On Friday, October 4, the Biden administration announced that it would not extend the humanitarian parole program for citizens of Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela. The decision has sparked outrage among many immigrant rights advocacy groups who say it could endanger “the lives of as many as 530,000 people”. Similar programs for Ukraine and Afghanistan have been extended in the past. Why not do the same for Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela?

This parole program, abbreviated as the “CHNV Parole Program” in reference to the countries it covers, allows citizens of the designated countries to seek temporary asylum in the United States. In an email, Jacqueline Charles, a journalist covering Haiti and the Caribbean for the Miami Herald, clarified that the administration had not ended the program “but decided it will not extend the two year window for those already admitted under the program.” That is an important nuance because it means people from these countries will continue to be eligible for the humanitarian parole program. Under this program, the United States has committed to admit up to 30,000 nationals of Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela every month.

Mark Green, the Republican U.S Representative for Tennessee’s 7th congressional district, told the New York Post that the federal government’s move was an “optics-driven smokescreen” by the Biden administration to appear tough on immigration just weeks before the election. The Biden administration has in fact taken a number of restrictive measures to curb the number of crossings into the United States, including an executive order that restricts asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border. According to the Associated Press, these measures are a response to the administration’s low poll numbers on its handling of migration, which could be a liability for the Democratic Party in the election next month.

Michael Wilner, the Chief Washington Correspondent at McClatchy, suggested another possible explanation for this decision.

“The administration didn’t renew parole for these groups because they didn’t believe they could guarantee that a future administration would maintain the program. Renewing it would give individuals a false sense of security. By giving them advance notice that they won’t be renewing it, eligible individuals who fall within these groups have time to look at alternative paths to legal status,” Wilner said in a statement via email.

In fact, Haitians who arrived in the country before June 2024 and Venezuelans who entered the United States before July 2023 continue to be eligible for Temporary Protected Status (TPS). The TPS program allows beneficiaries to obtain work authorization, it protects them against deportation and establishes a path for them to be granted travel authorization. Cubans have a separate process that allows them to obtain permanent status. This special process, which is guaranteed by the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966 (CAA), “allows Cuban natives or citizens living in the United States who meet certain eligibility requirements to apply to become lawful permanent residents”. Nicaraguans appear to be the most vulnerable group because they are not eligible for any specific program, although they can apply for asylum like all other nationalities, with no guarantee of approval.

The federal government’s decision not to renew the humanitarian parole program for the four countries comes after months of intense scrutiny from Republicans. They have repeatedly described the program as “an abuse of presidential executive authority,” according to the Miami Herald. In September, Trump announced in an interview with Fox News that his administration would not recognize the legal status of people admitted under the humanitarian parole program, putting them at risk of deportation. Earlier this year, about 20 Republican-led states sued the Biden administration over the parole program, though a federal judge ultimately upheld it in March.

Dr. Johnny Laforet, a Haitian lecturer at Princeton University, believes that the program, despite its imperfections, has achieved positive results from the government’s point of view.

“The government wanted to stem the flow of migrants coming into the southern border”, said Laforet. “If you compare the number of border crossings before and after the program was established, you will clearly see the difference”. Back in May,  FWD.us (pronounced Forward US), an immigration and criminal justice reform advocacy organization, published a report that showed that the CHNV humanitarian parole program had successfully reduced “unauthorized migration to the border”. Department of Homeland Security officials confirmed to the Washington Post that “illegal crossings from those four countries [had] fallen 99 percent since the program began in 2022 for Venezuelans and 2023 for the other nationals”.

The humanitarian parole program was launched in October 2022 to provide a legal pathway for Venezuelan migrants trying to flee their country. It was extended in January 2023 to include nationals of Haiti, Nicaragua, and Cuba. Since then, the program has allowed more than 500,000 migrants from those four countries to enter the United States with temporary legal status.

Speaking about the benefits of the program specifically for Haitian migrants, Dr. Laforet said that “in addition to applying for Temporary Protected Status (TPS) once they arrive in the U.S., which the administration has made available to them, this wave of newcomers can also get married or find a job that helps them get their green card.”

Overall, Dr. Laforet believes the program has done a lot for the Haitian community, including those who were already established in the United States. “[The parole program] is also good for the Haitians already living in the United States, because now their family members can join them here, and they no longer need to worry as much about their well being back in Haiti.”

Candidate Donald Trump insists that the votes of noncitizen immigrants will skew the 2024 U.S. presidential election. He repeats his claim in his rallies and focused on this anti-immigrant rhetoric in the 2024 presidential debate.

“A lot of these illegal immigrants coming in, they’re trying to get them to vote.” said Trump in the September debate broadcasted by ABC. “They can’t even speak English. They don’t even know what country they’re in practically. And that’s why they’re allowing them to come into our country,” he said charging Kamala Harris, his democratic challenger, without evidence as being part of a voting scam.

These claims follow a pattern of Republican-led misinformation about voter identification and election interference. Trump’s denial of the 2020 election results was rooted in claims around the unreliability of mail-in ballots and dead people’s votes skewing election results. During this election cycle, misinformation around noncitizen voting is uniquely rampant due to voter polarization and distrust of traditional media, shifting toward alternative sources of news like social media says Laura Feldman.

“People are not as trusting of legacy and mainstream news outlets, whether it’s the New York Times, the Associated Press, or CNN,” says Feldman, professor of journalism and media studies at Rutgers University. “Republicans are much more likely to distrust news media than Democrats, which can be connected to elite rhetoric about liberal media bias.”

Misinformed anti-migrant and racist messaging has defined Republican rhetoric during past presidential election cycles. Trump, before he was a presidential candidate, spread birtherism conspiracies about candidate Barack Obama during the 2008 election, falsely claiming that Obama was born in Kenya and therefore ineligible to serve as US president. Fox News and GOP leaders amplified the “great replacement” theory—that immigrants are coming into the US to replace white Republican voters—to a mass audience following the Republican loss of the 2020 election.

“I know that the left and all the little gatekeepers on Twitter become literally hysterical if you use the term ‘replacement,’ if you suggest that the Democratic Party is trying to replace the current electorate [with] more obedient voters from the third world,” said Fox News host Tucker Carlson on Fox News Primetime in April 2021, supporting the great replacement conspiracy. “But they become hysterical because that’s what’s happening actually.”

Trust in traditional news media steadily declined since the 1990s amidst a media environment that became more sensational and tabloid-driven, intensifying upon Trump’s claims about mainstream outlets broadcasting fake news, according to Feldman. As a result, audiences turned to alternative media sources.

Algorithmic changes and the misinformation policies of social media companies have affected the dissemination of information and conspiracies on these platforms. Elon Musk, who acquired X (formerly Twitter) in 2022 has been an outspoken endorser of Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign, fueling doubts about noncitizen election interference in his posts.

“The goal all along has been to import as many illegal voters as possible,” said Musk in July on X, to his over 200 million followers. His post garnered 45.8 million views. Musk’s posts about noncitizen voting conspiracies have been viewed over 200 times more than fact-checking posts correcting those claims published on X, reported NBC news.

“He bent the algorithm around his own account so he can draw attention to specific topics in a way that literally no other user on social media can,” said Andy Guess, an associate professor at Princeton University, who studies polarization and misinformation in politics. “He’s totally fixated on this noncitizen issue and can elevate these baseless claims in a way that gets people talking about them.”

Musk’s amplification of noncitizen voting conspiracies follows a wave of a right-wing media boom on social media platforms characterized by xenophobia.

In the past year, YouTube and Rumble livestreamers made money filming and harassing migrants at the US southern border, and TikTok videos claiming that refugees have entered the US as an “invading army of sleeper cells” quickly gained virality. Anti-migrant content is one of the leading narratives on TikTok says Lucy Cooper.

“People could be led to anti-migrant content from consuming news about what was happening at the time, and in that way, immigration is one of the issues that’s the most opportunistic. There’s a lot of pathways into it,” says Cooper, a digital research analyst at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) who researched TikTok and anti-migrant content.

As a growing population of Americans that rely on social media as a news source, social media platforms have transitioned to a hands-off approach to managing political misinformation says Guess.

“One side said, ‘You’re not doing enough to remove hate speech.’ The other said, ‘You’re censoring people.’ There was no way to satisfy both so the platforms generally try to pull back on politics altogether,” Guess says.

Unlike public health misinformation that was widespread during the pandemic in 2020, social media platforms lacked a uniform approach to political misinformation.

“When it comes to viral misinformation about migrants, there’s just no such playbook. An individual case or anecdote that might be based on something real can turn into sweeping statements. It is ambiguous at what point it becomes misinformation.” says Guess.

Young viewers are increasingly getting news from social media platforms as opposed to professional journalism outlets. In the past four years, the share of young adults who regularly get news from TikTok has grown nearly fivefold, up to 45% in 2024, revealed a Pew Research study.

Older demographics encounter different challenges around navigating a changing news media landscape. “They still don’t have crystallized perceptions of the orientation of the platform. That means they’re able to build trust in these platforms because they’re more novel,” said Guess.

Amidst a fragmented social media landscape, with users consuming content on various platforms, the ability to tailor content and reinforce echo chambers further entrenches the noncitizen voting conspiracy according to experts.

“Social media removes the gatekeepers, it’s completely unregulated. It’s increasing the scale in which information and misinformation can spread,” says Feldman. “Within those platforms, everybody is seeing different stuff, so it’s very easy for us to surround ourselves with the information that echoes back to us our existing world views.”

At a campaign rally in Arizona on Thursday, Donald Trump continued his attacks on illegal immigration and his criticism of the Biden-Harris administration’s handing of the border. He said the US is “like a garbage can for the world.”

With Election Day just over a week away, Trump has been focusing on anti-immigration rhetoric as he tries to win over additional voters in this final stretch of the campaign trail, especially in swing states. Though he continues his anti-immigration rhetoric at his rallies, he has not shared many details on how he plans to accomplish his sweeping immigration proposals.

What would immigration under a second Trump term actually look like? What policies would he realistically be able to implement, and what broader impacts will they have on immigrant communities already in the United States?

At another Arizona rally earlier this month, Trump mentioned his proposal to hire an additional 10,000 agents to patrol the U.S.-Mexico border, with no plan for how he will accomplish that or how he will get funding for this proposal. Trump has also proposed mass deportations of millions of people and building new detainment centers.

According to the New York Times, Trump will have a very difficult time getting the resources to implement his proposed policies. Many candidates, especially Donald Trump, rely on hyperbolic rhetoric on the campaign trail to energize their base without any realistic details on how they will put their proposals in action.

Stephen Miller, who oversaw border policy during Trump’s first term and is expected to take on that role again if Trump is re-elected, said at the Conservative Political Action Committee earlier this year that the administration would bring back Safe Third agreements, Remain in Mexico, and Title 42. He also mentioned creating large staging grounds for removal flights.

Safe Third agreements, Remain in Mexico, and Title 42 were all used during the first Trump presidency to curtail immigration. Safe Third agreements with countries in Central America required asylum seekers traveling through those countries to first seek protection there before they get to the U.S.-Mexico border. Remain in Mexico is is a Department of Homeland Security policy which required asylum seekers to remain in Mexico until their U.S. court date. Title 42 is a policy that was revived during the COVID pandemic which allowed for turning away migrants arriving at the southern border on the basis of public health concerns. This policy ended in 2023 by the Biden administration with the end of the pandemic.

According to WBUR, for the first three years of the Biden presidency, there were roughly 2 million illegal border crossings a year, and that number fell drastically with tightened border controls and significantly limited asylum claims. During the Trump presidency, those numbers remained below a million each year.

Daniel Kanstroom, an immigration law expert at the Rappaport Center for Law and Public Policy and co-director of the Boston College Center for Human Rights and International Justice, says he thinks it will be very difficult to implement something like Trump’s mass deportation proposal.

“There really is no way to implement this kind of a massive program without creating what amounts to a police state,” he told WBUR. “You’re going to have to be checking everybody’s I.D.’s. How do you tell who is an immigrant and who is a citizen? People don’t come with labels on their foreheads.” Kanstroom added that he does not think it is possible to identify the immigration status of 11 million people.

This does not mean that there will be no changes at all to immigration policy, or that there won’t be other devastating consequences. There could still be an increase in detention, deportation, and family separation, in addition to fear within immigrant communities.

One thing we know based on previous border crackdowns is that stricter immigration enforcement does not necessarily deter  migrants who want to cross the border. Anuj Gupta, CEO of The Welcoming Center (TWC), says the grit and perseverance of migrants who go through difficult journeys to get to the United States shows that they are determined to make it to their final destination. He says the U.S. should welcome people with that level of grit and determination.

“The issue is not that people want to come to this country,” he says. “The problem is that we don’t have a system to accommodate them.”

As a Philadelphia-based nonprofit organization, TWC provides community support and a wide range of services for migrants, including language training, entrepreneurship support, and leadership workshops. Elizabeth Jones, Strategy and Impact Director, says preparing for the possibility of a second Trump presidency means responding to changing community needs and emphasizing wellness, while maintaining TWC’s current programming.

“We need to provide a way for people to be able to express their fears,” she says. “Wellness will be threatened.”

The New Yorker book review mentions that “the American immigration system is a victim of its own dysfunction”.  It discusses how backlogs in asylum cases incentivize people to stay in the country, and draconian border laws increase the population of undocumented immigrants. This statement about the dysfunction of the system can also extend to the broader history of the problem at the border because the United States directly contributed to many of the conditions in Central America which are leading people to want to migrate. State repression and crackdowns beget more state repression and crackdowns, and simply redirect the problem rather than solving it; deportations resulting from collaborative crackdowns led by law enforcement and immigration enforcement planted some of the seeds for the problem at the border which is prompting more crackdowns to control the problem.

The Atlantic piece about the Darien gap shows just how much people are willing to sacrifice to make it to the United States. Before Dickerson went down to make the trip, she was told that she could take measures to make it safer, but ultimately, “survival requires luck”. Her takeaway was that making the migration process more difficult does not mean that fewer people will migrate. It just means that cartels and other dangerous groups step in and profit from the process, and many migrants will die. The UN migration officials sent to bus stops and other checkpoints leading up to the Darien gap were ineffective at convincing people to turn back. It is somewhat expected that once people are set on making it to the US and are determined to make the journey regardless of the dangers that lie ahead, there is little that can be done to convince them to change their minds. Additional enforcement attempts by Panama border officials also do not do much to discourage immigration; migrants simply warn each other down the line as they are approaching the border and learn to avoid the officials.

The New Yorker article mentions that there are generally two categories of people who try to come into the country without permission: those who offer themselves up for arrest and apply for asylum (which have increased since 2021) and those who sneak in and try to evade capture. The increase in the number of people who claim that they will face violence or persecution if they return home and are coming from places as far as China is another illustration of the fact that deterrence is not effective at reducing the influx of migrants at the border. A more effective approach would be to facilitate the legal pathways of migration to reduce the number of people who remain undocumented in the country or are waiting for years (in some cases over a decade) for their asylum hearings. It is also becoming increasingly difficult to figure out which asylum seekers are playing by the rules, according to the article. It is interesting that some officials think that more lenient policy is the reason behind more migrants crossing the border because they think the system is gameable.

CALAIS, FRANCE — Three migrants were reported dead on Wednesday by the French Maritime Prefecture. The bodies were recovered as 45 migrants were rescued during a failed attempt to cross the English Channel from France to the UK.

In June, Reform UK released a four-point plan to “stop the boats.” In their plan, they claimed that the UK government could start “picking up illegal migrants at sea and returning them to France.” Nigel Farage, the leader of Reform UK, repeated the claim on Question Time in June and then again on BBC Radio Kent in September. Richard Tice, member of parliament and former leader of Reform UK, tweeted in September, “Starmer needs to explain why he does not have leadership & courage to use 1982 UN Convention of Law at Sea to pick up & take back”

So, can the UK return migrants at sea to France?

“Not without the consent of the French, ” according to James Turner KC, a barrister at Quadrant Chambers specializing in maritime law. “Article 19 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea does not allow the unloading of migrants in other nations’ territorial waters “contrary to the immigration laws” of that country”.

In January 2018, the British and French governments signed the Sandhurst Treaty. The agreement outlined how the governments would cooperate to reduce illegal migration across the Channel. However, the agreement makes no provision for returning migrants intercepted at sea to France. There is only agreement that “Migrants rescued at sea will be taken to a port of safety in accordance with international maritime law.”

“The channel, and indeed a lot of littoral waters, are divided up into search and rescue zones and different states have responsibility in each of them” explains James Tuner KC. “But just because, say, the UK has responsibility for search and rescue in Zone X it doesn’t stop France coming and helping if they have ships in the area.”

In July, a British Border Force vessel assisted French authorities in a search and rescue operation and returned the rescued migrants to France for the first time.

At the time, a Maritime and Coastguard Agency spokesperson said: “A Border Force vessel was sent to support French vessels in the operation, coordinated by French authorities.”

James Tuner KC said, “If they were picked up in British waters then the appropriate port of safety will be a British one because otherwise you’re crossing an international boundary with [the migrants].”

Felix Thompson, spokesperson for aid collective Calais Appeal, said, “Although we would never encourage migrants to make the crossing, we tell them that if they do and are in distress, they should contact us as well as the emergency services. That way, we can try and get them help too and it’s on the record that the authorities knew a boat was in distress.”

In November 2021, 31 migrants died crossing the channel when their boat capsized in the English Channel. ​​At the time, the UN’s International Organization for Migration (IOM) called the incident the worst single incident of lives lost since it began collecting data in 2014. A French inquiry in the aftermath of the incident found that the migrants on the boat had repeatedly called French and British search and rescue authorities but received no assistance, despite a French coast guard vessel being in the vicinity. The boat had capsized around midnight, but was not attended to until the next afternoon when a fishing vessel saw bodies in the water and raised the alarm. Many of the migrants who died had frozen to death in the water since the boat had capsized. Five French soldiers have since been charged by French police for failing to prevent the loss of life.

Last month, Prime Minister Keir Starmer visited Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni to discuss migration. The Prime Minister told journalists that Italy’s deal with the UN-back Libyan government and the Tunisian government “appears to have had quite a profound effect.” He said, “Preventing people leaving their country in the first place is far better than trying to deal with those that have arrived in any of our countries, so I was very interested in that.” The number of people arriving in Italy from Africa has dropped by 64% this year.

It is unclear what lessons the Prime Minister is hoping to draw from his visit to Italy, however. French police already patrol beaches around Calais and Dunkirk and prevent migrants from leaving French shores where they encounter them.

“The Italians in the past have been very naughty about what they have done with refusing refugees to be landed in their ports. They have also offended against the principle of refoulement,” said James Tuner KC. In 2012, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the Italian government had violated international human rights law by returning more than 200 migrants intercepted at sea to Libya, their point of departure.

During the Boris Johnson Conservative government, Home Secretary Priti Patel drew up plans for a “push-back policy” under which border force vessels would forcibly push migrant boats back into French waters. The plans were abandoned, however, in the face of legal challenges. It was also thought that the chance of endangering migrant lives was so great that the policy was unworkable in practice.

“The international legal framework of the Refugee Convention and the Safety of Life at Sea Convention and the Search and Rescue Convention and the Collision Regulations all conspire against doing anything radical to ships at sea” said James Turner KC, who was involved in the legal challenge to Patel’s policy. He added, “I do not think the solution to migrant crossings is a legal one.”

The debate as to how to prevent migrants crossing the channel continues as the IOM has raised the death count for migrants crossing the channel in 2024 to 52, making it the deadliest year of crossings since 2018.

Zoe Sigman, an analyst at the IOM’s Missing Migrant Project, said, “We can never say that we have captured all of the data and in fact we know that we don’t capture all of the data.”

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.