The Border 'Crisis' and the Convenient Silence of the Pundits
📰 THE STORY: The New Arab reports on calls for a US-wide general strike on January 30th to protest Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the government's hardline immigration policies, citing human rights abuses and the separation of families. 🔍 WHAT THEY'RE NOT TELLING YOU: Historical Context: The current immigration enforcement regime didn't spontaneously appear. Operation Wetback in
1954 saw over a million Mexican immigrants deported, often violently. Later, the 1990s brought policies like Operation Gatekeeper (1994), militarizing the border and pushing migrants into deadly desert crossings, directly leading to an increase in deaths and the criminalization of seeking asylum. This was further exacerbated by the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act,
which dramatically expanded categories for deportation and limited judicial review, effectively laying the groundwork for the modern ICE juggernaut. They also omit that US foreign policy, including destabilizing actions and sanctions in Latin America (like the 1954 CIA coup in Guatemala, the 1973 CIA coup in Chile, or the ongoing sanctions against Venezuela), often creates the very conditions that
force people to migrate in the first place. Double Standard: Western media often portrays 'migration crises' as spontaneous events caused by 'bad governance' in developing nations, completely ignoring the direct role of former colonial powers and US interventionism in creating the instability. When refugees flee conflicts ignited or exacerbated by Western powers (e.g., Libya post-2011 NATO