into the tumultuous journey of migrants. As Americans, we see so much extensive coverage at the Southern border and this fearmongering effort both photographically and anecdotally of an overflow, an invasion. However, the jarring reality of the unrest of their hometowns and the journey they take to get to the U.S. slips out of the conversation. When the Biden administration has been taking such deliberate efforts to improve the Latin American countries that are homes of those migrating, how has this story of the path to the U.S. and immigration reform targeted at the source point fell so far out from the national conversation around resolving the border dilemma?

I thought the articles by Dexter Filkins and Caitlin Dickerson were both excellent. The Filkins article gave a really good overview of the problems from a US policy perspective: congress is in stalemate for partisan reasons, so the President rules through executive orders, which can then be challenged in court. As Filkins illustrates, the US asylum process and changing border policy are very dysfunctional. The fact that asylum seekers can stay for 10 years without having their asylum cases settled is a huge problem because it means that migrants can de facto stay and are likely to slip away and become undocumented at any point in the process. Better the certainty of being undocumented and staying than risking being deported for the sake of being legal. It was also interesting that the US had relied on Title 42, archaic public health legislation,  to turn away migrants at the border within 15 minutes of processing them for so long but cannot anymore. I thought the profiles of the local politicians Lozano and Gonzales were really interesting because they highlighted the gulf between the Washington narrative and the experience of communities close to the border. Both politicians gave the impression they were now totally disillusioned with the federal government’s ability to respond. There was a suggestion at the end of the article that what the US needs to do is invest more in South American economies. I don’t think that will stem the flow of migrants. I remember reading in Patrick Kingsley’s book The New Odyssey that increases in GDP lead to short to medium-term increases in population outflow as more people have the means to leave the country. I was also struck by the many similarities to the migrant crisis in the EU and in the UK: I haven’t read the book that we read the review for, but I did note that the review mentioned how the author didn’t consider US migration policy in a global context. Thinking about the issue in the context of a looming Trump presidency, I am increasingly convinced that the more liberal solutions to the migration crisis are nebulous and uncertain: facilitate assimilation and mutual understanding and increase overseas aid spending etc. On the other hand, the more right-wing suggestions on the right are very concrete: close the border, end the asylum system, have a hard cap on migration. My sense is that these suggestions are increasingly appealing to the median voter in many western democracies. The main obstacle for implementing these policies in Western countries so far has been international law, but how long will it be before a major western country ends its asylum system and which other countries will follow? The UK was the first to try to ship its migrants away and failed, but now the Netherlands and Germany are trying.

I found Dickerson’s piece fascinating and very compelling. It was a topic that I knew nothing about but that I now feel I know a good amount about. It’s crazy to me that a region that was thought of as impassable for centuries had 800 thousand people cross through it last year, with the fastest growing group being under 5s. My overall takeaway from the piece was that deterrence does not work: people have nothing to lose and everything to gain. Elimar’s situation at the end of the piece, living and working in Dallas, with her asylum hearing not for another 5 years shows how you can win big even though you gamble. I thought the story of Bé and Kánh was heartbreaking and allowed the human toll of the criminalisation of migration to cut through. It provides a useful counter example to Elimar’s success. It also points to the  long term traumatisation of even the people who do manage to make it to the US.

The side-by-side presentation of articles about Afghan immigration and US-military “mistakes” returns us to a theme that has permeated this whole course: during the first class, we discussed how underfunding foreign countries leads to the need to immigrate away from them. This week’s readings felt like an extension, that foreign military destabilization will also always lead to refugees. Even in a case where the United States presents the work that they do as “helping,” (and it ostensibly was meant to) their missteps led to public fear. American conservative voters will sometimes say we have no moral obligation to accept refugees and provide them with comfortable living conditions, but with the damage the US has caused abroad (in aerial violence and the rushed evacuation from Afghanistan) it does feel like we have a need to help. Still, despite SIVs and humanitarian parole, it feels like we’re doing surprisingly little in comparison with Iran and Pakistan. As global leaders, is the US obligated to help more than they would in other cases? What other obligations does the US have? Khan mentions at one point that the military didn’t give condolence payments to the families in Tokhar – is economic repayment a path towards accountability?

I’m also struck by how interrelated all migrations stories are. Afghan immigration is of course not existing in a vacuum; I find it really interesting that PBS reported many are now trying to come in through the Southern Border. And the newest waves of refugees aren’t just coming from Afghanistan, I have to assume many of them are coming from European and Arab countries. How is the issue playing out globally? And more locally, what role do the US government and NGOs play in cross-state migration? Immigrants want to be close to diaspora hotspots (like CA, St. Louis now, and D.C.) but how easy is it to re-resettle? I definitely agree that Afghan media and businesses need to grow roots before migrants will feel fully comfortable, and I wonder how long (historically, considering other groups that have been in their place) that will take? We’ve generally looked at immigration historically, and I’m finding myself curious as to whether any groups have come to the US with similar issues – if education, median yearly household income, and English language proficiency are so low, what historically has been the best way to combat that? And why aren’t we considering Afghans as part of a greater historical trend?

I’m also in love with the way that the second part of Khan’s reporting begins outlining her methodology; it feels like journalism-student gold. (cross-checking information in official reports with civilian reporting, using wayback machine, importing all data to an app where she could access it on her phone). I found it interesting that she also suggests meeting people “unplanned” – not warning them – because this way the information flows the most smoothly and is most reliable. Thinking about her work in the context of our prior harm-reduction, I’m a big fan of the way she presented herself totally honestly, but also imagining it was difficult to keep up contact – how do these families feel about their publication now? Also, she tells Katbeeah what the internal US documents say – is that necessary / does that help? I wonder whether hiding information like that could be better for the victims. I also found it interesting that both Khan and Hays referenced FOIA requests – I understand these vaguely, but I’m wondering at what point they feel useful. They seem outside the scope of what we’re working on, but is there a point as a journalist when that kind of information is necessary? Also, would have loved to have seen how she organized her information (considering there was so much by the end!!) + how she determined which stories to tell, out of so many possible (and deserving) accounts. Starstruck by both of Khan’s articles, lots to think about.

Azmat Khan’s investigation demonstrates the importance of information the public about the impacts of American wars on civilians. By speaking directly to victims of airstrikes, like the Saad family, Khan and her team humanized the civilians harmed by the war and continued to experience trauma for years after the war disappeared from the frontlines of American consciousness and public discourse. Sharing the victims’ stories also shows that there are very specific examples of the contrast between the official government narrative in reality, which cannot be denied based on evidence from eyewitnesses and family members. For instance, Younes Mahmood Thanoun was a victim of a strike which was only supposed to target one car but hit three because of an intentional decision to save more precise and lower collateral weapons for future strikes. The Pentagon concluded that there was no evidence of wrongdoing in this instance.

One of the most obvious reflections on Khan’s investigation is the striking similarity between what happened in Iraq and what is happening now in Gaza in terms of the underestimation of civilian harm and the contrast between the official narrative and realities on the ground. This particular quote stood out to me: “The air war has been marked by deeply flawed intelligence, rushed and often imprecise targeting, and the deaths of thousands of civilians, many of them children, a sharp contrast to the American government’s image of war waged by all-seeing drones and precision bombs.” Khan’s work and stories of victims she was able to share demonstrate this reality for Iraq, but this quote can almost be pasted with little change into a story about Gaza. The State Department’s official narrative and regular press briefings emphasize that they are putting pressure to reduce civilian harm and that strikes are carried out with precision, with civilian deaths as an unintended side effect, but the numbers and reports coming out of Gaza suggest that this is inaccurate.

This piece also sheds some light on both the role and challenges of investigative journalism – the second part to the series mentioned that it took years of negotiation and FOIA requests to obtain certain documents and information, and that on the ground data collection was interrupted by the pandemic. I also know and follow Lila Hassan, one of the research assistants who contributed to this project, and she often shares on her platforms how difficult it is and how much persistence is required to get access to documents from government sources. It is necessary work to hold officials accountable and shed light on the hypocrisy between the public narrative and what actually happened, but the reality is that it can also take years for this accountability to take place. It was also insightful to learn about some of the measures Khan took while visiting 50 sites in Mosul to ensure that the information she receives is accurate and that prior notice does not bias the work.

I remember when the U.S. armed forces left Afghanistan and watching the truly unbelievable scenes of people clinging onto an airplane, trying to escape. It seemed like a terrifying end to a terrifying conflict, with a terrifying aftermath as well. What was missing in the immediate aftermath news coverage, I thought, was the human aspect, while most American news outlets focused on the American angle. I remember a few stories of Afghans who helped the American military struggling to get out of the country and fearing the wrath of the Taliban. Those stories faded from view and I, like many Americans, moved on to other stories.

This week’s stories are what I was looking for. While the PBS NewsHour piece was nice context, for the most part, reading Khan’s two-article series was incredibly eye-opening. It was what I thought was happening, confirmed. My favorite stories combine public records and on-the-ground reporting, and that’s exactly what this was. I’m honestly about surprised Khan was able to get the Pentagon records, and I’m glad she supported it with in-person reporting. I think Khan summarized the first article very succinctly in the second article: the documents showed “not a series of tragic errors but a pattern of impunity.” And then the stories of the survivors only add to that claim of a “pattern of impunity.” It is a great example of combining records and on-the-ground reporting to get a complete picture and tell an otherwise untold, important, story of American military failure.

I also appreciated the podcast from The Breakfast Sisters and hearing from the migrants themselves, these being resilient women who were artists and journalists – defiant in the face of the Taliban and forced to flee when the Americans left Afghanistan. It was also nice to her about Restore Her Voice  and the women that they helped. I also enjoyed reading the PBS article about the refugees in St. Louis, and how they’ve adapted. The Migration Policy article was interesting too, but I feel like the data can only go so far – there were no interviews! Which I suppose isn’t their goal; they’re not a news organization. Perhaps combining the Migration Policy and PBS articles would have satisfied me more: reading the data, and then hearing from the people that comprise the data (though St. Louis was not one of the places that was on the top destinations map, but no matter).

These articles all unite in their mission of exposing and illuminating the humanity behind the Afghan story in relation to a context of a conflict-driven stage of U.S.-Afghanistan relations. The Azmat Khan piece is quite a stunning and bitter encapsulation of how a promise, one centered in the “extraordinary technology” of the American government, became a misguided attempt ridden with ignorance to civilians, yielding a bloody and unjustified outcome.

But what happens if the humanity is removed from this story, replaced by technology?

Khan and the Times speak to the logistical flaws of what boiled down to making sure that any expected civilian casualties must be proportional to the military advantage gained. Civilians had been collateral damage in this military system, the harm produced left unaccounted for.

This astonishing indifference to civilian presence and a lack of accountability in military action reminds me of the conversation around A.I. weaponization (technology known as lethal autonomous weapons) and its looming prevalence in the future of warfare. When the article discusses notions of confirmation bias and the ethical debate around a civilian toll as a “strategic necessity,” how does this fare in a technologically centric model where the humans aren’t making the decisions?

Some statements from the Pentagon files seemed appalling to me, how the military mistook civilians for enemy fighters nearly in 1/5 of the cases, often undercounted civilian deaths, how targets on “no-strike lists” like those in schools and hospitals were removed. Specifcally, the human decision behind this reads as morally depraved due to the lack of acknowledgement of civilian deaths. Khan says that this situation is “not a series of tragic errors but a pattern of impunity”; however, how do these decisions translate if we implement lethal autonomous weapons?

The other narrative through this week’s readings focused on the immigrant story of Afghans seeking to find their place within the U.S. and its communities. The MPI article was very helpful in painting a picture of the immigrant story of Afghans in the U.S. They explain how migration of Afghans is historically a conflict-driven one, and we see how the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan fits into this pattern. However, what shocked me was the large discrepancies in English proficiency, educational attainment, and labor force participation for Afghans. I find myself asking what mechanisms explain this gap in opportunity for Afghan migrants.

The PBS News Hour article on Afghan refugee communities in Missouri had me thinking of the housing conversation that has been so rife since the intense scrutiny on Haitian migrants in Springfield, OH. St. Louis has an F in affordable housing for the most disadvantaged renters, struggling with affordable housing supply issues. This article paints the traditional bright-eyed benefits of immigrant settlement, a phenomenon that brings a vibrant touch and cultural difference. However, there seem to be these fundamental lingering issues that perpetuate an inflammatory dialogue around the influx of refugees in America and how they are negatively impacting the livelihood of American communities and their existing residents.

The scenes that we have read described the chaos and desperation that conflict brings, especially when civilians are caught in the crossfire. Images of people clinging to planes, desperate to escape, show just how urgent and dire the situation becomes when a city falls into disorder. On the other side, military personnel are making life-or-death decisions, which leads to a lot of tension between those making the calls and the civilians on the ground.

One thing that stands out is how airstrikes are sometimes talked about like a video game, where operators describe the combat zone as “poppin’” with targets. How did we get to this level of detachment, where life and death are reduced to something that seems more like a game than reality? When that kind of attitude is taken, tragic outcomes follow, like civilians and children being killed due to miscalculations or flawed intelligence. What does it say about our military systems when those calling the shots don’t feel the weight of the consequences?

Then there’s the problem of proving casualties. Families who lose loved ones in airstrikes, like those of Katbeeah, are left grieving, but there’s so much red tape involved in verifying these deaths. Sometimes, reports are rejected because there’s not enough proof, or because the information is too confusing, limiting our understanding of what really happened. What kind of system allows for such disconnect between the reality on the ground and the reports being filed? How do we move forward when we can’t even agree on the basic facts of who died and why? It almost seems like these families are forced to grieve in silence, without proper acknowledgment of their loss.

At the same time, it raises the question of how the Afghan community is coping now. What does the distribution of Afghan refugees look like, both in the U.S. and globally? What resources or support do these communities have, and are they getting the help they need to rebuild their lives? Are we seeing a true effort to embrace these refugees, or is it more about tolerating their presence? The idea that these immigrants can “revitalize” communities is promising, but does that line up with the struggles they face daily?

And then, looking at the bigger picture of military airstrikes, hidden Pentagon documents reveal repeated mistakes and failures that have cost countless civilian lives. There’s talk of “mistakes” happening, but why are these mistakes so common? Why is it that investigations into these incidents often don’t even involve talking to survivors or visiting the sites? How can we trust a system that seems to lack accountability at such a high level?

These questions highlight the gaps in understanding, from the military operators who are distanced from the real consequences of their actions, to the civilians whose lives are shattered by those decisions, and to the systems that prevent us from fully knowing the truth. How do we address these issues and bring more humanity and accountability into these situations? And what does this mean for the future of conflict and the people who are inevitably caught in its wake?

Azmat Khan’s sobering piece on US drone warfare in Afghanistan left me less with a new insight on American military conduct and more so with a greater appreciation for journalism’s role in the systems of political accountability. What she demonstrated in her piece is that journalists go beyond simply relaying the information that they discover; sometimes they have to create their own lead rather than be informed by outside sources, as she did by questioning the official line put forward by the Obama government. The way in which she conducted her research however also displayed the limitations to a ‘free press’. The lawsuits currently in place to try and obtain more military documents credibility assessments in relation to Afghanistan and the fact that the Times only received 1,311 out of 2,866 reports made me think back to the state secrets privilege legal precedent that is active in the US and the limitations it creates for journalists and the information the public receives. If these 1000 or so documents were those deemed ok to be released to the public, knowing what kind of horrific details they revealed about the state of US military conduct, what would the remaining documents, not deemed suitable for the public eye, further reveal? Of course, state secrets and the 9 exemptions to the release of FOI documents or their use in legal proceedings can have grounds in protection of national security, but at the same time, the US has pulled out of Afghanistan. It doesn’t have to worry about maintaining relations or upholding foreign governments secrecy with a non-Taliban government, as that doesn’t exist any more. I find it very hard to see what the reasoning would be behind not releasing documents related to drone warfare, or at least releasing information in a way that could protect . For example, Khan was focused on the conversations and the way drone operators evaluated locations for their viability as ISIS targets. I am sure that in many cases, other snippets of these conversations and assessments could be released without releasing other vital pieces of information that perhaps would threaten national security or relationships with foreign allies – however I will admit that what I am saying is becoming very speculative of what these documents could actually contain. My main point is that I find it worrying the extent to which the agencies journalists are aiming to critique can shield themselves – it is not uncommon for the CIA and military agencies for example to withhold documents whose release would supposedly hurt ‘national security’, when later they merely addressed internal abuses of human rights committed by these agencies that would damage their reputations. In this way, these agencies still have some power in shaping media narratives simply by withholding information. Of course, Khan did most of the work on the ground by speaking to victims and sharing the stories of the victims killed but ignored by official figures. However what made her piece so monumental was the way she directly followed the patterns of US strikes where they had made it clear in their documents that there were potentially civilians; in a way conducting a form of present archeology and narrative reversal, deconstructing their claims that would not have been possible. The larger question is how to establish greater transparency, especially when agencies have powers to reject FOI requests, which remains a political question within which journalists play an essential role, even just by highlighting how many rejections they receive or by how hard it is to get some types of documents.

I found myself floored by the Azmat Khan articles. The nut-graph wasn’t exactly a revelation–I feel like the US Army’s disregard for civilian casualties has been a well-established precedent–but the fine granularity of detail that Khan reached with each individual victim and circumstance was astounding. Each individual story had the quality of a whole news piece, and Khan gathered so many. I wonder if her compensation would have been higher if she had split the piece into even more parts…

In my experience reading war reporting, two general approaches to conveying information have developed: the “embedded” perspective and the “humanitarian” perspective. This contrast can be portrayed easily by comparing coverage of Ukraine with coverage of Gaza; one has only embedded reporting and the other has barely any. While the former typically dehumanizes the targets of war through tactical jargon and black-and-white terminology, the latter typically treats the military as a black box that drops bombs at random. I think the Khan articles were so impressive to me because she was able to tell “both sides” of strike after strike; in doing so, she was able to paint a far more damning account of these attacks than somebody who had only interviewed the victims. 

I would love to ask Khan a few questions about her approach to reporting. Namely, why was this a two part series? It felt like a lot of what was covered in the first part was covered again in the second. In fact, I found the strongest sections of the first part to be the direct comparisons between the Pentagon documents and the on-the-ground interviews. Making an effort to separate the human toll from the Pentagon’s documents seems to detract from the cognitive dissonance that makes these pieces so strong. 

Jane Ferguson’s reporting for PBS NewsHour was fun to see, since I was fortunate enough to take her class last year. It’s encouraging to see the professionalism of the end result, given the unbelievable stress of her situation. With that said, I was thrown off by some of the choices that the NewsHour made with regards to their focus. Professor Ferguson mentioned that many Afghans had issues with how the US pulled out of Afghanistan, more so than that they pulled out in the first place. That makes sense to me, but no mention was really made about why the how of the operation was so disastrous (the breaking of the SIV promise, for instance). This omission could have more to do with NewsHour wanting to make as much content as they could from the situation, but I suspect it also had to do with the goal of including the segment on Biden’s speech, which I felt was significantly less important. 

One aspect that really surprised me was the pattern of the Afghan diaspora. I assume that many of them arrived in the USA by airplane, so I don’t really get why there is such a presence in Texas. Of all the places to put these refugees in, why would the state that constantly complains about an immigrant overflow from Latin America be the choice? Perhaps they have come through the Darién Gap?