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By ANDREW MOSS Contributor Last month, attorneys from the Department of Justice joined with counsel for the private prison corporation, the GEO Group, to present oral arguments supporting private immigration detention in California. Speaking before judges of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the attorneys appealed an earlier U.S. District Court ruling that largely upheld a 2019 California law mandating the phase-out of private immigration detention facilities in the state. Essentially, the government and GEO Group...
There’s a term that was developed in the academic field of peace research, and it deserves far more currency in political discourse and everyday language than it currently receives. It’s called “structural,” or indirect, violence, and, as the name implies, it refers to violence that is embedded in social structures or institutions. You can’t name a specific perpetrator as you would when an individual shoots, stabs, or suffocates another person. But structural violence inflicts no less harm than its direct counterpa...
There are many ways to suppress a vote. If you’ve followed elections in various states over the past two years, you’ll recognize such strategies as the purging of voting rolls, the elimination of same-day voting, and the shortening of early voting periods. There’s the requirement of government issued photo ID’s, and the disqualification of any voter registrations that lack an “exact match” among government documents required for identification. Then there’s the consolidation of polling places in certain districts, th...
As the struggle for immigrant rights continues to be fought across America, new battlegrounds may come into view, and then fade from public attention. For many months, our border drew intense scrutiny, as family separations shocked and horrified millions. Recently, the fate of DACA and 700,000 Dreamers moved back briefly into headlines, as the Supreme Court took up arguments over the Trump administration’s efforts to terminate the program. What hasn’t yet come to full attention, however, is the struggle over the future of...
In the past year the Trump administration has been applying increasingly restrictive policies to block asylum seekers from pursuing their claims in the U.S. The most recent measure, now temporarily barred by a federal judge’s injunction, would have required migrants traveling through another country such as Mexico to show proof that they had applied for, and were denied, asylum in that country. That policy would most likely have barred almost all migrants from Central America, as well as many Africans, Haitians and Cubans t...
There is a certain tyranny to the 24-hour news cycle, a specific grip on human awareness and attention. We have been rightly consumed by the Trump administration’s policy of separating migrant parents from their children, and the media have been filled with pictures and stories of anguished families, along with voices of critics from across the political spectrum. Yet though President Trump has retreated on the issue, he has still successfully used the powers of his office to dominate the media. He and his staff have been a...
