Migrant deaths and disappearances are part of Biden’s legacy on immigration

Jhon Javier Benavides Quintana left his home in Guayaquil, Ecuador, to find safety and better opportunities in the U.S. and to provide for his two young children, Jeremy and Mia. The decision to undertake the treacherous and potentially deadly journey north in February 2024 was an act of tremendous sacrifice. In recent years, communities in Ecuador have been devastated by worsening violence and an economic crisis that’s forced tens of thousands to flee to the U.S.-Mexico border.

Benavides Quintana was apprehended by Border Patrol in El Paso, Texas, in late March 2024 and transferred to Otero County Processing Center in Chaparral, New Mexico, about two months later. Even in the darkest moments of uncertainty, Benavides Quintana’s relatives said he remained hopeful, turning to religion. He read the Bible to others detained at Otero, run by the private prison company Management and Training Corporation (MTC).

But on the morning of June 15, 2024, the 32-year-old was pronounced dead.

It took Benavides Quintana’s family about five months to repatriate his body to Ecuador for a proper burial. Maria Benavides Quintana, Jhon’s sister, and Itzayana Banda of the New Mexico Dream Team, said his remains were nearly cremated by Immigration and Customs Enforcement without the family’s consent. (An ICE spokesperson said in a statement that if “neither the family nor the consulate claims the remains, ICE shall schedule an indigent’s burial, consistent with local procedures. … Under no circumstances shall ICE authorize cremation.”) His remains finally arrived in Ecuador in late November.

“[Jhon] left to provide a better future for his children, our mother, our father, for his well-being. Instead, he encountered death. My brother will forever live in the memory of his family, his children, and his friends,” Maria said in a phone call from Guayaquil.

If the family hadn’t received assistance from Ecuadorian officials, Maria said it would have been impossible for them to cover the estimated $15,000 they were told it would cost to repatriate her brother’s body. Mourning relatives who’ve lost family members in federal immigration custody are often left to navigate an expensive and confusing process to lay their loved ones to rest back in their home countries. There is rarely any closure or justice for these families. There’s also no solace for the relatives of people who’ve died or disappeared at the U.S.-Mexico border or on their journey to the U.S.

Jhon Benavides Quintana was one of 12 people who died in ICE custody in fiscal year 2024—the deadliest under President Joe Biden. At least 26 people have died in ICE custody during the Biden administration.

These deaths are part of Biden’s legacy on immigration.

This story was originally published on Prism. Read the rest.

The Dark Truth of Biden’s Immigration Policy

The last time Eduardo saw his best friend, Kesley Vial, a 23-year-old asylum seeker from Brazil, Vial was unconscious. He had been found hanging from a shelf in his cell at the Torrance County Detention Facility, a sheet tied around his neck. Seven days later, at a hospital in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Vial died.

Eduardo, who is from Ecuador and was also being held at Torrance, a private Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center about an hour southwest of Albuquerque, was already depressed. But Vial’s death pushed him into a crisis that’s still difficult to talk about. Kesley “was a joyous person, a good person. He danced that morning. He danced almost every day,” said Eduardo, who asked to go by a pseudonym for safety. “But being locked up in there is hell.”

This story was originally published on The New Republic. Read the rest.

Indigenous Leaders Are Being Forced Into Exile

On November 21, 2020, after Guatemala’s Congress approved a budget that proposed cuts to funding for health care and education, thousands of protesters flooded the streets. “People’s indignation was legitimate,” Lucía Ixchíu says. Riot police arrested dozens of people that day. At least two protesters lost an eye after being assaulted by police. A portion of Congress was sent on fire. Authorities quickly blamed protesters, but Ixchíu and others believe the blaze was actually instigated by government infiltrators to help build criminal cases against activists.

Just two months before the November protest, Ixchíu had survived the assassination attempt in Totonicapán. After the fire, the threats and police harassment only intensified, forcing her to go into hiding until she clandestinely left Guatemala in 2021. She says she wasn’t willing to bet her future on a racist and corrupt judicial system in a country like Guatemala “where prison is torture.”

This story was originally published on The Nation Magazine. Read the rest.

Guatemala’s War on Truth: The arrest of Guatemalan journalist José Rubén Zamora shines a spotlight on the country’s attacks on journalists

Renowned Guatemalan journalist José Rubén Zamora, president and founder of the investigative newspaper elPeriódico, has been detained for nearly a month. Security forces stormed Zamora’s home in Guatemala City on the afternoon of July 29, and occupied it for hours as several police cars and other vehicles without license plates surrounded the property. The law enforcement agents who entered Zamora’s home were heavily armed and had their faces covered, according to elPeriódico. The newspaper’s offices were also raided that same afternoon.

Zamora’s arrest is just one of many instances of the Guatemalan government persecuting journalists in response to their work exposing corruption.

“We had staff detained for 16 hours…practically kidnapped by the police,” said Juan Diego Godoy, a columnist and the digital director at elPeriódico, who was not in the office at the time. Despite the raid, elPeriódico successfully published the print edition of its July 30 paper under the headline “No Nos Callarán,” or “They Won’t Silence Us.”

This story was originally published on The Nation Magazine. Read the rest.

Undocumented people struggle to access reproductive care due to militarization of Arizona borderlands

Luisa and her husband migrated to the U.S. 14 years ago and they now live in Tucson, Arizona. She is undocumented, doesn’t speak English, and has five children, two of whom were born in the U.S. Luisa said she loves her children, but that all of her pregnancies and births were forced. She said her husband often raped her and controlled her birth control; over the years, Luisa had four miscarriages.

“I feel guilty saying this, but it was a relief,” Luisa said. “I didn’t want to have more children with him. I felt depressed.”

Finding reproductive health resources in Arizona has been extremely difficult for people like Luisa. The chronic lack of access to reproductive healthcare has been the norm for undocumented people in Arizona and across the country—long before abortion bans were enacted and the U.S. Supreme Court gutted Roe v. Wade in June.

This story was originally published on Prism. Read the rest.

Haitian Asylum-Seekers Are Being Mistreated in ICE Detention

It’s been over two months since as many as 15,000 Haitian asylum-seekers were forced to take shelter in an encampment underneath the international bridge in the borderlands of Del Rio, Texas. In September, harrowing images of Border Patrol agents on horseback, corralling and whipping a group of asylum-seekers as they waded across the Rio Grande, triggered widespread condemnation. Since then, advocates estimate the Biden administration has deported some 9,200 people who stayed at the Del Rio camp to Haiti. Others were forced back across the border into Mexico, where they are vulnerable to abuse by Mexican authorities and organized crime. A much smaller number were allowed into the United States to pursue their asylum claims.

As media attention has moved on from the spectacle at Del Rio, dozens of those Haitian asylum-seekers remain jailed in grueling conditions at the Torrance County Detention Facility in Estancia, New Mexico, about an hour southeast of Albuquerque.

This story was originally published on The New Republic. Read the rest.

“We Are Here by Force”: Maya Ixil Activists Fight for Asylum and Justice

For Francisco Chávez and Gaspar Cobo, it’s still painful to realize that they’re no longer home in the Cuchumatanes mountains of Quiché, Guatemala. Now they’re in El Paso, Texas, where they await their asylum hearings—a process that’s been marked by the cruel realities of the hostile U.S. immigration system. Even though U.S. intervention in Central America triggered many of the conditions that forced Chávez and Cobo to flee in 2019, there’s no guarantee they’ll be given permanent refuge here. But they’re fighting.

This story was originally published on NACLA Report on the Americas. Read the rest.

La Caravana de la Resistencia

Jerson did not want to leave his home country. He wanted to nurture life amid familiar streets and faces. But the radical act of leaving was his only remaining choice, an act of survival. Jerson left for the first time in 2015. He was apprehended in Texas, where he tried to apply for asylum in the United States. Instead, he found himself in immigration detention for nearly a year and was then deported. Upon his return to Honduras, he learned his father had been killed.

When Jerson tried to apply for asylum in the U.S. again, in 2017, it was with Arcoíris 17 (Rainbow 17), the first caravan of trans-gay migrants from Central America (and one from southern Mexico.) The caravan members nicknamed Jerson el guerrero—the warrior.

This story was originally published on NACLA Report on the Americas. Read the rest.