Dear Deeply Readers,

Welcome to the archives of Refugees Deeply. While we paused regular publication of the site on April 1, 2019, we are happy to serve as an ongoing public resource on refugees and migration. We hope you’ll enjoy the reporting and analysis that was produced by our dedicated community of editors and contributors.

We continue to produce events and special projects while we explore where the on-site journalism goes next. If you’d like to reach us with feedback or ideas for collaboration you can do so at [email protected].

Executive Summary for March 12th

We review the latest issues related to refugees, including a furore over a tell-all memoir by a U.S. border agent, Amnesty saying the Myanmar military is building bases over Rohingya homes and Pope Francis denouncing the politics of fear.

Published on March 12, 2018 Read time Approx. 3 minutes

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:

 

Suggest your story or issue.

Send

Share Your Story.

Have a story idea? Interested in adding your voice to our growing community?

Learn more
× Dismiss
We have updated our Privacy Policy with a few important changes specific to General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) and our use of cookies. If you continue to use this site, you consent to our use of cookies. Read our full Privacy Policy here.