In the deadly weather of a polar vortex, Texas' privatized electric grid failed, leaving much of the state without power. ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) detainees report especially horrible conditions during the storm.
Imagine fleeing an impoverished, war-torn or otherwise unlivable environment, only to be shoved in a box with a bunch of other suffering people while you wait for the rusty cogs of a giant corrupt bureaucracy to figure out whether you should be sent back into hell or allowed into a different, hopefully cooler hell in America.
At least you get the cooler part, as the power goes out in the middle of a blizzard because the state you're detained in can't maintain its power grid responsibly. They decided to privatize it instead of following national safety regulations. Republican lawmakers blame the wind turbines which make up less than 10% of their power production. Conservative propagandists on Fox News broadly point to the "Green New Deal" – a thing that hasn't happened – as a cause of the outages, while ignoring their own positions which undoubtedly contributed to the situation.
Now, you and your ten-year-old children who you haven't seen in weeks are going without water and adequate provisions in this death box. Maybe you would've been better off in the terrible situations you fled from. Often, that seems to be the goal of ICE - create so much suffering at the border that nobody wants to be an American anymore.
"ICE Detainees In Texas Described The Storm's Misery"
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/adolfoflores/ice-detainees-conditions-texas-storm
"Dying of Cold": Ice Detainees Freezing in Southern Prisons
https://theintercept.com/2021/02/19/ice-detention-cold-freezing-texas-louisiana/
This article is a compilation of my own posts and comments from Noise, to which I added some facts and better organization for sharing on here, because I think the information is worth spreading. Follow me over on Noise to see song lyrics, memes, videos I'm watching that I'd like to share, and other shorter thoughts. I usually post there a few times a day. https://noise.cash/u/lucas
Apologies to my generous sponsors for writing about such a contentious topic! I hope they don't mind. When I see this kind of irrational, dystopian treatment of human beings, I can't help but write something.
People will come over the border, legally or illegally, so long as there is an incentive to do so. Human traffickers will keep going if they will make more money than it costs to do the trafficking. Poor people escaping bad environments will brave the harsh desert if they expect conditions in America to be more livable than those they're leaving.
For some reason(s), people are coming over the border illegally, right? To me, it just seems like common sense, all we are doing is inflicting suffering so that some people will decide not to come over illegally to avoid that. But for others who are currently enduring worse, the proposition will still be worth it to them. The whole thing just feels like it's designed to cause more pain in the world.
Now, of course, we can't just snap our fingers like Thanos and stop all mistreatment across the world. But we could at least stop adding to it, right? Surely there's something we can do.
The History of immigration to America is complicated. Our economy is built on the exploitation of cheap labor from Mexico, and a portion of their economy ended up building on the feedback from that reality.
America stopped needing the cheap labor of immigrants so much as it grew internal populations of people to exploit. The modes of production changed, political tides turned. Long-standing racial tension found a home and a cause – most strongly in the rhetoric of the Republican Party, but realistically, it has influenced all of American politics.
"With no better options amid Trump's border crackdown, migrants are taking their chances with Arizona’s perilous Sonoran Desert"
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/border-crisis-arizona-sonoran-desert-882613/
"U.S.-Mexico Relations"
https://www.cfr.org/timeline/us-mexico-relations
"Expansion and Expulsion"
https://www.loc.gov/classroom-materials/immigration/mexican/expansion-and-expulsion/
The common justification we hear is human trafficking. People are bringing enslaved kids and humans across the border for nefarious purposes! My response is okay... and do you want to fix that problem? Or do you just want it out of sight and out of mind?
Our laws on immigration have actually made it harder or impossible for trafficked people to get help. If they go to police as undocumented migrants, the police in many areas are told to immediately call ICE, and when you get deported, you can't help with an investigation into human trafficking, one that was never filed, because the cops were too busy calling ICE.
The people who were turned into slaves don't really want to return to the place in which they were enslaved, that wouldn't be any better than staying here as a slave. Trafficked people get no help from America, even as we defend our horrible decisions under the guise of helping trafficked people.
"Does ICE Deport Victims Of Human Trafficking?"
https://growfreetn.org/2018/04/13/does-ice-deport-victims-of-human-trafficking/
"ICE Deported a Woman Who Accused Guards of Sexual Assault While the Feds Were Still Investigating the Incident"
https://www.propublica.org/article/ice-has-deported-a-woman-who-said-guards-sexually-assaulted-her-while-the-investigation-is-ongoing
With Joe Biden taking the reins as our latest war-criminal-in-chief, are we seeing a new shift in the political tides? Maybe the future is sunshine and rainbows, but I remain skeptical.
Republicans love to gleefully point out to imagined bleeding heart liberals that Joe Biden helped to write the infamous 1994 crime bill, signed by Congress and passed by President Bill Clinton.
The law imposed tougher prison sentences at the federal level and encouraged states to do the same. It provided funds for states to build more prisons, aimed to fund 100,000 more cops, and backed grant programs that encouraged police officers to carry out more drug-related arrests — an escalation of the war on drugs.
My response, of course, would be, "yeah, that sucks."
I find it funny, however, that while Joe Biden now admits the failures of the bill, Republican Congress members today would likely unanimously vote in favor of a bill with identical language.
It reminds me of how they sometimes claim Abraham Lincoln as part of their party - in fact, he was the first President of the Republican Party - when many of them identify with a racist secessionist movement from the 1860s, against which Lincoln fought to keep America united. John Wilkes Booth killed Lincoln believing that he was a tyrant who violently overthrew the Confederacy, and anyone alive today who believes that will have voted Republican in recent elections.
Do I love Joe Biden? No. I'm going to vocally disagree whenever he makes a bad decision, and defending him is getting very tired. Our entire political system is damaged, and the GOP are just the tip of the iceberg.
As a matter of fact, Joe Biden has already been struggling (failing) to live up to his promise to stop deporting undocumented migrants!
Many people who are themselves the exploited class now see immigrants as the enemy rather than as equally desperate and exploited. I will never fully understand how the rich managed to turn the poor on one another so completely. Split by nationalism and racism, we fight in tight-knit little pockets against one another.
When will the needless suffering end? When will we put in the effort to form better relationships with one another, interpersonally and across national borders? I have hopes that it's happening today, all around us. On the internet, we have connected with people from around the world, and we are building bridges with each other every day. Solidarity among common people, knowing we're all the same on the inside, can bring us to truer freedom than perhaps we have ever known.
"Myth of the Lost Cause-America’s Most Successful Propaganda Campaign"
https://www.historyonthenet.com/myth-of-the-lost-cause
"Doing Policy from Below: Worker Solidarity and the Prospects for Immigration Reform"
https://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1716&context=cilj
