Countless arbitrary detentions, jailings and deportations occurring across the U.S. with no end in sight.
Across the U.S., we are witnessing the daily demonization, criminalization and re-victimization of countless migrants and refugees, most of whom were forced to flee home and country as “the harvest of our empire”, as James Phillips sets out in his two-part article.
Refugees and forced migrants are the harvest of our empire
(Two Covert Action Magazine articles by James Phillips)
https://mailchi.mp/rightsaction/refugees-forced-migrants-are-the-harvest-of-our-empire
“The waves of immigration from Latin America that arrive at the U.S. border
are the harvest of our empire. This means that the policies of the United States
toward those and other countries are intimately involved in creating conditions
that force people to emigrate from those countries.”
Rights Action would add that the waves of forced migration over decades now are due also to the policies and economic interests of Canada and other Western allies.
Democracy Now is providing regular coverage to the manifestly racist and politically-motivated detentions, jailings and deportations targeting, demonizing and criminalizing Latinos and Muslims generally, and individuals identified with the rights of Palestinians suffering Israel’s genocidal ethnic cleansing violence and destruction that are, it bears repetition, supported and legitimized by the U.S. and West. People with visas and permanent resident status (green cards) are being illegally rounded up.
Beyond extraordinary efforts going on across the country by citizens, community organizations, non-profit advocacy groups, lawyers and legal aid clinics, there are few checks and balances, and accountability efforts from quite complicit main stream institutions – the Democratic Party in general, Congress and the Senate, the administration of justice, media, etc.
Genocidal Chixoy dam project inflicts more suffering on Maya Achi people, 43 years later
Every one of the illegal detentions, jailings and deportations represents a personal family-life story now further ripped apart.
Not surprisingly, people Rights Action has worked with and supported for decades have been forced to flee home and country (Guatemala and Honduras), as "the harvest of our empire”, past and present, to eke out a living in the U.S., while sending money (“remittances”) to families back home.
Over the last few days, I have received urgent communications from children of victims of one particularly extreme case of death and destruction in Guatemala that Rights Action has been working to help address since 1994.
In the midst of the U.S. and Western-backed genocides and massacres from 1975-1985, the World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) decided this presented an excellent opportunity to invest huge amounts of money (some estimate over $1 billion U.S.) in the Chixoy hydro-electric dam, a “development” project planned and carried out in partnership with the genocidal regimes in power.
The project was built and completed with extreme violence in Achi communities along the Chixoy River basin. One village in particular –Rio Negro– was particularly targeted. Over 450 villagers were slaughtered in 1982 in the most gruesome manners one can imagine, their deaths being, in the end, the promised “relocation” of Rio Negro necessary to help complete the project.
43rd anniversary of complete World Bank and IDB impunity for
Chixoy Dam-Rio Negro massacres in Guatemala
By Grahame Russell, Rights Action, March 13, 2025
https://mailchi.mp/rightsaction/43rd-anniversary-of-chixoy-dam-rio-negro-massacres
Through my work with Rights Action, I have come to know many Rio Negro victim-survivors since 1994. We have done our best to help support their work and struggles for truth/ memory/ justice, community rebuilding, and education for their children, a number of whom have been forced to flee home and country, as "the harvest of" the Chixoy hydro-electric dam and decades of ensuing entrenched poverty and landlessness.
Families torn apart, again
Now, three men - children of direct victim-survivors of the 1982 massacres - have been rounded up and whisked to “nadie sabe en donde estan” (‘nobody knows where they are’, I have been told by family members in the U.S. and Guatemala). Two of the three have wives and newborns. All have been working and paying taxes, etc., for years.
I fear I might soon learn of round-ups of some of the people forced to flee the violence, corruption and forced evictions of mining resistance struggles we have been supporting and denouncing in Guatemala and Honduras since the early 2000s, some of which are documented in “TESTIMONIO – Canadian Mining in the Aftermath of Genocides in Guatemala” (edited by Catherine Nolin & Grahame Russel, Between the Lines, 2021)
These “nobody knows where” detentions are predictable and awful book-ends to how our unjust, unequal global order so often operates, re-victimizing the very people forced to flee early victimizations caused, in large part, by the policies and powerful economic interests of the countries they are forced to flee to.
"There are no magic answers, no miraculous methods to overcome the problems we face,
just the familiar ones: search for understanding, education, organization, action ...
and the kind of commitment that will persist despite the temptations of disillusionment,
despite many failures and only limited successes, inspired by the hope of a brighter future."
Noam Chomsky
All hands on deck
Rights Action will do our best to support situations of illegal detentions, jailings, deportations of people we know of and have supported, knowing these are but a few of countless similar cases, with no end in sight.
We encourage any and everyone to get involved/ stay involved supporting local advocacy efforts and struggles in defense of folks that might be rounded up in your area.
"To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places - and there are so many - where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don't have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory."
Howard Zinn
