Tell-All U.S. Border Patrol Memoir Comes Under Attack
A former U.S. Border Patrol has defended his memoir criticizing the agency. Francisco Cantu’s book has been attacked from the political left and right.
The son of a Mexican-American woman, Cantu released “The Line Becomes a River: Dispatches from the Border” expecting criticism only from the right. But his book signings have been disrupted by immigrants’ rights groups.
One group attacked the tell-all author, calling him a “hipster Border-Pig.”
He answered back on Twitter: “To be clear: during my years as a B.P. agent, I was complicit in perpetuating institutional violence and flawed, deadly policy. My book is about acknowledging that, it’s about thinking through the ways we normalize violence and dehumanize migrants as individuals and as a society.”
Cantu worked for the Border Patrol in 2008–12 despite his mother’s warning, recalled in the book, that: “‘You can’t exist within a system for that long without being implicated.’”
When Cantu joined the force, he had visions of reforming it from within he said. But found that it changed those who joined the agency.
Now 32, he said he had had “an idea about changing the system from the inside or bringing some good to it,” but found the system was “designed to break you down and rebuild you into an enforcement agent.
“It’s true that we slash their bottles and drain their water into the dry earth, that we dump their backpacks and pile their food and clothes to be crushed and pissed on and stepped over, strewn across the desert and set ablaze,” he wrote.
Amnesty Says Myanmar Military Building Bases Over Razed Rohingya Homes
The Myanmar military is building bases on razed Rohingya villages, said rights group Amnesty.
Satellite imagery suggests that the remains of some partially destroyed villages are being bulldozed and new military facilities are under construction.
“What we are seeing in Rakhine State is a land grab by the military on a dramatic scale,” Amnesty’s Tirana Hassan, said in a statement. “New bases are being erected to house the very same security forces that have committed crimes against humanity against Rohingya.”
Myanmar has been accused by the U.N. of ethnic cleansing in the state of Rakhine and more than 700,000 Muslim minority Rohingya have fled into Bangladesh. Authorities in Myanmar said the operations were a counterinsurgency and said that bulldozing villages is part of an operation to build new homes for returning refugees.
Amnesty said the “reshaping” of the region appeared to be placing more military assets and bringing in non-Rohingya residents.
Pope Speaks out Against Politics Dominated by Fear
Pope Francis has spoken out against national policies based on fear. The comments come in the wake of Italian elections in which immigration worries were played up.
Speaking in Rome, he said: “The world today is often inhabited by fear. It is an ancient disease … And fear often turns against people who are foreign, different, poor, as if they were enemies.”
The pontiff has regularly spoken up for refugees and migrants but the center-right parties who got the most votes in this month’s elections have vowed to deport migrants en masse.
Recommended Reads:
- Libya Herald: Most Libyan Militias Involved in Illegal Migration Activities Nominally Affiliated to Official State Security Institutions: U.N. Libya Experts Panel Report
- The Scotsman: Dreams of Glasgow: An Eritrean Refugee’s Story
- Wired: Tagged, Tracked and in Danger: How the Rohingya Got Caught in the U.N.’s Risky Biometric Database
- LSE Blog: The Illegal Economy of Refugee Registration: Insights into the Ugandan Refugee Scandal #PublicAuthority