In February, the country broke an ominous record: over 68,000 people were being held in detention by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, more than ever before.
As immigrant families face detention, shrinking legal protections and the threat of deportation, Camp Hope offers children a rare chance to play, heal and dream. One former camper is headed to an opera conservatory in Italy.
Border grassroots organizing is winning in July; Who pays the price for Brownsville's tech and industrial boom? And Tijuana Art Week and NAFTA's lasting influence on Baja's landscape. Plus more!
“It’s not difficult to understand that a population that makes its livelihood off the land would find climate change oppressive, and would find climate change to be tantamount to persecution.”
All signs indicate that 2023 will be the hottest year on record, yet again. If this sounds like something you’ve heard before, it is. Every year it seems like records are set, broken, and then broken again in cities, states, countries, and regions across the world. The heat, droughts, floods, and storms are putting pressure on people and their livelihoods, primarily in the Global South. As founder and executive director of the organization Climate Refugees, Amali Tower explains in this podcast, these climate disruptions are causing more and more displacement in the world, and each year the number of displaced people increases by the millions. Border Chronicle readers should recognize Amali’s name: this is not only her second podcast (please check out the first one here), she also wrote a piece for us one year ago titled “Finding a Solution to Climate Displacement: Time to Divert Border Enforcement Billions into Loss and Damage Finance”.
In this conversation, as we approach the annual United Nations Climate Change Conference in the United Arab Emirates (that begins on November 30), Amali offers a provocative reframing of climate change and its impact on people. Climate change, she says, is a form of oppression for the majority of the world. By placing climate as an equivalent to persecution (similar to political, economic, or racial persecution), she challenges prevalent Global North narratives and offers new ways to view, think about, and tackle climate and displacement in the world. She asks listeners to consider this following question when thinking about people on the move: “How has the situation risen to such an oppressive level that I have absolutely no recourse but to leave my home country?” And, finally, Amali insists that it is the people with these lived experiences who should be leading the important climate conversations. Listen to this podcast and you might not think about climate and migration in the same way again.
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In February, the country broke an ominous record: over 68,000 people were being held in detention by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, more than ever before.
As immigrant families face detention, shrinking legal protections and the threat of deportation, Camp Hope offers children a rare chance to play, heal and dream. One former camper is headed to an opera conservatory in Italy.
County leaders say tax abatements attract jobs. But some residents argue the incentives enrich billion-dollar corporations while they shoulder the costs of growth, pollution, strained public resources, and environmental loss.
Border Chronicle founders, Todd and Melissa, talk about how law enforcement surveillance, high-speed chases instigated by Border Patrol, unwarranted searches and seizures, and other heavy-handed policing that border communities have endured for decades has now moved into the interior of the country.
Independent news, culture and context from the U.S.-Mexico border.
