NEWSLETTER | Sept. 30, 2021
IN THIS ISSUE: A refugee crisis at the border, again. Could the Dust Bowl return? Plus guideposts to the origin of debt limits and cloture, a poll opinion and other surprises from history.
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SEPT. 21, 2021 Haitian migrants were returned to Port-au-Prince after U.S. authorities expelled them from Del Rio, Texas, where they had attempted to cross the border from Mexico. (Photo: Alamy)
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A Refugee Crisis at the Southern Border Echoes Detentions at Guantanamo Decades Ago
By HARRISON TREMARELLO | Retro Report
Alarming images of a growing migrant camp under the Del Rio bridge in Texas. Video of Border Patrol agents on horses chasing migrants. News footage of flights expelling thousands of people. The government's treatment of refugees is back in the headlines.
According to Department of Homeland Security data obtained by CBS News, of the 30,000 migrants at the Texas border – many of them Haitians – fewer than 13,000 will appear in immigration court, with 3,000 now being held in detention facilities. Earlier this month, an estimated 4,000 migrants were deported and returned to Haiti.
Under U.S. law, non-citizens have the right to apply for asylum if they fear they will be persecuted if they return home. Many Haitians migrated to South America after the 2010 earthquake, and are now migrating to the U.S. to escape the pandemic-driven economic downturn, increased migration restrictions in Chile and racism, along with a belief that the Biden administration would liberalize immigration rules.
Meanwhile, Haiti is still reeling from the assassination of President Jovenal Moïse, gang violence and a 7.2 magnitude earthquake last month.
But despite the current unrest, the U.S. has deported thousands of Haitians without an asylum hearing.
This is not the first time the U.S. has refused to grant asylum to Haitian refugees. During the Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier dictatorship, the U.S. regarded Haitians as economic migrants and therefore ineligible for asylum. Three decades ago, thousands of Haitians fled political violence after a 1991 coup. The U.S. detained 12,000 Haitian asylum-seekers in prison-like conditions at Guantanamo Bay without legal representation. The majority of their claims were denied, and immigration officials informed hundreds of H.I.V.-positive migrants with approved asylum claims that they could be detained indefinitely until their court-ordered release in 1993.
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1991 After a coup that overthrew President Jean-Bertrand Aristide of Haiti, thousands of Haitians attempted to flee to the United States. They were detained at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba, outside the reach of U.S. law.
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Some current immigration policies mirror those of the 1990s. Today, migrants can be deported without an asylum hearing under Title 42, a law used by Presidents Trump and Biden to speed deportations during a public health crisis. Title 42 mirrors a 1987 ban on H.I.V.-positive visitors and immigrants that was used to justify the detention of asylum seekers in Guantanamo. Earlier this month, a federal judge ruled that families cannot be immediately expelled under Title 42, a decision the Biden administration is appealing.
In the 90s, the government argued that asylum rights did not apply at Guantanamo Bay because it was outside of U.S. territory. More recently, Trump-era immigration laws barred asylum seekers from entering the U.S. Those laws, known informally as the Remain in Mexico program, require migrants at the southern border to wait in Mexico while their asylum claims are processed. President Biden ended Remain in Mexico, in part because many migrants faced physical danger. But in August the Supreme Court ordered the program reinstated while a challenge moves through the courts.
HARRISON TREMARELLO, an intern at Retro Report, is a video and multimedia reporting student in the journalism and political science programs at Northwestern.
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DUST BOWL, 1936 A farmer and sons face a dust storm in Cimarron County, Okla. (Photo: Franklin D. Roosevelt Library)
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Could the Dust Bowl Return? Climate Scientists Have Some Answers.
By ALEX REMNICK | Retro Report
A recent United Nations report on climate change painted a grim vision of the future. Even if countries manage to cut emissions sharply in coming years, global warming will likely still reach a critical limit, 1.5°C, leading to increasingly extreme weather patterns and droughts.
The United States reached a troubling milestone this year with the hottest year on record, tying 1936 in the period known as the Dust Bowl, when severe dust storms swept the southwestern Great Plains, damaging the ecology and agriculture. While there is a widespread belief that that the Dust Bowl resulted from human activity, the facts are a bit more complicated.
According to eco-geomorphologist Kasey Bolles, "tree-ring records show that 1934 was the worst drought year in the last millennium, and buried soils across the Great Plains reveal that drought is a common feature of the region."
In other words, the primary cause of the Dust Bowl was the location itself: The southwestern Great Plains states have always been prone to drought and dust storms. “Agricultural census data indicates that the most heavily cultivated areas were at the eastern edge of the Great Plains, far from the core of the Dust Bowl,” Bolles said in an interview.
Farming techniques of the early 20th century certainly exacerbated Dust Bowl conditions across the Southwest. Some farmers practiced a technique called listing, a type of plowing that was thought to reduce erosion. But instead, Bolles said, listing “broke up soil surface crusts and churned up silt-size particles, which are easily picked up by wind."
So how did the Dust Bowl end? The answer is a combination of human effort and luck. “The rains returned in the early 1940s to break the drought,” Bolles said, while environmental research and public effort “led to better understanding of an important ecosystem that we still benefit from.”
Today, many of the natural conditions that triggered Dust Bowl storms in the 1930s are back, threatening to bring similar problems: record-high temperatures, severe droughts and a significant increase in airborne dust. Beyond concerns about agricultural harm, scientists are worried about the effects of airborne dust on public health. Dust storms decrease visibility and contain tiny particles that can cause heart and lung problems over time. Human activity is the main driver of these new environmental changes.
Droughts and heat waves are inevitable, and they can be devastating even when human activity does not exacerbate them. Without corrective action, scientists warn, the next Dust Bowl era could be even worse.
ALEX REMNICK is a writer and social media producer at Retro Report.
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Sand from soil erosion inundated farms during the Dust Bowl era of the 1930s. (Photo: National Archives)
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Retro Report Recommends . . .
The Retro Report team suggests articles, podcasts and videos that interest, impress and inspire us. Do you have a pick you'd like to share? Let us know: news@retroreport.com.
. . . Unexpected fallout from bounty systems: The Texas abortion law includes an unusual provision: a financial incentive to report others. This podcast from Planet Money compares the legislation to the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act to assess the ways a "bounty system" can affect a marketplace. [The Indicator]
. . . Intertwined origins: The debt limit and the Senate's cloture share a history that dates to the tumultuous time around the start of World War I. [NPR]
. . . Unclear results: Political coverage would be better if news organizations got out of the polling business, Richard Tofel writes in a weekly newsletter about journalism. [Second Rough Draft]
. . . A new series: Bill Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky turned her into her a national pariah, but over time, public opinion has shifted. "Impeachment: American Crime Story," a series that Lewinsky co-produced, premiered on FX earlier this month. Even as it was unfolding, the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal altered the way people talked about sex in public. [The Washington Post]
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