Join us April 22 for a fascinating conversation about how international students organize and protest in the face of repression and threats. RSVP: z.umn.edu/IHRC_April22
@freedomhouse.bsky.social @nafsa-official.bsky.social @presalliance.bsky.social @migrationcollab.bsky.social @iehs.bsky.social
As Paik argues, "Borders are violence" to migrants and the land alike (Paik, "Sanctuary for None," 94).
At the same time, border patrol efforts also scar the desert. Border wall construction requires new roads to be built. "Security" efforts necessitate the use of bulldozers and explosives to clear the land, destroying trees, cacti, animals, and water sources.
As migrants attempt to cross the desert, the US government points to this pollution as reasons to deny them sanctuary. As Paik argues, the "US state deploys sanctuary for nature to deny sanctuary to migrants" (Paik, "Sanctuary for None," 76).
Despite deterrence efforts, migrants continue to cross through the Sonoran Desert. In doing so, they pollute the dessert. Migrants carve new paths to avoid detection from border patrol agents. They discard unnecessary objects that might slow them down such as old food containers.
The US government implements "prevention through deterrence" to pass off the mass murder of migrants as a simple result of environmental factors in the Sonoran Desert while obscuring US imperial policies.
The US government has also weaponized the desert's hostile terrain. While reinforcing other border-crossing locations, the US allows migrants to cross into the US through the Sonoran Desert, knowing that the extreme temperatures and aridity will kill most crossers in the process.
Despite being one of the primary causes of pollutants in the Sonoran Desert, the US government recasts itself as guardians of the land, setting aside swaths of the dessert as protected environmental sanctuaries such as Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge.
The Sonoran Desert has taken on multiple meanings for the US state. Starting in 1941, the US began using the land for military training. They treated the dessert as a "sacrifice zone." The seemingly "vacant land" was polluted by the US state, exchanging the health of the land for national projects.
This March, MiSC scholar A. Naomi Paik (@naomipaik.bsky.social) published "Sanctuary for None: Conservation, Migration, and Border Violence in the Sonoran Desert." What does Paik teach us about the links between land conservation and the antimigrant violence?🧵
read.dukeupress.edu/social-text/...
Take a listen to my convo w/Amelia Frank-Vitale on her new book, "Leave If You Can: Migration and Violence in Bordered Worlds." I learned so much from this book & Amelia's response to my questions.
newbooksnetwork.com/leave-if-you...
It hurts that denationalization is still a reality today.
@elliottyoung.bsky.social @karl-jacoby.bsky.social @tinashull.bsky.social @irpinaingiro.bsky.social @kangborderlaw.bsky.social @carlygoodman.bsky.social @austinkocher.com @yaelschacher.bsky.social @prof-nataliam.bsky.social @latinohistory.bsky.social @ithacamcg.bsky.social @wmack3212.bsky.social
✍️ Corinealdi shows these aren't coincidences. Racism, capitalism, militarization, and anti-immigration policy feed on silence about what came before.
To document denationalization is to lift the veil. Read her full article here 👇
thefunambulist.net/magazine/fol...
But the past isn't past.
Panama is now paid millions by the US to deport migrants crossing the Darién Gap, the Dominican Republic rendered thousands of Haitian descendants stateless in 2013, and the US recently issued an executive order targeting birthright citizenship.
The history was buried for multiple reasons ⤵️
🟠 WWII drowned it out globally
🟠 Anti-Black and anti-Asian discrimination was the hemispheric norm
🟠 Once it ended, the prevailing consensus was to call it an aberration and move on.
Afro-Panamanian lawyer Pedro N. Rhodes took the case to the Supreme Court, warning that this set a dangerous hemispheric precedent. The Court was unmoved. Until 1961, descendants of Caribbean migrants still had to prove their "Panamanianness" to claim their own citizenship.
In 1941, Panamanians voted on a constitution that promised labor protections for some while revoking citizenship for others. Article 12 stripped birthright citizenship based on Blackness, Caribbean ancestry, and speaking languages like English, French, patwa, or creole.
It didn't come out of nowhere. Decades of nativist propaganda had targeted Black Caribbean and Asian migrants as obstacles to national progress, and by 1928 nearly everyone non-white or non-European fell under Panama's "prohibited migrants" category.
Historian & MiSC scholar Kaysha Corinealdi ( @kcorinealdi.bsky.social ) asks how this happened and why it fell into oblivion. Her answer in a recent @thefunambulist.bsky.social article cuts to the heart of how we choose what to forget, when we choose to remember, and what that costs us today.
Between 1941 and 1946, over 50,000 Panamanians —most of them Black— were stripped of their birthright citizenship. It was the first constitutionally sanctioned denationalization in the Americas. Yet, almost no one talks about it. 🧵👇
thefunambulist.net/magazine/fol...
“As far as I can tell, it’s the practice of ICE to throw everybody’s documents into a black box and then lose it."
Something remarkable happened this week: a Substack post helped expose and remove the first-ever ICE 287(g) enforcement agreement with a K-12 school district in the United States. Here's what we know. 🧵
Documents filed this morning by the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of NY exposing how ICE has been lying for a year — not only to the public, but to the courts and to prosecutors — about being authorized to make arrests at 26 Federal Plaza and other immigration courts.
Documents filed this morning by the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of NY exposing how ICE has been lying for a year — not only to the public, but to the courts and to prosecutors — about being authorized to make arrests at 26 Federal Plaza and other immigration courts.
According to documents filed this morning by the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of NY, ICE has been lying for a year — not only to the public, but to the courts and to prosecutors — about being authorized to make arrests at 26 Federal Plaza and other immigration courts. (1/2)
Join the IHRC and @iehs.bsky.social for a fascinating online discussion: The Founding of the US and Immigration History on March 31 at 3:30 Central. More info and rsvp: z.umn.edu/USandImmHistory
@hidehirota.bsky.social @amandafrost.bsky.social @migrationcollab.bsky.social @umnengagement.bsky.social
As Predicted, ICE Reports Another Detention Death While Congress Does Nothing: 2nd This Week, 13th This Year, 42nd Under Trump
austinkocher.substack.com/p/as-predict...
NEW EVENT: Maxamed Abu-maye, author of the book Black Muslim Refugee: Militarism, Policing, and Somali American Resistance to State Violence. Wed. April 8 at 5pm in person and online. z.umn.edu/IHRCApril8
@uofmhumanrights.bsky.social @iehs.bsky.social @migrationcollab.bsky.social
🚨 Since July 2025, federal agents have shot 16 people. No criminal charges. Limited public information. Cases quietly fading from the news. Rather than a coincidence, these events reflect a deep-set pattern. 🧵👇
www.counterpunch.org/2026/02/13/t...
@elliottyoung.bsky.social @karl-jacoby.bsky.social @tinashull.bsky.social @irpinaingiro.bsky.social @kangborderlaw.bsky.social @carlygoodman.bsky.social @austinkocher.com @prof-nataliam.bsky.social @latinohistory.bsky.social @ithacamcg.bsky.social @wmack3212.bsky.social @kcorinealdi.bsky.social
Golash-Boza calls on cities to demand footage release, agent identification, & written transparency agreements for joint federal operations.
We know what federal impunity looks like. This piece makes sure we can't pretend otherwise.
🔗 Read it in full ⤵️
www.counterpunch.org/2026/02/13/t...